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!
