Sarah's Blog

Some freebies

Well, my website is really taking shape now :) All the pages (apart from the contact form) are up and I'm starting to add content to them.

I promised a little alliteration freebie for you to celebrate the new site but I'm actually going to go one better than that (2 better in fact!) - 3 cute freebies!

First is the promised alliteration set:

Alliteration Set

Then, I made some stuff on frog life cycles. The first item is a Powerpoint which also includes a video (I didn't make the video!) When you use the Powerpoint it will ask you if you are sure you want to open it (because it contains a video) - just say yes :) Unfortunately, if you've got an older version of MS Powerpoint, the video will just show up as a picture and not actually play. If this is the case, here is the link to the video so you can still watch it.

Frog Life Cycle Powerpoint

To go with that I made a set of life cycle sorting cards and worksheets.

Frog Life Cycle Cards & Worksheets

Hope you enjoy them :) More stuff in the shop (including freebies) soon!

Have you noticed?

Look! Blog done!

Ok, I know I said it would all go at the same time but it will actually all go at more or less the same time - the rest will follow in a day or two. It proved impossible to make it all live at once.

Tim has been working very hard to get it all done for me and the other pages are coded I just have to add my text and upload them. Apparently, I have to tell you how wonderful he is ... ;)

So, Tim is wonderful .... actually, he is :)

Rest of site and lovely freebie in a day or two - watch this space!

Out with the old ....

The last post, on my fraction work with April, has inspired me.

For the last week or so I've been getting my Montessori shop up and running. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do :) It's Montessori for those who want to use some of the materials without going the whole hog. The materials are really fun and nice to use.

Thing is, that is now set up and kind of running itself (sort of!) and, as anyone who reads this blog regularly, will know I'm an eclectic homeschooler. We use allsorts. We dabble in this and that. Sure, I love certain aspects of Montessori but I also love Waldorf style nature tables and art and I also love Charlotte Mason style narration and nature study and I also love notebooking and lapbooking. We even occasionally love (gasp!) workbooks and worksheets ... and BBC Schools and other online learning. We take the best from everything and leave the rest behind.

All this got me thinking about THIS website - which is a separate entity from the Montessori one. Waaay back in 2004 I originally had a homeschool website (set up, then, under Tim's name). I did love it - it focused entirely on what I wanted it to focus on - homeschooling and a homeschooling family life. Over the years my website has kind of wandered about and lost it's way somewhat.

Now, with the departure of my Montessori stuff elsewhere, I've decided to get it back on track - turn it, once again, into a little home learning treasure trove :) It's going to get a complete overhaul, be consistent (appearance wise) throughout the whole site, and will focus entirely on homeschooling (eclectic homeschooling!) and living as a homeschooling family.

There will be:

• This blog for "what we've done", lesson ideas, our day trips etc.
• A shop - I ADORE making lovely little learning things (notebooking pages, lapbooks, card games, worksheets etc) and I want a place to put them. They will be colourful, fun, cute and (obviously!) educational. Don't worry - they won't cost huge money and there WILL be plenty of freebies :)
• A page for each of the kids - these will be mostly photographic records of the work they are doing in this (and subsequent) school years - their own indidivual little "class" page if you like :D

So that's what will be happening over the next week or so. Tim and I spent a fair bit of time this morning sorting out the new graphics (I brought a GORGEOUS webset to use over the whole site!) Tomorrow he's going to code the basic pages for me so I can start adding content (I CAN do it myself but he's much quicker lol!)

I'm HOPING (fingers crossed) to transfer EVERYTHING over to the new layout/style in one go rather than having to do it in dribs and drabs. So, expect everything to stay looking the same for a bit until one day the new stuff will whizz into existence!

Oh, and I've been doing some work with April on alliteration so I'm going to "welcome" the new site with a VERY cute alliteration freebie for you :)

"I Promise ...."

The lovely news of this week is that my littlest girlie is now a fully fledged Brownie :) We went to the Guide Hall last night and watched her take her Promise - it was very sweet! Here she is, looking like she's going "oooo!" but in fact is saying her promise.

 

As soon as April came home from Brownies, Rosie had to be dropped off at the same hall to do Guides (Monday evenings are a bit packed round here!). She came home saying they had started doing some project about homeless people - not sure exactly what yet, sure we'll find out in due course! She was also very pleased because they got given new neckers ... she likes it and I can see why, the turquoise/purple colours are lovely :) Forgot to get a piccy of her actually wearing her uniform so here is her cupboard door wearing it instead!

 

Back to April! She, like most little kids, likes to get into small hidey-places - here is her latest place - under the dining table reading!

shhhh!

 

"hello!"

 

This morning I made bread. We all LOVE homemade bread in this house and I get moaned at for not doing it enough so today I did. Nom, nom, nom.

 

FINALLY (and this is VERY exciting), after all the hoo-haa deciding whether to put my curriculum here or on Currclick or on Lulu, I've decided .... to give it it's own website!! Yep, Montessori Themes has been born and I'm very proud of my babba! I won't bother to describe it here - just go have a look, it's lovely! :)

Montessori Themes

Mostly pictures!

Been sooo busy with curriculum stuff - problem is, my brain is coming up with ideas quicker than my fingers can get it all typed up! As well as my April/May curriculum, I've also got my Botany 1 and Zoology 1 sets up and (taa-daa!) I've JUST finished a set about landforms which will be in the store very soon :)

After the blinding hot weather a couple of weeks ago, we've been experiencing typically spring weather here - sunny one minute and absolutely chucking it down the next. Literally, as I'm writing this, it's gone from sunny to POURING just like someone had turned a tap on! Last night we even had thunder and lightening! Once that had cleared it turned into the MOST beautiful evening and a stunning sky .... look :)

 

 

By this morning THAT had cleared to reveal this .....

 

Gorgeous :)

Here are a couple of other piccies that I grabbed this morning .....

These aren't going to be around for much longer

 

Hello there :) The tree he's sitting on is JUST coming into blossom - soon it will be pink all over

 

A little work, a little play, a little rest ... and it's all good

Hello lovely people!

First off, eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the Twitter "follow" button in my sidebar - I started a Twitter account mostly for work stuff because it's easier to update new products there. I can also put any other education related stuff I think is fun too :) I DO occasionally put non-education silliness on there as well. Anyway, if you wanna follow then follow .....

So, work. It's going good! I made the big decision to move my purchase products from this website to Currclick. Currclick is HUGE and I can reach a far bigger potential customer base there than I can through my website. The free stuff (English and Maths) continues to reside here. So what's in the shop? At the moment I've got my first theme book (April/May) and my first set of Montessori Basics - this is a little something I put together for those who want the materials but not the theme element. They will come in sets for 3-6 year olds and 6-9+ year olds - for example Botany Set 1 (in the shop now!) is for 3-6 year olds. Botany Set 2 will be for the other age group. I'm currently working on Zoology Set 1 and hope to have it in the shop in a couple of days.

I seem to have settled into a nice little routine at the moment. Get up early, do some yoga, have breakfast with the kids, work for an hour or so on the shop/products, do some stuff with the kids, lunch, do some housework, play about, answer emails and so on ..... It seems to work well, it's a good routine :)

What else has been going on?

Well, the other day, we took delivery of a new bed/shelf combo for Rosie ... that had to be assembled. Tim went out in the morning and I was left clearing out all her old stuff and dismantling things. Errk! What a horrible spidery nightmare! Anyway, whilst doing this, we happened upon an old bubble wand under her bed so, feeling rather tired of the work, we went outside to play in the sunshine ... spot the bubble :)

I also made little lemon cakes. Basically just regular cupcakes with lemon juice and zest added to the mixture. They are then decorated with icing made with lemon juice and bits of zest on the top. Rather hastily thrown together but quite yummy :)

Finally, yesterday afternoon, I had a check up with Mr Tiernan the surgeon who got rid of my facial mole a couple of months back. He seemed very happy with the way it had healed up (not NEARLY so happy as me - I can't tell you how pleased I am with my face now!) Unless the thing grows back (small possibility) I don't have to see him again. I'm very glad I had it done, he did a FAB job and I can heartily recommend him if you need anything like that done. I saw him at Newhall Hospital in Salisbury - it is private but, honestly well worth the money if you really feel bad about something like I had.

That's about it for now :)

Hoppity-Hop!

Easter is coming! Yippeee!! Chocolate!

I do love Easter - for me, it's the start of spring proper (although with the weather we've had recently you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd skipped spring and gone straight into summer!) I do my Easter bunny bit (no, not the Bridget Jones bunny costume although I'm sure Tim would love that!) - I just get up at the crack (ha ha) of dawn and go outside in the garden and hide eggs for the kids to search for. I ADORE doing it - so much so in fact that I believe I shall still be doing it when the kids have grown up - Tim will have to look for them instead! :D

Anyway, to celebrate this forthcoming holiday, April and I decorated the seasonal table with Easter stuff. We now have cute yellow fluffy chicks, an Easter "tree" (branches decorated with paper eggs) and even a small Easter bunny popping out of an egg :) Here's a piccy:

 

We've been taking a bit of a break from homeschool work for the Easter hols but I've still been working hard! I've finished my first curriculum book! Yay! It's now available from my home education pages (link in sidebar) and is on the theme of "spring" ....... I shall start work soon on the June/July book which will have an ocean theme to it.

Other than that, not much to add ... other than Floyd diving down by the side of the cooker this morning, rummaging around, backing out very suddenly closely followed by (I'm fairly sure) a large hairy housespider. He then pounced on the hideous arachnid and ATE IT!! Mmmm! Crunch, crunch, squelch, squelch ..... *barf*

Whilst I applaud Floyd's efforts to save me from 8-legged monsters I wish he'd not done it just as I was about to eat breakfast! Blleeeurgh!!

I'm still here :)

Yes, I did go a little absent there! Thing is, we've been enjoying the fab weather and getting on with gardening (got all the new fence up!) and planting out my seeds (potatoes, carrots, spinach, spring onions and lettuce). The seeds have all been planted in a quite bewildering array of "pots" - carrier bags with potatoes in to name one! I've been recycling big time :)

The nice weather also took us (today) to Linford Bottom - a very, very, very lovely place in the New Forest which Tim went to a lot as a small boy. Oh how beautiful! We even paddled in the little stream it was that warm!

The other reason for my absence has been work. Yes, work. I've decided that I'm going to contribute to the household funds (have plans .....) but I can't "go out" to work because of homeschool committments so it has to be something I can do from home.

So, I'm tapping into my skills.

1. Curriculum. This is something I've dabbled in before but never quite got off the ground but now it's all kind of fallen into place. Seasonal, hands on, Montessori inspired, bi-monthly curriculum books focusing on science/nature and "the world". There is a certain amount of reading/writing involved but I envisage that folks will use the free maths and English stuff I've provided to go with the purchased curriculum. The first book (April/May) is due out (fingers crossed!) on or around the 1st April. You can take a look on my home education pages (link now in sidebar!)
2. Consulting. For many years I've been assisting new (and sometimes not so new!) homeschoolers with getting set up, general Montessori questions etc. I've decided to do that on a more formal basis and offer more in-depth help so I'm offering a consultancy service. Three very reasonably priced packages are available so if you're reading this and are a new homeschooler, a new Montessori homeschooler or just plain in a muddle (been there!), drop me a line - make use of my experience :) Again, there is a link to the consultancy page in the sidebar.

That's all for now - got new work pics to upload soon but that will wait until another day :)

OK, ok ... you win!

I still get plenty of emails/messages asking me about the home ed/materials element of my site.

As you know, the reason I took them down was because of theft and general unpleasantness from people who thought that even if they were being given something for nothing that they could still email you and complain about it. There were other reasons to but I can't be bothered to go over that now.

Thing is, I'm all too aware that educating your own child is NOT a cheap option - far from it. Home educators get NO help from the government whatsoever so we are responsible for all the books, materials, activities ..... I KNOW there will still be theft but I'll just try to ignore it and hope that the decent people of this world outweight the crappy and I have minimised the chances of ranting maniacs by removing all email links (bwa-ha-ha!) .... I like to share the love so to speak .... soooo....

...... I've decided to make a home ed element of this site again. It will be Montessori inspired and will contain videos of activities along with pdf's of the materials OR how to make the activity yourself OR a link to a site where you can get the material.

At the moment, the only section that is "live" is the maths so you can go along and see that :) It IS a work in progress and will take a long time to fill up nicely so bear with me and don't get narky if nothing has been uploaded for ages.

I've decided to make it kinda free - kinda being that I have added a donation button which I HOPE that people who download will use at least ONCE but I'm not insisting upon it and I don't keep tracks of who donates or not and how much etc. It's a free choice.

Here is the link to the pages (you can also get to them from my main homepage).

... and here is the most recent video I did - April using the stamp game :) Enjoy!

Photo heavy!

Helloooo!

I thought I'd be reappear before everyone thought I'd gone for good!

Ok, quicky update on the website. I have added another craft to the crafts page and I've got several recipes that I'm in the process of writing up to add to the food page. There WAS another page that I was umming and aaahing about doing but I've decided to put that on hold for the time being. This is largely because I don't ever seem to have the time to sit down and do it! It's one of those projects that I'm hoping to work on over the next couple of months or so.

So what else? Here come the pictures!

There has been .....

Work on projects - this is something April did for her animals in winter project. She made a folded book ....

 

 

 

 

Ploughing through GCSE maths (with the help of the very splended CGP video lessons)

Baking of glittery cupcakes (yum yum) by my good self

Crocheting of dusters (again, by me)

I also made April a fun bunch of stuff about alliteration :)

The first crocus of (early!) spring ... more please!

... and, finally, April doing some really funny daddy-related things. Firstly, paper dolly daddy! Can't say I entirely like the thought of him wearing an orange and green stripey skirt but hey-ho *laughs*

.. and this is really funny - daddy at work!! Stick man daddy shown doing various things (that actually did happen!)

Top left: Daddy driving the van (although it looks, for all the world, like he's crashing into a tree!)

Top right: Daddy twisting his ankle jumping clumsily out of van (and that facial expression is probably fairly accurate...)

Bottom right: Daddy in the New Forest being greeted by a 3 legged cat giving him a dead mole. Yes, that really did happen!

Bottom left: Daddy delivering stuff to a VERY grumpy, nit-picking chef. Mentioning no names obviously. Readers of this blog probably wouldn't know who it was anyway but the mushrooms being delivered by stick daddy are significant ..... *laughs out loud*

Love the way she always gives Tim incredibly curly long hair! His hair isn't this long OR this curly - he looks like Charles II!!

That's all folks!

Bear with .... bear with .....

There may be little in the way of blogging at the mo - I am (taaa-daaa!) FINALLY getting to grips with remodelling my website. For too long my poor, neglected site has had dusty corners with half finished pages but not more!

So I'm cutting back on some web related stuff in order that I can spend time with my dear old website. Facebook - sorry to say, got bored of spewing "snippets" of my day already, true, it's excellent for keeping up with some friends but it IS dull. So, FB is easy to ditch for a bit. Sims Medieval - oh dear, oh dear. I have become terribly addicted to this game so that IS harder to put on the back burner for a while. Blog-hopping ... hmmmm - most of the blogs/sites I really love are in my sidebar, then there are a couple I actually do like but just haven't added (usually because they are infrequently updated). However, there ARE some blogs that I read simply because ... erk, how can I put this delicately? .... they are the blogging equivalent of car-crash telly - savvy? Those blogs I will read NO MORE, it's too sad for words. You Tube - oh my god! I recently discovered someone had uploaded ALL the episodes of Crime Traveller! For those who don't know, this was a series in the 90's which starred Michael French as a time travelling police officer. It was, in my opinion, utterly brilliant - but they only made 1 series :( Still, I'm engrossed and loving it and it's hard ... to .. tear... myself....away .....

There is very little I can cut back from away-from-the-computer in order to free up more time and nor would I want to. I won't compromise on my kids education/social life, my home or my hubby.

So, anyway, expect some stuff changing over the next few weeks. If you visit my homepage (which you will have to type in manually as I don't have a top bar yet) you can see updates and pages added and so on. At the moment, there is this blog, the craft page and the recipe page. The craft and recipe pages are works in progress and will be added to as I do stuff but the pages are up ready to receive so to speak. I also have a couple of other ideas brewing away which may or may not see the light of day depending on how I feel.

What you will NOT be finding (sorry to those who might have been expecting it) is a page of homeschool materials or anything like it. Long term readers of this blog will know why I no longer share my items with the general public but for those new here, it's basically because I got fed up with the theft, nastiness and general unpleasantness that came with it. It's extraordinary - you do what you think is something nice and end up being treated like rubbish because of it! *shakes head in wonder*. I do still make Montessori materials (we still do Montessori after all!) and I have FOLDERS full of stuff which I COULD have shared. Seems a shame, but there you go. I tried and tried for the longest of times but it seemed the more I did the more crap I got. So, I've learned, as it were, that you can only bang your head on a brick wall for so long and then you decide the pain isn't worth it *shrugs*.

So that's that .... watch this space :)