it has been a long busy week and we have a very busy and exciting week ahead so may not get to blog too much. My dear friend M is coming from the states for the week so we will be playing tourist. I don't expect that too many normals will get done so it will effectively be our half term.
we have finally started our iditarod project by beginning our alaska lapbook. I just need to blow up the map of alaska so that we can plot the route of the race and choose our musher. M is bringing a couple of book on the race that I ordered from amazon and sam is very excited to read them. He is really interested in the race though I think the distances involved are a bit difficult for him to comprehend. I suppose I could say that it would be like driving back and forth to london 10 times. we are marching through sotw and are back on the egyptians. sam did a lovely picture of king tut;s mask. I am just sorry that I did not take more pictures when I was egypt, it would be nice to show him the sites as I saw them.
we made a big decision this week, we are going to get the house in shape to put it in on the market. matthew is exhausted by the daily commute so it makes sense to move closer to leicester. He would like a brand new house so we will head over to the new estate in leciester to have a look at what is on offer. it could be the end of the year before we do move, there is so much to do to bring the house up to a saleable condition. I am going to do as much as I can at evening and weekends to help take the pressure off of matthew. It will be sad to leave this house and peterborough, this is the longest I have ever lived anywhere in my whole life!
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
on line at last
what a week. we haven't had internet access most of the week due to a problem either with the line or the router. M has managed to put things right-yipee! I didn't realise how bad my cyber addiction was until I had to go cold turkey. It wasn't exactly cold turkey though because I went into starbuck twice in the week to make use of their wireless network. It was pretty cool I have to say,
Sam has had a good week. We started sonlight 1st grade science and have already wizzed through the first 7 days. he is eagerly awaiting his next young scientist club pack which should be here any day now. He is in an art phase at the moment and several times a day will disapear off with his sketch pad to draw something. He likes trying different medium and mixing them. he is quite taken with the charcoal pencils that we got as well as the oil pastels and will often use them in the same picture. I think he must have inherited my mothers' artistic talent. I hesistate to give him too much direction because I think that if I start interferring too much he will loose interest. I just make sure that he has lots of sketch pads and things to draw with. I of course give him help if he asks but usually he doesn't. my artisitc skill are completely lacking so i am not usually much help. Perhaps I ought to do a drawing course.
Lots of socialising this week. We had lots of fun with sam's cousins on tuesday, a party on thursday and mudpud on friday. he certainly is not missing out on a social life because he is not at school. next week promises to be just as busy with ice skating, the cousins and EO group.
Have very sadly decided that we won't be able to go to melrose afterall. I was really looking forward to meeting everyone and spending some time with the families we already know. Two of the boys ( our antenatal class friends) are having their bday parties that week as it is half term and sam was devastated at the thought he might miss the parties, especially as he so rarely sees them now they are in school. In retrospect I should have realised that it would come to this choice as all the boys (bar sam) have mid feb bdays. It was a tough decision to make and i hope we haven't upset anyone. that was certainly not our intention as we value and cherish all of our friends. so have a great time everyone who is going, i will be thinking of you!
Sam has had a good week. We started sonlight 1st grade science and have already wizzed through the first 7 days. he is eagerly awaiting his next young scientist club pack which should be here any day now. He is in an art phase at the moment and several times a day will disapear off with his sketch pad to draw something. He likes trying different medium and mixing them. he is quite taken with the charcoal pencils that we got as well as the oil pastels and will often use them in the same picture. I think he must have inherited my mothers' artistic talent. I hesistate to give him too much direction because I think that if I start interferring too much he will loose interest. I just make sure that he has lots of sketch pads and things to draw with. I of course give him help if he asks but usually he doesn't. my artisitc skill are completely lacking so i am not usually much help. Perhaps I ought to do a drawing course.
Lots of socialising this week. We had lots of fun with sam's cousins on tuesday, a party on thursday and mudpud on friday. he certainly is not missing out on a social life because he is not at school. next week promises to be just as busy with ice skating, the cousins and EO group.
Have very sadly decided that we won't be able to go to melrose afterall. I was really looking forward to meeting everyone and spending some time with the families we already know. Two of the boys ( our antenatal class friends) are having their bday parties that week as it is half term and sam was devastated at the thought he might miss the parties, especially as he so rarely sees them now they are in school. In retrospect I should have realised that it would come to this choice as all the boys (bar sam) have mid feb bdays. It was a tough decision to make and i hope we haven't upset anyone. that was certainly not our intention as we value and cherish all of our friends. so have a great time everyone who is going, i will be thinking of you!
Sunday, January 15, 2006
yosemite sam
after spending two hours on line and trying to get through on the phone I finally managed to book a campsite for yosemite for our vacation. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in a long time. Everytime I would get through to the accept transaction step the site would time me out even though I had not spent more than 10 minutes on the site. The site was so slow to load as well. I was so frazzled that sam kept bringing me chocolates to help!! It was worth it in the end though because now we have a reservation. Sam is very excited about going and keen to get rock climbing and hiking. They also have stables there and is equally excited about the prospect of going on a trail ride. Must try and get him a few riding lessons before we go so that he knows how to sit on a horse and isn't too sore.
Booking the site was the focus of our day really. We also went for a walk, played hot wheels, did laundry and played dino park again. Somehow I am always relagated to the ticket taker. not sure I fancy visiting the park though as the bus is usually driven by playmobil cats and dinos are allowed to roam free. he has certainly started being more imaginative in his play in the last few months-even if it does involve feeding his playmobil horses to his fluffy t-rex!! in fact he amused himself all the way home on the train last night by setting up museum and bringing it to life. I then had to solve the mystery ( I think we watch too much scooby doo)
It was back to normals this week and sam seemed as keen as I to get back into the rythmn of things. We seem to be marching through the read alouds so am searching around for more good chapter books. Have two on the way about the Iditarod which we will be following and doing a project on. Sam is excited as we have almost finished kindergarten science and will be starting first grade science next week. I am going to reinstitute the weekly experiments as I got a bit lax at the end of the year. Sam enjoys them so much and as one of my goals this year is to make our home ed experience more fun then back they come. our next young scientists club box should be here soon. We are also catching up with SOTW and are looking at ancient africa at the moment. several good ideas to try out, including a recipe or two.
Sam really enjoyed both home ed groups on friday. In the morning it was the main EO group where we did experiments with light and color and in the afternoon it was mudpud at activity world. Needless to say he was shattered by the end of the day.
Yesterday we went to london to celebrate M's bday. We wandered around covent garden before heading over to the scienc and natural history museums. We treated M to an IMAX movie for his bday . We saw Aliens of the Deep and the boys loved it. I prefered the space one we saw last year. We were all so pooped that we headed home about 4 and all had an early night.
Today is M's bday but he has had to work. Hopefully next year we will get to celebrate with him.
Booking the site was the focus of our day really. We also went for a walk, played hot wheels, did laundry and played dino park again. Somehow I am always relagated to the ticket taker. not sure I fancy visiting the park though as the bus is usually driven by playmobil cats and dinos are allowed to roam free. he has certainly started being more imaginative in his play in the last few months-even if it does involve feeding his playmobil horses to his fluffy t-rex!! in fact he amused himself all the way home on the train last night by setting up museum and bringing it to life. I then had to solve the mystery ( I think we watch too much scooby doo)
It was back to normals this week and sam seemed as keen as I to get back into the rythmn of things. We seem to be marching through the read alouds so am searching around for more good chapter books. Have two on the way about the Iditarod which we will be following and doing a project on. Sam is excited as we have almost finished kindergarten science and will be starting first grade science next week. I am going to reinstitute the weekly experiments as I got a bit lax at the end of the year. Sam enjoys them so much and as one of my goals this year is to make our home ed experience more fun then back they come. our next young scientists club box should be here soon. We are also catching up with SOTW and are looking at ancient africa at the moment. several good ideas to try out, including a recipe or two.
Sam really enjoyed both home ed groups on friday. In the morning it was the main EO group where we did experiments with light and color and in the afternoon it was mudpud at activity world. Needless to say he was shattered by the end of the day.
Yesterday we went to london to celebrate M's bday. We wandered around covent garden before heading over to the scienc and natural history museums. We treated M to an IMAX movie for his bday . We saw Aliens of the Deep and the boys loved it. I prefered the space one we saw last year. We were all so pooped that we headed home about 4 and all had an early night.
Today is M's bday but he has had to work. Hopefully next year we will get to celebrate with him.
Monday, January 09, 2006
FSP
Today was the first meeting of the year of the Future Scientists of Peterborough club. The club focused their attention on air and what happens when you heat it and cool it. They did approximately 6 experiements and a good time was had by all (at least I hope so!) The youngest member of the club-josie was very keen to join in and assisted greatly in the experiments. The key thing (from my point of view) is not so much that Sam learns lots of complicated science but rather that science is fun and accessible and starts to look at life in a more scientific way. It was great having the puddles over to join in and I hope that it was a success from their point of view. Sam is very excited about the next meeting of the FSP and spent the afternoon looking in his books for experiments for them to do. Sorry there are no photos-didn't get a chance to take any but hopefully Merry will blog some of the ones that she took.
Seeing the children have fun today and go off on lots of interesting tangents really sums up home ed for me. It is all about making learning fun and hopeing Sam's eyes to the wonder and excitement of the world around him. I hope that we managed to achieve a little of that today.
Seeing the children have fun today and go off on lots of interesting tangents really sums up home ed for me. It is all about making learning fun and hopeing Sam's eyes to the wonder and excitement of the world around him. I hope that we managed to achieve a little of that today.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
only my son..
could come up with a line like "mommy, my pteradon wants me to read chronicles of narnia to it, please can you come get it down off the shelf".When I went up to get the books he was surrouned by his fluffy dinos and most of his dino books. He had obviously been reading them bedtime stories. It was so cute. It wasn't so cute however, when 45 minutes later he still hadn't fallen aslelep!
Despite M not being here (he's at work) we have had a really lovely day. We went to cambridge to check out a few museums and do a little shopping. We went to the Sedgewick, which is one of his favs and spent ages on their time trail. Having done the OU fossils course I enjoyed it even more as I was able to put things into context. We had intended to visit the museum of classical archaeology and the anthropology/archaeology museum but the former isn't open again until next week and the latter until open until late afternoon by which time we were both pooped. He was very good company and we both had fun. We treated our selves to chocs from Hotel Chocolat and maybe I chose the wrong thing but I much prefer Green & Black. Sam seemed very happy with his though and devoured it in reccord time. We had mom & sam movie night tonight and watched jurassic park 3. he was so cute, he insisted on bringing all his fluffy dinos down to watch and then covered their eyes during the scarier bits. He has asked to watch Walking with Beasts tomorrow so that his new smieadon can see his family. He also wants to make his own version of jurassic park ( or mesozoic park as we call it) tomorrow-sounds like we have a busy day ahead!!
Was absolutely stunned at how easy it was to file M's taxes on line last night. Was even more astounded when it came out that we are due a refund. Must have done something wrong! Only my taxes to do now-am just waiting for my on line pin number. Have worked out all my details on paper so hopefully it won't be that bad. I made next to nothing so there is really nothing to report.
Have booked our flights to CA-we are all very excited. It is ages and ages until we go but we can't wait. It will be lovely to see my family again as well as showing sam yosemite and monteray. there is do much to do, I don't know how we will fit it all in!! May even get to go to my 20 year high school reunion while we are there-can't believe that it has been that long. I certainly don't feel old enough to have graduated in '86.
Despite M not being here (he's at work) we have had a really lovely day. We went to cambridge to check out a few museums and do a little shopping. We went to the Sedgewick, which is one of his favs and spent ages on their time trail. Having done the OU fossils course I enjoyed it even more as I was able to put things into context. We had intended to visit the museum of classical archaeology and the anthropology/archaeology museum but the former isn't open again until next week and the latter until open until late afternoon by which time we were both pooped. He was very good company and we both had fun. We treated our selves to chocs from Hotel Chocolat and maybe I chose the wrong thing but I much prefer Green & Black. Sam seemed very happy with his though and devoured it in reccord time. We had mom & sam movie night tonight and watched jurassic park 3. he was so cute, he insisted on bringing all his fluffy dinos down to watch and then covered their eyes during the scarier bits. He has asked to watch Walking with Beasts tomorrow so that his new smieadon can see his family. He also wants to make his own version of jurassic park ( or mesozoic park as we call it) tomorrow-sounds like we have a busy day ahead!!
Was absolutely stunned at how easy it was to file M's taxes on line last night. Was even more astounded when it came out that we are due a refund. Must have done something wrong! Only my taxes to do now-am just waiting for my on line pin number. Have worked out all my details on paper so hopefully it won't be that bad. I made next to nothing so there is really nothing to report.
Have booked our flights to CA-we are all very excited. It is ages and ages until we go but we can't wait. It will be lovely to see my family again as well as showing sam yosemite and monteray. there is do much to do, I don't know how we will fit it all in!! May even get to go to my 20 year high school reunion while we are there-can't believe that it has been that long. I certainly don't feel old enough to have graduated in '86.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Rant
Excuse me for a moment while I rant about the lack of computer games for macs. We got Sam zoombinis for xmas on the basis that it would work on a mac-what they failed to mention on the requirements is that it doesn't run on the latest version of OS (which we have) now we are stuck with yet another game sam can't play until I get my pc mended. We have searched high and low for mac games but for this age they just aren't out there-why!!?!?!?!? someone ought to start up a software company that does edutaional games for macs-there is surely a huge gap in the market, we can't be the only ones with this problem. If my pc isn't fixable then I don't know what we will do-hardly seems worth paying hundreds of pounds for a pc only to pay games on it.
Rant over, sorry about that.
A belated thank you to merry for a lovely art day on tues. we had lots of fun and sam enjoyed the different media. We must get back into doing this type of thing at home. I am great on talking about artists and their paintings but not so good on experimenting with their techinques and styles at home. I guess I am more a read it out of a book kind of gal.
Rant over, sorry about that.
A belated thank you to merry for a lovely art day on tues. we had lots of fun and sam enjoyed the different media. We must get back into doing this type of thing at home. I am great on talking about artists and their paintings but not so good on experimenting with their techinques and styles at home. I guess I am more a read it out of a book kind of gal.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Resolutions-Sort of
As a rule I don't do resolutions because over the years I have learned that I don't keep them which makes me feel even guiltier than I usually feel on a day to day basis. Merry's 5 goals list got me thinking though. I would like to set a few goals for the year, both personally and for HE. I haven't done 5 for each category and these are likely to change over the year and may well be forgotten altogether if my track record is anything to go by.
Personal Goals:
1. Pass my fossils course
2. Pass my Leonardo course
3. Keep the house organised for more than 5 minutes
4. Make sure my family and friends know how much I appreciate and value them
5. Have a more proactive approach to life
6. Focus more on my business-try to achieve an event or party each month
7. Make time to exercise
HE Goals:
1. Make learning more fun
2. Follow through with ideas more
3. Help sam to develp his creative side
4. Finish all the experiments we start!!!
I am sure I will think of more as the days go by so may well add to this list.
Personal Goals:
1. Pass my fossils course
2. Pass my Leonardo course
3. Keep the house organised for more than 5 minutes
4. Make sure my family and friends know how much I appreciate and value them
5. Have a more proactive approach to life
6. Focus more on my business-try to achieve an event or party each month
7. Make time to exercise
HE Goals:
1. Make learning more fun
2. Follow through with ideas more
3. Help sam to develp his creative side
4. Finish all the experiments we start!!!
I am sure I will think of more as the days go by so may well add to this list.
Sorry!
Sorry to all those Scrapy Doo fans that I may have upset with my last post! I think we will all have to agree to disagree. Who knew that a cartoon would engender such lively discussion both at home and on the blog!
New Year's day had an interesting start for us. Came down to discover that in the night someone had broken into our shed and a neighbors. They practically destroyed both shed doors in doing so and took only the seats off our bikes. I am just so thankful that they did not try to get into the house. M spent all day sorting out the two doors and his parents came up to sort out our kitchen lights. Sam delighted in showing them Swamp Beast and I think my fil was really taken with it. Once both problems were sorted out we had fun playing games and were kindly treated to chinese take away by fil. Despite the unpleasant start to the day it turned out to be a nice one.
Today has been mental. Sam and I have been working since just after breakfast to get the house back in shape. He has been such a big help-he really enjoyed the reunite daddy's orphan sock game. Who says cleaning can't be educational! All of our clothes closets look much better as does the living room. All xmas decs are put away for another year and life can return to normal (whatever that is). One last tidying job to tackle tomorrow-sam's room. I am not looking forward to that, don't know where I am going to fit everything in. Should have asked santa for a ray gun for xmas to shrink all sam's toys to pocket size. when he wanted to play with them we would just reverse the polarity of the gun.
A policewoman came by today to interview us about the break in. Poor woman wasn't quite prepared for Sam Dolling ace detective who was eager to help her with the case. She took it all in her stride and patiently explained the crime solving process. He was excited to hear that the crime lab will be coming to dust for finger prints ( so was I-wonder if it will be like csi?!) They don't really expect to catch anyone but at least they are investigating.
New Year's day had an interesting start for us. Came down to discover that in the night someone had broken into our shed and a neighbors. They practically destroyed both shed doors in doing so and took only the seats off our bikes. I am just so thankful that they did not try to get into the house. M spent all day sorting out the two doors and his parents came up to sort out our kitchen lights. Sam delighted in showing them Swamp Beast and I think my fil was really taken with it. Once both problems were sorted out we had fun playing games and were kindly treated to chinese take away by fil. Despite the unpleasant start to the day it turned out to be a nice one.
Today has been mental. Sam and I have been working since just after breakfast to get the house back in shape. He has been such a big help-he really enjoyed the reunite daddy's orphan sock game. Who says cleaning can't be educational! All of our clothes closets look much better as does the living room. All xmas decs are put away for another year and life can return to normal (whatever that is). One last tidying job to tackle tomorrow-sam's room. I am not looking forward to that, don't know where I am going to fit everything in. Should have asked santa for a ray gun for xmas to shrink all sam's toys to pocket size. when he wanted to play with them we would just reverse the polarity of the gun.
A policewoman came by today to interview us about the break in. Poor woman wasn't quite prepared for Sam Dolling ace detective who was eager to help her with the case. She took it all in her stride and patiently explained the crime solving process. He was excited to hear that the crime lab will be coming to dust for finger prints ( so was I-wonder if it will be like csi?!) They don't really expect to catch anyone but at least they are investigating.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Happy New Year!!
A Happy 2006 to everyone. I hope it is a happy, healthy and prosperous year for everyone. We had a quiet night last night-it was a family movie and game night. We watched Scooby Doo the movie-the one with Sarah Michelle Geller. It was good and we all laughed a lot. It did prompt a family discussion about Scrapy Doo. M & S think he is a good guy and should never have been made the villian of the movie. I disagree- I never liked Scrapy Doo. Oh, the level of intellectual conversation in our house.
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