Finally Blogging

Finally Blogging!

I am eventually emerging out of the yuckyness of early pregnancy, but not yet out of the ‘completely wiped for half the day’ phase. So school is still pretty much a mornings only affair atm until I get some stamina up!

We did eventually make it to Blue Planet after our disastrous day and we had a wonderful time. The kids were great and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. When I looked back over the day before I was actually quite astounded by how much protection I think God gave us that day. It could have been a whole load worse; We could have taken the right route to our destination and then either been stranded on the Motorway with a flat tyre and no emergency cover, in the cold and with 3 kids in the car, or worse had a serious accident on the motorway because of the flat. I believe the lengthy diversion afforded us time to avoid the motorway and be in a safe, warm place with the children, with access to a telephone directory! I also believe God sustained the tyre until we got there!!

The holiday makers had a fantasic time too and enjoyed a lovely afternoon at the Spinaker Tower in Portsmouth while they were away.

Anyway - that was weeks ago now! Life has trotted rapidly towards Christmas since then (deep breath in…). I have been busy re-working MPH 1A with Boo and she seems to be ‘getting it’ very slowly. We re-did the test on Thursday and she did manage to complete it all, but still only managed 60%. That said I recognise that that is a marked improvement from ‘blank’! I still feel though we need to stay put for now so I’ve bought an Usborne sticker maths book for her and also have another ‘ground work’ book that will be fun for her to work with for a bit. So we’ll do those until they’re done and then I think we will just move on. I won’t redo the test again. She seems to have the mechanics now, but still lacks some understanding, so it’s that I’m working on for a bit.

Reading-wise she shocked me last week by picking up a grade 3 Ladybird ‘easy reading’ book and attempting some of it. She then decided it was a bit tough and scaled herself down to a grade one book (the princess and the pea) and read it in two days. I have quite a collection of these from my childhood and she has decided they are what she wants to read now. I hadn’t even considered that she was ready to read them yet and was giving her much easier books, but she has proved me wrong! She is now reading Jack and the Beanstalk - which is a grade three book, and albeit slower she is doing fine with it! She really has shocked me and amazed me - just like my boys did :-) It definitely seems to be that golden ‘6’ in my family that is such a milestone and she’s not quite there yet!! I am also so pleased that she is already willing to make her own choice of reading book and to ‘have a go’.

Aside from the academics we have been doing some fun stuff too and I’ll blog some pictures of some of the children’s artwork in a mo. We are using ‘Artistic Pursuits’ atm and we are all finding it quite inspiring as you will see from the result :-)

For all of these the children drew the pictures, coloured them with soluble crayons/pencils and then watered them to get a painted effect.

This is Phoebe's painting - I was very impressed :-)

This is Abigail's. She had a VERY little help from me on this, but it is pretty much her work and gorgeous too I think. I'll post up what she copied another night.

And this is Joel's. Also pretty good :-) imho!

Jacob is doing one too, but it's only drawn so far. I'll blog that too when it's done.

There probably is masses more I could blog, but I have a mess to sort downstairs and late nights do not agree with me just now, so by the time I’ve blogged the piccies and sorted out I’ll need to hit the sack. I will try to keep up to speed a bit more now I’m feeling a little more human again!!

Oh - and Ellie turned three on Monday! We had a little party for her :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS!!