Last week, Hannah was probably as ill as she has ever been in her life! We've been lucky (or she has a very robust immune system due to full-term breastfeeding and decent exposure to dirt) and, other than colds she has had a real illness only three times in her life (one stomach bug, one throat infection and very mild chickenpox if you're interested). She had a coldy virus last week that developed into sinusitis. DH is sucsceptible to sinus trouble and it is so unpleasant. Poor child spent a week just lying on the sofa with a vile headache, sometimes in so much pain she could barely move her head.
She was finally well enough by Friday to go to her grandmother's to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha with the rest of the family, but wasn't well enough till today to do the work we had planned about it. Actually, it was last year's work that we just didn't get round to then. I'd printed off a lapbook from someone's blog but it was just a few things to stick into a folder, nothing required any actual work, so Hannah chose to stick it into her exercise book for Religion and Philosophy and write her own explanations underneath each picture as I read to her from a book about Hajj. She was quite fired up about going to Mecca when she is older.
We also did some work on time as this seems to be something she forgets on a regular basis. I think she can tell the time and mostly she can, but she seems to get very muddled all over again on a regular basis. So we went over it again and for the moment, it seems to have sunk in! We might spend a bit more time on it tomorrow though just to reinforce it.
She whizzed through a couple of pages of literacy tests (oops, almost typed "testes" there...I know testing is bollocks but still!) and ran into a couple of words she didn't know so practiced looking them up in a dictionary, which is another, useful for life in general, skill, like time-telling, that seems not to stick in her brain and needs frequent re-visiting.
After all that, we watched Saturday's Merlin and talked about story structure, went to the post office and supermarket. Time to relax...well time for Hannah to relax, time for me to make fajitas for dinner!
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Friday, 19 October 2012
In which we were too busy to blog...
Wednesday was just a manic day! Hannah went to a Victorian Pharmacy workshop in Richmond Park, which is about as far from us as it is possible to be and still be in the same city so we needed to leave early. She went in to do her thing and I walked for an hour in Richmond Park in glorous autumn sunshine! She really enjoyed the workshop. The children dressed up in Victorian caps and aprons and were shown how to make extracts of various substances, tooth powder from salt, spearmint and something Hannah claims was icing sugar but seems an unlikely ingredient in tooth powder to me! They also used pill rolling gadgets like this to make pills from playdoh! The printed label on the box says "Not to be taken".
I had to rush her away from new friends she'd made and we made a valiant effort to get back across London in just over an hour to get to her first LAMDA class. Poor thing; she was so excited about starting and then we missed half of it because of traffic! She has to make a selection from about half a dozen short monologuesand I'm trying not to influence her unduly in favour of the Anne of Green Gables piece, just because I love the books so much! She's wary of needing to do a Canadian accent, but it's the easiest to act, in my opinion.After LAMDA, we raced off again to Irish dancing.
After all the running about I was too tired to write it up!
Then actually there was probably plenty of time to blog, but Hannah is coldy and floppinng about not doing much and all we've done is go to the cinema as part of National Schools Film Week. DH took her to see The Lorax yesterday and I finally got to see Brave with her today! Brilliant! Also we saw a family we used to see at Mad Science and it's always nice to catch up with the people we see only sporadically!
I had to rush her away from new friends she'd made and we made a valiant effort to get back across London in just over an hour to get to her first LAMDA class. Poor thing; she was so excited about starting and then we missed half of it because of traffic! She has to make a selection from about half a dozen short monologuesand I'm trying not to influence her unduly in favour of the Anne of Green Gables piece, just because I love the books so much! She's wary of needing to do a Canadian accent, but it's the easiest to act, in my opinion.After LAMDA, we raced off again to Irish dancing.
After all the running about I was too tired to write it up!
Then actually there was probably plenty of time to blog, but Hannah is coldy and floppinng about not doing much and all we've done is go to the cinema as part of National Schools Film Week. DH took her to see The Lorax yesterday and I finally got to see Brave with her today! Brilliant! Also we saw a family we used to see at Mad Science and it's always nice to catch up with the people we see only sporadically!
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
In which nothing special happens
I'm determined this time to write even when it's just a day and nothing much happens...although whether I will hold myself to that on the days she does nothing but watch cartoons remains to be seen.
Today was a work day for me. I'm doing two half-days a week at the moment. Hannah asked me if I would set her work to do while I'm out so what happens is that I write a list of things on a white board and leave anything she needs for it out on the table. She's not under any pressure to finish it and if she needs help that DH is unable to provide, she can just wait. And as always, life is welcome to intervene!
Today she did two pages in a literacy workbook and about half a sheet of division sums before she and DH went over to his sister's. While she was there, she read some of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which she has just started. I've made myself stay hands-off where reading is concerned. Reading is my passion; it's as necessary to me as eating or breathing, but she is not me and I don't want her to feel under any pressure to read. I do wish she could discover the pleasure of getting lost in a story and not wanting to put it down and I hope that will happen now she is reading better stories. I have no problem with her reading the formulaic series of books about puppies or dinosaurs, but they are pretty predictable and the characters are not particularly well-developed so there's no incentive to read on, either to find out what happens or because you care about the characters.
However, now she is onto the later Harry Potter books, I am going to have to encourage more daytime reading or she will never get through them at all. I think I'll probably get them on kindle for her as well..she will never manage to read Order of the Phoenix in physical form!
She's also learnt how to pay a cheque into the bank today. How useful that will be in future I don't know..probably by the time she is managing her own bank account cheques won't exist, but she gets a kick out of doing grown up things.
Today was a work day for me. I'm doing two half-days a week at the moment. Hannah asked me if I would set her work to do while I'm out so what happens is that I write a list of things on a white board and leave anything she needs for it out on the table. She's not under any pressure to finish it and if she needs help that DH is unable to provide, she can just wait. And as always, life is welcome to intervene!
Today she did two pages in a literacy workbook and about half a sheet of division sums before she and DH went over to his sister's. While she was there, she read some of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which she has just started. I've made myself stay hands-off where reading is concerned. Reading is my passion; it's as necessary to me as eating or breathing, but she is not me and I don't want her to feel under any pressure to read. I do wish she could discover the pleasure of getting lost in a story and not wanting to put it down and I hope that will happen now she is reading better stories. I have no problem with her reading the formulaic series of books about puppies or dinosaurs, but they are pretty predictable and the characters are not particularly well-developed so there's no incentive to read on, either to find out what happens or because you care about the characters.
However, now she is onto the later Harry Potter books, I am going to have to encourage more daytime reading or she will never get through them at all. I think I'll probably get them on kindle for her as well..she will never manage to read Order of the Phoenix in physical form!
She's also learnt how to pay a cheque into the bank today. How useful that will be in future I don't know..probably by the time she is managing her own bank account cheques won't exist, but she gets a kick out of doing grown up things.
Monday, 15 October 2012
In which some of us are dragons from Northern Ireland
I don't even know where to start with this one, except that I truly believe that imaginative play is one of the most profound learning experiences and besides that, it's fun...for them playing and for me, overhearing randomness and trying not to laugh!
Hannah's friend is here today and they started by L towing Hannah up and down the laminate floor in a fleece blanket, the dog in pursuit and both of them shrieking with laughter. Somehow the game evolved into something that involved Hannah being a baby dragon. I made her some wings out of a small fleece blanket (bit of a theme there today!) tied on with string. There was a break from the dragon game for lunch and watching Transformers then back to being dragons, this time randomly with Northern Irish accents...no idea why!
In other news, the Cooking Round Britain project continues. Last week, when I didn't bother to blog, we made Aberffrau biscuits which were featured on Great British Bake Off. These are very simple, shortbready type biscuits, baked in the shape of a scallop shell. Originally the biscuit dough would have been pressed into an actual shell, but as we don't live in Anglesey,whence the biscuits come, we didn't have a scallop shell handy and pressed the dough out into circles and then made lines in a scallop shell pattern with our fingers. There are two explanations for the choice of the shape: one links them to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, whose pilgrims wear a scallop shell to denote their quest. The other is far more romantic, a legend that once a Welsh Prince was holding his court in Aberffraw (not too unlikely, the place also hosted the Eisteddfod in the distant past), and his wife was walking on the beach there, and spotting a pretty scallop shell asked for a cake to be baked in the same form. Take your pick!
There was supposed to be a pattern of alternating sweet and savoury dishes, but cooking on a Monday naturally lends itself more to sweet stuff that can be taken as a snack to drama and not so much to cooking something for dinner as we don't get home till gone 8! Maybe next week we can cook on another day and do savoury. This week we made welsh cakes. These were very easy and most delicious. I would almost always have the ingredients on hand so it's a good one to add to the repetoire of quick snacky things to make. These could be from any part of Wales and am not quite sure what to do in terms of the Welsh counties, which traditionally were quite few but there now seem to be 22 of them, some tiny and because they are modern creations, they don't have traditional recipes. I think we'll have to just make all the recipes we can find for Wales and colour in all the counties when we're done!
Just come back from dropping the girls to drama and am very excited because Hannah is starting her LAMDA classes this week.
Hannah's friend is here today and they started by L towing Hannah up and down the laminate floor in a fleece blanket, the dog in pursuit and both of them shrieking with laughter. Somehow the game evolved into something that involved Hannah being a baby dragon. I made her some wings out of a small fleece blanket (bit of a theme there today!) tied on with string. There was a break from the dragon game for lunch and watching Transformers then back to being dragons, this time randomly with Northern Irish accents...no idea why!
In other news, the Cooking Round Britain project continues. Last week, when I didn't bother to blog, we made Aberffrau biscuits which were featured on Great British Bake Off. These are very simple, shortbready type biscuits, baked in the shape of a scallop shell. Originally the biscuit dough would have been pressed into an actual shell, but as we don't live in Anglesey,whence the biscuits come, we didn't have a scallop shell handy and pressed the dough out into circles and then made lines in a scallop shell pattern with our fingers. There are two explanations for the choice of the shape: one links them to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, whose pilgrims wear a scallop shell to denote their quest. The other is far more romantic, a legend that once a Welsh Prince was holding his court in Aberffraw (not too unlikely, the place also hosted the Eisteddfod in the distant past), and his wife was walking on the beach there, and spotting a pretty scallop shell asked for a cake to be baked in the same form. Take your pick!
There was supposed to be a pattern of alternating sweet and savoury dishes, but cooking on a Monday naturally lends itself more to sweet stuff that can be taken as a snack to drama and not so much to cooking something for dinner as we don't get home till gone 8! Maybe next week we can cook on another day and do savoury. This week we made welsh cakes. These were very easy and most delicious. I would almost always have the ingredients on hand so it's a good one to add to the repetoire of quick snacky things to make. These could be from any part of Wales and am not quite sure what to do in terms of the Welsh counties, which traditionally were quite few but there now seem to be 22 of them, some tiny and because they are modern creations, they don't have traditional recipes. I think we'll have to just make all the recipes we can find for Wales and colour in all the counties when we're done!
Just come back from dropping the girls to drama and am very excited because Hannah is starting her LAMDA classes this week.
Friday, 28 September 2012
In which we start a new project and make Bosworth Jumbles
On Wednesday Hannah and I were catching up on Great British Bake Off and one of the history of food sections was about Cornish saffron buns. We reflected that we hadn't tried those on our recent holiday in Cornwall. I was about to suggest we made some when an idea for a whole project embracing geography, history and cookery burst fully formed into my brain. We would print off a map of the counties of the UK, one which could be coloured (Hannah has only a very shaky idea of how the country fits together so this will help her understand it better). One by one we would make a local speciality from each county and look at its history, make it...eat it obviously..and colour in its county of origin on the map.
Today we decided on Bosworth Jumbles, from Leicestershire as suggested by someone on Learning Under the Trees. I googled it and found a recipe on the ITV website from Ade Edmondson's programme on cooking local dishes. He used to come into the bookshop where I worked as a new graduate and was lovely so I felt warmly inclined towards his method, which you will find here. This S shaped biscuit is from a recipe supposedly left behind at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) by Richard III's cook! Although a different website suggests a far simpler recipe which seems much more likely than the lemony version we made. All I can say is Richard III may have lost his horse, his kingdom and his life at Bosworth, but at least he had damn fine biscuits!
Today we decided on Bosworth Jumbles, from Leicestershire as suggested by someone on Learning Under the Trees. I googled it and found a recipe on the ITV website from Ade Edmondson's programme on cooking local dishes. He used to come into the bookshop where I worked as a new graduate and was lovely so I felt warmly inclined towards his method, which you will find here. This S shaped biscuit is from a recipe supposedly left behind at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) by Richard III's cook! Although a different website suggests a far simpler recipe which seems much more likely than the lemony version we made. All I can say is Richard III may have lost his horse, his kingdom and his life at Bosworth, but at least he had damn fine biscuits!
I should add the not-very-S-shaped one is not badly made but half-eaten!
Thursday, 20 September 2012
In which we experience an air raid...
...in a manner of speaking! After playing with a friend who goes to school and is currently doing WW2, Hannah came home expressing a desire to build an Anderson shelter. Not, as her friend had done, from a cardboard box, but properly, in the garden, from scrap metal. I took a deep breath. I thought about the possibility of getting scrap metal. I discounted that and offered large cardboard boxes instead, but in an unused bed in the garden with a wooden frame. Hannah accepted but then we considered the fact that we have a metal shed in the garden. That would work,we thought. We spent a bit of time researching shelters and air raids and decided on what she would need to have in the shelter.
Yesterday she made herself a gas mask out of a pair of goggles from a chemistry set, some dark fabric, a toilet roll inner tube with metal mesh from the craft box on the end. She planned her wardrobe, a dress (those of you who know Hannah will know how unusual *this* is), a hand-knitted cardigan, knee-socks and boots. She decided which toys and books would be appropriate..and ended up reading The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, which was published in 1940 (we checked!).
Today, while she got dressed into her wartime clothes, I went down and made up a make-shift bed in the shelter. She had some home made leek and potato soup (wanted it to have been feasible for a 1940 lunch) for lunch and packed a canteen of water, a thermos of soup and a roll in her case. Then I played an audio clip of the air raid siren and she picked up her bag and coat and went calmly down to the shelter with the dog.
They stayed in there for two hours, which is probably long enough to get a sense of what the waiting for the all clear might be like. The dog fell asleep, Hannah read a bit of her book and played with her toys. She wrote a diary entry. Then she emerged into the daylight after the all-clear!
Yesterday she made herself a gas mask out of a pair of goggles from a chemistry set, some dark fabric, a toilet roll inner tube with metal mesh from the craft box on the end. She planned her wardrobe, a dress (those of you who know Hannah will know how unusual *this* is), a hand-knitted cardigan, knee-socks and boots. She decided which toys and books would be appropriate..and ended up reading The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, which was published in 1940 (we checked!).
Today, while she got dressed into her wartime clothes, I went down and made up a make-shift bed in the shelter. She had some home made leek and potato soup (wanted it to have been feasible for a 1940 lunch) for lunch and packed a canteen of water, a thermos of soup and a roll in her case. Then I played an audio clip of the air raid siren and she picked up her bag and coat and went calmly down to the shelter with the dog.
They stayed in there for two hours, which is probably long enough to get a sense of what the waiting for the all clear might be like. The dog fell asleep, Hannah read a bit of her book and played with her toys. She wrote a diary entry. Then she emerged into the daylight after the all-clear!
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
In which we celebrate "best friendship"
There have been a slew of articles doing the rounds on Facebook this week on the subject of discouraging children from having best friends, like this one in the New York Times or this one in the Sun. There are always comments from the teachers advocating these policies that they are not saying children can't have best friends, just that they are encouraging inclusiveness and general friendliness. And I agree that is a good thing, but I don't understand several things about this move.
I don't understand why having a best friend prevents you from having other friends and making friendly approaches to others. Certainly children can be encouraged to do so *without* losing that special bond of best friendship.
And I really don't understand why children have to be protected from the pain of falling out with their friends. We have spats with our friends, our family, our life partner.....that is part of life. It's painful, but there's no way to get through life without experiencing it at all unless we do not have a close relationship at all. Which would be a poor and miserable way to live a life!
Hannah is currently curled up on the sofa with her best friend. As I started writing this, her friend had her head on Hannah's lap and Hannah had her arm round her friend. They spent all day yesterday and all day today together. They've had the odd argument as they always do, but after so many years of best friendship, they are used to that and are very good at resolving it and getting on with being friends again. They first met in 2005, when Hannah was 22 months old and her friend was 20 months. Her mother and I got into conversation in a soft play area and have also been good friends ever since. They've been to pre-school together, we've shared home ed days (I have L here one day a week at the moment although it used to be two days), we go on holiday together, we have sleepovers, they come to our family birthday dinners. It's special.
It's not exclusive. They have other mutual friends they enjoy spending time with, some of whom were initially L's friends and some of whom were Hannah's. They do drama and trampolining together so they have a fairly large circle of shared friends and acquaintainces..but they also do a lot of separate things and have other friends that the other only meets at birthday parties. They have, in fact, a normal friendship. Just like adults. Surely it is not that weird to have a friend you feel closer to, feel you can trust with your deepest feelings and concerns, have more in common with, share values with??? Should we all be aiming for a colourless existence where we get on with everyone but love none? I don't think so.
I like that Hannah has these close friendships. She has 4 special friends. L is one..more like a sister than just a friend (especially considering the squabbling and rivalry!)..they go back before memory and I hope that they can weather the storms of adolescence and stay friends for ever (it's a challenge, but not impossible...I have a good friend I;ve known since we were about 2 and our friendship has survived all our different life choices and deepened over the years).
A is the next; they met about 2 years ago and have a much more peaceful friendship. They have lots in common and can spend hours and hours in each other's company quite easily. O is another friend in this vein although we don't see her that often at the moment. And last but not least, B. We met her last year and despite a 4 year age gap, she and Hannah had one of those instant connections that feels a little like love at first sight. Although they maintain their friendship by email as we live in London and B in Leicestershire, I have a feeling that they will always be able to pick up where they left off as the best friendships do.
So here's to friendships, the ups and downs and all the brilliant potential of best friends!
I don't understand why having a best friend prevents you from having other friends and making friendly approaches to others. Certainly children can be encouraged to do so *without* losing that special bond of best friendship.
And I really don't understand why children have to be protected from the pain of falling out with their friends. We have spats with our friends, our family, our life partner.....that is part of life. It's painful, but there's no way to get through life without experiencing it at all unless we do not have a close relationship at all. Which would be a poor and miserable way to live a life!
Hannah is currently curled up on the sofa with her best friend. As I started writing this, her friend had her head on Hannah's lap and Hannah had her arm round her friend. They spent all day yesterday and all day today together. They've had the odd argument as they always do, but after so many years of best friendship, they are used to that and are very good at resolving it and getting on with being friends again. They first met in 2005, when Hannah was 22 months old and her friend was 20 months. Her mother and I got into conversation in a soft play area and have also been good friends ever since. They've been to pre-school together, we've shared home ed days (I have L here one day a week at the moment although it used to be two days), we go on holiday together, we have sleepovers, they come to our family birthday dinners. It's special.
It's not exclusive. They have other mutual friends they enjoy spending time with, some of whom were initially L's friends and some of whom were Hannah's. They do drama and trampolining together so they have a fairly large circle of shared friends and acquaintainces..but they also do a lot of separate things and have other friends that the other only meets at birthday parties. They have, in fact, a normal friendship. Just like adults. Surely it is not that weird to have a friend you feel closer to, feel you can trust with your deepest feelings and concerns, have more in common with, share values with??? Should we all be aiming for a colourless existence where we get on with everyone but love none? I don't think so.
I like that Hannah has these close friendships. She has 4 special friends. L is one..more like a sister than just a friend (especially considering the squabbling and rivalry!)..they go back before memory and I hope that they can weather the storms of adolescence and stay friends for ever (it's a challenge, but not impossible...I have a good friend I;ve known since we were about 2 and our friendship has survived all our different life choices and deepened over the years).
A is the next; they met about 2 years ago and have a much more peaceful friendship. They have lots in common and can spend hours and hours in each other's company quite easily. O is another friend in this vein although we don't see her that often at the moment. And last but not least, B. We met her last year and despite a 4 year age gap, she and Hannah had one of those instant connections that feels a little like love at first sight. Although they maintain their friendship by email as we live in London and B in Leicestershire, I have a feeling that they will always be able to pick up where they left off as the best friendships do.
So here's to friendships, the ups and downs and all the brilliant potential of best friends!
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