To Plan or Not to Plan

Uh - that would be 'not to plan' this week!

Sometimes things just don't go according to plan, so it is generally a good thing (for us) that our planning is very low-key.  This week we had a Home Ed coffee morning planned at a friend's house yesterday, which was lovely, as expected - much socialising done by children and parents, and an over-all fun time was had by all :)  Monday was a planned PJ day, as always - interrupted by a visit to the doctors, but otherwise lovely.  Tuesday we did hardly anything, which was unplanned but nexessary - and our only other 'planned event' was to be a group visit to a soft play area tomorrow... organised by myself.  I am now in the frustrating position of possibly being late to my own event (am really hoping we won't be stopped from going).  Eldest has had a couple of health issues left over from his nasty virus last month, and for the last couple of days he has really not been himself.  I can't leave it over the whole weekend so I'm going to have to try to get an appt tomorrow, at whatever time they can give me (probably in the morning).  Ah well, these things happen - and I will be soooo glad to get my sunny, happy biggest boy back again once he has recovered.

So Eldest has not been sleeping well at all; Youngest is still getting used to no pull-ups in bed, though I do simply have to boast that he went all night last night with dry pants & sheets (he still woke a few times, but no accidents, clever boy)!!  And then at some point during the night (I've stopped looking at the clock every time I'm woken up as it's too depressing), I developed severe toothache :(  I had an emergency appt this afternoon & am now armed with antibiotics and more painkillers, and an appointment for a root canal on Monday - urgh!

So that said, I wouldn't have expected to have anything to write about today.  Knowing that Eldest was struggling (and I was exhausted), I deliberately did not plan anything for today, except a bit of Wii-playing (if anything can rouse Eldest that would be it), but we just gently carried on with whatever presented itself (not least to take our minds off how rotten we were feeling in our respective ways), and surprisingly ended up doing quite a bit.   See, distractions can be positive!  So Eldest did a bit of Reading Eggspress (he loved the trial fortnight so he is now fully subscribed) and MathsWhizz, and Middle did a LOT of Reading Eggs.  Youngest wanted to play Body Bingo (we made our version last week - see All Learning Together), but when I got out the counters he looked disappointed and asked to play it the "old-fashioned way" (ie using chocolate buttons like the first time as we didn't have the proper counters when we played it last week).  Bless him - we stuck to proper counters but he still had fun shouting 'Bingo' in the appropriate places (and a few inappropriate ones)  Middle and Eldest joined in too (Eldest was reluctant to leave the sofa at this point, so he just answered the questions).

See, another nice thing about HE is that where I thought Middle might have finished with the 'Our Bodies' project that he sort of pursued last term, he's actually still very interested, and Eldest and Youngest are getting involved as well now: we don't have to ditch a project just because we've 'done it' for a term already!  So there was much excitement today when a parcel arrived for me, and when Youngest asked what it contained, we opened it to find "my new body game" - here  (I always call them mine as it immediately makes them want to try it, plus they are also slightly more likely to treat it carefully than if it were their 'own' property!)  It's great: a magnetic board with cut out magnetic shapes showing different body organs, with a little write-up on each organ's function.  All the boys enjoyed working out where each organ went, so I hope it'll turn out to be something they return to again and again.  In fact, Eldest was interested enough to go on to then have a go at this little Interactive Human Body, courtesy of the BBC.  We had fun trying to work out which way round the gall bladder went, but other than that, he did very well :)

All three boys enjoyed watching 'Deadly 60's Top Ten' on the TV at lunchtime, and then Middle and Youngest were inspired to get arty today too... I had noticed on the inspiring Deep Space Sparkle arty website that they do quite a bit Eric Carle - style art using painted paper.  Knowing how much my boys love splashing paint onto paper, we got out a few sheets and had fun mixing colours and covering the sheets with broad brush strokes, that we will save and use for coming projects. I still only have paint in the primary colours + white and black (and a little gold and silver), as it saves on storage space, plus it's a really good way to reinforce their understanding of how to make the secondary and tertiary colours etc.  Well anyway even after painting about a dozen sheets, they still weren't ready to put the paints away and Middle decided that he wanted us all to do something together, so we found a big piece of paper and got to work.  Eldest did a cloud but really wasn't in the mood today - the rest of us painted a big landscape of sky, grass & trees, then once it was dry (which took a while!) the younger two boys stuck on some Autumn stickers that I'd almost forgotten we had, and made a lovely woodland picture.  There was a little disagreement over whether or not a hedgehog should be fying in the sky, but in the end they both embraced the surreal and decided to have a whole host of flying creatures!

Finally, after a bit of Wii-play (Lego Star Wars), with all the boys enjoying killing a variety of droids, today it was Middle's turn to do some baking - and with it being Daddy's birthday, we decided to make a cake to welcome him home from work.  By this point my poorly tooth was playing up quite a bit, but Middle and I managed between us - and after all, you can't go without cake on your birthday!!!

So I was quite chuffed with today's acheivements - although I have to say, my lauded housework routine has slipped in all the 'feeling yucky'ness.  I'll just have to take it a day at a time - hope for a lovely time at Soft Play (eventually) tomorrow, a lovely weekend, and (after the necessary evil that is a Root Canal treatment on Monday), hopefully a lovely week next week with us returning to our usual joie-de-vivre.  Bring on the joie!