Happy Wednesday!!

It has been a very happy Wednesday here, after the grimness of Tuesday when everything was grey and the rain didn't stop, today the sun came out and it almost felt warm! I'm just realising how much my mood is dependent on the weather - when its dark and damp I just want to curl up like a cat somewhere warm, its not that I feel particularly low or sad, just more tired really. But when the sun is shining I feel great - full of energy.

We seemed to get loads done today, had a walk on the beach (with camera of course), then a drink at the cafe, where the lady serving (who happens to be one of the nice Tai Chi ladies) gave A some mental arithmetic practice working out prices and change. Came home and did some work on spelling, then A read to me. Then we played a new card game for a while - Chinese Ten - which I got out of this library book. By this time we felt we'd done enough 'work' work, so I got a bit creative in the kitchen: cooked some pies (leek and mushroom for me, leek and broccoli for A) and Italian style cauliflower, then apple and pear pie (with fruit from my mum's trees which we nicked earlier today) with alpro custard (delicious!) for pudding. After overdosing on pastry we waddled off to my Tai Chi class where A spent the time drawing, and devising a new game to play with her friends on Friday. Unfortunately the washing up is still waiting for me in the kitchen.

This is one of the things I love about my life here:
sand shadow picture:
beach treasure:
tree corpses - I find these very beautiful for some reason:
A running away!

We Won Something!

Last week A was grumbling that 'we never win anything', then later that same day I got a call from a local library to tell me we had come second in a competition and won £15 worth of book tokens! So yesterday we went for the presentation and had our photo taken for the local paper - very exciting. For the competition we had to go round the high street finding books in shop windows, writing down the authors names, and find the secret phrase made up from the first letters of the authors surnames. So now we must get to a bookshop and spend our winnings.
We also met up with some friends yesterday who had been away since the beginning of July, and whom we had really missed, so a good day all round.

Had a lie-in this morning, listening to Radio 4' big_bang_day stuff. I found it all quite mind boggling, but very interesting, I think A dozed through most of it - it didn't seem to inspire her! She has been quite caught up with her current 'saving the earth' project, focusing on animals at the moment. She's been using a number of books, plus googling things, and coming up with some interesting facts and info and some great drawings. She's doing most of it by herself and seems to be really enjoying it.
Maths is becoming a bit of an issue, not because A cant do it, but (as I think I mentioned in a previous post) she is very quick to give up, and becomes quite frustrated and cross about it. When I sit and go through it with her she does understand and can work things out. We've been using a couple of different workbooks which seemed good and quite 'fun', but I'm wondering if I need to find a different approach and different resources to help her. Any suggestions very welcome!!

Working backwards here - Monday was a beautiful day, after Tai Chi we spontaneously decided to head to the beach and enjoy the sunshine, so we had some chips at the little cafe and then went paddling in the sea and collected loads of shells for jewellery making. Then it was back home to our trampoline classroom for some project work and discussions. We both commented how wonderful it was to be able to get out and enjoy the last of the summer, and how much we are loving home ed :)

Castles, mushrooms and nice tai chi ladies

I meant to post these castle creations a while ago as they are so pretty, but forgot, so here they are now. The first one was something me and A did a few weeks ago on a rainy afternoon. The silver one below is something created by A and my Mum ages ago. They are now up on our shelf together in the living room, and get lots of nice comments from visitors.

A took these pics today. She has developed a real interest in fungi, ever since we looked at a book my friend lent me called 'Food_For_Free' to help us with our foraging. I'm too terrified to try any of the wild mushrooms we find, as there seems to be so many 'bad' ones that look like 'good' ones. I also remember seeing a mushroom 'expert' on a Jamie Oliver programme warning about some highly poisonous mushroom that looks exactly like an edible one - the only way you know the difference (unless you are an expert of course!) is if you eat it and die. Well, that may not have been exactly what he said, but thats what stuck in my mind. Maybe I'm just a sissy! Anyway, A has decided to do a project on fungi and is busy collecting information, so along with the photos she took today, and some she made her Nonna take when she was over there, we got some more books out of the library today. We must have a look at some websites too, I'm sure there'll be some helpful ones out there.

Tai Chi this morning, I was chatting to one of the other women afterwards when she looked at A and said "when is she back at school then?", so I smiled sweetly and replied "well, she's not going back actually, I'm home educating now." She then gave a huge smile and said "Really? Well good for you!" and turning to A said "that will be fun, wont it?". What a lovely response!

A and I had a discussion last night about how we will approach things now, as her old school starts back this Wednesday so it feels like time to get a bit more organised. A wants to keep to a bit of a (flexible) routine, so we decided on 2 hours each weekday morning on English and Maths as a basic plan. I think it might be good to have this as a general rule to motivate us (me!) in the mornings - I am not a morning person! We'll see how this goes, I think there's a sense of security in it for A, because she is used to this sort of routine. At school they had their 'main lesson' for two hours every morning. The rest of the time she'll work on her various projects as and when she feels like it. There are some things we will work on together, for example learning Italian, and others I will just support her in when she needs me to. She expressed a real keeness for spelling tests too (?) so I'll go along with that. Things will change and develop I'm sure, we are still at such an early stage, but it does feel nice to have a little bit of a plan.
Bedtime doesn't seem to be such an issue, she is still staying up very late but is happy to go to her room when I ask her to (usually 9 - 9.30). I'm hoping she'll start actually getting to sleep a bit earlier once we have more happening in the mornings.