We love Mondays

I LOVE Mondays!  No more dreading the start of the week: nowadays we really look forward to our Pyjama Mondays (though I do get dressed, as you know).  Mondays are usually such lovely days, filled wth gentle, flexible activities... making sure the boys are keeping up with their jobs (Eldest unloads the dishwasher; Youngest and Middle take it in turns to empty the washing machine into the tumble dryer/ empty the dryer), doing a bit of online Maths/ English, creating art/ baking, playing - and this week Monday also marked the start of new lapbooks for Eldest and Middle - maybe that will continue for however long this lapbook season lasts.  Eldest, bless him, worked really hard and completed his lapbook on Friday evening, because he wanted to show it to family who we were visiting on Saturday - you can see the finished result at the end of this post.  He and I are really proud!

So this morning I asked if the boys would like to make some bread.  They were really enthusiastic (they love both being violent in their kneading (bashing) and being creative in the shapes of their rolls), so that was a lovely start to the day.

We had MathsWhizz while the dough was proving, then they made a start on their new lapbooks while it baked.  Eldest has chosen Desert Animals as his topic.  I had suggested the World Wars as it's one of his favourite subjects, but no - he wanted to do another "animal-y one", so that's what he's doing.  He wanted to repeat the format of his Ocean lapbook, so I've made another mini book out of a few square-cut folders.  Middle is happy with the smaller, more interactive version, which is good as I bought fifty envelope files for the purpose!  His chosen subject is the Human Body - a topic that he appears to find endlessly fascinating.  Today he asked me if he could watch the Rock n Learn DVD that we have on the subject, and I had to keep pausing every time we got to a different system (msucular, skeletal, nervous etc) so he could copy it down!  I wouldn't even have tackled something that involved myself, but he was full of vision, so away he went - it just goes to show, even the most reluctant worker will put effort into something they really enjoy!

 (he hasn't labelled it yet, but hopefully some of the systems are obvious!)

We had our yummy bread rolls for lunch, then decided to do a little art, based on Antony Gormley's "Field for the British Isles".  Eldest really liked it as it reminded him of Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes)'s army of mini snowmen.  Anyway, we got the playdough out and after making a few little people, soon realised that we didn't have enough.  I didn't have any cream of tartar in the house either, so couldn't make any more.  We took a photo of what we had made so far, then packed it away into tubs until we have replenished our playdough stocks!

More tidying up after that (Youngest was having a "pull everything off the shelves" kind of day) - and an improvised spot of circuit training (the only drawback to pyjama days being those days when they need to let off some steam... so I find ways for them to exercise indoors) and that was our Monday!  Loved it!   And finally, before I log off, here it is (pause for another proud Mummy drumroll): Eldest's first ever lapbook...

Mini-Structure and Pop Art

I love Facebook.  I was in a conversation on it the other day, and identifying with that familiar HE struggle between the heart's love of the unschooling philosophy, and the head's need for a degree of structure, for sanity's sake.  This term, although we're only a week in, I feel like we've struck a balance that works for us.  Every day that we're home, the boys (particularly the two older ones) do half an hour (or more if they like - they sometimes do) of Reading Eggspress and MathsWhizz, while I do some reading or maths games with Youngest.  He stalled on Reading Eggs last term, and is still consolidating the skills learned and building his confidence to be able to go back to where he left off.  Also, most days we do an activity of Mummy's suggestion (the boys have the power of veto) - from a list of ideas.  Eg yesterday we played Middle's brilliant new game (another Christmas present), Scabs and Guts.  It's a board game with lots of questions on the body, healthy living etc - it seemed that every other question involved poo, snot & other not-so-refined topics... the boys loved it, of course, and Middle was particularly delighted when one card asked him to do a demonstration of someone with food-poisoning... his acted-out vomiting was very convicing - yeuch!

So other than half an hour of online curriculum in Maths or English, and one activity from Mummy's "what shall we do today" suggestion box, the boys are free to explore, watch, play etc as their interests dictate.  If the TV goes on they watch something that we have recorded (from BBC2's Learning Zone, or CBBC and CBeebies).  Horrible Histories is a particular favourite of Eldest's, and the younger two are currently enjoying William Whiskerson (geography) and Curious Cat (design & technology), which we recorded last term. There are a few great programmes on the internet too (we really like Grid Club) but more often than not, they're just off creating or having fun - not so much evidence of screentime this term ('hooray' says Mummy!)  Sometimes they need/ want my involvement, often they are happy to just get on with whatever it is.  It certainly all seems to be working so far :)  People who are purely unschooling may well suggest that we're not doing it properly by having any structure, and those who are fully structured may be horrified at my doing "so little" with the boys - but it works for us.  At the moment, anyway.  When it stops working, we will find what works better, and adapt.

So yesterday our learning (that I was aware of) looked something like this: Eldest and Middle were on Reading Eggspress while Youngest and I read a few small books from the Oxford Reading Tree - him sounding out & blending the simple words, me reading the ones that he couldn't/ didn't want to read - and of course, having fun chatting about the illustrations, to keep it fun (given the choice of 'sharing a story' or 'practicing reading', I know which seems more appealing!).  Middle baked some smartie cookies, but somehow they all got eaten before I remembered to take a photo - oops; Eldest read his new book, "Predators" (Steve Backshall); we all played the aforementioned delightfully disgusting board game, 'Scabs and Guts', and then Eldest (and Middle) played camera challenges where I had to give them a challenge of something to take a photo of  (eg something with a triangle in it, something with spots/ stripes, something shiny etc.   All in all, a lovely day!  Like I said though, that was just the learning that I noticed - so much of a person's learning just cannot be quantified.  They were off playing and creating for hours - who knows what they were absorbing while enjoying themselves!

And today? Well, we've had MathsWhizz; Horrible Histories and William Whiskerson on TV; Youngest has been further exploring the CBeebies website; Middle counted the bones in his foot (then we looked it up to check the "real" answer); and Mummy's contribution was to make some Pop Art.  I showed the boys Andy Warhol's 'Marilyn' prints in our book, "Famous Paintings."  Eldest remembered it from the from the Art programme they watched last term (recorded from the BBC's learning zone), and they were all keen to get the paints out and have a go at our own version.  I looked online to see if there were any instrictions to follow (I'm not totally confident when it comes to teaching art), but as I couldn't find any, we worked it out as we went along.  In case you fancy a go, this is what we did...

Pop-Art Self-Portraits

We wanted to do four colour variations - and four x A4 would have been too big I felt, so I folded an A4 page in half, to give us a smaller starting area each.  We each drew a basic head (and shoulders) self-portrait.  We are blessed with a photocopy function on our printer, so I made three further A5 copies of each self portrait.  If you don't have access to a photocopier, you could just trace the simple outlines.

   

Next we mixed six colours of paint (I only keep paint in the primary colours plus black and white at home - partly because of limited storage space, partly because it provides plenty of practice at mixing colours).  We decided the best look would be to limit ourselves to using five colours each.  We laid our four identical self-portraits out in front of each of us, and started painting.  It worked better for us to do a kind of production line: rather than completing one self-portrait at a time, we each did all four faces first (making sure each was a different colour), then each mouth etc...

   

That was as much as Youngest could handle really (ie just colouring his faces in with different colours on each page).  With Eldest and Youngest we looked at Warhol's colour variation and talked about how they weren't all uniform - in some of them the eyes and lips were the same colour; in others it was the lips and hair etc.  As we went along we tried to not only vary the features that were the same colour on each self-portrait, but also make sure there was a balance of colour across all four pieces. 

When we had finished filling our faces with colour we looked at how Warhol used colour to make bolder backgrounds than just leaving them white - so (with the exception of Youngest, who declared his to be finished), we assessed our faces so far and looked at which colours would work best as backgrounds to tie the four mini prints into one work of art (that sounds more pontificatory than it actually was).  Most importantly, it was fun, and we're all really happy with our completed "artwork"

 Mummy

 Eldest

 Middle

 Youngest

And then this afternoon we had a play date with the boys' old school friends at a soft play area - so now they're all nicely exhausted and happy from another lovely day.  And what's more, it's now the weekend, so we get Daddy at home too - hooray!  I'm off to enjoy the weekend - hope you have a good one too!

Excitement in Pyjamas

Given that today was a low-key pyjama day as has become our habit, it was still a pretty exciting day, most especially for Middle.  Today he "graduated" from Reading Eggs (aimed at 3-7 year olds) to Reading Eggspress (aimed at 7-13 year olds).  He did several lessons in one hit on the last level today as he was so excited to see that he was nearly at the end, and he couldn't wait to be on the same programme as his big brother.  Great was the rejoicing in the house when the Reading Eggspress screen flashed up, and he got to choose his new avatar!  Definitely a proud Mummy moment.  See, Middle struggled academically at school.  He was easily bright enough to do the work, he just didn't fit in the system, and eventually became so depressed that he wouldn't even try.    In six months he has gone from being slightly behind according to Reading Eggs, to ahead for his age.  Now that doesn't actually mean a lot as far as I'm concerned - I always knew he was capable, and I really don't set much store on performance age etc - that's a trap perpetuated by the league tables etc found in the state school system  It's just nice to have a kind of measurable evidence of progress for those who aren't sure of HE, and of course for me if I'm having a wobble.  What means much more to me is that since starting our home education journey Middle has relaxed so fully, I feel like I have my gorgeous, happy, loving boy back.  And quite simply, he was really happy at starting Reading Eggspress - so I am happy for him!

All three boys are now total "Wild Tales" (CBBC) addicts, as evidenced by their excitement at the start of the week being equal to the start of another series - and this week's stars are families of caribou, African wild dogs and polar bears.  There was an entertaining (for me) moment when the caribou gave birth to the baby star of the show, and Eldest asked me what that big red thing was, still hanging from between the caribou's legs.  I explained about placentas etc, and confirmed when asked that yes, I had one for each of my babies - but when I offered to find a picture online to show him, I was answered with an unequivocal "Ewww NO THANKS!".  Apparently that's an education too far right now!  (boys are weird: I am expected to come running to admire the size of their latest toilet-blocking faecal product, but looking at a picture of a placenta online is gross?  Go figure...)
Anyway (moving right along), following Wild Tales we watched an episode of the fun and informative Richard Hammond's Blast Lab, and learned about the surface tension of water.  We did a quick impromptu demonstration of water filled to the brim of a glass, to see if the boys could see the slight dome shape made by the water surface as we added a little more water.  They could, and were dutifully impressed... but were more excited by the splashes made when Mummy accidentally dropped too much water in suddenly - who said education isn't allowed to be exciting?

A different kind of excitement was also provided today by our Christmas Decorations book.  Normally I would prefer something less prescriptive - something that we could design ourselves and be a bit more organic in our creating - but this weekend was pretty full of house-sorting (we culled the toys in Middle and Youngest's room ready for Christmas, and are trying to restore the study into a functional space, rather than the dumping ground it has become) - and I ran out of time to have a look for some more creative crafts or other activities, so we grabbed this book off the shelf, and got the scissors & sellotape out.  It may not have seemed that exciting to me, but anything that reminds the boys of the fast-approaching season is guaranteed to riase the levels of enthusiasm in the house!  And an hour or so later, we had quite a few pretty Christmas decorations ready to be hung/ stuck to windows...

The lovely thing was that even though I personally found the ready-to-cut patterns a bit uninspiring, the boys really got into it - and very quickly came up with further ideas of their own.  Eldest made a rather complicated 3D Christmas tree model that took him a while (cue much muttering), but he persevered with his design and the end product looked great.  Then he followed it with a stand-up santa hat, and a star decoration.  Middle made some decorations out of cellophane and card - and Youngest flitted between making decorations and drawing letters with a stencil he had found.  He was so excited by producing his own letters, bless him - I guess he's ready to learn to write then!  Sadly I can't post photos of the boys' original decorations as they seem to have been squirreled away, probably in the boys' bedrooms... well, I suppose I should be impressed that the bedroom-tidyness lasted a whole day!

Questions, Food, and Mini-Blogger

Regular readers will know that we've been looking on and off at the topic of the Human Body, using games, online quizzes, TV programmes, books - and just lots of the boys' own natural questions.  Take this question from Eldest the other day (after seeing a trailer for a TV programme showing a live birth): "why does it hurt ladies to have babies?"  I love questions like that: they always throw the subconscious prude in me slightly and I have to gather myself to give a sensible answer that doesn't overload the asker with too much information, but does give them the information they want at a level they can understand without glossing over "the embarrassing bits".  Anyway, Eldest (and his brothers who were listening) got an impromptu chat over the kitchen table (why do they always ask these kind of questions while we're eating?) - we talked about contractions, with all the boys tensing their muscles for a long time to see who could do it the longest, and whether it hurt - we covered the size of the hole that babies come out of versus the size of a babies head, and and of course we had the inevitable comparisons with "the biggest poo I ever did".  I guess boys are fixated with showing off poo sizes because they don't get to boast about baby weights in the same way new mothers do!

All of this Human Body stuff has led nicely on to further learning too - the boys have been taking an interest in which foods are good for which parts of their bodies (especially the ones that help them grow big muscles!)  I have been concerned for quite a while about the food that they eat (or don't eat: Youngest in particular has a total aversion to fruit & vegetables), so I jumped on their curiosity as an opportunity to do something about it.  I think everyone must be aware of the government's "five-a-day" campaign for healthy eating - as you know, I intensely dislike governmental interference on a personal level (and actually, healthy living requires much more than five fruit or veg a day because modern farming methods have left the soil so depleted of nutrients that we don't get the same goodness from - say - a carrot, as we would have done fifty years ago) - and I have an allergy to shoulds (as in 'should eat five a day'!).  Anyway despite my loathing for all things 'nanny-state',  I have really been wanting to find a way for the boys to be aware of the dietary choices they make, so I started looking for a good resource or two to help us.  Having posted a request for recommendations on Facebook, a friend quickly passed this link to me: Nourish Interactive, with Chef Solus.  It's American, but I haven't found any vocabulary issues as yet - and the free printables are great; there are loads of them!  So we've used it as the basis for our own "My Plate" project.

Alongside all the learning we've been doing about food groups etc, we drew around some plates and made our own big plates, all different colours and border designs.  Next we drew up large sheets for each of the five main food groups (named and colour-coded a la Chef Solus), and found lots of clip art of different foods that we laminated and cut out to allocate to each food group.

The rest is simple: when we eat something, it gets moved from the food group onto our 'plates' - the idea being that at the end of their evening meal, the boys (and Hubby and I) will be able to see how balanced their meals were over the day.  Creating it all has taken us a week, on and off... we just need to use it now!  We started on it this morning, and quickly realised we need extras of cereal, and a variety of meats - among other things that I expect we'll discover as we go along - but hopefully it will prove useful!

 

Of course, that's not all we've been doing - there have been some lovely pictures made, books read, games played, online curricula completed, hedgehogs putting on weight, visits to friends, and diary written in.  I've run out of time though, - so I'll leave you with a bit from Eldest.  I'm just so pleased that he's kept his diary up, and made it something to treasure...

 

23rd November 2012

7.23am

Going to J's house in Devon today!

12.58pm

look a..................................

hawk!

my first wild hawk I've ever seen in my life!

5.58pm

I'm in J's house and playing nerf guns!

 

24th November 2012

8.01am

I like it here.

3.34pm

Went to some place where Mummy and I bought J an early Christmas present

 

25th November 2012

3.15pm

Did the longest walk I've ever done in the rain with no waterproof trousers!..............

the HOUSE

the house... why am I hugging the house?

5:01pm

going home

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

oh well.

 

27th November 2012

9.25am

Woodpecker in the garden!

27 days until Christmas!

Wild Tales on in 7 mnutes!

cool!

super!

epic!

happy me

 

12.23

I just saw my first goldfinch WOW

Grandma and Auntie A just got here

 

12.59

Just went to get a filling now I'm numb.  I like being numb.

 

Time to Chill and Play

We had a lovely trip to a Fire Station today, organised by one of the local Home Ed mums.  Blue Watch showed us inside all the different storage parts of the fire engine, had a chat about fire safety at home, and then *cue much excitement* took us outside where all the children who wanted to had a turn at squirting water through the hose, sitting in the fire engine, and wearing a firefighter's helmet and jacket.  My boys all wanted to, and were suitably thrilled with the opportunity.  Eldest is starting to feel a bit big for those sorts of thing, and wasn't sure if he wanted to join in, but I said if he liked, I'd take a photo of him that he could then edit later at home, and he was very keen on that idea -of course, once he had his turn he thoroughly enjoyed it :)

While we ate lunch we watched our newish Human Body DVD from the Rock n Learn series.  (We've had it a while, but the boys decided they wanted to watch it yesterday & then ran out of time - so lunchtime today it was).  It is American, so many of the spellings/ pronunciations are different, but the boys really enjoyed it, so I'll be looking out for more reduced-price dvds from the same series.  Conveniently for this Human body topic that the boys are all interested in at the moment, there are TV series on both CBeebies (Get Well Soon) and CBBC (Operation Ouch!), so we've been recording those and watched some today as well :)

This afternoon Eldest was back on the computer editing his photos (like mother, like son!), and Middle wanted to cook some shortbread with me that he'd found on the CBeebies website yesterday - here (minus the glace cherries).  It was a simple enough recipe, but as we're used to following 'grown-up' recipes, the quantities made were a bit on the puny side!  Next time I'd double the ingredients.  They were yummy though, so no problems there!

 

 

Other than that, today was another lovely restful & happy day - lots of stories, cuddles and giggles, singing silly songs and experimenting with our voices, games on CBeebies, measuring each other's heads (why are retractable tape measures to irresistible to the male of the species???), watching Deadly 60 and other programmes, playing with money and so on.  And hopefully more laid-back laughter to be had tomorrow.  What was set to be a really busy week has thankfully turned out to be no more busy than normal - and it's lovely having the time just to play & have fun with my boys while my brain reboots from its most recent wobble :) 

 

In fact it's so much fun I am making a philosophy of it: wobbles = time to chill and play.   Just focusing on fun rather than on assessing what they are learning (even in a low-key way).  Trying to measure the immeasurable is so stressful - not to mention guaranteed to be inaccurate!  So I'm not bothering this week.  I doubt I'll be able to stop myself watching out for learning progress on a permanent basis, and I'm not sure that would be healthy anyway - I just need to make sure it's not stressing me out - and more importantly, that it's not stressing the boys out.  We're not in school, we don't have to wait until half-term to have a week off if we need it... have I mentioned lately how much I love this Home Ed life...?!

Not-so-helpful Suggestions...

Much as I love our little routine that we've been getting into, I feel it needs a tweak.  The problem is, where we've had a "no TV or games console until after lunch" rule, it seems to have created a false appetite for those things that I don't remember being there before.  Or maybe it was there - I can't remember if they actually watched a lot of TV & played on the Wii a lot over the holidays, or if that's just how it felt at the time...?! Anyway, regardless of that, we do now have the rule in place, and it does seem that as soon as we have lunch, the TV now goes on automatically.  So I'm just wondering: have I brought that about by having the rule in the first place?  You know how it goes: if you tell a child "don't touch that" they are immediately tempted to touch whatever it is, even though they may not have even noticed it before.  Perhaps by restricting TV access I have made them more aware of its appeal...?
Further to this, I have also noticed that they have not been so forthcoming with their own ideas of things they want to do as they were before the summer.  I have a feeling this has something to do with the slight structure that we have in place.  I ask them to do a bit (about an hour in total) of MathsWhizz and Reading Eggs every week - but other than that we are generally fairly unstructured.  Also, I've been making more suggestions this 'term', which is more of a habit than a structure but still significant.  You see, when they first came out of school they found it very hard to think of what they wanted to do - they were totally used to having entertainment/ learning processes set in front of them.  Through the deschooling process they learned more about themselves and where their interests actually lay: they learned how to think for themselves - they worked out what they wanted to learn about, and just got on with exploring, finding, enjoying etc - and we all loved it.  This term (our first real term of HE if you discount the deschooling) I have asked very little of them, but have made suggestions based largely on things they have previously mentioned or things that I think will interest them.  I saw it as a kind of verbal strewing - just putting the ideas out there and seeing what the children pick up on.  To be honest though - they generally like anything I suggest (I do try to suggest fun things!); we have been busy, learned lots and had lots of fun.  I am just a little concerned that they aren't thinking for themselves so much again, but rather depending on my suggestions before lunch & reverting to screen time after lunch.  It's certainly not a disaster as far as Home Education goes - but it is food for thought.
So I'm off again - pondering; musing - not wobbling exactly, just considering... and thinking we may have our 'half-term' now: we have a VERY busy two weeks coming up anyway, so we may just use that time to back right off from any structure again, and see what happens.  I don't want to extend the 'no TV' hours, or ban it totally, but I really do want to encourage them away from depending on it to entertain them. (Learning on the TV is another matter - we love that!) We currently have nothing at all planned for half-term, so maybe we'll resume a bit of structure then - it depends what I learn from the next week or two...

Meanwhile we've been having a lovely week.  Craft club on Tuesday saw the boys painting the clay models they made earlier this month, and then making "fossils" (as they called them) out of clay, plaster-of-paris, and little toy creatures.  Their clay models are being re-fired, but we were able to bring the fossils home - and today we used a paint-wash to give them a bit of colour (one of just two suggestions that Mummy made today).  The boys are all really pleased; they look great :)

  

     Middle's "Fossils"                                Eldest's "Fossils"  

 

Youngest's "Fossils"

Yesterday we went to visit some new HE friends, and had a really good time with them.  It took up most of the day, so we had no time for anything else, but we didn't care - it was just lovely for me to see the boys socialising so easily... and of course, Mummy and the other grown-ups had a lovely natter too!  I realised that one of the things I have really appreciated since we started our journey has been the support of people around us who haven't tried to tell us what to do (even when the experienced Home Ed'ors could doubtless see all of my naive mistakes right here in my blog), but have just stood alongside us and encouraged us that we could find the right way for us. Thank you everyone!

Today has been lovely too.  Apart from the fossil paint-washing, my only other suggestion (I am going to try not to make them for the time being) was to ask Eldest if he still wanted to do some baking (he did) as I had some soured cream to use up, so we made some gorgeous Cinnamon Squares - it made the kitchen smell all Christmassy and we got to eat cake at lunch-time - hoorah!

Also today Middle has been making different types of paper aeroplane.  He has somehow memorised how to make four different types ('bug', 'dart', 'glider' and 'super-cool short plane'!) - three of which were in a book he had months ago, and one of his own invention.  I am really impressed that he's remembered all the differently precise folds - but he's such a visual person, I needn't really be surprised.  He even taught our lodger how to make her first paper plane this morning!  Now that's mastery - when you can impart a skill that you have learned to someone else!

As I deliberately stepped back from making suggestions today, the boys found their own activities - and there was a LOT of imaginative play going on today - Middle and Youngest spent a lovely long time playing with playdough, making all sorts of things - meals, planets, animals and using them in role-play.  Eldest spent a long time in his room, making things with his lego and orchestrating battles etc.  Once upon a time my teacher-brain would not have handled them "just playing" like that (except for maybe Youngest), but the further we go on this journey, the more I see how vital it is: for them to be able to explore in their own worlds causes all the little neurons in their brains to make new connections, and can lead to who-knows-how-many fascinating discoveries.  This is genuine learning.  As Albert Einstein said,

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
 

It is not an indulgence, nor is it a cop-out to try to justify them playing as if we feel they "should" be studying (in a more academically acceptable way): it is VITAL  that we allow our children the space for imaginative play.  How else can we provide them with the opportunity to naturally expand their minds?  Feeding them facts is OK if that is what they are interested in, but in encouraging them to explore their imaginations and the world around them, we are presenting them with endless possibilities.  Another one from Einstein:

"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent or absorbing positive knowledge"

Finally, speaking of Neurons, I thought I'd share Eldest's quiz question for Daddy that he left stuck to his bedroom door yesterday:

For those who didn't already know, the answer is (a) - and I tell you what: if we have that many neurons, and learning new things causes them to connect in new way, no wonder I can feel my brain stretching!

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!