Math and mayhem

Today has been a busy day.

I got up in the morning with the littlest lady and bought some extra time under the covers with a few books. We got up and I made her banana pancakes, while she stood on the chair next to the cooker and tried to eat them as soon as they touched the plate.

Mr Buttons got up, got his breakfast and woke up enough for me to go out and patch up the fences after the ponies’ last break-out attempt. The fostering time with them coming to an end is getting easier to live with the bigger I get and the more I fall around in mud.

The kids played, I cleaned.

Mr Buttons is loving our kitchen scales at the moment. He is being super helpful by weighing my rice and pasta (not something I used to do pre-GD) and everything else he can find. Of course Captain sees this going on, hears the fantastically loud beeping sounds and wants to get in on the action. So at some point I could barely see the kitchen table for all the things we now know a very precise weight of. (Although I don’t quite trust Captain’s units of measurement like

“Three, like me!” and “A million dollars!”)

Buttons did a project on Minecraft, which taught me a lot. He is now making brilliant, sprawling mind maps, and using them to figure out what he wants to write.

The kids had a band going on for a while, with Captain on ukulele and vocals, Mr B on slide whistle and guitar. It was loud enough to completely drown out Linkin Park, which I had had playing on the background. Also, very entertaining. (And yes, the guitar could use tuning…)

Then we started playing games. I found this beautiful wooden bingo set Captain got last Christmas from my cupboard of mysteries. This gave us several good rounds. Then we played a very confusing game of Number Navigate, with very little concern for rules.

Bingo!

We all cooked a vegetarian curry with lentils and chickpeas, just to add to the cosiness of today. I’m fully embracing a winter menu, with lots of stews, soups and nice warming spices. They work well with gestational diabetes too, it appears, and there is always plenty in the pot. And lots of veggie prep for my kitchen assistants.

There were stories read by me, and Harry Potter by Buttons.

Captain and I made jigsaws, and she spend some time with her treasure collection. She has developed a fondness for my tealight stash. She loves opening and closing the “special box”, taking them out and putting them into various containers. They also work well as pretend cakes, gifts and stacking blocks.

Treasures

Hubby made a brief appearance between work and ukulele band, and found us sitting on the floor in front of the stove with various activities. He listened to the kids’ news, brushed Captain’s teeth before bed and headed off while I was reading bedtime stories and Buttons was playing Minecraft.

And when both kids were in bed, I added up that Mr B is 30 pages from completing the whole year’s math curriculum. Six months early… This is the same boy, who used to be near tears with his math homework. Setting his own target and having the support to work at it has clearly been a good way for him to learn.

So, tonight I am tired and my hips ache. I also messed up my knee at some point during my DIY fence fixing job, I think. But I am delighted to be taking a moment to appreciate my two crazy little friends and Hubby, who tells us we’re doing great every day. Even when he has to have his dinner surrounded by piles of books and days’ worth of art projects…

Copies

My whole life is contained within five copy books.

Five squared exercise books. Squared ruled 7 mm, 88 pages. Three of them are blue, one is orange and last one is red, with about a hundred and ten stickers stuck on the covers. I did get a fancy diary from Hubby for Christmas, but I find the pre-written dates daunting and the pages unapproachable. There’s a lot to be said for a humble copy, where you can easily tear off a few pages from the middle for an emergency drawing session for a bored child, or make a shopping list without disturbing the perfect flow of days.

So technically, the bit about 88 pages wasn’t true.

The first blue one belongs to Captain. It moves from my back pack to my canvas shopping bag, and comes with us everywhere. That way she can draw all her important creations before they escape. Also, playing “five in a row” is a great way to kill time. This involves her cheating considerably and always winning, even though she only draws one giant “O”.

The second one technically belongs to Mr Buttons, but is a huge part of my life. This is the copy, where I write down his plans for each week. We have settled into an eclectic style of homeschooling with him, where he does math from a book and has started to read the Harry Potter series for his English. He set his own target of pages per day for math, so we map that down onto this copy. He also decided on a few things he wanted to learn about this year, and does projects on them most weeks. These get divided into reasonable chunks too, to help him visualise what he’s planning on doing. Any trips, activities and going to visit his mom also get written into this ‘plan’, so he can easily see what is happening each day. He likes having this physical plan, and it seems to help him work independently. He often changes things around in it himself, which has really made him take interest and pride in his own work. He also uses the copy for ideas, math work (though he prefers to do calculations in his head) and working things out.

The last blue one is for me tracking every bite I eat, thanks to being diagnosed with gestational diabetes a few weeks ago. It’s the only one of the copies I can’t wait to get rid of, as writing down foods brings back bad feelings of the eating disorder I had from my early teens right into adulthood. It’s always in my bag, with times, foods and trying to figure out any spikes in my blood sugar. Roll on February, is all I’m saying about this part of my everyday kit.

The orange one is a very recent addition. This is the one I’ve taken to writing little notes about the books I read. At the moment, everything I’m reading is about breastfeeding and parenting, thanks to a sudden urge to do a good job as a LLL librarian and actually try to read the books in our group’s library suitcases. That way my baby brain can forget everything safely, and I have quick reference guide to whatever it was doctor so-and-so said about family beds or omega-3. It also helps to compose my thoughts on paper, as I can get quite anxious about talking in front of a group of people, as lovely as they all are.

The red one is the most time consuming, but most definitely my favourite. That’s the one I use to keep my homeschooling records on Mr Buttons. I write notes every day (recently, anyway) about everything he’s doing. This is where I translate the unschooling into subjects, record all his reading and write down math progress. I also add any observations, that I feel are important in his development in general. It gives me so much satisfaction to look at the pages of enjoyment in learning, when less than a year ago the same boy “hated reading” and did “nothing” in school when asked about his day. Now you couldn’t stop him from learning if you tried. Trust me, I’ve tried. (True story. I announced a family-wide holiday for his birthday, and he taught me all sorts of interesting facts about coffee plants at the end of it.) This notebook is the magic potion that makes me feel happy on days when I’ve had to explain to yet another person why we homeschool, or heard another comment on how I only do arts and crafts around the table with the kids all day. I can see the love I’ve poured in on those pages filled with my horrible handwriting, and that helps me tolerate people’s views on what I do as a stepmother. And that more than makes up for sitting there, surrounded by my copy books after bedtime, writing things nobody will ever read.

Anarchy

The ponies kept pushing down the fence between the back and the front. 

After days of battle, we gave up and let then wander around the whole yard.

They have more space and new grass. They are happy.

We have short grass at the front of the house. We are happy.

The dog, however, is getting bullied by the ponies.

He is not best pleased.

If you need evidence, just check out the last picture...

Hide and seek ponies

The gardener

Plotting to retake the front yard

Festival of fires

This is what we did yesterday.

Lego and little artists

This is what we've been up to today.

I set up an ivitation to create. The kitchen table was full of craft materials.

I wasn't even finished, when Captain came to see what was happening.

"Ooh, I like painting!"

Here she is, painting one of her numerous pictures of "a baby".

I did the dishes, and played with Lego.

Because I'm an adult, and that's what we do.

Right?

Mr. Buttons apperead.

He works in mysterious ways, in mysterious places.

...and makes mysterious things...

Joker wanted some fresh air, so out we went.

Horse whisperers they are not

Batman practising his climbing skills.

Will he escape for good this time?

We also had food, played, cleaned up and read lots*. And somehow it's only three o'clock.

I'm pausing to appreciate how much more time home educating gives you.

*Surprising Sharks (Davies, Croft)

Wild Animals - Elephant (Bender)

Stomp (Willis, Howard) x5 so far today

Rumpelstiltskin (Nadin)

Poems about animals (Moses, Moore)

Petting Zoo (DK readers)

Big Scary Monster (Docherty)

The Wizard of Oz (Illustrated by Mauro Evangelista)

Why Lion Roarrrs! (Tinga Tinga Tales)

Spot Says Goodnight (Hill)

Saint Patrick's Day

                                 You may be a homeschooler if your child would rather redirect water into the sewer than watch the parade...

Myself and Mr. Buttons made some leprechaun crafts and talked about St. Patrick.

If there are pirates we are interested, ADHD permitting.

I really need to get internet sorted for the house.

Visited Nana's house the other day and got serious documentary envy while flicking through their Netflix account.

Also, that would save me, and everyone else from St. Patrick's Day musings days after the event...

I survived

I survived my first week of homeschool!

It involved lots of reading, cooking, and spending time outdoors.

We also had a train adventure and visited a history and art museum.

We had the whole children's section of the library to ourselves on Thursday morning, which was brilliant.

It feels like Mr. Buttons is trying to do everything, in case time runs out.

I'm enjoying having both of the kids home and not having to look at the clock.

Having to deal with some very unhelpful people has been an unneccessary extra.

But that will pass.

Also, I didn't think I could be more tired, but I am.

I'm enjoying it too much to care though.

Captain has discovered "a rainforest" at the back of our garden

I have a feeling there will be a tree fort soon...

Mr. Buttons is teaching me archery

Animal washing service

We built an obstacle course and pitched a tent

Roll on, week two!