It's Official!

We are now officially Home Educators! Today is the first day of term after Matilda's fifth birthday, so we celebrated with a trip to the library. I felt ever so slightly naughty too! It feels fun to be going against the norm.
The day started with some Kindle reading in bed - she has just started on The Twits by Roald Dahl. There aren't many words she gets stuck on now and she gets the general gist of most things.

 

Then off to the library to find some books about Space. We are planning a field trip to the National Space Centre next month with her friends so have gone to get some inspiration for artwork and projects. 

 

Winnie seemed unkeen on the library's organisation and seemed intent on relocating the baby books to the teenage fiction section.

 

 

I really rather cunningly managed to forget my keys, so we spent the afternoon at Nyree's, eating homemade chips. For which we are truely thankful!

Clever little monkeys!

Tilda completed her 100th lesson on Reading Eggs today and scored 100% on the quiz!

 

Winnie is also being super and is practicing her walking!

Perpetual mess

What little got tidied yesterday is now a crap-hole again. Really very annoying! I'm found out that Winnie isn't particularly impressed with banana, but does like carrot-poofs!
Steve has been messed around by work again today and is an upset/angry ball of misery now. He's cancelled going on his brother's Stag weekend so he could go to a meeting today but when he got there nobody knew anything about it! soooo frustrating! Now he's gone back in to babysit the others who haven't completed the work they should have. Not fair.

On a happier note, here are pics of Tilda's workbook from yesterday - there are still bits to go in it and it needs more colour, but things are looking good!

 Tilda decorated herself with a Sharpie,

I've made some frogs for the ELEPhants to decorate tomorrow. The frogspawn delivery has been delayed due to a tummy-bug, but hopefully should arrive soon.

Tried Steve's new tussah silk nino that Nyree has acid-dyed for him - its very nice indeed!

This morning Matilda demanded 'schoolwork' so we set about finding some for her to do! We had a woodland visit logbook from the Woodland Trust's Nature Detectives site which she has (mostly) filled in about her visit to the woods in Rolleston the other week. We went and printed off some pictures to stick in it too - pics to follow tomorrow. She also took her tick-box spotter charts and a clipboard - we saw blue, yellow and red butterflies and I picked up a good dose of hayfever. The trees are all in flower - I may have to avoid walking that way for a few weeks.
This afternoon I've been cutting out frogs for the children to decorate at the ELEPhant meet on friday and have managed to find the table under lots of junk.
This enabled us to sit together and eat our dinner nicely. Winnie smooshed up a pear and sucked on some corn tortilla. She seemed very proud of herself. I doubt very much that anything went in as her gag reflex is still pretty strong, but we're in no particular rush and she seems happy to just suck things.
Here she is in all her sticky, pear-juicy glory!

Trip to the library

Taking a break from yet another of Tilda's ridiculous tantrums to write this. I'm so fed up with it. Everyday has a battle and I really struggle to like her much sometimes. She's currently sat in the porch, screaming for her Daddy, who won't be home for another 5 hours.
Asides from the stroppiness, we had quite a pleasant trip to the library. On Thursday Dave is bringing some frogspawn over for us to look after and observe, so we went to see if there were any books on frogs, Not really, as it happens! Highlights of library trips for me is using the self-scan automatic check in/out things - they even have a card reader for paying fines with! Our library is actually very beautiful - it has wonderful stained glass and a beautiful mosaic outside.  Lots of lovely tulips!

I've been and bought some card for friday with the ELEPhants - going to make some frogs with movable legs to decorate. Got me some paper fasteners and some sticky dots too!

Thursday!

A busy day here today!  First of all, after a yummy berry smoothie,

we started making bookmarks for Mother's Day presents. Then the postie arrived with a new, bargainous wrap. I am being a seriously hypocritical wrap-ho by getting one as I fell out with the Evil woman and swore I'd never wear another, but it was super-cheap, so principles? meh.

 

We also recieved some wonderful wooden toys from Kerry today that I have started to paint - will oil them to seal once they have dried.

Planted(!) our avocado stones.

Our trip to Asda was a very windy one, Tilda found a ladybird, we read the poem on the sculpture, then went and bought Haribo!

The poem reads;
Come all you people
Pause a while
And I will tell you a story.
A story of this enduring valley of ours
Of factories and flowers and furniture
Of lace, bobbins, planes and pencils
Of mines, railroads and canals
Of water and willows
Where Kingfishers and Herons dive
Where quiet flows the Erewash.

by Janet Devereux

Tilda's first attempt at solo spelling!

This morning she couldn't wait for me to help her write Katherine's card, so had a go by herself! It reads; To Af(Katherine), I Luf(love) U(you) with an upsides down exclamation mark!