Settling Back Down

It's always hard to get back to "normality" after a holiday, but we're gradually settling back down here.

Emily's had a great week, very busy with lots of fun. She has done lots of maths and English and a fair bit of history too. She's also been doing a lot of surrealist art work with pictures cut from magazines and her own weird backgrounds. Yesterday and today Emily's been having a huge arty-crafty session, making lots of secret Christmas presents and cards, as well as helping Daddy repair a big bike that Jackie gave us and helping him take down the trampoline too.

We've been taking Voldemort and Severus out into the garden a lot more since we got back from holiday. Until recently, they really didn't want to be out there at all and would barely move, but now they've finally got the hang of it and are having a good old explore :-)) The garden, however, is littered, every single day, with a large assortment of dead things ranging from goldfinches to the normal mice to voles and even a rat. Nice. I think Romeo, Juliet and Cassie-Cat are trying to teach the babies what to do :-//

Emily has also been trying to learn her lines for her Christmas yoga play; she has quite a lot to say and do this time round, and since we missed the first lesson of term while we were away, she's trying to catch up with the others. We were a bit sad on Tuesday night at yoga to find that the teacher had changed the date of the play to Sunday the 16th December instead of the Saturday, as we thought that clashed with Emily's karate Christmas party (Daddy's being Santa again, lol). Fortunately, though, Emily found out today at karate that the party date has also moved and is on the Saturday, so that all worked out rather nicely after all!

This is a little poem Emily wrote in the car when we were away on holiday; I've just found it and various other poems which she's going to type up on the PC, set to nice background images. This one is called "Time":

Time is a mode of thought
An earthly measure
With mysteries taught.

What the trees grow with
What the clouds change with
Is time, divine.

I love that one, especially since she wrote it while Jon and I were frantically trying to find our way out of Carlisle city centre! Poetic thought in the midst of chaos :-))

I liked this too, found on the Secualar Homeschoolers list: The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List :-))

Mind you, I took Emily to a little tiny, old fashioned independent opticians on Friday morning - they asked her what school she went to and were hugely positive when she said that she was home educated. Glad to see that not everyone in the optician's world is of the Specsavers ilk.