Jack of Ducks

 

This is cute, I think it is anyway.   Toni and Sol are creating a deck of cards by drawing each card and gluing it onto backing card.   They were studying some regular cards and commented how the Jacks were holding swords and how they looked a bit dangerous.   The girls decided to draw a pair of ducks as a jack and instead of swords they are holding lollipops.

Bunny Bag

We have been particularly crafty this week.  The girls and I decided to make a couple little tote bags for the girls to carry their purses in when out to the shops.  As the children are mad about rabbits it seemed an obvious choice in fabric.  We made two of them, both very similar now Seb is looking to have one done too. 

Round Up

This last week has been a bit quick for me, I can't believe so much time has passed so quickly.

 Sol had yet another eye appointment, she got to spend 80 minutes in the presence of a doctor who did every test imaginable on her.  anyway her eyes are not worse, in fact shes only two levels away from being the legal level to be able to drive when she is wearing her glasses so this is positive news.  The centre of her left eye is ow blind but apparently this is 'okay' as far as things go.  The centre blindness is a preferable outcome to some of the things that she could have with her conditions.  Anyway, another test in eight weeks then hopefully she will get another opportunity to get in front of the surgeon who first saw her. 

Seb spent several days building and playing with rockets.  We had witnessed the international space station pass over head several nights running and that inspired him enough to make this magnificent creation.

Sol didn't want me to be lonely when she went to sleep in the neighbours house, so she left me her favourite toy, Lorraine, to cuddle and keep warm.

Toni decided she was going to throw a Hula Party one afternoon and made this paper grass skirt. She forgot about the coconut shell bikini top so decided to keep her clothes on.

SUNDAY SUMMARY, Birthday, desks and sleep

Okay, I HAD planned on doing a "snap Shot" Sunday  but it turned out to be more of a photographic summery of my week .....

Here goes

Monday night the children asked for a sleep over. When we went to check on them this is what we found.


I spent most of Tuesday (between swimming lessons, and running the kids to summer scheme, and childminding) trying to tidy the house.
I have to say my husband has the most annoying habit in the world, his newspapers. He buys the Sunday Times every week but never gets it all read. I don't know if you know the Sunday Times but there are 60 supplements with it, and now he has started buying yet another newspaper. If he doesn't get one read he keeps it, and each week this rolls on till he has stacks. I am not allowed to touch the papers, if I were to throw them out he would come looking for a certain article or something. What annoys me most is the fact he stores them next to the bed, oh and the newspaper print stains our white painted floor. Thing is most of the stuff in the Sunday paper we have already read or heard about during the week on the NEWS funnily enough.

No photos from Wednesday, much to my regret! We had early morning swimming lessons then on to our home education day. It was a tiring day, but very successful so well worth it.

Thursday, after swimming, summer schemes, and child minding, Hollie and I set about making some jewellery. This is the bracelet we made which we have since given to a friend.

Okay, so the desks are not really from Friday but I will share the photo anyway. We got them in Tesco's, reduced from £49 down to £12.25 which is a steal. They are MDF and just slot together in two minutes, the kids love them and they are ideal for their crafts and colouring. I am sure they will enjoy doing their skool at them too.

Saturday was my birthday, 21 again! We had Moet & Chandon champagne mixed with orange juice for breakfast otherwise known as bucks fizz! I didn't do anything else for the day, just sat around and rested after another hectic week.

Baking day - Saturday 24th

I am back dating blogging LOL. Today is actually Wednesday not Saturday but I wanted to post these photos before I share this weeks events.

Baking biscuits - Toni got an Angelina Ballerina cook book for Christmas so she decided to give one of the recipes a whirl.

The biscuits looked 'ok' but they did not taste so good.

So we made another batch and they turned out delicious.

The tooth fairy came to our house last week too!

Decorating plates & Eating Healthy

I started the day with my free trial delivery from Graze. One of the other home educating mums suggested that we might like to try it so we did! Pop over to http://www.graze.com/ if you fancy signing up. They send you these little boxes of fruit, veg or other things which make up three of your five a day F&V. It was yum - not sure whether or not we will continue after the trial - I might have to talk out local shop into keeping more exotic fruit and doing this service them selves!

Then there was this - it is a finger mouse. I haven't tried it yet, it was £2.00 from ebay and is a mouse that goes on your finger funnily enough.

Toni is still not the healthiest girl on earth and her eye looks sore, she still made it through the day's activities though.

We decorated cups and saucers with special paints that you bake on. Oh did I tell you my oven has packed up so that is a tough one .... neighbours come in handy there.

acting the fool!

Oh this one I did ......

Just kidding.

Hot chocolate & grass growing

Today the 5th January - we thought we would get up early and start the year enthusiastically ... except that despite the children being up early every day for a fortnight they decided to over sleep. Roy had to go and do the 'work' thing and I had to make start with the children. It has been three weeks since we have done anything that resembled skool.

Couldn't start the day without a giant mug of Cadbury's fudge flavour hot chocolate from the lovely mug that Santa brought me.

We decided to use one of the Christmas gifts given to Roy and I from our neighbours who are also very good friends. They had got a chuckle out of this grass 'monster', they bought it thinking it was rather rude looking. The children oblivious to what us adults find funny duly watered the monster and we talked about what is needed to make things grow .. uhhum.

This month brings us to two years of home educating. We have evolved as a family and enjoyed the enhanced lifestyle that education at home has brought us all.

I personally have read many more books than I ever did, a few of them about other peoples theories on education, some of those books were quite alarming or disturbing in a good way of course. Things I had never thought of about the school system before, things to make you think about how you are bringing your children up. Not that we ever had any issues with Mag's prior schooling. Mag's school was unique, his school had 26 children and boasted as close to one on one attention a child could get whilst being in an education establishment. When his school closed down we looked at alternative schools. The other schools could not offer to us that same environment so we took fear and decided to try teaching the children at home. I wont say it was an easy decision to make, but once we did we embraced it whole heartedly - I think I always was a home educator just waiting for the chance to do so.

Anyways - I don't want to ramble (or maybe I do) ... this WAS leading somewhere at some stage ...

We took the last week or two off from real life as an opportunity to discuss what direction we are going in this year with regard to the children's education. Mag is still intent on doing his first GCSE this year though I am not sure he is quite ready. He has been working incredibly hard at a subject he loves (amongst others) - mathematics. The exam forms need to be filled in this month, and he has a school who will take him as an external candidate if we decide to go ahead.

With regard to learning, Mag follows a slightly structured style, following on from what he did in school just came naturally to him. We have found he is learning a broader range of things that he would have been in school, his appetite for knowledge is huge.

For the younger children we are not quite unschoolers, yet we are not strict schoolers. We do skool every day but when life gets in the way we don't! The children do spend their mornings making things, doing 'projects', they love nature work, stories, drawing etc. Toni is an excellent reader, and Seb is brilliant with numbers. Sol has a great imagination and can role play many situations. We do what I call 'structured' work too but the emphasis is on making the time the children have fun and rewarding.

Materials we have purchased this last year have been minimal, I was lucky enough to get to go and scavenge when our local school closed down. We got loads of reading books, drawing paper, exercise books, jigsaws etc We have purchased workbooks from an education website and a few books from amazon too but on the whole we didn't need much which makes life easier.

Please Look Away

If you are liable to get a Christmas gift from us then please look away now!

We decided to try something different for our gifts this year - neighbours and friends are getting hand made gifts instead of bought ones.

Snowman Soup thanks to http://www.organizedchristmas.com/.
These simple gifts were made by putting a bag or marshmallows, some wrapped chocolates, and a couple of sachets of hot chocolate in a lovely snowman mug.

The tag has the poem
Snowman Soup
Was told you've been real good this year.
Always glad to hear it!
With freezing weather drawing near,
You'll need to warm the spirit.
So here's a little Snowman Soup
Complete with stirring stick.
Add hot water, sip it slow.
It's sure to do the trick!


The jars below were also simple to make.
The whiter jars need to be made two weeks before you are going to give or use them. Simply split a vanilla pod length ways and cut it into three. Put the vanilla pod and caster sugar in a sterilised jar and give a little shake. After two or three weeks the sugar will smell devine - mmmm. You can use the vanilla sugar in coffee, hot chocolate, baking or anything else you fancy. This is an everlasting gift too, because when your sugar goes down you can refill it a number of times before the vanilla pod fades.

The other jars are maldon sea salt, with some dried chillies, peppercorns and a couple of star anise. The spiced salt is great for putting on your steaks or rubbing onto roast chicken for a bit of extra kick!

Glitter Fills

These can be taken free gratis for your personal use. I have made these using animation shop, they are simple to do. I do actually have these on another site but I noticed a few searches coming here to my blog because of my tutorials. I thought it would be nice for anyone who searches to actually get something they are looking for.

Other names for these files can be spakles, glitters, glitter fills. These can be used in Photoshop, PSP8, PSP9, PSPX, PSPX1 & X2. If you need to know how to apply these fills then click on the tutorial link over at the left side of the page.

I also take requests for graphics made or if you need a special glitter fill. Please use the comments form below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.