Hannah has been a fan of Razorlight for years, influenced by her older cousin's liking for the song "America". She was 4 when she first owned one of their albums and just turned 6 when I took her to see them at the 02. Obviously we've missed them over the past year or so. But they are back and I had already bought tickets to see them at Guilfest in July when I noticed on their Facebook page that they were going to be busking at St Martin in the Fields yesterday evening as part of the Big Issue 20th Anniversary event.
I was in a complete quandary. I wanted to go. I knew Hannah would love it. But we'd had a couple of really busy days and she was supposed to have a swimming lesson at that time. But she'd love it and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and we can swim any time. But the dog would be on her own for too long. But I wasn't certain exactly where it was. But, but, but!
Eventually I ran the idea past my friend Louise when we met at home ed group. She suggested I leave Hannah at group with her and go home to walk the dog, before picking Hannah up from her house and going into central London. Brilliant! So we did that, arriving at St Martin in the Fields about 5pm. Still not sure where it was actually going to happen, we were reassured by a drum kit set up in the courtyard. We sat down and got chatting to a very nice Italian lady in incredibly funky shoes. Hannah complimented her on her outfit (ha, don't think she has no social skills, do you...see very ranty post!).
We waited a long time. Well an hour is a long time if you are 8 and desperate to see your idol in the flesh! I can remember perfectly well what kind of state I would have been in if offered that opportunity to meet Curt Smith. In the interim, Hannah was interviewed by a journalist and we made friends with some scaffolders from Margate, and she filmed a police incident! Then finally Razorlight arrived. One minute everyone was sedately sitting around the edge of the raised stone platform, but Johnny wasn't having that and called us to come closer. We ended up no more than 3 feet away from him! Our scaffolder friend drew his attention to Hannah and when they sang America, this happened.
At the end we got a photo with him and his autograph! Hannah is planning to photocopy it and have it framed to go on her wall! She was on cloud nine for the rest of the evening! So glad I made the decision to go...definitely would have regretted it if we hadn't!
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
In which I rant about rude people
I'm just warning you in advance that this is yet another home educator getting hot under the collar over the bloody socialisation question!!!
I was going to call it the "dreaded" socialisation question, but I don't dread it. I think, given the unbalanced and highly biased image of home ed presented by the media and government, I cannot blame people who have never encountered home ed as it *actually* is for being concerned. And presumably, if their own children go or went to school, they *do* do most of their socialising with people in their class...school takes up a large part of their life. I am always happy to enlighten people as to the reality of this home educated child's social life...which is there is a hell of a lot of it.
So when I told this woman (a dog-walking acqaintance) that Hannah is home educated and she trotted out that old chestnut, I didn't get defensive. I told her I understood why the image of home ed in the media would lead one to think that, but actually.....and followed with a list of all the opportunities Hannah has to socialise with her friends, drama, home ed group, horse riding, music lessons etc etc etc.
"She sounds thoroughly spoilt!"
How I stopped myself from saying "fuck off" I don;t know. She is *lucky*, yes. We couldn't personally afford to do all these things for her; we are very fortunate in having relatives who offer to pay for some of the more expensive activities. but if she didn't do those things, I would still be doing what I do, scouring listings, museum websites and email lists for things that she might find interesting. And yes, I go to some effort to take her to things. But a) so do parents who send their children to school pay for activities and take them places...it has nothing to do with home ed and b)it's not all about her. *I* enjoy them. So sue me, I get personal gratification out of having fun with my child!
But what hit me most is *how* exactly is it acceptable to say to someone that their child is spoilt, when you barely know the person you are speaking to beyond the most casual acquaintance and have never even met the child in question. I wouldn;t dream of saying something like that, even to someone I knew very well. Somehow I don't think *Hannah* is the one lacking in social skills!
I was going to call it the "dreaded" socialisation question, but I don't dread it. I think, given the unbalanced and highly biased image of home ed presented by the media and government, I cannot blame people who have never encountered home ed as it *actually* is for being concerned. And presumably, if their own children go or went to school, they *do* do most of their socialising with people in their class...school takes up a large part of their life. I am always happy to enlighten people as to the reality of this home educated child's social life...which is there is a hell of a lot of it.
So when I told this woman (a dog-walking acqaintance) that Hannah is home educated and she trotted out that old chestnut, I didn't get defensive. I told her I understood why the image of home ed in the media would lead one to think that, but actually.....and followed with a list of all the opportunities Hannah has to socialise with her friends, drama, home ed group, horse riding, music lessons etc etc etc.
"She sounds thoroughly spoilt!"
How I stopped myself from saying "fuck off" I don;t know. She is *lucky*, yes. We couldn't personally afford to do all these things for her; we are very fortunate in having relatives who offer to pay for some of the more expensive activities. but if she didn't do those things, I would still be doing what I do, scouring listings, museum websites and email lists for things that she might find interesting. And yes, I go to some effort to take her to things. But a) so do parents who send their children to school pay for activities and take them places...it has nothing to do with home ed and b)it's not all about her. *I* enjoy them. So sue me, I get personal gratification out of having fun with my child!
But what hit me most is *how* exactly is it acceptable to say to someone that their child is spoilt, when you barely know the person you are speaking to beyond the most casual acquaintance and have never even met the child in question. I wouldn;t dream of saying something like that, even to someone I knew very well. Somehow I don't think *Hannah* is the one lacking in social skills!
Sunday, 22 May 2011
In which we are not on fire
Do Not Be On Fire!
This is Rule Zero at Hackspace
I can see why they need it; there is a lot of exhuberant passion for making things, investigating things and no doubt testing them to destruction! But you have to love a place that *needs* a rule like this. So much of life takes not setting yourself on fire for granted and I'm sure it's not nearly as much fun!
Today Hannah and I attended a Young Hackspace session organised for the Hackney home ed group on sound. First up was a session on rhythm with Anthony, a music technologist, involving clapping, discussion of what music *is*, natural rhythms of the human body, eg heartbeats, walking etc, and creating our own rhythms with a drum machine dating from 1985, the year in which music became more than a noise in the background for me!
Afterwards Morag and Pippa ran a session on the physics of sound, involving water tanks, speakers, balloons, air cannons, slinkies, corn flour gloop, pieces of metal pipe and a large wooden hammer, most of which was made by members of the community!
Came away buzzing; I love their enthusiasm and geekiness. It was a little like stepping through the tv onto the set of Brainiac..fewer explosions maybe, but at the end we'd had a blast and nobody was on fire!
This is Rule Zero at Hackspace
I can see why they need it; there is a lot of exhuberant passion for making things, investigating things and no doubt testing them to destruction! But you have to love a place that *needs* a rule like this. So much of life takes not setting yourself on fire for granted and I'm sure it's not nearly as much fun!
Today Hannah and I attended a Young Hackspace session organised for the Hackney home ed group on sound. First up was a session on rhythm with Anthony, a music technologist, involving clapping, discussion of what music *is*, natural rhythms of the human body, eg heartbeats, walking etc, and creating our own rhythms with a drum machine dating from 1985, the year in which music became more than a noise in the background for me!
Afterwards Morag and Pippa ran a session on the physics of sound, involving water tanks, speakers, balloons, air cannons, slinkies, corn flour gloop, pieces of metal pipe and a large wooden hammer, most of which was made by members of the community!
Came away buzzing; I love their enthusiasm and geekiness. It was a little like stepping through the tv onto the set of Brainiac..fewer explosions maybe, but at the end we'd had a blast and nobody was on fire!
Friday, 20 May 2011
In which we get started
I suppose I should do an about us post first, but I don;t suppose anyone but people who actually know us are ever going to read this anyhow....unless I use it as evidence of what we are doing on our journey into education outwith the school system, in which case, I'm Sarah, mum to Hannah, aged 5 and a half, for whom the stresses of full-time school were way too much. Maybe some day, but not right now.
I;ve been wanting for some time to write more about Hannah and now seems a good time to do so.
so...................
today, 24th October. a day in which everything we did involved measuring. Hannah needs to drink more water during the day so this morning we made a chart. I showed her how much water is in her average size glass by getting her to pour it into a measuring jug and explained how if one glass contains 5 fl ozs (I know I should probably be doing it in metric but I think better in pints...and I;m not even that old..I did all my school maths in metric!!!) then she needs to drink 4 glasses a day to get to the pint recommended by our lovely GP. then we drew a very straight sided version of this onto paper, and Hannah spent ages practising drawing straight lines with a ruler. I measured it out into four equal sections and drew lines across, writing 1 cup, 2 cups etc. Went to the kitchen to get a drink and when I came back Hannah had drawn the next day's chart, not measured but a pretty accurate approximation of four equal parts ruled off and labelled correctly.
she came up with a fairly complex system of colour and symbol codes for noting what she had drunk to make up the day's quota. I wonder how she plans to colour in the last section today which was completed over some hours partly in milk, partly water, partly squash?
Next up was shopping. I gave her a list (of one item, admittedly, but the point was seeing whether she could work from a written list to get the right stuff). she isn;t too clear about money yet but the shop owners know us and I trust them not to rip her off (hmmm, did she actually give me change though????). Then we made Dino Dung (cookies) from her dinosaur cookbook as presents for her auntie and uncle's birthdays. I need a better scales to do weighing things on...it is very hard to explain to her at the moment that each of the tiny lines = 25g, so I did the measuring in this bit. She did the messy stuff, rubbing in butter, stirring in egg and milk and squishing the dough into copralites!
I had to leave them to the tender mercies of my husband when they were half baked but they turned out nice.
Off tomorrow to Disneyland Paris...in half term...which is galling as I booked before de-registering her. Still, she might even get a chance to practice her French on a real French person. I still remember being amazed that my tentative "bonjour" was understood and responded to. that's pretty much the limit of Hannah's French at the moment...well, bonjour, merci and elephant (with appropriate accents which I can't figure out how to add!). Wonder how much use *that* is going to be???
I;ve been wanting for some time to write more about Hannah and now seems a good time to do so.
so...................
today, 24th October. a day in which everything we did involved measuring. Hannah needs to drink more water during the day so this morning we made a chart. I showed her how much water is in her average size glass by getting her to pour it into a measuring jug and explained how if one glass contains 5 fl ozs (I know I should probably be doing it in metric but I think better in pints...and I;m not even that old..I did all my school maths in metric!!!) then she needs to drink 4 glasses a day to get to the pint recommended by our lovely GP. then we drew a very straight sided version of this onto paper, and Hannah spent ages practising drawing straight lines with a ruler. I measured it out into four equal sections and drew lines across, writing 1 cup, 2 cups etc. Went to the kitchen to get a drink and when I came back Hannah had drawn the next day's chart, not measured but a pretty accurate approximation of four equal parts ruled off and labelled correctly.
she came up with a fairly complex system of colour and symbol codes for noting what she had drunk to make up the day's quota. I wonder how she plans to colour in the last section today which was completed over some hours partly in milk, partly water, partly squash?
Next up was shopping. I gave her a list (of one item, admittedly, but the point was seeing whether she could work from a written list to get the right stuff). she isn;t too clear about money yet but the shop owners know us and I trust them not to rip her off (hmmm, did she actually give me change though????). Then we made Dino Dung (cookies) from her dinosaur cookbook as presents for her auntie and uncle's birthdays. I need a better scales to do weighing things on...it is very hard to explain to her at the moment that each of the tiny lines = 25g, so I did the measuring in this bit. She did the messy stuff, rubbing in butter, stirring in egg and milk and squishing the dough into copralites!
I had to leave them to the tender mercies of my husband when they were half baked but they turned out nice.
Off tomorrow to Disneyland Paris...in half term...which is galling as I booked before de-registering her. Still, she might even get a chance to practice her French on a real French person. I still remember being amazed that my tentative "bonjour" was understood and responded to. that's pretty much the limit of Hannah's French at the moment...well, bonjour, merci and elephant (with appropriate accents which I can't figure out how to add!). Wonder how much use *that* is going to be???
In which we went to Disneyland
Woh, survived that! Our first holiday as a family unit and after a dodgy start (lost passport, late leaving, engineering on the Tube, general grumpiness all round, not to mention a fit of completely theatrical histrionics when A got on the Eurostar with the tickets and the security bod wouldn't let Hannah and me on...."no need to cry, love, " he said, waving us through in the nick of time. but it worked, I thought, wondering really what lesson my daughter might have learnt from that!!!! I spent a long time when she was a toddler teaching her that crying and stomping got her nowhere!)
anyway, Hannah tried out her French on some real french people...who could have been more appreciative of her efforts and managed without language showing real concern and consideration for a frightened child who had lost her mother.
On the trains to and fro and in the parks she made friends easily and it was lovely to see her social confidence back. So much for school being the place for learning social skills....Hannah seems to have unlearnt most of the lovely social skills she had before she started.
so now we are home and back in the swing of normal life. Of course for children who do go to school it is half term so we took the opportunity to catch up with one of her closest friends from her former class, who has really missed her. I'm really pleased we're keeping in touch, J is a lovely girl and she and Hannah seemed to play very peacefully together.
this morning was supposed to be a La Leche League meeting at which I would have expected H's best friend to be present but no one came. Still, planning the meeting gave H an opportunity to reflect about sharing and be open to letting others play with her toys...was very pleased with where we got to in the end. Back home and Hannah said she wanted to make a Sleeping Beauty puppet and a prince for her little cousin. there's been some tension between them recently and Hannah wanted to make up for being grumpy. So we now have two beautifully crafted characters made from the inner tube of kitchen rolls, dressed in tissue paper, faces cut out of cardboard and coloured, tissue paper hair, tin foil crowns and the prince also has a tinfoil sword and shield, all decorated with glitter and sequins. Bliss to have a whole free afternoon where we have time to do stuff like that.
anyway, Hannah tried out her French on some real french people...who could have been more appreciative of her efforts and managed without language showing real concern and consideration for a frightened child who had lost her mother.
On the trains to and fro and in the parks she made friends easily and it was lovely to see her social confidence back. So much for school being the place for learning social skills....Hannah seems to have unlearnt most of the lovely social skills she had before she started.
so now we are home and back in the swing of normal life. Of course for children who do go to school it is half term so we took the opportunity to catch up with one of her closest friends from her former class, who has really missed her. I'm really pleased we're keeping in touch, J is a lovely girl and she and Hannah seemed to play very peacefully together.
this morning was supposed to be a La Leche League meeting at which I would have expected H's best friend to be present but no one came. Still, planning the meeting gave H an opportunity to reflect about sharing and be open to letting others play with her toys...was very pleased with where we got to in the end. Back home and Hannah said she wanted to make a Sleeping Beauty puppet and a prince for her little cousin. there's been some tension between them recently and Hannah wanted to make up for being grumpy. So we now have two beautifully crafted characters made from the inner tube of kitchen rolls, dressed in tissue paper, faces cut out of cardboard and coloured, tissue paper hair, tin foil crowns and the prince also has a tinfoil sword and shield, all decorated with glitter and sequins. Bliss to have a whole free afternoon where we have time to do stuff like that.
A whole lotta nothing
S
Well I suppose it looks like nothing. the thing is, it isn;t supposed to look like school, although the people who don;t approve of our decision to home school probably feel better when we do sit down and do something formal, and sometimes we feel in the mood for that, but there's all sorts of leanring experiences open to her now...for instance, one of her latest achievements is to answer the phone very competently and politely...today she was taking messages for me from breastfeeding mums calling for support...and even answered the phone in the shop for me, which involves a very long and complicated business title! Otherwise we've done a bit of maths...A has started introducing the concept of tens and units so she;s been adding bigger numbers together. The three of us played a Tell the Time lottery game. We've done some experiments with magnets...listening to her explain to my mum about polarity was fun! We both have our favourite trick you can do with magnets but am baffled that she wasn;t impressed with the jumping ring magnet! Well I liked it! I don;t remember ever learning that stuff at school....wonder why not??? did we not learn it or have I forgotten? Maybe it was something they covered in physics when I was doing a crossword at the back of the class!
She's learnt to climb a new tree this week. I find myself feeling thrilled with this achievement, not only because I was an inveterate tree climber as a child (there is something so *right* about having a good climbing tree in your life!), but because her report from school at the end of last year mentioned that she was slowly gaining in confidence on the big climbing frame. Just goes to show you can learn more from a tree...and also, since she had some help on her first ascent from George who is nine, that you can learn more when offered the opportunity to mix with children who are older in an environment which encourages them to share skills rather than segrgates them from everyone but their exact peers. Hannah was one of the oldest in her class at school and while many had superior climbing skills, it would be rare to find a 4 or 5 year old who had the social skills or even the spatial awareness to help her out.
But the tree climbing is so good for her...from being a rather sedentary, indoorsy person, she has developed a real love of being outdoors, as long as she can climb. It;s been wonderful for her confidence too. God knows it needed a boost!!
Meanwhile the search for some kind of social activity continues. We see friends fairly often and she has an email penpal, the daughter of a friend, also home educated, for whom she has developed a genuine affection. Hannah is always very excited to get an email from Rosie and her replies are a mixture of her own attempts at typing with phonetic spellings and dictating the rest to me. We can;t seem to find any sort of activity she would like to do. I will organise her going back to horse riding but there seems to be no opportunity to mix with other kids. she;s toyed with going to ballet and will be going back to swimming in the new year...but there doesn;t seem to be anything on offer that really appeals. A friend and I are looking into Woodcraft Folk...apparently there's a waiting list but hope by the time places come up H will be more open to doing something without me. At the moment that seems to be a challenge. One possibility is tennis coaching which would be with three friends.
One thing that has struck me with Hannah and her friendships recently is that she is capable of incredible loyalty. Her friend H is one example...they met at pre-school where Hannah spent all of a term and a half with this girl..the first friend she made by herself without it being the child of a friend of mine...before H went on to another nursery. This was 2.5 years ago and yet Hannah still considers H to be a close friend. On the flip side she also has the tendency to bear grudges. she;s recently announced that she has decided to forgive a certain friend for biting her................in July 2006!!!!!
Well I suppose it looks like nothing. the thing is, it isn;t supposed to look like school, although the people who don;t approve of our decision to home school probably feel better when we do sit down and do something formal, and sometimes we feel in the mood for that, but there's all sorts of leanring experiences open to her now...for instance, one of her latest achievements is to answer the phone very competently and politely...today she was taking messages for me from breastfeeding mums calling for support...and even answered the phone in the shop for me, which involves a very long and complicated business title! Otherwise we've done a bit of maths...A has started introducing the concept of tens and units so she;s been adding bigger numbers together. The three of us played a Tell the Time lottery game. We've done some experiments with magnets...listening to her explain to my mum about polarity was fun! We both have our favourite trick you can do with magnets but am baffled that she wasn;t impressed with the jumping ring magnet! Well I liked it! I don;t remember ever learning that stuff at school....wonder why not??? did we not learn it or have I forgotten? Maybe it was something they covered in physics when I was doing a crossword at the back of the class!
She's learnt to climb a new tree this week. I find myself feeling thrilled with this achievement, not only because I was an inveterate tree climber as a child (there is something so *right* about having a good climbing tree in your life!), but because her report from school at the end of last year mentioned that she was slowly gaining in confidence on the big climbing frame. Just goes to show you can learn more from a tree...and also, since she had some help on her first ascent from George who is nine, that you can learn more when offered the opportunity to mix with children who are older in an environment which encourages them to share skills rather than segrgates them from everyone but their exact peers. Hannah was one of the oldest in her class at school and while many had superior climbing skills, it would be rare to find a 4 or 5 year old who had the social skills or even the spatial awareness to help her out.
But the tree climbing is so good for her...from being a rather sedentary, indoorsy person, she has developed a real love of being outdoors, as long as she can climb. It;s been wonderful for her confidence too. God knows it needed a boost!!
Meanwhile the search for some kind of social activity continues. We see friends fairly often and she has an email penpal, the daughter of a friend, also home educated, for whom she has developed a genuine affection. Hannah is always very excited to get an email from Rosie and her replies are a mixture of her own attempts at typing with phonetic spellings and dictating the rest to me. We can;t seem to find any sort of activity she would like to do. I will organise her going back to horse riding but there seems to be no opportunity to mix with other kids. she;s toyed with going to ballet and will be going back to swimming in the new year...but there doesn;t seem to be anything on offer that really appeals. A friend and I are looking into Woodcraft Folk...apparently there's a waiting list but hope by the time places come up H will be more open to doing something without me. At the moment that seems to be a challenge. One possibility is tennis coaching which would be with three friends.
One thing that has struck me with Hannah and her friendships recently is that she is capable of incredible loyalty. Her friend H is one example...they met at pre-school where Hannah spent all of a term and a half with this girl..the first friend she made by herself without it being the child of a friend of mine...before H went on to another nursery. This was 2.5 years ago and yet Hannah still considers H to be a close friend. On the flip side she also has the tendency to bear grudges. she;s recently announced that she has decided to forgive a certain friend for biting her................in July 2006!!!!!
Just a day
These are the things that are so hard to record and yet I have to keep a log of things we have done. I am keeping anything like workbooks, stories and pictures that can be kept but Hannah seems to prefer writing that has a concerte function rather than imaginative stuff, so she will happily write letters but of course unless we took photocopies of everything (maybe I should???) the point of a letter is to send it. Her Nanny's friend bought her a book this week (The Complete works of Lewis Carroll, which I hope she will enjoy at some point...she's maybe a little young to appreciate the surreality of it..I got my copy as a present when I was 12 and loved the nonsense poetry) and she wrote him a nice thank you letter....hooray, maybe this is the year when she writes all her own thank you letters???
Tomorrow though she is writing a very important letter....to Father Christmas. I know she is expecting a letter back, as she has seen in her book, Dear Father Christmas. A nice creative challenge for me, but am a little intimidated by following Tolkien into this realm. I've never actually read the Father Christmas Letters and was planning to read it to Hannah this year but she is enjoying our bedtime reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone too much and wants to carry straight on to Chamber of Secrets afterwards and then on through to the end of the series. I wonder how long that is going to take us...
Tomorrow also sees the start of a new Christmas tradition. As Hannah is not allowed chocolate on a daily basis, there is no chocolate advent calendar this year, but we have a gorgeous fabric one and each pocket has a Christmas-related activity in it, hence the writing to Father chirstmas, but others include writing cards, picking recipes and crafts to make, making gifts, going for a walk in the woods to see if we can find stuff to make a wreath or at least a winter display, walking round the neighbourhood looking at lights, decorating the tree, going to see Santa, going to the pantomime.
Other work we have been doing has involved playing games, especially a new one called Ooky Spooky which is a number game that requires counting and addition. We've also introduced the concept of maths as a language that can be read and Hannah has enjoyed writing down and answering sums. I started to do it using flashcards but she has never really taken to flashcards...sensibe child. Pencil and paper was better. How on earth do I record for the benefit of the Education people that we played a game? Mind you, after two terms at school she came home with a scrap book that contained at most ten pages of work and a selection of photos. Most of her time was spent playing, as it should be at 5...and still is. Her play is so wonderfully creative. I love listening to her telling stories with toys, especially when she doesn't know I;m listning. I specially love the way she has taken to blending her imaginative world with her knowledge of the natural world. she has so far created about 4 imaginary species, about whom she knows the most incredible amount of detail, where they live, when they lived in the case of mythosaurs who were post-dinosaur but pre-human, although from the pictures she has drawn they appear almost human and I sense her interest in human evolution at play even though she clearly conceives of them as animals. Others are hinders, which appear to be a kind of grazing herd animal with the appearance of a large cat...very feline ears and spotted like a cheetah, but have four identical babies at a time like an armadillo. I'm not entirely sure what a softer looks like and have forgotten the most recent species...altough there was an aquatic one as well when we were on holiday and spent part of each day in the pool. Her latest project is to create a book about her beasts and she has made a start, drawing very detailed pictures of mythosaurs and hinders (I had imagined the hinders to be more like deer and was surprised by how feline the are).
I suppose my next task must be to get the camera sorted so I can take pics of some of her writing and craft over the next few weeks, before they are all given away or eaten!
Tomorrow though she is writing a very important letter....to Father Christmas. I know she is expecting a letter back, as she has seen in her book, Dear Father Christmas. A nice creative challenge for me, but am a little intimidated by following Tolkien into this realm. I've never actually read the Father Christmas Letters and was planning to read it to Hannah this year but she is enjoying our bedtime reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone too much and wants to carry straight on to Chamber of Secrets afterwards and then on through to the end of the series. I wonder how long that is going to take us...
Tomorrow also sees the start of a new Christmas tradition. As Hannah is not allowed chocolate on a daily basis, there is no chocolate advent calendar this year, but we have a gorgeous fabric one and each pocket has a Christmas-related activity in it, hence the writing to Father chirstmas, but others include writing cards, picking recipes and crafts to make, making gifts, going for a walk in the woods to see if we can find stuff to make a wreath or at least a winter display, walking round the neighbourhood looking at lights, decorating the tree, going to see Santa, going to the pantomime.
Other work we have been doing has involved playing games, especially a new one called Ooky Spooky which is a number game that requires counting and addition. We've also introduced the concept of maths as a language that can be read and Hannah has enjoyed writing down and answering sums. I started to do it using flashcards but she has never really taken to flashcards...sensibe child. Pencil and paper was better. How on earth do I record for the benefit of the Education people that we played a game? Mind you, after two terms at school she came home with a scrap book that contained at most ten pages of work and a selection of photos. Most of her time was spent playing, as it should be at 5...and still is. Her play is so wonderfully creative. I love listening to her telling stories with toys, especially when she doesn't know I;m listning. I specially love the way she has taken to blending her imaginative world with her knowledge of the natural world. she has so far created about 4 imaginary species, about whom she knows the most incredible amount of detail, where they live, when they lived in the case of mythosaurs who were post-dinosaur but pre-human, although from the pictures she has drawn they appear almost human and I sense her interest in human evolution at play even though she clearly conceives of them as animals. Others are hinders, which appear to be a kind of grazing herd animal with the appearance of a large cat...very feline ears and spotted like a cheetah, but have four identical babies at a time like an armadillo. I'm not entirely sure what a softer looks like and have forgotten the most recent species...altough there was an aquatic one as well when we were on holiday and spent part of each day in the pool. Her latest project is to create a book about her beasts and she has made a start, drawing very detailed pictures of mythosaurs and hinders (I had imagined the hinders to be more like deer and was surprised by how feline the are).
I suppose my next task must be to get the camera sorted so I can take pics of some of her writing and craft over the next few weeks, before they are all given away or eaten!
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