Getting on our Wickes!

Somebody e-mailed me this picture today... can't think why!

Our weekend was a busy one, taken up again with diy and trips to Wickes (which the kids HATE!) Hubby was busy replacing the old living room door with a new pine one and is in the process of replacing the architrave and skirting board too. I'm very impressed, it's looking much nicer now. So because Hubby was busy I had to take the kids out in the cold and dark on Saturday evening for the 'switching on' of the lights in town. Honor had to be there with the Brownies. Henry found it very boring and uncomfortable and so I had to reward him with a new light sabre from one of the street traders. It was quite nice, though, to see some of the Mums from Honor's old school again.

And my brother rang me with some exciting news from Down Under...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm so. so tired. It is only 6.45pm and I'm bathed and in my jammies watching the bedtime hour on Cbeebies with Hope who is playing on the floor. The latest news is... Henry got the Citizen of the Week award at school for being kind and Hubby has bought a trailer on ebay. Hubby has also removed the kitchen door as I think it is in the way! And he will hopefully replace the living room door with a new pine one this weekend.
That's all I can manage tonight.

Kumon and Cooking.

This is actually for yesterday. I tried sending my pics from the phone to the computer but it wouldn't work. My hardware and software seem to be feeling much better today so I can get on with it now.

So. When the kids came in from school they had their usual snack to keep the wolf from the door and gor straight on with their Kumon homework. This has to be done religiously every day. It's a kind of brain training, a method based upon repetition and gradual progress through the stages. Earlier that day I rang the instructor to discuss the process for Honor's maths. At the moment she is practising daily subtraction of 2-digit numbers and I had been telling her to mark on the paper where she was carrying from the 10's. But the instructor insists that the pupil must not write it down but hold the process mentally in their heads as they go through it. In the workbook a whole page is devoted to subtracting from numbers that end in 3 so that the pupil is also revising number bonds to 13 at the same time. Eg, 43-15= the 3 becomes 13 in your head, 8 and 5 is 13 so the unit is 8 and then you have to remember that the 4 is now 3, subtract the 1 = 2 and the answer is 28. I thought Honor might struggle with not being allowed to write the process down but she didn't. She has done quite a bit of practise on this already so she is getting quicker and more mentally agile (faster than me, in fact, though as I said to the instructor, I don't think I'll be getting Alzheimer's any time soon!). Honor is also enjoying the English work. I know she has only just started but she has actually been taking alot of care in completing it accurately. There seems to be a lot of focus, not just in Kumon but in school also to form letters 'just so.' For example 'k' and 'h' have tall sticks (ascenders) right up to the line but 't's ascender doesn't quite reach it and teachers are VERY fussy about it being right! (much more so than I used to be!...as long as I could read it, that was good enough!) Henry has been doing Kumon maths since March. I wanted him to start at the beginning because I believe the school curriculum lacks the basic repetitive practise that I think is essential. At the stage he is at now he can easily read, write and count numbers up to 100. I'm not going to put him in English yet (1. Can't really afford it and 2. think it'll be too much to do after school) but he is reading very well, flying through the books he brings home from school and I did buy a couple of Kumon English books from Amazon so I can photocopy just a page or 2 at a time for extra help at home, when he is up to it.

After Kumon, they did their cooking as Wednesday is cooking day! Honor was given a recipe from CBeebies I Can Cook for a bread and butter pudding to follow by herself. This was a good opportunity for her to practise weighing and measuring. Henry made fruit buns. They both used up the over-ripe bananas from the fruit bowl in their recipes.

Margate is closed!

Just thought, while I'm watching yet more Dr Who repeats on BBC3, I would upload some of the pictures from Margate.

Day off.

Today was an INSET day at school and hubby had arranged to have the day off. After catching up on a load of maths Kumon homework we headed down to Manston to visit the museums by the airport. Unfortunately the Manston museum was closed (only open at weekends). But we were still able to look around the Spitfire museum, which was free! The kids LOVED it. I knew Henry would. He is very familiar with all that World War stuff from the Indiana Jones films. But even Honor got really excited about it. She has studied a bit about it all at school. It's a lovely little museum with a 1940's style cafe where we had a cup of tea and watched the planes taking off. It also has a gift shop. Henry bought a noisy plane and Honor bought a book about Anne Frank. We'll definitely go back again when the other museum is open and spend a bit longer.

So after lunch we had to decide where to go next. I thought of heading into Margate with the idea of either visiting the museum there or the Shell Grotto. But Margate was a dismal place. We drove around for ages NOT finding the Grotto. Then we parked to check out the tourist information centre and museum, but both were closed. We did come across a lovely playground on the seafront, heading out of Margate towards Cliftonville which had a huge, wooden Viking Ship to play on and all sorts of great play equipment. The older two played there for half an hour and then we decided to head back to Birchington for a break at Jungle Jims - one of those indoor play barns. Not really the kind of thing I was looking to do, but the kids had a great time, and... in the car park we saw a caravan for sale which hubby is interested in.

I'm back now and baby is having her nap while the others have gone to their Kumon class. Honor has been doing maths for just over a year as she lacks confidence in this. But she wanted to do English too so she starts this today. She thinks it's going to be easy. She is quite advanced for her age in English but Kumon is all about accuracy which Honor tends to be lazy about. So she might be surprised to find she gets more wrong than she thought. Well, we'll see.

Spots2 - The Revenge!

Here are the big kids in their spotty outfits for Children in Need.

Hubby arrived back from South Africa this weekend. It hasn't been as hard to adjust to as I had anticipated. We had already agreed that when he got back, we would dedicate this time to having fun with the kids. He has really missed them. He took the 2 big kids swimming this morning and he was impressed at how well they behaved. (Actually, he is sitting beside me right now and I can smell the chlorine!) We all have a day off tomorrow so we are going to the museum at Manston Airport.

So, yeah, it's been a nice weekend. Even though we had to watch John and Edward leave the X-Factor. But I have a feeling they are going to be the real winners of this years competition, regardless of who gets the most votes.

The littlest hobos!

Today is the feast day of St Elizabeth of Hungary, the patron saint of Hobos who sold all her riches to help the sick, starving and homeless. As we were up a bit earlier than usual today, we had time before school to reflect on being thankful for having such a lovely home and everything we need. We've put her picture up on the sideboard, as a reminder, where it will stay until the beginning of Advent... which isn't long now!!!

At school today, the big kids were invited to audition for tomorrows' Children in Need talent show. Henry took in his guitar and Honor took a couple of hula hoops. But they both came home saying they'd bottled out of it!

I had tea with my friend Lee this morning. She has leant me a spotty dressing gown for Henry to wear. I also popped into town to pick up some photos - mainly of Hope. They're a bit disappointing. On my way back to the car I popped into the clothes shop for a browse and got chatting to an old lady who came up to see the baby. She used to be a nurse at the baby clinic years and years ago and loved working with the babies. She told me quite a bit about her own family, too. That's what is nice about carrying the baby around - it's a conversation starter!

One of the pictures shows Honor playing with Molly Moo Cow - the first thing I ever bought for her just after I found out I was expecting.