Month: January 2009

So, Monday was a day for recuperating, catching up – and lots of washing! Maths, English, SotW and lots of snuggling up in bed reading 🙂

Tuesday was swimming, where K surprised himself by managing to actually “properly” swim when the teacher suggested he try 😀 L managed to swim with no floats (although more under the water than not, so lots of putting feet down in order to get back up again 😆 ) and then J had a go, very cautiously and only in the toddler pool, and he managed a couple of strokes too! Hooray for Centerparcs!
After swimming we walked down the main ethnic shopping street (handily near the swimming pool) to find some interesting food for Chinese New Year stuff at Tots and Nots and also investigated a couple of charity shops 🙂

On Wednesday J had a Tudor day at Peterborough Museum so we drove there, leaving ourselves plenty of time to find it – fortunately as it turned out, since parking proved to be less straightforward than I’d hoped and we ended up having to walk a fair way and only just arriving in time, despite driving past the Museum several times in our hunt for a space. While J was learning leatherwork, use of herbs, blackwork, penmanship and various other relevant skills K, L, A and I did a dinosaur trail round the rest of the museum, finding lots of hands-on things to try and ending up by a crate of games and books on the top floor which kept us busy until lunchtime. We met up with J for lunch, which should have been halfway through his day, but he decided that he was feeling too tired to do the afternoon session and would rather go home and have a rest, especially as it was to be weapons and armour and a couple of weeks hanging around the MilPil at Kentwell had already taught him pretty much all about those 😉 We walked back to the car via the Queensgate Centre where we found a Lush and picked up a couple of Grab Bags 🙂 then he dozed in the car (must have been tired!) while we drove back. We realised we now had just enough time to get to A’s Baby Music, an unexpected bonus. While A and I were singing J did some English and K worked his way through random exercises in random workbooks he found in my bag (some of which I then had to rub out for L to do later 😆 ) then we dashed back for the boys’ gymnastics session, then home again with just enough time for J to swallow down some tea before Cubs – Wednesdays really are all go!

Chinese New Year at Tots and Nots went well, very low key but with a fair bit accomplished 🙂 We got there nice and early so Gina was able to do some piano while I did some French and that set the tone for the children getting a fair bit done in between bouts of playing and craft 🙂 We put out noodles and chopsticks for the little ones to play with (eating being a bonus 😉 ) and at snack time we had green tea mochi (possibly more Japanese, but never mind!), laver, Double Happiness Gold cake, multicoloured tapioca balls, coconut juice and herb tea. We hadn’t managed to get fortune cookies, so J wrote out lots of fortunes (imagine what he’d have said if I’d asked him to write 15 sentences, yet writing as many random fortunes very neatly on strips of paper was fine!) and we folded them and slid them into cookie rolls for people to pick as they left 😀
The children played Chinese Chequers (is that really Chinese?) and made lucky red envelopes and dollar bills to put into them (some of them gained lots of extra noughts to become multi-million dollar bills!) and Gina showed the children how to play tunes using the pentatonic scale on glockenspiels. There were puzzle sheets with word beginnings and endings to match up and copy out and generally all sorts of ways for us to quietly tick boxes that reading and writing had been done without the children even realising it 😉 A good session 🙂

Today was another busy day, starting with K opening :birthday: presents and cards (how on earth did he get to be seven already?!) and then everybody piling in to the car, which currently feels like a second home 🙁
J had the first of a series of Maths sessions with Uni student volunteers, then an Art workshop with one of our HE group mums who is an artist. Meanwhile K, L, A and I took E (while Gina kept an eye on the two Js) off to Ely Cathedral for an animal safari and a brass rubbing session. I think K was a little disappointed when he realised that the animal safari was only to be in the cathedral, rather than in an exciting animal park he had somehow overlooked last time we went 😆 but he enjoyed it once we started. The man running the session was new to it, which was a shame as it meant that he did not know the stories behind the animals and in one or two cases was not even sure exactly where the animals were; we had to go back and look for the whale in the choir stalls once the children realised he had missed it out because he couldn’t find it! It was still fun though, we were given sheets with pictures of the animals we should look for so the children had fun colouring them in, ticking them off or crossing them out once found and we made up our own stories where necessary 😛
The brass rubbing was in a different building (in the Cathedral Centre, where we had had lunch) and was basically set out as a classroom with lots of small brasses on tables, with black paper, masking tape, bronze crayons and little sheets describing what was on each picture. We were told to tape the paper over the brass, press round the edges to see where the picture was and then rub up and down so that the marks were all in the same direction and it looked better. Each child was supposed to do two, but most of them managed three in the time allowed and the lady running the session then started to mutter about cost… I was helping L and E, whilst keeping A happy on my back, so K started off independently and soon did his usual trick of acquiring a friendly grown-up, in the shape of the safari man, who presumably didn’t know about the two pictures limit; K ended up with a great sheaf of papers! BB added to it by giving him one of her rubbings as a birthday present, which he was very touched by – thanks BB 🙂
We dashed back to the car and just made it back in time to swap E for J before Gina had to go, then it was home again, with J fizzing about his day – so nice to see such enthusiasm :clap: He presented K with a robot he had made in the art session, which now seems to have become one of K’s favourite presents 🙂 and they chatted all the way home, then K and L played DS while J showed me the task he has as a challenge for next week’s session. He’s also been challenged to get to more than 72 on the factors and multiples game (I assume this is the game; will have to check with him in the morning) presumably playing it as a one person game and just getting as far as he can – 72 seems to be the record so far so he is keen to do better!
K chose the menu for tea tonight, so we had pizza and chips (he hadn’t even realised this was possible but was very chuffed when I agreed it might be 😆 ) and then a yummy mint chocolate fudge cake, which we stuck candles into so that we could do ceremonial singing and wishing.

And now I really should be writing my sermon for Sunday, because tomorrow the boys have astronomy and I’d like to get to slingmeet and scrap store while they’re there, then K’s godmother has suggested we all go bowling together…

Mostly swimming…

Saturday morning found us quickly assembling birthday gifts and cards for a party we had all but forgotten about 😳 All’s well that ends well, though, and the children had a good time and came home with interesting cake (no sugar, no dairy, no gluten, no eggs, lots of fruit and nuts) which Bob mostly ate for them 😉 and a few bits and pieces they had made 🙂
In the afternoon and evening we had thought of going back into the city for some of the University 800 years celebrations, but everybody was so tired that we gave it a miss and just had a pottering kind of day, playing with the dog, walking to the park and so forth.

A has been sleeping really badly again, or at least making me sleep really badly, with lots of snacking and switch-feeding. If it doesn’t calm down soon, I think we may be heading towards total night weaning 🙁 She’s also at that awkward in-between stage for naps, where she can’t really quite manage without a sleep in the day, but if she has one then she stays up really late that evening. I keep thinking I need to decide how to tackle this, but while I’m still tired I can’t get my head round how to change things so we’re less tired!

On Sunday we intended to go to church, but all overslept (in my case largely thanks to A 🙄 ) so stayed at home instead. The owners of our dog-sat dog phoned to ask about getting her back and we arranged to take her to them on the way to Gina’s village where we hoped to catch some Plough Sunday celebrations. Then they invited us to lunch, we got chatting and before we knew it it was mid-afternoon 😯 Since we were only a few minutes drive away we went on anyway, hoping to catch the end of the Morris dancing, but were only in time to see a few oddly dressed men leaving the village hall 🙁 Ah well, there’s always next year 🙂

Some packing was done on Sunday, but mostly list-writing ready for speedy packing on Monday. The children did a fairly good job of following their lists, L and K notably more successfully than J, who really seems to struggle with concentrating on a task for any length of time – although he can sit and read a book from beginning to end without a single pause 🙄 so packing wasn’t too painful and we managed to leave before lunch, do food shopping on the way and get to Centerparcs in time to check in, go straight to our chalet (villa? accommodation?), unpack and still get a swim in before tea 😀
In fact tea had to wait while we nipped next door to deliver a birthday present and eat a slice of cake, then being the mean parents we are we whisked our children away, fed them and put them to bed.
Unfortunately all the activities the children had chosen to do were cancelled (3 day football course for the boys, Wise Old Owl walk for L) which saved us a fair bit of money but left them feeling a bit hard done by 🙁 We did lots of swimming, though, and J, having lost the gasket from his goggles, managed to earn another pair by showing me he could go underwater without them (he just didn’t like to) while L and K soon got the hang of using their float jackets to support them while they whizzed round the pool. The flumes were a hit with L, K liked the trip he did with Bob but then went down by himself without making sure one of us was at the bottom and got spooked 🙁 and J was completely traumatised by going down with Bob and ending up under the water for ages. Eventually I persuaded him to go down with me instead and made sure he didn’t go under at all, but that was his lot. K and L loved the white slide and would happily have gone down there as many times as Bob could stand (three abreast 🙂 ) while J found his level with the currents tunnel and pootling in the shallows looking at the lights underwater. A was very clingy most of the time, unfortunately (developmental phase? I hope so!) so Bob and I got very tired arms from holding her on one arm whilst supporting other child(ren) with the other. Ho hum.
We loved the salt pool (especially when we got to swim outside in the snow!) and L and K were fascinated by the sprugel pool and cold plunge (K wants to go back again soon so he can beat his record for how long he can stay in – I think it’s currently at half a second up to the chest 😆 ) but it was really only on the last day that A got up enough courage to wander along in the shallows by herself – and then promptly tripped over a step and landed on her face in the water!
The play areas were great too, especially the jingly plates (step on them to make bells chime) and the whistly switches (jump on one end to make an organ/whistle sound, then jump on the other end to make a different sound) and K and L both loved the very tall slide. J is too much his mother’s son, I fear.
Last day spoilt, as usual with holidays, by poor behaviour from J 🙁 I really need to get my head round how to pre-empt and prevent this, as it is a sad and upsetting feature of every holiday we have and I’m getting a bit tired of it! On the whole, though, lots of fun 🙂 (Thanks Helen.)

New year, new term

New Year’s Eve – lovely party, which we left rather later than planned having been seduced by the promise of sky lanterns at the time we should have been going home 🙂 They were worth it though! Thanks for a lovely time Em 🙂
We listened out for the seven pips at midnight (leap second!) but disappointingly Radio 4 (which we had thought our best hope of getting pips) elected to play the usual chimes of Big Ben instead 🙁 Lots of fireworks to watch as we drove along the quiet A14 though 🙂

We spent New Year’s Day with Rebecca and family, back from the States for a visit. As usual, a little time is not enough, but it’s good to have the chance to catch up a bit. Perhaps we’ll make it out there one day. Or maybe the University will come through with a fantastic job for Benedict 😉

I was preaching on Sunday 4th, so it was handy on Sat 3rd that there was a children’s Christmas party at the local Methodist church to which Bob was able to take J, K, L and A while I worked on the service. (Incidentally, I’m thinking I might start putting services in here, maybe tucked away a bit or something…) It was all age worship, so lots of props and activity. Seemed to go well, I think 😕

Monday 5th was CHEF sport, the first session of the year. The only way I managed to get the children up was by pointing out that there was snow (!) and that we could go and play in the park after the sports session if they wished. In the end the traffic was so bad that we missed half of K’s session, L decided that she’s not yet big enough to do sports (fair enough; she’ll do it when she’s five and stops Mummy milk, she said – one thing ending and another beginning 🙂 ) and J enjoyed his session until almost the end when the teacher (who treats the older group rather like Army recruits at times) made the losing team in some contest or other do burpees. J was so tired he stumbled out and burst into tears 🙁
We went to the park with a few other families and the children enjoyed playing in the snow, once we had established a few ground rules for all, including the boy who looked at me as though I was mad when I told him off for putting snow down BB’s back (really shoving it down inside her T-shirt!) – apparently that’s how they play with snow in his family, as his mum pointed out when I mentioned it to her. He was a bit put out when asked not to throw snowballs in people’s faces at point blank range too; a useful lesson in not taking family rules for granted, I guess.
Bob was giving blood in the evening, but somehow we hadn’t made an appointment for me (usually they get made together so one of us can go while the other childminds, then we switch over – the mobile donation unit comes to an industrial area 5 minutes’ walk from the house) and apparently you can’t make appointments on the day or donate without an appointment. The alternative date I was offered I can’t do, so I guess I’m going to miss out this time 😕

On Tuesday Big Alice came for the day and we had a nice day of not much. There was no CHEF swimming so we had thought about going to the local pool, but Alice was late and we had dental appointments in the afternoon so the children took Alice to the park instead, while I got an hour or so of assorted housework done. Dentist was fine. J needs to clean his teeth better (which we’ve been telling him for a while, but maybe he’ll listen to the dentist!) and the others are all great 🙂

Wednesday was Latin etc – the first one with added Puddle girls. It went very well, and J, K and L all agreed at the end that it had been more fun with the extra girls than without them, so that was good. There may be a little shaking down of groups, I think, as we now have a fast Latin group (F, J, J) and a rather slower group (M, A, C, SB and K) but the slower group is fairly spread… We’ll see! Merry brought lovely soft toy sewing stuff, which the younger ones enjoyed while the older ones were doing Science, and they were all very excited to make a spirometer and find out their lung capacity. We did pencil case contents in French and the non-fast Latin, non-younger science girls also did some interesting-sounding work with Gina and some handbells 🙂 It was quite hard to drag ourselves away at 1:30 to get to Baby Music. I’m looking forward to the sessions when we don’t have to but can fit in some afternoon fun too – maybe Art and French, or some playing in the field…
Baby Music was fun, but K was desperate to see what we were doing so asked the teacher if he could watch too and was instead invited to sit in the circle with us, which meant he could not help himself but just had to join in with great gusto!
No gymnastics yet, and no cubs, so an unusually leisurely Wednesday evening 🙂

Thursday 8th Tots and Nots should have been a Book Club week, but the older group organiser was ill, so it was actually quite a quiet session. Rebecca and co came along, which was lovely (Tots is where we met so it feels right to have them there!) but very hard to say goodbye at the end, knowing that we won’t see them for at least another 6 months 😥 We stayed very late in the end, getting useful things done. I like T & N sessions where we feel we’ve done okay by the families who come along for a toddler group but also managed to fit plenty in for the older children and added a bit of straightforward box ticking work for our own children too 😀

On Friday we had intended to go and see R and co, but they were busy so we postponed until 16th and had a catching up day at home instead. We got out all the crates of books and decided which workbooks the children will use this term and where we’re going to try to get to in them. Susan dropped Joy off (we’re dog-sitting for a week) in the middle of all this, so there was also lots of playing in the garden 🙂

Writing thank you letters has made me realise that while K is very willing his writing is still very unformed. We have done work on letter formation but not recently and he doesn’t seem to have translated that skill to actual writing. His preferred way of writing is to have the words written down for him first so that he can copy them, but watching him closely I realised that he is copying the letters almost like pictograms, so that they look right but they are produced in a fairly random way. The big goal for this term, therefore, is to be letter formation for K and L, because he needs to revise it before bad habits become too ingrained and she needs to learn it all anyway. J, meanwhile, is going to work on getting his cursive script going properly, because just a little work on it made him realise that it is not only neater but also faster 🙂
On Saturday I wrote out a plan for the week and we got cracking 🙂 We’re a bit behind on Singapore Maths, so the aim is to do 10 ex. in the course of the week, with a big catch up on Saturday if needed, ready to start a fresh week on Sunday. English will mostly revolve around letter formation/cursive. We looked at the week and where we can fit work sessions in (not many places) and when might be good times for Bed Ed instead, curling up to read SotW or similar because we’ve been out all morning and are too tired for anything else, for example. I’m determined that the automatic telly-turning-on that the children seem to have fallen into will stop!

Monday 12th was a busy day (not good for our work schedule!) with an animation workshop for the boys and a Police dog handlers talk for the girls (not gender specific, it just worked out that way!). We picked up J and E on the way (from a school where their parents were busy doing Plough Monday stuff) and then went to S’s house with assorted Lego bits. S’s dad had stepped into the breech when the planned animation workshop leader was unable to do it 🙂 Small groups worked with him and Lego doing storyboards and then lots of photos to be run into animation while the rest of the animators worked with magnetic pictures on a board (again taking photos to play in sequence), flick books and zoetropes. The littler ones just played and parents chatted or helped out until it was time to head off for the police dogs talk in a church hall in town.
We arrived at the same time as the policemen, which was great as the children got to see the dogs in their vans and to chat to the handlers a bit first. The session itself started with a quick run down of what the policeman was wearing and why. One of the mums asked how heavy it all was and was given the vest and accoutrements to wear so she could see for herself – general answer = a lot! We met two different dogs, the first a general purpose German shepherd, who was asked to attack the policeman who was not his handler (through a large padded sleeve, but it still looked slightly scary) and the second a completely soppy Labrador trained to sniff out explosives, who demonstrated his skills by finding test-tubes containing blotting paper which had been wrapped around plastic explosives. They’re trained not to touch what they find (thanks to the number of dogs killed by IRA booby-traps) but to sit and stare at it until the handler comes to investigate. This particular dog loves to play so has been trained using a ball, which he believes comes out of the wall near to the smell- the trainer was very careful not to let him see the ball before it bounced off the wall above his head! Afterwards the children queued up to pet the sniffer dog (but not the attack dog!) which he put up with very nobly for a while, before retreating under a table.
Back across town to pick up the boys, then we dropped J and E off at a different school (still Plough Monday stuff) and came home.

Swimming on Tuesday 13th was momentous enough to have a post of its own!

Wednesday was Latin etc again, this time with added smoking! Joy spent the morning in the garden, with occasional visits from children wanting to play with her. Had to dash off again to Baby Music, then back for Gymnastics, then a quick tea for J before Cubs – busy Wednesdays back with a vengeance!

Thursday 15th was Space Day at Tots and Nots 😀 One of our regular parents worked on the Phoenix mission and this was a follow-up talk to one he did a while ago about it. I think it went well (I was with the Tots so missed the talk itself) and apparently there were lots of interesting questions, like why didn’t they use windscreen wipers to keep the dust off the windscreen so they could see? There were some fun activities too, which kept the children busy, but again we managed to fit in some normals, so Gina and I were happy 🙂 I think this Tots and Nots might just work out 😉

On Friday 16th we finally managed to get down to Horsham to see friends we’ve somehow failed to meet up with multiple times. By the time we’d exercised the hound and everybody had got ready we were rather later leaving than we’d hoped, but that didn’t seem to matter when we got there and we were able to stay late enough to see all the children as they got in from school 😀 The Dartford toll has gone up though, which took us by surprise and meant we had enough change to get there but had to borrow from our friends to get back! Oh, and the headlights didn’t do anything when I turned them on, so we had to drive home on full beam 😯 Fortunately the car has a control which adjusts the full beam to be high or low so I managed to dip them enough not to dazzle everybody, I think. We didn’t see any accidents anyway…

A musical interlude

Bob took lots of time off over Christmas and New Year, with the intention that we could see family and friends, have a relaxed couple of weeks and also get lots of house and workshop sorting done. Oh and some planning for this year. Instead the girls and I all ended up with very unpleasant flu which laid us out for a couple of weeks and meant that we missed out on seeing some (but fortunately not all) of the friends and family we had hoped to spend time with, spent lots of time resting but without really feeling rested at the end of it, got hardly any house/workshop sorting done and failed pretty much completely on the planning front. Ah well, c’est la vie!

J had a good time at Holiday Orchestra, however, and is now enthused about recorder. We’ve promised him (erm, actually, I may not yet have discussed this fully with Bob 😳 ) that when he has the triple whammy of Grade One in theory (tick) recorder (working on it) and piano (lots more practice needed, hence the discussion) then we will buy him the instrument of his choice to move on to, with the proviso that we can afford it, of course 😉 He’s extremely eager to learn trombone or trumpet so hopefully this will give him the shove he needs to get back into regular practice habits 🙂
In the meantime one of my not yet done jobs is to set him up to try out a few brass instruments, hire one for a few months and find a teacher we can afford to get him started – no point buying an instrument we’re not sure he’ll stick at
K is asking for the same offer to apply to him, which is good because he was not so keen on the idea of theory, as it involves more reading and writing than he currently feels comfortable about (confidence in literacy is one of our things to work on with K for this term, I think). He’s really enjoying recorder and desperate to go to Holiday Orchestra when he’s finally old enough (next time!) so he can have a go at Gamelan like J 🙂
L has just started pootling on the piano and veers between enjoying it and bursting into tears at the very thought 🙁 so I think that’s one we need to take gently. She certainly doesn’t have the bouncy enthusiasm both boys had when they started but I haven’t yet worked out why 😕 She is doing recorder too, despite Gina’s qualms about teaching children under year 2, and seems to be managing okay there. Pairing up with BB is fun for her 🙂
A is doing Baby Music and has just started to really get into it, which is just as well given that the classes are a) expensive and b) badly timed so that we have to cut our Latin etc sessions short on Wednesdays. The smile on her face when we’re singing or playing instruments in the sessions makes it worth it (she’s singing “goodbye Kate” behind me as I type 😆 ) for now though – and L loves to sit in (the others sit in the next room and play quiet games or do book work) which means we’re getting better value for money as she’s picking lots up too 😉

Now we just need to find a choir for the older ones (or I need to find one for me so I can get my confidence back and organise one for the children myself) and make some use of the cello we have sitting on top of the piano. L wants to start cello but it’s the right size for K or J… K and L still want to do violin too, but J is now sold on the idea of brass. I think we need a music grant!

Epiphany!

It was the first swimming lesson of term this week and J was doing his usual half-hearted dip the chin in when the teacher encouraged them to swim with faces in the water. I pointed out to him that swimming chocolate (fast becoming an institution) depends on them working hard at something new or challenging each week, not just taking part in the lesson, and suggested that his challenge for this week should be to put his face in the water flat, turn his head to the side (as if breathing whilst doing front crawl) and then put it back into the water. He hesitated, procrastinated, dipped his chin in, then his nose and then finally gave it a go properly and surfaced completely delighted with himself 😀
After the lesson he came into the toddler pool as usual while K had his lesson – and spent most of the next hour (including begging me for extra time) with his face at least three inches under the water, pulling himself along the bottom of the pool with his hands, or pushing with his feet, tickling people’s knees and only surfacing when he was either out of breath or his goggles were full of water. I think we may have a had a breakthrough 😀

Not content with that, on Thursday J helped me to prepare a pomegranate for Tots. He did one last week as well, so knows what to do now, but whereas last week he looked horrified at the idea of actually eating the thing, this week he asked if the seeds were okay to eat and on being assured that they were popped one in his mouth… and then another… and another. We have another fruit to add to our repertoire 😀

It may take a while, but I think we’ll get there 😉