New Tattoo

These posts seem to get less frequent!!

I'm not going to try and catch up with what we have been over the past days / weeks, mainly because I cant remember. So I will just write about what we have done yesterday and today.

Angel and HRH didn't attend fencing class yesterday as ALL the children have developed coughs and colds. :-(

After much lounging about and TV watching the children seem lots better today.

Last night I was only woken once, so should have felt better this morning, but as always, a good night isn't always followed by a good morning. I felt rough and crabby on waking this morning, so it was a another slow start to the day.

The children are all in the routine of breakfast and doing jobs now, so little reminding is needed on that front at the moment.

HRH decided to paint his 'Ben 10' Alien, he made the alien from cereal boxes and cardboard tubes yesterday and asked if he could paper mache it, but given we don't have any newspapers, ever, I suggested the 'kitchen towel and PVA glue idea'. He liked that idea and proceeded to glue away. Angel joined him and they had a productive hour or so, co-operating!!! Yes, Co-operating, that is something Angel and HRH really are finding hard to do at the moment. I find I am constantly being referee to their scobbles, and its wearing me down :-(

Today I exploded and they both sat top and bottom of the stairs; once I had calmed down I spoke to them about their behaviour and asked them to 'try' and get on. They did manage to be civilised for the half hour left of the evening, its a start!

Also today I have realised this cold and cough episode has left Luna with limited hearing, and she has been falling over a few more times than normal, so have booked an appointment with GP for opinion. Not that, that has proven worthy in the past! But Lynsey used to suffer terribly with glue ear, so don't want Luna having issues too!

HRH and Angel made and wrote in birthday cards for friends at HE group tomorrow.

Angel did English grammar work. Nouns, pronouns and connectives. Again I was impressed with how quickly she picked it up and applied it to the activities and sample test exercise.

HRH is drawing LOTS at the moment and the detail in his pictures is developing greatly and he is adding words and phrases of his own accord, so that's good!

Luna and Pal used the left over paint from HRH painting his alien, and enjoyed painting various pieces.

In the afternoon we went to visit my brothers new puppy. the children are so excited about her. Daisy ! My parents were 'dog sitting' today as both my brother and his girlfriend were working and they didn't want to leave her alone all day !!!!!!

Children enjoyed spending time with Daisy.

Oh and here is a pic of my new tattoo, for those that have not already seen it else where LOL

The seahorse symbolises going with the flow of life. The four pebbles at the bottom are my children. As in, little rocks that support me !!

A Pattern emmerging ??

It seems that when I have a bad day and start to feel like I'm coming back up from being so down things go really well and I want to blog about it....

This morning started off pretty dark in mood and things progressively got worse as the morning wore on.

However today's 'incident' gave me the opportunity to look at things and see where things were going wrong. I spoke to a very good friend (non HE'er) and she helped me identify the problems and suggest some remedies for them. I do miss not having someone to 'moan' at and then see what the problems really are....actually not problems at all, just things needing tweaking a little.

It all hit off when I suggested to the children that we did some activities / work. But as the morning had not gone well so far it was now only 1 hour until lunch, so we were all hungry and crabby. I started to prepare lunch (potato and leek soup) and the children all sat at the table doing their own bits and pieces.

Angel was working on SATS workbook, specifically on punctuation today,

HRH wanted to write his own book,

Luna was happily copying letters on the chalk board, of which she seems to never tire.

Pal was generally moany and needed me!!

However as I was preparing lunch while the children were doing 'work' I was constantly called on to help.

I got stressed, I shouted, and shamefully told them all to go away before I exploded.....major feeling of guilt and general moodiness followed. Leaving me feeling SH*T, that I had taken my incompetence's out on the children (again)

The children all kept their distance while I talked to friend and discussed some solutions.

We / I realised that lunch time is NOT a good time to be STARTING activities, I am fed up with trying to cook and be dictionary, assistant, teacher, organiser etc etc all at the same time. Furthermore doing things at the table in the kitchen does not go well anyway in the morning, as they always have to be packed away for lunch. So one solution is to place a small collapsible table in the lounge so that the children can work there and not have to pack things away mid-way. Done that one already, and its being used as I type. !!

I sat with the children after lunch and explained that I don't cope with cooking AND supervising / assisting them with their activities.

We have written out a timetable. After more than a year of doing this by myself I have found out the hard way that actually I like some structure to my day.

We all sat together (on the living room floor, not around the table lol) and split the day into what are the usual thing we do and at what time we prefer to do them.

The children all drew pictures for the various activities and I wrote the times down the left hand side, and drew clock faces so that Luna and HRH can relate it to the clock on the wall next to the chart.

HRH has issues with structure like me, he copes much better when I say this happens at 3 O'clock for example. So we now have a sort of structure....will see how long it lasts...lol

After writing up the timetable the children realised it was time for activities etc and asked if they could do some painting.

Pal painted his Chinese mask.

Angel did a free painting of spring (it is Imbolc today after all !!)

HRH wanted to do something about Romans, as we are having a history man come to the HE group soon and he is doing activities on Romans. HRH looked through some books and asked to do some Roman Armour. I found a large piece if cardboard and he painted it silver. Then he asked for the Roman sandals I made last year (thank goodness I kept them)

I sat with HRH for a good while reading through some Roman History books we have, He really enjoyed finding out about Roman life, will look for activites to fuel his interest, (any suggestions??)

Luna painted, lots. She loves getting her hands in there and mixing the colours. She did a lovely seaside painting too.

Luna and Angel cleared away whilst Pal had a nap and I read with HRH.

Childern are now watching a DVD as it is past 4 pm lol.......

Collection of Pics from the day (well the afternoon)

This and That

Yesterday (Thursday) I had a major bad day. It was a combination of tiredness and plain and simple crabbiness....
So, after moaning to a very close friend I decided to get up earlier in the morning and 'do' something rather than let things happen.
I prepared some activities for the children to do last night, for today and as always it is up to them whether they do them or not, but I do want them to start doing 'something' regularly.

So today I got up early (er) and showered / dressed before the big two got up and got the little two sorted.
We all had breakfast, all were dressed and I washed up ect all before 9 am. !!!!!! Now I know in most households people have been up for hours and are thinking about lunch, I've been there, but lately I have slipped into letting the children watch the dreaded TV in my room while I doze ....Tut, tut I hear you shout.
But needs must, and it helped me through some dark days, but days are not dark now, and I needed a kick up the posterior to get things back on track.
So today is the first day (I know its Friday, but when I want to do something, I get very impatient and HAVE to do it NOW) LOL

Whilst I was clearing away the breakfast things, HRH completed in record time the mental maths questions I had set him and moved onto the next sheet of filling in the missing numbers sheet 1-100, he completed up to 50 before we had to get ready to go out.

Luna used the 'Compare bears' and sorted them into 'big' 'middle size' and 'small' piles on different sized plates. I demonstrated a colour pattern sequence and asked her to carry it on. She did, and showed Pal what she was doing.

Angel completed some of the writing exercises I had wrote out for her last night; they were taken from the Phonics Ltd books we are using at the moment. Some of the activities involved spotting various spelling mistakes in the text and then choosing the correct word from a list to complete short sentences. She had no problems with either exercise and asked me to 'mark' her work for her LOL

We then went to a Local (ish) Wacky Warehouse place and the children enjoyed running off some energy. We were surprised to see three families from our regular HE group there too. The children enjoyed 'playing' with their children; even though the other children are all younger than Pal I think ??? but they all get on with children of all ages and HRH was especially pleased to see the little boy who shares his name :-)

We took advantage of the free meal tickets being given way with entry to the wacky and had a Pub lunch after wards. Not the healthiest option I know but we don't do it very often, if at all.

Back home Angel made carrot cake independently, again, while the other three made traditional Chinese opera masks from air drying clay.
HRH had wanted to do this for days, but for one reason or another we have just not got around to it. But today we did. And HRH was so pleased. He also spent great amounts of time and care on producing the mask.
Whilst I was helping him get the clay the right size for his face; he had used the tape measure to get the measurements right; he asked how he could make the mask rounded at the back to fit his face into. I had a look around and suggested a saucer. He agreed that would work so we placed the piece of clay onto the saucer and he was really impressed with the shape of the mask.

HRH, Luna and Pal spent at least an hour adding facial features and decorations to their masks. Once they are completely dry we will paint them and add bits of ribbon etc.
Piccies of HRH, Luna and Pal making masks and of the final masks.

HRH's mask

Pal's 'Cheese' face lol.

Luna's mask
Pal's mask

Once the clay and baking things were cleared away the children each had PC time and we then all sat down to watch the DVD IGOR.
Dinner was Homemade Carrot soup, followed by Angel's Carrot cake. Yummy......
A much better day all round today :-)

Back to Fencing

Due to the snowy weather recently, our fencing session was put back a week, so the first one back took place today.


HRH and Angel were both eager to return to the sessions and settled back into things very quickly today.


As usual my mom and I took turns to watch HRH and Angel and to sit with Luna and PAL in the car watching DVD's as the weather is still too wet and cold to go to the park near by. I have decided, for next week to try leaving the little two with my mom at home, and just take the older two to their fencing class. It takes about 45 minutes to get to the class and the session only lasts an hour; if traffic is against us, its a 3 hour outing for only 1 hour activity, which I don't think is fair for the little two. They are very well behaved and don't seem to mind the journey, but I do feel that they will get more of the time spent at home with 'Big Nanny'. We will try it next week and review things then.


A 'new' boy started the Fencing class today, and immediately clicked with HRH. Its always good to see HRH get on so well with other children, there were times when he was really struggling so much with his aliments that his whole personality was withdrawn and he didn't like socialising at all. But he has changed so much since the days of Muddle Puddle camp, hidden under the blanket in Luna's pushchair (for anyone that is reading and remembers !!! )
It is really heartwarming to see him develop and blossom, and thankfully he seems to be getting longer breaks between flares ups now, and is quite happy to discuss with new friends what he can cant eat.........





Here is a piccy of Angel and HRH with their Certificate and badge for Grade 1 in foil Fencing. Congratulations to you both!

Before we went out to fencing I was unusually organised and had done the usual tidying / laundry / feeding etc that goes on in the morning and we had a spare hour...yes really....one spare hour.....so I encouraged the children to sit at the table and do some 'work'
Luna jumped up and asked if she could do more Letterland activities; involving looking through the Letterland story book and choosing a character / letter to practice writing on the chalk board whilst I read the accompanying story. We talked about how the letter shape is formed and what objects on the page and around the room begin with the corresponding letter. HRH had a few strops about not being able to write and not wanting to do any work. But I managed to gently persuade (lol) him to come and join Luna and practice forming his letters. He did, and surprised him self how capable he is.
I really need to try and do regular writing practice with all the children. Angels writing has really come on now; she had major issues not so long ago with forming her letters. She is a very 'lefty' left hander and we have always left her to her own devices with things like pen control etc as we never felt able to instruct her as to the best way to do things when neither of us were left handers. But now she has established a grip of the pen which she finds comfortable and her writing is becoming more regular in size and pattern, I sat with her some weeks ago and helped her find new methods of forming some letters she was still struggling with. This has paid off and now only practice will help her tidy things up. I do feel terrible having to encourage the children to do regular writing practice as I have awful hand writing and don't want to make them do some thing they don't want to do. but similarly I don't want them growing up being uncomfortable to write in public etc, like I am. I don't believe in doing anything for the sake of doing it, and I wont get the children to write things over and over again in the name of writing practice, so I need to find worth while activities for them to have opportunities to practice their writing.

Angel did some work in her Maths SATS practice book and struggled a little with the <> more than symbols, but managed the practice test paper with no problems. She achieved 10 out 10 correct answers.

I really must get the children to the library tomorrow, we have books out that were due back at the beginning of December, thank goodness we don't get fines on children's books here.

It's clicked !!!

My overall aim for this year was to help HRH get to grips with reading. He has never really struggled with it, but I have not been persistent enough with regular reading practice. In the past he has made definite progress but then for some reason i have not continued with it and he then forgets the letter sounds and blends.

'Our' main aim of HE has always been a relatively small one in many respects. I even let this slip when the LA lady visited and I now know its in black and white, and she may hold it against me. ;-)
But our main aim has been to help the children read fluently. After both Lynsey and I worked in schools in our local area, where reading ability is very low, it made us aware that when a young person has a good grounding in reading they are then able to learn what interests them more efficiently.
We worked with so many children and young people that could not read and they were pretty much cut off from the world around them. I'm not talking about reading and writing issues here such as dyslexia ,I'm talking about the inability to blend letters or even sound them out in the first place.
Although we / I have never put pressure on the children to learn to read, I do see it as being probably the most important skill needed. As I type this I realise that reading is at the forefront of the aims for the children but we / I have always had a relaxed approach to supporting the children.
Angel starting reading at around the age of 7. But like many children she recognised letters and specific words from around 3-4 years, But she 'properly' read and understood when she was 7. And now at the age of 9 she is an avid reader. She jumped very quickly from early reading schemes to chapter books and she now devours anything with print on it. It is a real joy to see her enjoy reading and gain so much information and pleasure from doing so.

I digress, back to HRH, well this past week I have sat with him regularily and encouraged him to re-start the 'Bob-books' I purchased last year. He has whizzed through the first 7 little books in the past 4 days. It seems that 'it' has clicked and he is remembering some of the words as he progresses through the books. I'm so pleased for him. He still tries to get out of the regular reading practice and I am having to use bribes to encourage him, but once he has completed another book he says he is pleased he tried.
And as HRH is progressing through the books, Luna has become interested in the Bob-books too. She is very capable of sounding out the letters and is on the verge of blending some. Even Pal sits with me and makes letter 'sounds' whilst looking at the books....bless...

There is bit of a political who-ha at our local HE group at them moment and things are up in the air about the structure of the meetings and the type of activities taking place. Angel has wanted to suggest a topic of 'Food from around the world' for some time but she has not had the opportunity. So yesterday I suggested we did one our selves at home. Angel was semi-pleased with this idea, as she is disappointed about not doing it at the group, but I thought it would be a nice thing to do.
So we started with food from China. Angels choice, because she knows that at some point it Will involve a Chinese Take Away...Clever girl that one !!!
Angel started by 'Googling' Chinese food, and we sat for around an hour reading various interesting facts about; what foods are traditional to China, how they include the Yin and Yang principle to foods and how each meal includes a balance of the two.
We then looked at our diets and discussed some of the foods which fall into the Yin or Yang group.
We looked at chinese table etiquette and watched some You-Tube videos about using chopsticks. For dinner I did chicken fried rice and chips and we used chops sticks. As my parents were visiting again for dinner, the children enjoyed telling them about Chinese table etiquette and how to use the chop sticks.!!!!! I do love watching the children relay information to others about what they have learnt. It really shows what they have taken in and understood when they tell others !

During the finding out about food from China we fetched out our world map and looked at where China was in relation to ourselves and we talked about, countries, continents and travelling to and from other countries.

All children at some point during the day used various web sites, and I showed the children a series each of Rainbow and Button Moon on You-tube, they loved it (so did I lol)

Today the children largely entertained themselves this morning as I wondered around in a bit of a fog that I couldn't snap out of until I had a long telephone conversation with a special friend. Once I had come through the fog, we went outside to make a snow man, snow lady and snow baby....and had a snow ball fight or 2 or 3.

Angel then organised the other 3 into a baking session, for cakes for HE group tomorrow, while I caught up with the breakfast and dinner time washing up.
While Pal had a nap Angel did some English SATS workbook on Apostrophes and amazed me (again) at how quickly she has grasped concepts that I still struggle with.
Luna used chalk boards to practice writing letters after I read stories from the Letterland story book. HRH sat with Luna and helped her with the 'correct' forming of the letter shapes....whilst he drew the appropriate character to go with the Letter i.e. Clever cat for C.

DVD. Bath, then bed.

A bit late, but as they say, better late than never.

I hope everyone had a super Christmas and a Happy New Year

We are just thinking about getting into a semi-routine of starting back to doing something, rather than watching TV and PC or Wii playing, so far HRH is finding the new reduced times very stressful, but he is helping around the house for more Wii time etc....long may it continue.

I had promised myself before Christmas to sort out the pictures form my air balloon trip back in October and order a poster of approx 30 prints form Snapfish.com. I finally got around to doing so yesterday and the collage-photo-poster is on its way to me. But whilst uploading the pics I remembered a request from 'To the manor born' about blogging the air balloon trip. So here you are;

The Air balloon Flight took place on 26th October 2009.

We arrived at the 'launch site' at about 2pm. We (by we I mean my brother (C) and myself) met the Pilot on the main car park, showed him our tickets and he showed us the way to the balloon.

As we were approaching the field we saw the land rover that transports the balloon and basket from site to site, the basket was standing next to the vehicle. I was very surprised to see how large the basket was; It can accommodate up to 16 passengers.

Once all the passengers had arrived, the pilot introduced him self to everyone and talked about the health and safety stuff, including how to climb into the basket and the position we need to be in when we land....because some times, apparently, you can bounce a couple of times and then land with the basket lying down.......!!!! at this point I was thinking about going home!!!!!

The pilot (M) asked for volunteers to help unroll the balloon; as my brother and I wanted to get as much as we could from this experience we volunteered for everything LOL.... a number of us stood on either side of the balloon which had been rolled out into a huge sausage shape on the ground, our job was to find the main seam and pull the balloon out so it was flat out on the ground.

Once the balloon was pulled flat M and his crew hooked it up to the basket and two more volunteers were called forward (C being one of them), to hold open the 'mouth' of the balloon so that huge fans could begin to inflate the balloon. Cold air fans were used to inflate the balloon, then hot air from the gas burners were used to lift the basket.

Once the basket was upright M shouted for everyone to board the air balloon. When everyone was in place (and it was rather a tight squeeze, with four passengers to a compartment) the gas burners were used to lift us into the air.

A view inside the balloon from the basket below!

The take off was smooth and slow, but the ascent was quick but smooth. We watched with awe as the ground fell below us and we raise higher than the trees and birds flying around the clear sky. It was such a clam relaxing experience. I felt so insignificant up there. It really brought home to me how small, we as humans are compared to the earth we live on.

M announced at some point that we had reached a maximum of 2000 feet and had travelled 14 miles.

After approx 1 hour M was starting to look for a field to land in. He told us about the fact that some farmers are really not happy with balloons landing in their fields and they have to be very careful about where they land, however, you cannot steer a hot air balloon and you have to literally go with wind, so sometimes they need to land in ANY field.

We were approaching a farm and M suggested a field over to our right, he radioed to the crew who had followed us in the land rover which collects the equipment and the mini bus which takes us back to the launch site.

M was waiting for the wind to move us clear of an electric pylon when the wind stopped and for what seemed like an age we were hovering above the pylon !!!!! eventually the wind picked up again and moved us clear. phew !!

We began to descend and the field quickly came up to meet us. We all sat in our seats and braised our selves for a bumpy landing, however one didn't come, we grazed the long grass, bounced slightly and came to a gentle stop. We were then told that they hadn't found the farmer who owned the field and we may have to take off again, so we had to stand and wait for clearance. After approx 30 minutes we had the go ahead to deflate the balloon and pack it away in that field.

The land rover came onto the field and we helped pack the balloon away. The balloon had to be pulled down to the ground and then beaten, physically with our hands to get the air out !!!!once flat on the ground it had to be rolled and lifted into a basket.

The balloon alone weighed one ton and the basket another ton....its really amazing how it stays in the sky!!

We got back to the launch site and enjoyed a champagne toast to the flight.

Super day all round!!

No Fantastic Mr Fox!

Today we intended to go and see 'Fantastic Mr Fox' as a belated treat for HRH's birthday, but having checked the times last night, I found that the only showing for today was at 5.30, which is far too late for us!
I have promised we will go Monday or Tuesday when there are more showings available.

The day began with me suggesting to the children that they go through the catalogues we have lying around the house, cut out the things they would like from Santa and stick them on a piece of paper. I have really lost track of what they each want, and its getting scarily close now. So the children did, and I was relatively pleased with their choices, although Luna has a real doll fetish at the moment and both sides of her piece of paper was crammed with doll pictures....LOL

After that we did some science. I picked up an Electronics kit in TK MAX last week, and had put it aside for such a day.
The children LOVED it. The pieces are really solidly made and even Pal could have a go without fear of him damaging any fragile bits.
Angel and HRH enjoyed following the instructions and working out the symbols for each component needed for the various circuits they were making.
Much discussion was had regrading what is needed for the lamp / buzzer / motor to work and why switches might be needed.
We talked about how the power is used more efficiently when the components are placed in parallel as opposed to straight circuits.
We discussed what other items around the house would have motors and switches etc.
I suggested we drew a few examples of the circuits the children had made to save as examples of what they had done. HRH and Luna were fine with that and they happily got on with drawing and labeling the different parts they used.
However, Angel had a major issue with drawing.....she felt that she was useless at drawing and would be ashamed to show any of her friends what she had drawn. !!??!?!??! Not sure where that came from?!?!?!
After much discussion I found that the 'real' reason was that there had obviously been some issues with some of the girls at the HE group yesterday and Angel didn't feel that she was able to stand up for herself without hurting someone. She said that she has been bought up to not insult her friends and she was not comfortable with telling her friends when they had upset her...........so we had a long discussion about the fact that sometimes you have to say how you are feeling even if that might upset your friends because its not good to keep things in side and not consider your own feelings as being important......(some compressions can be made here to issues I have at the moment too) After much talking I think we got to the real root of the outburst and Angel settled back down. However she was still very insistent that her drawings were not good enough. :-( So I suggested we took photographs instead and we could label them when I print them off, She said 'thank you'. Bless her. She was very happy to do more experiments once that 'issue' was resolved!
We then did lots of shopping for Christmas presents this afternoon and my parents came back here for Dinner. Chicken Curry. Yummy!