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NOTICE ON PICS - All pics on this blog (unless otherwise stated) are my personal work. DO NOT take pics from this blog without seeking my permission first! Bless you.

Welcome to my blog. It is updated weekly with pictures and projects from our homeschool - maybe you can find something to inspire you :) I have a (no longer updated) materials page elsewhere on my website and will, occasionally, post my homemade materials in this blog.

I'm married to Tim (delivery driver and gorgeous musician), have 2 daughters, live on the south coast of the UK and have 1 aging cat (Hemmingway or Hemmy for short). I love reading, yoga, crafts, baking, daft old comedies, music and teaching.

On this page you can find my homeschool blog, if you want to read my general, day-to-day blog, click the link below :)

My NOT Homeschool Blog!

Great Links:

Hands of a Child

Homeschool Share

Mathwire

Nature Detectives

NOTE ON PICTURES: This shouldn't be necessary but I have, sadly, noticed growing cases. Please DO NOT link directly to pictures on this website - it steals my bandwidth and is BAD! I CAN trace you if you do and I will take action.

Category : Things

 

Friday, October 16, 2009

The NOT homeschool blog

I'm well aware that my readership generally divides into those that are fellow homeschoolers and enjoy the homeschool related posts and those who aren't and just enjoy the general stuff. Of course, I'm sure there's some cross-over occasionally!

Anyway, I've decided to start a separate, non-homeschool related blog and keep this one for purely homeschool things - I like the idea of keeping stuff separate and the people who like the general things don't have to be bored rigid with the homeschool posts and vice-versa! You with me so far? *laughs*

Soooo, if you mostly want to read homeschool posts stay here. If you mostly want to read general posts go here (or the link at the top of the page!) - nothing is passworded, just go right ahead. I did try something like this before and had it passworded by Bravenet but I didn't like the layout and the lack of flexibility so this time I decided to code it myself (without the password) - I like to be in control of my own pages!

Obviously, you're more than welcome to read both although the homeschool blog is, by it's very nature, going to be more .... ahem ... restrained ;)

 

Monday, October 12, 2009

Many conkers!

It was a wonderfully sunny warm day today (Tim ALWAYS get's amazingly lucky with the weather on his days off) and, as I've got to spend the day decorating April's room tomorrow, we decided to go for a walk. We went into Christchurch because they have THE most brilliant conker trees near the priory carpark :)

First, we wandered down to the river to feed the ducks and there was some old man waffling on his mobile (very loudly!) ..... thought no more of it. A while later we went down to the harbour and there was the same old man again shouting into his mobile (by this time Tim and I were sniggering). We wandered around for a bit looking at boats and swans and stuff and then slowly made our way back to the carpark via the Priory churchyard. We got back to the carpark and guess what? The old man was there STILL bellowing into his phone! Of course, we now burst out laughing especially since his conversation included (honestly) "I'M JUST WALKING ALONG NOW!!!" and we were wondering if it was the same conversation. Tim said maybe he'd just got a mobile for the first time and was excitedly calling everyone he knew *laughs* His wife or whoever he was with looked a bit embarrased!

Anyway, we hunted around on the grassy bit in the middle of the carpark and found absolutely stacks of conkers :) I also got donked on the head by one falling from a tree which hurt a bit! We came home with a big bagful ..... beautiful colours!

We've stuck some of these on the window ledges to keep the spiders out (they hate them), some have gone on our nature table and the rest April is playing with and we're using for autumn maths manipulatives.

Rosie went to Guides tonight and came home with a leaflet about a 24 hour camp next year (not until August) - she's really excited!

Off to crash in front of the telly now .... wish me luck with the decorating - I've been known to drop entire tins of paint of the floor in the past .............

 

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

A parting of ways

I think my days of producing educational materials (at least for sale at any rate) have ended. Me and business just don't get on *laughs*. The problem is, as I put in a blog post a while back, I can't do my stuff as pdf any more because it gets stolen and fobbed off as being made by someone else. However, having attempted to try the other way recently (sellings as pre-printed) I can see that, that isn't necessarily going to work either as it just requires SO much of my time to produce and is incredibly expensive.

It's problematic as it was a handy source of extra income - ok, not a lot but certainly enough to mean that I could pay for the kids homeschool stuff myself (what I didn't make for them obviously!) rather than having to go to Tim for the money all the time which I LOATHED doing.

I'm not a particularly business-minded person anyway - at least not from the point of view of "being in charge" and I'm hopeless with the money side of it as I lose track too easily (a few months back I was doing incredibly well with sales but, rather embarrasingly, I've got nothing to show for it now). It's weird "shrugs", I was always a brilliant secretary - deeply organised, terribly efficient, could deal easily with accounts and whatnot - you'd THINK that would mean I could cope with running my own particular little show, but no. Obvisouly not! I'm better at "looking after" Mr Boss than being one myself I think!

This is not a cry-baby, self pitying thing, I'm just being realistic. It does leave me with a couple of quandries though - firstly, I'm not going to have any pennies any more! (that does want to make me cry if I'm honest!) and secondly, what on EARTH am I going to do with the folders and folders FULL of Montessori pdf stuff I have?!

Part of me wants to stick the whole lot in the recycle bin and hit delete but I'm not going to do that - too many years of hard work there!

I'm still going to do the free stuff because I like making things and it's fun. I'm not so bothered if those things get nicked .... not sure why, should bother me but it doesn't! Talking of which, I've been re-organising the Box.net account and added descriptions to things to make them easier to find. Will also be updating the materials page SOMETIME soon.

Anyway, what else today apart from my work-related decisions? Well, we've had HUGE amounts of birds flocking around our feeders! Not a minute goes past without someone shouting "hey! a robin ... or a blue tit .... or a nuthatch ... or a dunnock!" or whatever. Tim even noticed a rather cheeky dunnock perched on the tailgate of the car and peering in at us through the living room window! I had to go out in the rain today and refill all the feeders all the time being eyed up by a big fat pigeon who then attempted to get food out of the feeder hung on the washing line! Of course he was much too big and just ended up making an arse of himself before flying off looking rather crestfallen!

Finally, me and April have had a quiet afternoon as Tim took Rosie to her trampoline class and it was too rainy for the swing park. April, decided to have a little pretend tea party with her toys and I took a picture which I then played around with in Photoshop and gave it this rather nice drawing effect and put it in black and white - quite sweet I think :)

 

Saturday, September 19, 2009

A little thoughtful spot

Gone all Winnie-the-Pooh "ish" this morning!

I think it may have all started with a very strange, sorrowful, odd dream I had last night. I remember, ages ago, blogging a bit about dreams and whilst I never did get into really studying them (and thus, am no closer to working out "why"), I still find the topic fascinating! I don't really think about them much unless it's one that, for some reason, left me feeling unsettled or sad or ridiculously happy or whatever. Also, those ones that are incredibly "real" - like you wake up and almost think "did that happen or not?" - those always make me think too.

Anyway, last night's dream left me feeling somewhat disturbed although it wasn't scary or unpleasant - it happened like this ..... I found myself in this big, old house - the sort you'd see in horror movies only it didn't feel haunted or scary, just old and a bit dark. I was wearing this long (floor length) black dress, no shoes (!) and my hair was all loose and just hanging down my back. I wandered around this house, drifting from room to room, opening doors and there was never anything there - just empty rooms. Eventually, I came to a wide hallway and there were some childen (didn't see their faces) doing circus acts (like juggling) on the stairs and completely ignoring the fact that there was an old lady lying on the hall floor. I've no idea whether she was ill or injured or just asleep. I felt momentarily panicked thinking "why is everyone ignoring her?!" and then I just wandered on and found myself in another room. I stood there, it felt like there were no more rooms to wander into and then a man walked in (again, like the children, couldn't see his face). He was wearing a white shirt and dark trousers and he had dark hair - he came up to me and embraced me and I did the same back to him and lay my head against his chest and sighed but it was a sort of sad little sigh .... and that was it ... the end. Don't remember anything else after that.

So what was all that about then? Honestly? Dark houses, me looking all gothic, empty rooms, kids doing juggling, all ladies lying motionless and, finally, a mysterious man. What on earth?....... The human mind is truly and very, very bizarre thing!

Anyhow, got to get myself in gear now and go hunting for Rosie's birthday present - her birthday is on the 28th so not long - can't believe she'll be 12! Nearly a teenager .... oh. my. god.

Might take some blogging-time out now (actually, just get off the computer full stop!) until the new week so have a lovely weekend won't you? :)

 

Thursday, September 17, 2009

We haz wheelz

.... or, today we viewed a suitable automobile and purchased the said automobile.

Brace yourself for an overload of excitement .....

It's a Nissan Primera! Could we have got more routine? Probably not but it's a nice car with a brand new MOT for a super-duper price. Job done :)

Here it is in all it's sort of greeny blue glory!

 

I'm speechless with relief that this whole tedious episode is done with (especially given that we've spent the whole of Tim's holiday trying to find one!) - although, it needs taxing which Tim will do when he's got paid tomorrow. So, when we go out tomorrow we'll still have to go in the Citroen and leave the new one on the drive which is slightly annoying!

 

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Sims 3 nonsense

Ok, yes, I was a bit bored this evening! Here is my attempt at doing some movie making with the Sims 3 - lady cycles to the beach (at night no less!), whips a book out of nowhere and proceeds to have a read before going home again - all set by my good self to some rather nice Bach *laughs*

The way the Simmies get on their bikes is slightly odd - they sort of vanish and then reappear again!

Anyway, here it is ..... I really do need to get out more ....

 

Monday, September 14, 2009

A car!, a car!, my kingdom for a car!

Yes indeed, I am still looking - in fact, I grow ever more weary in my search for a "new" automobile for this household. I have browsed so many advertisments I fear I may go permanently crossed eyed.

Part of the problem is (or was) money - our savings didn't stretch to much and, at one point, we even considered going without things (like, y'know, food) and getting one on credit. In the end, we approached Tim's mum who is very kindly going to lend us a bit extra so that we've got a bit more choice.

Now we come to the tricky topic of "what" car ....... we have done our research (based on reliability and general robustness rather than looks or how cool it is) and what have we ended up with? A choice of a Mondeo, a Rover 400 series (shame that when they DO go wrong you have to wait about a millienium for new parts because Rover doesn't exist any more), a Volvo, or a Honda Accord.

Tim is (simply due to the sheer number of them available), leaning towards a Mondeo. Oh dear god, he'll buy one and by the end of the week will have got himself a sales job and a suit and be cruising up and down the motorway. YES! Tim will have transmogrified into MONDEO MAN!

We've got a few to look at and so will hopefully be sorted by the end of the week ....... hopefully.

In the meantime, Rosie's got Guides tonight (her first time there so she's a bit nervous!). Tomorrow she and Tim are going to get haircuts - I can't remember the last time Tim got his hair cut, it's ridiculously long and messy! I have been threatening to sneak up on him in the middle of the night (à la Samson and Delilah) if he didn't get on with it soon. Wednesday it's trampoline class for Rosie, Thursday is more gardening I believe and Friday we're going to pick up his wages and then go into Christchurch and walk along the river and feed the duckies (ANYTHING to get away from cars and gardening!)

That's all for now - off to get Rosie's stuff ready for Guides.

Added much later .... Rosie did good at Guides :) She was nervous at the start but apparently had a great time and came out buzzing. She played some strange fish game (!) and learned how to set a table with cutlery as in a restaurant - next week they're learning how to fold handkerchiefs (she laughed when she told me that and said "ooo! how useful!")

 

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Oh and ...

.... on doing loads of gardening you also discover that:

a) you do in fact have a fence between you and the next door neighbour - look! see that? It's not been visible for literally years! -

 

and,

b) you now have a HUGE pile of stuff in the middle of the lawn that you have absolutely NO idea whatsoever what to do with -

 

 

Sunday, September 13, 2009

No garden toys required

One of the fun side effects of doing the gardening - particularly the kind of large scale gardening that we're doing at the moment - is that you end up with loads of quite cool base-building material :)

Tim chopped down a huge amount of overgrown trees/shrubs this morning and when he stopped for a break me and April went out and trashed his nice, tidy pile of offcuts. I LOVE doing stuff like this - no toys, just a bunch of branches and leaves and we have SUCH fun :) We tried building a sort of teepee first but that fell to bits so, in the end, we got some of the biggest branches and laid them against a large bush and then started putting lots of smaller leaves and twigs over the top for a roof.

I have to say, it wasn't very large and certainly wouldn't provide much in the way of shelter but April enjoyed crawling under it and bug hunting on (what is left of) our lawn. The grass (as you can tell from the pictures) has not stood up well this summer - it's really brown and patchy! We've got loads of leaves starting to flutter down off the trees as well so the garden is looking pretty messy.

Provides loads of play opportunities though - for a 4 year old and their 39 year old mum! Nothing I like better than being outside, no shoes and feeling the grass under my feet :)

Did get some pictures but they're not very good - as I said, it wasn't a truly magnificent structure but it was certainly better than the pictures make it look! Love the one of April sat on the floor bug hunting - she found a ladybird!

 

 

I think April's moving her furniture in, in here :)

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Cars and things

Well, I'd like to say that we've spent the first few days of Tim's holiday being massively productive and getting all our jobs out the way. Hmmmm ....... I'd like to say that.

Sadly, things have been a bit frustrating - we've wanted to get things done but other things keep getting in the way!

We've done a bit of tidying in the garden but there is loads more to do, I've not started anything that I wanted to do around the house yet (touching up the paintwork on a few windows, sorting out seasonal clothes etc) and (and this is the real nightmare), we've got nowhere with the car yet :(

Tim really wants to get this sorted before he goes back to work on the 24th partly because it just makes sense to try and do that but also because the MOT on our current one is due on the 2nd October so, clearly, we need to get another car before then!

He really isn't THAT bothered what sort of car it is - he's not a "car" person, he just wants something reliable and (if we're honest!) at least a year younger than what we've got now and big enough (he's tall and lanky!) We've shortlisted a few makes that are (going on AA and Which Car reports) particularly robust and reliable so now it's just a case of finding something.

To be truthful, he could do with an extra £200 or so to go on top of what he's already saved, just to give a little bit more choice. It's frustrating really, it's one of those times when it would be great to be able to go to his boss and ask for an advance of his wages and, say, pay it back out of any future overtime (which he does reasonably regularly) ....... do people still do advances on wages? I remember, years ago, that I did that a couple of times when I worked for the Bournemouth Echo - they were always quite obliging! Mind you, they were a wonderful organisation to work for full stop :) Anyway, I digress, the thing is with most companies working to tight budgets these days I'd imagine asking for an advance is probably not a good thing to do! I don't know ... I don't run a company and I'm not very well "up" on financial things so I don't know.

Anyway, other stuff ... Rosie's got her first trampoline class of the new school year this afternoon. Was thinking of going so that April could go in the swing park at the Littledown but the weather is a bit lousy and I (for some reason) am very chilly - I say for some reason because I don't think anyone else is! So I might not. Have to see!

Tomorrow we are DEFINATELY going to get on with some gardening!

Friday we're going out - we're going to stop off at Tim's work so he can pick his wages up and then going into Burley because I want to go here. No, I'm not going to buy a wand and turn everyone into frogs! I'm getting some beeswax candles - won't have parafin ones in the house any more and have not found anywhere else locally that does beeswax ones!

Right, going now - lunch soon :)

 

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Lazy!

You're getting mostly pictures tonight because I can't be bothered to type much (and in any case, Tim will be back with pizza very soon!). Yes, of course, I could just not blog but I like to blog ... just sometimes don't want to type much! :P

So here are some random and unconnected pictures from the last couple of days:

No, we didn't have some sudden freak weather here in the south of England! Tim brought back a ice box thingy from work and proceeded to empty our food into it and defrost the freezer. It SO badly needed doing. He chucked the ice outside and April decided to use it as a frozen dinosaur land!

 

Tim and April sprawled out watching telly ... aaah!

 

A weirdy cloud that Tim photographed

 

Rosie FINALLY finishing up some decimals notebooking work I set her. Very glad. Suspected we'd be doing decimals for the rest of our lives.

 

 

Autumn nature table. Yes, I've done it already!

 

That's it .. byeeee!

 

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Baffled

 

Oh dear, I've got a nasty bruise on my leg, just above my knee which (although you can't tell from this picture) is just over half as long my middle finger! (and a lot, lot darker purple than the picture makes it look). Ok, just a bruise you might think BUT I have NO idea how I got it. What's more bizarre is that I didn't have it before I went to bed last night and woke up this morning and there it was! How on earth can you bash yourself like this IN BED?!

I have no clue whatsoever *looks deeply confused*.

Anyway, today has been rainy and dark so we stayed in, played games and ate chocolate biscuits. Tim did brave the elements once to go out and buy a new riser rail for our shower because the other one, well, fell to bits the last time he had a shower. He came back, fitted it and then we did not much.

He's off to work tomorrow for his normal hours (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) and then he's doing a whole week of overtime the following week and then (taa-daa!) he's on holiday for 2 weeks. I'm glad about that because there is much gardening that needs to be done and he's just the person to do it *giggles* (can't have him slacking on holiday!)

 

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Back to the shop with you!

Tim is off to church this morning and then, on the way back is going into Tesco with the utterly rubbish printer to attempt to get a refund. I shall be glad to get the old one back!

Last night I was a bit headachey (weird weather I think) but we had a nice meal, a glass of wine and enjoyed the Proms on telly. It was Handel's 250th anniversary so we had the rather lovely Arrival of the Queen of Sheba - which Tim says a lot of people have at weddings and I can't understand that because it's sooo fast! Surely the bride has to sprint up the aisle to that *laughs*. There was also Zadok the Priest (or rather "Zaaaaaaaaadooooooooook the Priiiiiiiieeeeesssst" - they REALLY drag that out!). I love the build up to that one with the choir suddenly exploding into the afore mentioned "Zaaaaaadoo........."

It was a really good prom (in my opinion!) - if you'd like to listen to it, you can catch it here.

Having a quiet morning while Tim is at the church - done some tidying (can't stand it getting messy in here!), hoovering, stuck some washing in the machine, cleaned the cooker top, done some washing up .......... ok, quiet but BUSY!

 

Saturday, August 15, 2009

New blog look

Bit of an overhaul gone on here :) Did a new blog banner (instead of the sidebar pics) - took aaages to find pictures that were (a) recent and (b) not hideous. Anyway, thanks to Photoshop and some digital scrapbook bits, I got there in the end. Not too shabby  

 

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Thought for the day

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,

the chance to draw back, always

ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and

creation), there is one element of truth, the

ignorance of which kills countless ideas and

splendid plans - that moment one commits

oneself, then providence moves all.

All sorts of things occur to help one that

would never otherwise have occurred. A

whole stream of events issues from the

decision, raising in one's favour all manner

of unseen incidents and meetings and

material assistance which no man would

have dreamed could have come his way.

~ W H Murray - 1913-1996 - Scottish Mountaineer ~

(Not Goethe as is commonly believed!)

 

Friday, August 14, 2009

HP Have made a monster

Remember how I said we brought a new printer not that long ago? We shouldn't have bothered, it's an absolute pig of a machine :( So, this is by way of a recommendation - if you are needing a new printer DON'T buy an HP F4280 All-In-One Deskjet.

Luckily, we kept our old one (also an HP but vastly superior) because we'll be going back to it.

The F4280 took FOREVER to install and when it finally did, we put paper in and it started to do the cartridge alignment printout. Then jammed. This did NOT bode well - it jammed printing the test page!!

Anyway, to cut a long and tedious story short - here is the F4280's catalogue of crapness:

1. The ink runs out at a ridiculous rate - I reckon the cartridges must hold about a teaspoonful of ink because I am VERY economical with my printing (do virtually everything on draft) and it's already telling me the ink has nearly run out.
2. It jams every time the wind blows. I've had the back off the thing, carefully extracting mangled paper more times than I care to think about.
3. It changes the settings all by itself! I had to manually KEEP setting it back to A4 from letter because it kept changing it!
4. Finally (the biggest poo in the toilet), it routinely only prints HALF a page! What?! We have not been able to work out why it does this. We've been through all the settings, read the book and pored over forums on pc websites trying to find an answer. Nothing. It. Drives. Me. Potty.

So there you have it. Avoid. I'm going to dig our old one out and get some new ink for it - the F4280 will be forever consigned to the computer graveyard (i.e our garage).

PS - another point to mention, although this is just "me" and not a fault as such - I found the way it "spat" my printing at me VERY RUDE! My old machine used to casually roll out the finished paper - this one kind of shoves it violently at you as if to say "here's your printing, now sod off!" I was quite offended *laughs*

 

Thursday, August 13, 2009

An oldie but still one of the best

Short diversion from homeschool stuff today :) I just LOVE this Pet Shop Boys track that I recently rediscovered - it came out in 1993 (oh my bloody god, seems soooo long ago now!) The video is just the usual Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe feast of strangeness, but I think one of the really noticeable things about it are the strong lyrics - the first verse just kind of grabs you :) Bet we've all had nights like this at some point ..... ;)

Another night, with open eyes

Too late to sleep, too soon to rise.

You're short of breath

Is it a heart attack?

Hot and feverish, you face the facts

You're in love.

 

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Buyin' stuff

Dragged Tim out this afternoon to "Big Tesco" to buy some homeschool stuff (bet he was excited!) So, got there and picked up files, notebooks, crayons, watercolour paper AND a fab magnetic Europe map with flags and country/capital names to use with it for the very small price of £4.00! I have to confess it was VERY Montessori which means I haven't quite gotten over my Montessori obssession *laughs*. Here it is with April having a little play:

Anyway, we also spotted an updated version of our scanner/printer for half price! Oooo! tempting ... shall we/shan't we ..... Well, feeling saucy, we decided we would - whoosh! into the trolly it went :)

Then we got the hell out of there before we spent any more money *laughs*.

 

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

*Laughs out Loud*

Oh and another quicky blogpost. I think I blogged this a looooong time ago but I've just rediscovered it and, as before, it totally cracked me up. Enjoy :)