Doh, forgot the camera ... again!

Had a great Hallowe'en party on Friday evening with HE and local children at the hall where Katie does her art. All the children and most of the adults dressed up and enjoyed nibbles, drinks, spooky games and a disco. P came along too and enjoyed himself - swinging Ben's mate around and around so much that I thought he would pass out through dizziness!

Played "wrap the mummy" (as in Egyptian Mummy) with teams of 4 children wrapping an adult up as neatly as possible in 3 mins. using cheap toilet rolls. We played this a few years ago at home during a Hallowe'en party and I remember saying "you use the bog roll to wrap around your partner" and a few of the children didn't know what bog roll was - so this time I was polite and said "toilet roll"! Great fun anyway, and loads of mess afterwards for snow ball fights and general sliding around on bits of tissue all over the floor.

Katie and Ben carved pumpkins and made pussy cat and pumpkin shaped biscuits for the evening (we sampled quite a few before we reached the venue). Unfortunately completely forgot the camera and haven't taken any pumpkin shots or whatever! Maybe next year I'll be more on the ball.

Car started to play up on the way down, just the occasional judder but by Friday evening it was misbehaving badly and actually quite scary to drive. We had headed off to the grandparents for grub and fireworks but decided to return and pick up our other car instead as the jumping and what have you was more-or-less stalling the car - we drove home slowely and will certainly not be taking it out again - it's time to put this baby to bed. An R reg which has done us proud for about 10 years - shall miss her.

Grub and fireworks was fun but extremely wet. We got home at 11 and sank into bed with a lovely lie in this morning before a day or car hunting! We set out with the idea of buying a smaller car mainly for P to use for all his work driving. We like the Focus and Golf and were looking mainly at these. We couldn't believe how good the prices were, even for 08 cars! We had found a big car showroom yesterday before grub and fireworks, which only allowed us to test drive (with the sales person in the car too - pretty tight squeeze as we had Katie and Ben in the back) on a 30 mile an hour small stretch of road which last about 5 mins tops! Today's car showroom, a little closer to home, let us drive 4 cars in total. Each was an absolute bliss to sample as we are so used to an older car with heavy pedals and gears - it was great fun. Each car seemed nicer than the previous and then we clocked a Picasso which wasn't anywhere on our list for even looking at! The price enticed us into the test drive seat and the "ooohs and arrrrs" just said it all really. The first Picasso was a 2ltr Petrol which would have been silly to buy really as our criteria was for a (small) 1.6 diesel, but upon our return the dealer had brought out a top of the range 1.6 diesel for us which was 6 months old and slightly cheaper still. It had dealer plates attached so we took it for a much longer spin - it was beautiful and we've placed our deposit down!

Coming home with full beams on our faces, I suddenly realised that all of our past cars have lasted us near on 10 years which'll mean Katie may be 21 and Ben 19 and me fast approaching 50 by the time (hopefully) this car will give up the ghost. Shock horror - I wonder what my children will be doing by then - we could even be ferrying around grandchildren!

Photos to follow - I promise.

Finally, a little plug for my friend's album which is available on itunes to purchase - "Out of the Ashes". Can't get the first two songs of the album out of my head - they are very catchy. Some are on the artist's MySpace so you can listen before you buy!

It is cold here today, thanks to the wind. Have been having a waterbottle in bed these last couple of nights! During the day, cold or not, I am loving the autumn colours, clear skies and that sense of "something around the corner" - being the festivities of Halloween, Firework Night and Christmas. Have started Christmas shopping via the "net" already (a first for me) and looking forward to a shopping trip to Lincoln very soon. Have been trying hard to avoid all the Christmassy decorations and glitter in alot of the shops, we find they really do put a damper on the excitement of it all when they appear too early. I remember, about three years ago, browsing round a garden centre choc full of beautiful Christmas glitz at the beginning of September. It was fun at the time, but we suddenly realised that Christmas had started just a little too early and there was still a 4 month wait until the actual day!

P has retired to bed early this evening (and yesterday evening actually). He had a bit of a work get-together and "jolly" on Friday which ended in a late and boozy night so perhaps he's either suffering from that or is coming down with "something". During his "jolly" he and his team had to put on a performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller. P opted to be in the group to make costumes (chicken) while others watched and memorised the dance from the video! In the evening he went along to the team's fancy dress (Halloween) party wearing his cape, mad professor wig and skeleton gloves!

Finally decided on a colour scheme for our rather dreary, cold bedroom. We have a treasured quilt on the bed in shades of burgundy with gold needlework etc., and wanted something warm on the walls to compliment it. We already have a blind and muslin curtains (which we took with us from our first home in P'boro) which would pull the whole scheme together. Decided on a brown (yep, sounds boring and yuk, but actually it's a lovely warm, rust brown - that makes it sound worse doesn't it?!) So, when you read in the mags about cheaply slapping on some paint to change your room I don't expect the "cheap" to be 90 quid (honestly, for 4 cans of paint, gloss, rollers, sandpaper, light switch, lightbulbs (for B) and 2 small cans of spray paint (for K)). I had a couple of vouchers, £5 off a £30 spend or £10 off £50 spend which I hoped to use but to my embarrassment, not only had I shopped at the wrong DIY store, but the voucher wasn't valid until next weekend anyway!

Our two stop-motion HE group sessions that I ran went well. The first session we divided the children into groups and got them working on ideas, putting them down on paper to form a storyboard and then make props and backgrounds. In the second session, which was last Friday, the groups did their stop-motion filming. They all worked so well together and were really keen and dedicated to producing interesting films. My children, probably like a lot of HE children at home, especially in small families, often do projects on their own so to have everyone work in groups pooling their ideas, compromising and generally cooperating with others was one of my main aims of the sessions. Can't wait to see the finished results. Katie and Ben often make short films at home using the stop-motion method. This website, which I found to help those in the HE group, is easy to follow and covers everything from start to finish. For those that remember claymation Morph from the Tony Hart children's art programmes, we came across a Morph clay kit in Hawkins Bazaar. If only I'd seen it before the sessions - it would have gone down well!

Take a moment to check out my few Ebay sales (listed on the side bar). I need dosh! Cheers!

Some interesting links

Thought I'd pass these on:

Resources 4 home-education is jammed packed with links and ideas.

HE-Resources is another site with lots of interesting stuff.

Bowland Maths KS3 DVD-Rom came across this link in a recent TES and initally thought I wouldn't have much luck obtaining the free DVD-Rom of KS3 maths games as we aren't a school (in England only, sorry not Wales, N. Ireland or Scotland). Reading the FAQs I thought I'd try my luck (as non LEA schools were able to apply too). The link is for the order form and you can access more information from this page too. I put "0" in all sections asking about LA and then added that I was a home educator teaching a KS3 child etc,. etc., in the "special delivery instructions" section. Got our DVD-Rom this morning and Ben has been testing it out.

Potato Council register to get two varieties of seed potato early next year ready for planting to experience home grown spuds.

National Schools Film Week for free film viewings is next week. You probably have heard about this already. We're hoping to get tickets for the recent Narnia feel at our "local" cinema.

City Creator anything along these lines always goes down well with my two. Designing your own city etc. Good fun.

New experiences yesterday

Had a good day yesterday. We teamed up with some new HE families that live sort of close to us (no one seems to live that close to us anymore - wonder why?) for a game of ten pin bowling in Kings Lynn. Nice to meet some new people and different set of children for Katie and Ben to get to know. Bowling was good fun as the adults played too (miserably in my case) with Katie and Ben on seperate teams both coming second (by 1 point in Ben's case and 2 points in Katie's!). Tootled off to visit Kings Lynn library afterwards which took far longer than expected due to two things. Firstly I had a "doh" moment and forgot that Kings Lynn is actually Norfolk not Lincolnshire so our library tickets didn't work. Secondly they had just installed a new automated system which unfortunately, just as we were having our "doh" moment, witnessed teams of other people suddenly needing assistance one way or the other in working the new system. The staff of three seemed to go into overdrive running back and forth sorting out problems with us probably being the most awkward needing three new library tickets! All very pleasantly dealt with though but I did feel for them.

So, new families on the HE front and then Ben went to watch Cubs in the evening. Those who have read past blog entries will realise that Ben gets a bit worked up over new situations. Rightly so, I do too, I like to know exactly what's going to happen, etc., etc. Anyway, he was really, really brave staying cheerful until just before going in. Seeing all the other children in their uniforms, knowing they they all know each other and then they start stare at you because you're the "new boy" would turn anyone to jelly! He asked to watch rather than join in. Boy was it noisy (he's not good with noise he's just good at making noise!) - running around and doing games. Then things changed and it started getting interesting and Ben began to loosen up and want to join in (from his chair of course!). They are working towards an aviation badge and went to visit the local airfield last week. This week they were given the NATO phonetic alphabet to learn in about 20 mins. Now, I hardly ever boast about my children in my blog (although perhaps I should a little more), but I was seriously impressed with my son. The other children were constantly checking to see what the letters all stood for but Ben managed to just look through the A-Z and remember it immediately. The leader came over and asked if he could do his first name and he reeled off first and last name without a bat of an eyelid! Proud moment! Proud because at the start of the evening the leader had come up to Ben and asked what school he went to, to which Ben answered that he was taught at home. The leader when into commiseration mode saying to me "is he stuck indoors with you all the time, not getting out and meeting others, is that why he won't join in?" or words very similar. I'm not a violent women, but I did have to resist forming a fist! "Nope, we meet other people and children all the time" (grrr you silly man) "but he gets a little nervous in new surroundings" (grrrr). "These boys have had fun running around at school together all day, you should join them Ben" he says (double grrrrr). Anyway, Ben enjoyed learning all this stuff and started chatting to another cub and seemed quite happy. Next they had to try and guess the airline symbols which he joined in too although the other leader asked "have you ever been abroad Ben?" in a very sympathetic way (or am I just getting paranoid now?!) - "yes, I've been to Portugal" he replied really confidently - that's my boy.

He wants to go back and hopefully he'll take part properly next week. I certainly think it'll do him the world of good having fun with the other boys and they seemed keen for him to join them which was nice.

kilo echo echo papa yankee oscar uniform papa oscar sierra tango echo delta

A reminder for me - what we hope to do this term!!!

Finish "Our World" lapbook - nearly there, just need to look at continents now.

Music appreciation
Sketch Tuesday + other art
Maths
Handwriting
Latin (including the Romans) ... all on a weekly basis

Cooking ... hopefully weekly!

Work towards "Brownie" badges. There are so many badges out there for the children to develop an interest in so many subjects plus to encourage them to learn a bit more about themselves, their environment, behaviour and understanding of others.

Finally conquer the RSPB Action Awards. Katie and Ben could easily work towards the Bronze and Silver badges, but we've been a bit lazy (first piece of work was dated 2006) so I think we need to start again and really concentrate on it this time!

Katie's art classes - fortnightly

We'll throw in some social too with the HE group sessions!

Stop at the end of November(ish) and really enjoy the run up to Christmas. We have some fun ideas for pressies so will need the month to do all that.

In need of HE encouragement?

You should read this then .... Many thanks to Dawniy for posting it on her blog.