I was watching Kirsties Homemade Christmas a couple of weeks ago. Lemmy wanted to watch it too, and started to get very excited about the approaching festivities. He saw the section with the children making saltdough decorations and suddenly decided he would like to do it. The power of television eh? I've done saltdough with him before but he rapidly got bored with it.
Anyway off we went to make the dough and we cut out lots of Christmas trees and stars and I did some rounds to paint as baubles. The following week when they'd been baked and were ready we painted them and covered them (and ourselves!) in glitter too. I'm going to put the strings on later and figure out where to hang them, so I'll take some photos and add them to the blog.
The 1st of December was a sad day at the Old Schoolhouse. Our lovely, soppy dog was put to sleep at the vets. I've blogged about it over at my other blog http://motherofintention.blogspot.com/2011/12/another-sad-good-bye.html but I wanted to mention here too as obviously this is something that has had an impact on Lemmy. He's taken the news pretty well, but then he's lost two pets in the last year already. With Kelly-dog I didn't tell him she was PTS. I really wasn't sure how he would deal with that news. But this time his dad told him that Oz-dog was gone and had prepared him with the knowledge that he may have had a special sleeping medicine at the vets. Lemmy asked me this outright and I generally don't believe in lying to children, if there is an age appropriate way of explaining something to them. So I told him the truth, and he asked if Kelly had died the same way and I admitted that she had. We had a very long conversation about how and why this was done. It happened over the course of the weekend, he came and asked questions as he thought of them. Sometimes asking the same questions over and over. I think he understands now.
He also asked if we'd buried him in the garden like we did with Kelly and I had to admit that we hadn't. We've had him cremated and will be burying his ashes next to Kelly when we get them back. He knew about cremation already as his Great-nana died ealrier in the year and she was cremated. He still asked a LOT of questions about it though.
I know some people struggle with how to broach the subject of death with small children. My view is that the best way forward is honesty as much as possible and in an age appropriate way. We haven't had to deal with the death of a close loved one yet, and I know that will be a whole different ball game when it does happen but I do hope that having taken such an honest approach with loss of our dogs has set the groundworks of making it as easy as it possibly could when they time does come.
Us grown ups are still very much in the grief stage of the loss of this four legged member of our family. Lemmy seems to have moved on emotionally very swiftly. We're buoyed by that ourselves. Christmas is coming and Lemmy's obvious childish enthusiasm for that is infectious.
Friday 9 December 2011
Monday 14 November 2011
Too busy learning!
I really have to make more effort with this blog!
Our days are so busy just being.....
We've been learning a bit about Armistice Day, as obviously it's been at the forefront of peoples minds and conversations just lately. Lemmy is very interested in all things war. Well he is a boy!
I've requested some information from a family member about my Grandfather's time during the war so that we can do a proper project. I think (hope) Lemmy will engage with it more if it's about someone he can relate to. Of course he never met my Grandfather, but he is aware of who he is.
On Saturday morning Lemmy got up and saw a picture of an Otter on my computer. He wanted to know more about it, and so followed an hour of finding out all about Otters and then Beavers and Mink. I don't know how his brain makes whatever connections it does but this somehow led on to watching videos of volcanoes erupting and learning all about them and in particular pyroclastic flow.
We've done the usual reading and writing practice this weekend, and some colouring too to try and improve his handling of a pen. This is the hardest part of Home Educating. He's really not keen on this element of learning. He really does want to read, but doesn't want to put in the practice. I'm very aware that this child of mine can read far more than he's letting on...
Other things we've been doing - gardening (always lots of that in this household), he's helped cut down the last of the apple trees we've removed. He then made a 'meteor deflector' out of the branches. This was basically a bivouac!
It's hard to remember everything he's probably learned over the last few weeks. He's very inquisitve, and conversations range widely all day - every day!
He's also very proud of the fact that he's now been invested at his Beavers Troop!
Our days are so busy just being.....
We've been learning a bit about Armistice Day, as obviously it's been at the forefront of peoples minds and conversations just lately. Lemmy is very interested in all things war. Well he is a boy!
I've requested some information from a family member about my Grandfather's time during the war so that we can do a proper project. I think (hope) Lemmy will engage with it more if it's about someone he can relate to. Of course he never met my Grandfather, but he is aware of who he is.
On Saturday morning Lemmy got up and saw a picture of an Otter on my computer. He wanted to know more about it, and so followed an hour of finding out all about Otters and then Beavers and Mink. I don't know how his brain makes whatever connections it does but this somehow led on to watching videos of volcanoes erupting and learning all about them and in particular pyroclastic flow.
We've done the usual reading and writing practice this weekend, and some colouring too to try and improve his handling of a pen. This is the hardest part of Home Educating. He's really not keen on this element of learning. He really does want to read, but doesn't want to put in the practice. I'm very aware that this child of mine can read far more than he's letting on...
Other things we've been doing - gardening (always lots of that in this household), he's helped cut down the last of the apple trees we've removed. He then made a 'meteor deflector' out of the branches. This was basically a bivouac!
It's hard to remember everything he's probably learned over the last few weeks. He's very inquisitve, and conversations range widely all day - every day!
He's also very proud of the fact that he's now been invested at his Beavers Troop!
Monday 19 September 2011
Not back to school!
well - I haven't posted all summer. We've just been too busy doing stuff!
We've had a summer full of learning about growing in the garden. Lemmy's runner beans grew really well! And his pumpkin plant has one grapefruit sized squash on it at the moment. He discovered how delightful mange-tout are as a garden snack and the result of that was that we managed about two stir-fry's worth into the kitchen and the rest ended up in an active 5 year old's belly!
We've done a few festivals this year, most notably the Croisannt Neuf in Wales which was delightfully small and saw Lemmy spend his pocket money on a gaudy pink and gold glitter face mask and developing an obsession with an old fashioned coconut shy!
Shambala at the end of the summer always proves to be the best festival of the season for us though. The biggest negative was Lemmy getting his first ever wasp sting. He dealt with it admirably, first removing the sting from his finger and THEN coming to me to announce the injury - though by that point he realised it was hurting and he descended into tears. A trip to the medical tent ensued (as the finger was swelling quite a lot) and we returned smelling of vinegar! And true to form Lemmy managed to sweet talk a nurse into parting with a medicinal polo. Then he spent the rest of the weekend telling any pretty girl who would listen about how brave he had been!
He had great fun in the kids field, though I think possibly the grown ups enjoyed John Hegley's animal alphabet somewhat more than the kids did. Lemmy was really keen to make a bar of soap so we did that on the last day and he was very pleased with the end result. The musical hit for him was seeing Kid Carpet (a favourite of mummy's, and i'm so glad he starting producing childrens music as well as his adult stuff)performing songs from his upcoming kids show. And of course watching the fancy dress procession produced lots of excited exclamation!
So home now, settling in for the winter. It's time to start teaching him to read in earnest. He's finished Reading Eggs, but I'm not sure how much of it he's absorbed so we've moved onto Starfall for now and actually it's reassuring that he does know far more than he's willing to let on. The writing is proving a bit trickier. He's very much an active outdoor boy, so sitting and doing 'proper work' doesn't appeal. I'm afraid bribery of sorts is working here. He's discovered Moshi Monsters and so for the time he sits practising reading and writing, he earns time on MM.
He's also discovered Warhammer (mum rolls eyes). He has been very interested in Oz's English Civil War soliders, so I suppose the fact that Warhammer has skeletons and zombies was always going to appeal to him.
I'm going to try very hard to do a weekly update on here, to keep track of what fun we're having and also to document the warts and all aspect of Home Ed. It's a brilliant journey, enjoyable for the most part.....but it wouldn't be fair to only put the nice bits would it!
We've had a summer full of learning about growing in the garden. Lemmy's runner beans grew really well! And his pumpkin plant has one grapefruit sized squash on it at the moment. He discovered how delightful mange-tout are as a garden snack and the result of that was that we managed about two stir-fry's worth into the kitchen and the rest ended up in an active 5 year old's belly!
We've done a few festivals this year, most notably the Croisannt Neuf in Wales which was delightfully small and saw Lemmy spend his pocket money on a gaudy pink and gold glitter face mask and developing an obsession with an old fashioned coconut shy!
Shambala at the end of the summer always proves to be the best festival of the season for us though. The biggest negative was Lemmy getting his first ever wasp sting. He dealt with it admirably, first removing the sting from his finger and THEN coming to me to announce the injury - though by that point he realised it was hurting and he descended into tears. A trip to the medical tent ensued (as the finger was swelling quite a lot) and we returned smelling of vinegar! And true to form Lemmy managed to sweet talk a nurse into parting with a medicinal polo. Then he spent the rest of the weekend telling any pretty girl who would listen about how brave he had been!
He had great fun in the kids field, though I think possibly the grown ups enjoyed John Hegley's animal alphabet somewhat more than the kids did. Lemmy was really keen to make a bar of soap so we did that on the last day and he was very pleased with the end result. The musical hit for him was seeing Kid Carpet (a favourite of mummy's, and i'm so glad he starting producing childrens music as well as his adult stuff)performing songs from his upcoming kids show. And of course watching the fancy dress procession produced lots of excited exclamation!
So home now, settling in for the winter. It's time to start teaching him to read in earnest. He's finished Reading Eggs, but I'm not sure how much of it he's absorbed so we've moved onto Starfall for now and actually it's reassuring that he does know far more than he's willing to let on. The writing is proving a bit trickier. He's very much an active outdoor boy, so sitting and doing 'proper work' doesn't appeal. I'm afraid bribery of sorts is working here. He's discovered Moshi Monsters and so for the time he sits practising reading and writing, he earns time on MM.
He's also discovered Warhammer (mum rolls eyes). He has been very interested in Oz's English Civil War soliders, so I suppose the fact that Warhammer has skeletons and zombies was always going to appeal to him.
I'm going to try very hard to do a weekly update on here, to keep track of what fun we're having and also to document the warts and all aspect of Home Ed. It's a brilliant journey, enjoyable for the most part.....but it wouldn't be fair to only put the nice bits would it!
Saturday 28 May 2011
More garden, Peru and Mercury
We've been doing a lot in the garden over the last couple of weeks, and decided that this bit of garden would be handed over to Lemmy. The paeony was already in, as were the forget-me-nots but Lemmy chose some plants at the garden centre to fill in. He made a bee-line for the marigolds, for some reason he is very taken with them. Of course he couldn't resist the snap-dragons, and I was very pleased when he picked a bright red zinnia as it's always been one of my favourite flowers.
Lemmy also learned how to build a cane support for the runner beans which he planted in the greenhouse a while ago now. We built the support and he planted the runner beans out - though only time will tell if he'll actually eat any!
Lemmy has a subscription to the National Geographic Kids magazine and it arrived this morning. He sat with his breakfast and browsed through it until he found an article which got him very excited - a feature on Machu Picchu. He announced he wanted to go there! My cousin visited there on a trip to South America a couple of years ago and fortunately has some photos online so we went to look at them and Lemmy seemed quite impressed that someone I know has actually been there! This afternoon we expanded on this a little by finding Peru on the (very large!) map of the world we bought this week. Then a little time on the internet to learn what language they speak in Peru, and what their flag looks like and to find out who built Machu Picchu. By that time I was losing his attention a bit so we decided to turn our attention to other matters.
I also bought him a poster of the Periodic Table this week, and he was keen to do something with that. I asked him what he wanted to learn and he just wanted to pick one of the 'squares' so off he went and picked Hg - Mercury. We talked about the chemical symbol, and then about the atomic number - we wrote on post-it-notes and stuck these on the poster. We also watched some Youtube videos, one of a man handling mercury which led to a discussion about it being poisonous and then a video demonstrating that even a heavy lead musket ball would float in the mercury.
One other things which has really grabbed Lemmy's attention of late is Oz's toy soldiers. He's currently in the shed learning how to re-enact the English Civil War........
Tuesday 10 May 2011
In the garden
Helping to cut back the stag horn trees....
Helping to prepare the bed for the paved barbeque area....
Helping to build a new Barbeque.....
And using the box as a space-ship....
We decorated our outdoor table......
We had some tree surgery done and they brought a cherry picker. When offered the chance to go up in it Lemmy could barely contain his excitement! He was very well behaved and even got to make it go up and down.....
Wednesday 13 April 2011
In the kitchen
Some things we have made
Coconut Ice
For some reason we don't have a picture of the finished product, but I can confirm that it was very yummy indeed!
Honey Cake
Cheesy Star bites
Coconut Ice
For some reason we don't have a picture of the finished product, but I can confirm that it was very yummy indeed!
Honey Cake
Cheesy Star bites
Home Ed Journey.
I've decided to start a second blog, not a very imaginative title though I'm afraid!
This blog will primarly be to document and share the Home Ed Journey that I travel with my son. I've tried keeping a written diary but to be honest because I don't have the means to print photos at home I often lose the motivation to keep up with entries.
As I can upload the photos to the computer I thought maybe I'd find it easier to keep up to date with what we do if I can sit in the evening and post a few photos, with a few descriptive words.
As I have a backlog of photos, there will probably be a flurry of posts to begin with, while I try and catch up on the 'things we have done'
I'll write a bit more about 'us' over the next few weeks....
This blog will primarly be to document and share the Home Ed Journey that I travel with my son. I've tried keeping a written diary but to be honest because I don't have the means to print photos at home I often lose the motivation to keep up with entries.
As I can upload the photos to the computer I thought maybe I'd find it easier to keep up to date with what we do if I can sit in the evening and post a few photos, with a few descriptive words.
As I have a backlog of photos, there will probably be a flurry of posts to begin with, while I try and catch up on the 'things we have done'
I'll write a bit more about 'us' over the next few weeks....
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