A Week in the Life of a Home Educating Family: Wednesday 2015

There was more activity today, which shows the sausages are pretty much better again, huzzah.

If you missed the previous days’ posts, please click here:

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday

7am

I wake and make a cuppa.  I go through my emails and start next week’s online food shop (it’s a never ending process!).

8am

The girls wake together and I can hear them chatting happily together.  D tells me later that M was showing her how to play Solitaire and they both brushed their hair.

8.30am

The girls have breakfast and play with the bunnies before going back upstairs as M wants to continue teaching D how to play cards.  I go back on my laptop to look through our nature curriculum: we haven’t looked at it for weeks and I’m wondering about going to the common today.  Wednesday is our free day so we either stay in, go out, meet friends, go shopping, whatever we want – such is the beauty of home ed and its flexibility!

9am

They both come down again to sit with me on the sofa: D works on her times tables sticker book and M plays solitaire on the iPad.  When D asks me what 1 x 11 is and I try to explain it to her, it becomes apparent that she does get multiplication yet – or has she forgotten?  I’m sure she understood it before!  I make a mental note to get some manipulatives out to help her.  We get dressed and ready to go out.  I happen to find some hand-me-down boots for both of them and they love them so much that they want to wear them to the common.  I envisage new boots caked in mud so I suggest the park instead, which they agree to.

10am

We walk to the park and there’s a fair bit of falling over as it’s much muddier than I remembered.  Nevertheless, we have a good time and we only leave when I get too cold to stand it anymore.

12

We get back and have a hot chocolate each.  They both want to start baking immediately but I feel exhausted from being buffeted by Hurricane Barney so I insist on a sit down first.  D and I finish Lumino City (wonderful app, highly recommend it if you like Monument Valley) and M plays with the rabbits.

12.30pm

M wants to make her own ‘Cookie Cakes’ recipe but we can’t find her book with the recipe in anywhere so we play with K’Nex instead.  I get quite drawn into making a crossbow until D accidentally punches me on the head (she was going for a rather exuberant hug).  I ask her to be more careful but she thinks she’s being told off and runs off crying because she thinks I don’t love her anymore. 😦  D has been quite highly strung for the past few months and it only takes a tiny nudge to push her over the edge.  However, she is very good at taking herself off and coming back a while later saying ‘Mum, shall I tell you why I was crying?’.  After a cuddle, we carry on playing with K’Nex and D makes an octagon but then my cross bow breaks just as I’m adding the rubber bands and I don’t have the heart to start again!

3.30pm

I sit down for a cup of tea and D asks me to remove a splinter from her foot, which I do after fetching my tweezers.  While we were out this morning, M asked various questions like what are those white blobs on the pavement and what are those gold coloured circles?  So while I drank my tea I Googled the answers – I couldn’t find an answer to the white blobs but the gold circles or ‘Street Studs’ are boundary markers apparently.  D then wants to know what twelve thousand and twelve looks like and M wants to know why Boxing Day is called Boxing Day.

4pm

I remember that we haven’t watched this week’s Strictly yet so put it on for the girls.  They immediately start doing their own routine to the theme tune and get well into judging the contestants.

5pm

D wants to make a box for the ‘treasures’ she found while walking to the park today so I show her how to make a net for a cuboid and she loves all the measuring and cutting, she’s also astoundingly good at ‘reading’ the net and imagining which bit would go where when it’s put together.  Meanwhile, M plays on Animal Crossing.  I then go to cook dinner.

5.30pm

I start to feel weirdly feverish so I decide to remain seated on the sofa for a while.  I check Facebook and the girls are intrigued by the videos in my news feed and the petition on Change.org (SIGN IT!!!).

6pm

The girls’ cousins call on FaceTime – we have some kisses from 3 year old L and then M goes off to chat to 9 year old A – they also try to play a long-distance duet together on the piano before giving up to visit each other in Animal Crossing.

7pm

M is still on FaceTime – hilariously, she’s stuck around to listen to A’s trumpet practice and then onto the cousins’ bedtime drinks and some sort of dinosaur quiz.  D plays on our old LeapFrog console for a while before watching a couple of episodes of Dora.  I go upstairs to put clean sheets on the bed.  I’ve done the minimal amount of cleaning today, which I’m now regretting because if I don’t do a little a day then it soon mounts up and gets too much for me to cope with.

8pm

M says bye to her cousin and we all go upstairs.  D doesn’t want a story – this is a bit of a theme at the moment as she would much rather be doing other things.  This is fine by me as I know she’s a book lover at heart and it’s only a matter of time before she returns to it.  I read Heidi to M and then leave them playing My Little Pony on the iPad together.

9pm

I’m so tired and feeling a tad unwell so I’m off to bed!