Politics Rules

Ooops, there went the rest of March. And April. And most of May. But look! It's not June yet, and here I am.

Shortly after my last post, the General Election date was announced...and from nowhere, Emily became absolutely fascinated, and I do mean fascinated, by politics. She's learnt (and mostly taught herself) more about politics in the last two months than I learnt in a lifetime. She thoroughly researched all of the main parties and their policies, sat glued through the TV debates, read every newspaper she could find, followed the online news, joined facebook groups, debated and discovered, learnt to recognise all the key figures and their history and sat up with me until 4am on election night, having accompanied me to vote.

And that, of course, was when the real fun began. In the days following the election, Emily was glued to the live news for hours at a time, cried at Gordon Brown's resignation speech and his following speech at Labour HQ, scorned all of the potential Labour leadership candidates, and spent numerous hours in humorous dialogue with one or other of us, much of it managing to incorporate various renditions of "I agree with Nick." She has professed herself to be vehemently anti Tory but pro LibDem and hasn't missed a move in the unfolding coalition's early days and weeks. She talks about and discusses the problems of marrying up Tory policy and LibDem policy and can tell you at great length the whys, hows and wherefores of her views on the deficit and their strategies for reducing it. A second hand book on the workings of parliament, a present from Nana and Gramps, has been devoured and she now knows more about the ins and outs of how it all works than I do. Numerous times I've started to explain something to her only to find her explaining it to me. The depth of her knowledge, from nowhere, is quite astonishing. We have a new career ambition to add to the list of course - politician (well, PM, actually, but even Emily acknowledges that she has to start somewhere, rofl!)

We're especially pleased that Emily's emerging political views are most definitely not just parroted version of our own. Jon was a political activist in his student days and has a wealth of knowledge he shares with Emily, but where as he is staunchly Labour she's much more of a Liberal at heart. She's looking into the Youth Parliament as something she might like to get involved in. We shall see.

Along with the politics, economics goes hand in hand. Really need to find some good, friendly stuff about money markets and the financial industry. I did A level economics and much of it is still a mystery to me.... lol... shows how much attention I was paying at school. I have this book but to be honest, it's not very inspiring.

OK, what else, apart from the politics? Computer programming continues with Gramps - the last major project they did was to code, in Ruby, something which controlled an external set of pedestrian traffic lights, complete with flashing to tell the pedestrians to get a move on. Here she is with the traffic lights set up, including the pedestrian crossing button :-)
We flirted with some English literature, not entirely successfully; Emily's been reading a lot herself, including the entire Noughts and Crosses trilogy (actually, there are four of them now) with its theme of racial superiority ....but she doesn't enjoy having to analyse a text. The prologue of Canterbury Tales was studied, but without enthusiasm. She had a go at a literature study of Skellig, but abandoned it as she hated the book (I liked it though). We're now working on Wind Singer by William Nicholson, based vaguely on this (PDF) Scheme of Work, but again Emily's not really enjoying it. I'm beginning to think that studying literature is one of the quickest ways to kill of a love of good books :-/ Don't know that we'll continue down that vein very long... I'd rather she just read voraciously without having to do "work" on the darn things.

There's been quite a bit of history. We finished a study of the English Civil War in our weekly library sessions with Romy, where Hazel is still doing psychology with the girls too. At home, Emily's been keen on 20th century history and has made timelines of major events in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, now on our wall. Today she started on an essay tracing the changes in technology over the last fifty years, so we'll see how she gets on with that. Once that's done, we plan to start on this Dying for the Vote book, tracing the history of chartism and the suffragettes. There are other books in that series too, including the Cromwell one (which we've done) and one on King John and on the British Empire. They're quite engaging and there are free downloadable teacher's notes/sheets etc available for them all here.

We've stalled a bit in science. We're watching the Chemistry: A Volatile History series; we're also doing odds and ends of various science bits and pieces, but I'm struggling to find science stuff now that my cynical daughter doesn't consider silly AND which is doable in the home. I suspect we'll end up heading more towards a kind of environmental science angle... possibly something like this course from Planet Earth. Have now finally decided against GCSEs. We've opted out of the system this far, for this long, for such very excellent reasons....we're not going to opt back in now. Having discovered that many (most) universities accept OU courses instead of A levels, at the rate of 30 points per A level, we won't be doing A levels either. No need or point. Hurrah!

Amid all the education, Emily did of course find time to spend a whole four days in her pool during the hot weather last week :-))




I was amazed today to find that someone I went to school with in Berkshire somehow ended up teaching in North Lincs at our village school and left at about the same time we moved up here 12 years ago. She knew and had worked with Emily's "teacher". Bless her, she offered her own opinions on the disgraceful way they treated children there and sent a lovely note to Emily saying how sorry she was that Emily had come into contact with the evil Mrs S. A very strange coincidence in our small world!

My Goth Girlie

Looking scarily considerably older than eleven in some of these. *Wail*

Time is slipping by so fast this year. This evening, for the first time, it was still light when I "put Lulu to bed" at 6.15 (that's when she goes back into her cage for the night and settles down to sleep for 12 hours or so). The crocuses are out and the daffodils are nearly out. In a few week's time a quarter of 2010 will be gone!

Education - yes, well, I'm *still* wrangling with how much structure Emily does or doesn't need in her home education adventure. Just when I think I've cracked it, we get a not-so-great day that causes me to rethink it all again.

Since my last post, Emily's made a start on sewing her halter neck top. She worked on civil war history (reluctantly) and done psychology homework for Hazel (much more enthusiastically). She has breezed through the first chapter of a chemistry textbook and read various library books. We've been ice skating with Romy, to our regular library slot with Romy, Hazel and Tansy and been to friends and had friends over. She has cooked, drawn, photographed and faffed endlessly with hair, makeup and clothes. Later this week we're going to Woodside Falconry centre and we're also going to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D.

Mainly, though, Emily has continued with her IT and programming obsession. She's been working with some DOS batch programming links like this, this and this given to her by our friend Sean, who said lots of lovely, encouraging things to her about her work and her growing confidence. She's also excited by these detailed, free tutorials in Visual Basic, C# and PHP and has started to work her way through them, party on her own and partly with Gramps, who seems to be enjoying himself nearly as much as she is! It's all way over my head, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to start learning so that I can keep her company and *attempt* to be of some help occasionally. With this being such an all-consuming passion of Emily's just now, I'm keen to let her have as much time for it as possible.

Time, mind, is something we're a little bit short of. Emily does like interaction and doesn't like being left to her own devices all day, every day. She spends Monday afternoons with Gramps, then Weds afternoons we're out and all day Fridays we're either out at friends or have friends over here. That really only leaves us with Tuesdays and Wednesday/Thursday mornings (Monday mornings just don't seem to happen!) but given how late someone gets to bed and therefore how late someone also gets up in the mornings....basically that leaves me with Tuesday. Factor in the regular Grandad doctor/hospital appointments, occasional illness and the occasional desire to leave the house and see the world and you can see why we have a problem fitting formal education in. Organisation is the key. The missing key, that is. As ever.

Meanwhile, with all the BBC cuts being announced - one of the things going is their teen website...and our largest contract along with it. That's over half of our income for the chop. Sigh. At least they've given us a long notice period, but replacing that contract with something else is going to be very, very tough. Panic? Me? As if.

All the World's a Bookshelf

We made this beaded spiders this morning; Emily's is the blue one to match her blue room, mine is red. We have this Beaded Critters book and also Lovable Beaded Creatures, with the latter being much harder than the former! Going to try to get into these properly over the next few weeks with all the beads Emily had for her birthday.

Emily's fascination with computer viruses continues apace -- she's been finding out all she can and wants to order The Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses from the library... it's very expensive!! With Gramps on Monday afternoons she's been working away too - one week they looked in depth at logic gates; with Gramps' help Emily's also written two programs in Just Basic... one is a random number game where the user has to guess a number between two parameters while being given "too high" or "too low" clues. The other one allows the user to input a list of (for example) animals and it will then sort them into alphabetical order :-)) They also started to look at assembly language but have dropped that for the time being; it was extremely difficult, I gather.

For one reason or another we haven't done that much formal work during this last fortnight, but among what we have done has been a fair bit of introductory Shakespeare work adapted from the Shocking Shakespeare unit I mentioned in the last post. We looked at elements of comedy and tragedy, working out why Bottom is funny and why Juliet is tragic, using quotations from particular scenes to back up Emily's ideas. We also looked indepth at the "All the world's a stage" speech from As You Like It and Emily wrote a piece inspired by it, tracing the ages of man from baby to school child to lover to ambitious hero to successful midddle age to early old age to eventual decline. I think it's superb :-))

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All the World's a Bookshelf

All the world's a bookshelf
People are mere books
All have twists and turns
Everyone in their plots

First on the left, the picture book
A few pages in the chapter
Rapturous delight in bright colours

And then the tattered workbook
Ticks, crosses, doodles, misspellings
Reluctantly scribbled in tiredness

Next comes the lovingly thumbed romance novel
Seeking Cupid through rose scented paper
Heart adorned cover beckoning love

Then, the action thriller
Ticking bombs and super villains
Characters leaping out of battle ridden pages

Next to the right, the proud autobiography
Tales of rich and poor and ups and downs
Pages crisp and new - money well spent?

And then the photograph album
Memories trapped in a single frame
Wisdom embellishes the yellowing photos

Finally, the last book on the shelf, another picture book
Dignity lost in a second childhood
Helpless, frail and tired
Tired from a journey from page to page
This is the end
------------------------

We've continued meeting up with Hazel, Romy and Tansy once a week for me to teach some history to the girls and for Hazel to do psychology with them. History-wise, we're still ploughing through Cromwell and the civil war. Jon has started to do some GCSE level law with Emily too, which she's enjoying. He was going to take her to visit the magistrate's court, but apparently they won't allow anyone under the age of 14 into the gallery. Sigh, moan, grouch. Wasn't very pleased about that. Jon has decided to apply to become a magistrate in any case, as our nearest town currently has four vacancies. He's been along to observe the court twice, as required by the application form, so now we've just got to send that off and see what happens.

Finally, we've bought a pattern for Emily to make herself a halter neck top; we're off to buy the material tomorrow before taking Romy ice skating :-))

Psychology, Ecology, Sewing and Shakespeare

Started our weekly "study sessions" with Hazel and Romy this week in the library. Hazel did some psychology with Emily and Romy while I read library books to the adorable Tansy, then I took over and did some history with the big girls. Emily really enjoyed the psychology and learnt about conditional and unconditional stimulus and response. I think my history efforts were a little less fascinating, mind. We're going to work on Cromwell and the civil war, loosely based on a King Cromwell book I found in the This is History series, which has associated teaching resources from Hodder Education. Over the course of several weeks, the book leads up to kids writing a mini biography of Cromwell, an approach which I fancied us having a go at. I'm sure it will get better once we get into the meat of it. Actually, the page above has helpful teaching stuff for a number of the This is History books, including King John, Empire stuff and one called "Dying for the Vote".

At home, we started a sort of introduction to Shakespeare. I like some of the ideas in this "Shocking Shakespeare" scheme of work, so we'll have a go at some of those. That site does have a fair bit of good stuff for literacy; we adapted their Spooks & Spirits unit at the end of last year and turned it into a gothic literature-ish study and added bits about Edgar Allen Poe etc. I've only just realised the site is specific to Hertfordshire schools.....well, we're nowhere near Hertfordshire, but who cares?

In science (mainly just biology atm) we've also started a new topic, looking at ecosystems, food webs and adaptations. Emily created and sorted some food webs and investigated the desert ecosystem, finding out what the challenges of living there are and how camels and catci have adaptations to help. The plan is to do the same for the other major world ecosystems...investigate the habitat and then look in more detail at how two different animals or plants have adapted to it.

Found this BBC Learning Clips site which I hadn't realised existed; hundreds of useful video clips on there for all sorts of things. Emily watched a couple about cacti and desert adaptations there.

Emily has done more computer programming-y work with Gramps in her regular Monday afternoon sessions. Last week they had fun with an old Apple emulation thing and carried on their work with Just Basic. Emily's very taken with the idea of using one of Gramps' old, unused computers as a "sacrificial computer" for which she can try to create blue screens of death and other such evil nasties!

Meanwhile a pattern arrived for a halter neck top which Emily wants to sew. We'll go and choose some material for it next week and get started on that. I haven't sewn an item of clothing since needlework O level many years ago, lol, and Emily's never done a full size garment before, so that should be interesting! Next week we're also going to investigate Chinese New Year...we have our seasonal tree to decorate in that theme and we're also going to a Chinese New Year party next weekend, so that should be fun.

Ha - now this blog post has just turned into a long list of "we're doing this and we're doing that". Will have to take more photos to upload and find something more interesting to say!

Ice Princess & Academic Dithering

Ice skating has dominated the week. Went with Hazel and Romy to begin with, and after an initial problem with too-small skates, Emily spent a happy hour clinging to the rail at the side and slowly going round the rink. Emily and I went back for a second time later in the week - the rink was full of big teens going very, very, very fast and hanging around in groups at the edge chatting, bless 'em, but Emily gathered up her guts and spent another hour and a half pottering around, gradually getting more and more confident. She's now able to do a little bit without holding on, albeit still within hand distance of the rail. Lessons are very expensive, but I'm wondering whether we can stretch to just a couple, enough to get her really moving and away from the edge. She doesn't want lessons - Emily says she'd rather figure it out herself. She did that with swimming too - took a very long time, but she did eventually teach herself to swim well :-)) We shall see.

Work-wise at home, we did some more biology, finishing up the end of our work on cells, cancer, cell division etc. More computer programming with my Dad, which is going down very well indeed. Emily presented him with a long list of what she wants to learn, computer-wise, over the next few months (!):

• I want to learn how viruses spread and how they work.
• I want to learn to create applications that work inside a webpage.
• I want to learn how to fix windows when it *Dies*
• I want to learn how to make actual software- things like maybe a file converter, a video player, anything. And make it look professional as well.
• I want to make some kind of an anti virus program. (Loads of people have done it. Why not me?)
• I want to learn about how the system registry works.
• I want to learn how to edit programs (exe files ) (if that’s possible)
• I want to learn html.
• I want to learn more about what you can do in cmd.
• I want to learn more about how windows itself works.
• I want to make a program run every time the computer starts. ( I know its to do with system registry…)
• I want to learn what a computer is like without windows… MWAHAHAHA
• I want to learn what all the F buttons do (F1, F2, F3 ect)
• I want to learn about how worms work.
• I want to learn about rootkits
• I want to cram as many programming languages into my head as possible!!!!


OK....well, that will keep both of them out of mischief for a while!

At one point during the week, I was preparing some work on glaciers for Emily to do, following on with our mountain theme in geography - and then I hit another doubting session. She's not really interested in glaciers. She knows what they are. However, according to "those who decide what our children should learn" she ought to be able to label diagrams of a glacier and know the terminology associated with it. Great, if she were interested. She's not. So, why? I failed to find on the net or invent a way to make it fascinating for her. In the end, we didn't do it. And that set me thinking again about what she "should" be learning, why, how, when and what the point of most of it is. I learnt all about glaciers at school. Other than a general knowledge of what one is, I didn't retain any of that information and have never since needed it. Because geography wasn't "my thing" and so far, it doesn't appear to be Emily's thing either. But then again, she is interested in environmental science. So who knows? And does any of it really matter, aged 11?

And then that set me thinking again about the whole exam issue and whether or not it's important for Emily to do bloody GCSEs. Half of me thinks they're all pretty pointless. The other half of me thinks that, since Emily's not the most confident child in the world, being able to tick a few boxes might be worth it to save her the future stress of having to jump through different hoops to get onto the course of her choice, or having to "perform" in an interview with the odds stacked against her. But then again, another half of me (I'm good at maths) thinks that the Open University courses etc might well serve the same purpose but at less expense and less hassle. Yet another half of my schizophrenic home education personality thinks that it would be good for Emily to knuckle down (in due course) to serious study and examination in subjects which do delight her such as psychology, biology and law. And another half nags at me, pointing out that possibly having (say) three GCSEs, none of them in maths, is worse than not having any at all. If you're going to have them, hadn't you better have forty seven all at A****** grade? Otherwise people will pay more attention to the ones you *haven't* got or the ones where you only got a B or a C. Won't they?

ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGH!

For now, we've decided not to decide, again. Emily's only 11....but then again, I don't want to be faced with her doing loads of exams crammed into only a couple of years - don't think we could afford it and I don't think we could handle the organisational stress either. So if she were going to do any, I'd rather she staggered them over quite a few years, which doesn't really leave all that much time to make those kinds of decisions.

So, I'm sticking my head in the sand again. We're going to carry on doing the subjects Emily enjoys, probably scale down the efforts with the subjects she doesn't enjoy and....wait and see. My heart says a huge NO! to any kind of school related hoop jumping. My head says that's fine for a confident child who can blag their way onto any course or into any job they please by sheer force of personality...but possibly cruel or irresponsible for a child whose confidence level varies so greatly. We've opted out of the system thus far. Why on earth would we want to opt back into it for GCSEs or A levels? Conversely - why would we want to put unnecessary obstacles into Emily's path? Sand. Meet head.

Snow Leopards and the Moon

Our bacteria didn't grow. Zilch. Nothing at all. Wonder what we did wrong? We do have another sachet of agar left, so we'll have to have a think about doing it again and seeing if we can get something to grow this time.

Last week's "work"...let's see. Emily carried on with mountains-ish stuff for geography, watching the Mountains episode of David Attenborough's Planet Earth and then researching snow leopards. The Snow Leopard Trust had some interesting materials about snow leopard conservation and the challenges of protecting a predator in areas where people depend upon their livestock for a living.

Science was biology again, looking at what cancer is and how it develops. Lots of great stuff at The Centre of the Cell including a neat animation about how cancer occurs and a game based around developing cancer treatments.

In history last week, Emily continued with the modern theme, looking at the moon landings in more depth. We read from this lovely book by Stewart Ross which looks at moon mythology, science and history and watched some footage related to the moon landings. Emily also investigated some of the theories about the moon landings being a fake and told me all about the various photographic and film anomalies and their suggested explanations.

We didn't do much on Thursday, I don't think, as I had to take the car back to finally get its MOT finished, which took several journeys and most of the day on and off. On Friday, Jacki and her girls came to visit us - the girls made delicious chocolate chip cookies and together they all sewed plump little felt chicks. Over the weekend, Emily surprised us both with this fantastic cake - I love how she can now just waltz into the kitchen alone and produce - with or even without a recipe - such lovely bits and pieces :-))

Emily and I are both thrilled that Hazel has offered to teach Emily some GCSE-ish psychology with Romy once a week. In return, I'll do some history with Romy and Emily, which will probably be less thrilling...but I'll do my best. It will be good to get back to seeing Hazel and Romy regularly....it's been far too long. Next week we're off ice skating together before our educational efforts begin, lol.

We seem to be doing quite well, education-wise, at the moment. I'm still fretting over Emily's free time, though. Because Jon and I have to work during the evenings, we don't get to spend enough family time together - bizarre, really, given that we're all at home all day long. It seems that working from home can sometimes be a recipe for less family time, not more :-(( I wish we were in a position, financially, to be able to draw a line at the end of the day and have free evenings, but we're constantly playing catch up with real life work so it's just not happening at the moment. Must work out a way to make this happen. Invent 48 hour days or something. There must be a way.

Internal Workings

Of a PC, mostly. This afternoon, Emily did some more computer science work with my Dad. They looked inside an old PC and discussed which bit did what and they also talked about their plans to build some logic circuits to operate traffic lights.

With my Dad, Emily also wrote a small basic program which lists every prime number :-))

Friday was spent visiting home ed friends (having cadged a lift from my Dad), where the girls practised finding surface areas and drawing, cutting out and making shapes from nets. At the weekend, Emily variously read, baked (yum!), Simpsons-ed, drew, karate-d and computered. On Saturday we braved letting Lucifer and Lilith out into the garden without their harnesses for the very first time but with supervision. They absolutely loved it, stayed out slightly longer with supervision on Sunday and then today were allowed out all day on their own, although we brought them in when it got dark. Beautiful little things, they're really loving their freedom and big brother Severus is an absolute angel playing with them in the garden. Big tabbies Romeo and Juliet have yet to notice that the babies are out, I think, as they spend most of the day asleep and only tend to go out in the dark until the summer comes.

This morning I took the car back to an 8am appointment to have its steering column sorted out, only to be told that they didn't have the parts and it couldn't be done until Thursday. I was deeply unimpressed, to put it mildly. No car this evening has meant Emily missing kick boxing too.

While Emily has been pondering the inner workings of a PC, I've been pondering the inner workings of our home ed style and in particular my own battles the autonomous approach. When she's not actually "doing something" with me or actively being with friends, Emily spends *a LOT* of time on her computer. Waayyy too much time, many would say. I find myself fretting over this and nagging her to get off the computer and go and do "something" else, but then I find myself nagging myself to stop nagging her. I daresay, had technology been at today's levels, I probably would have been the same at her age and so might her Dad have been. I think I'm possibly turning it into more of a problem than it should be....but then again, another part of me thinks we must be failing to provide anything else exciting to do.

With me and Jon both up to our necks in trying to earn money every spare minute of the evening and weekends apart from when I'm consciously doing things with Emily during the day - and no siblings - it's not as if Emily can run off and play "with someone". She probably likes the company when she's on the computer too, because it's in the same room as ours while we're working. She does a lot of different things on there - sometimes just playing Sims or some other game, but often finding out about things which interest her and she does a lot of creating art work and videos to put on You Tube too. It is true that her IT skills are phenomenal and her artistic skills are soaring ahead too, both of which are due to lengthy computer time. So that's all good. But surely...? Shouldn't she be reading, or playing a game on her own, or playing in the garden, or, or, or, or....?

I guess I struggle with concepts autonomous educators might take for granted sometimes. It's a combination of worrying about Emily being an only child, worrying that we have to work all the time, worrying that she might be lonely, worrying that she might be bored, worrying that she doesn't have this marvellous, all-consuming away-from-the-PC hobby that so many home educated kids do seem to have. Worrying that she's only on the PC because she can't think what else to do. In truth, Emily does do plenty of reading, garden playing, cooking and all the rest of it. We have equipment, craft stuff, books and all manner of other paraphenalia coming out of our ears, should she want to use it, which she sometimes does. And, allowing for normal preteen moods and a slight lack of social confidence, she does seem happy enough, most of the time. But - arggh! I wish I could stop fretting!

Slime and Bacteria

Lots of hands-on chemistry and biology today. Emily received a glow in the dark slime kit for Christmas and she worked her way through that with great hilarity. The glow in the dark one really does glow in the dark and makes delightful fart noises when squished as an added bonus ;-)





She also made a less firm, sloppier clear slime to which she added drops of food colouring; they spread through it to make a really pretty stained glass effect.



The explanation in the kit about polymers was woefully inadequate, however, so we spent some time this morning looking up a decent explanation. Later this afternoon, Emily worked on this polymers basics internet scavenger hunt thingy (pdf file).

In biology, we mixed up some agar and Emily thought of four places to take swabs from, to see if the bacteria will grow. She chose a tongue (mine, not hers, because she didn't like the thought of scraping hers, lol), raw meat, some mould growing near the side door (it's that kind of house...sigh) and the toilet bowl. Nice. We'll have to keep checking on the petri dish to see what's happening.

Meanwhile, Emily has also been working hard on some IT research today. She's blinding me with science about tracing IP addresses and programming pop up boxes. Eeep. It all sounds very impressive but I'm a bit lost!

Took the car in for its MOT first thing yesterday morning. It failed, of course. Something to do with the steering column being loose - it's a Rover and the garage couldn't get hold of the part needed so sent me back home to try to find it from a scrapyard. Jon found and bought it online and it arrived today. The part wasn't expensive, but it's going to cost over a hundred to have it fitted since it's apparently a long job and involves resetting the tracking too (or somesuch) and they can't do it until Monday anyway. Bit stranded until then, since the MOT is way overdue and I'm nervous of driving the car illegally, especially since it apparently invalidates the insurance if you're driving without a valid MOT. Dratted car.

Monday & Tuesday

Inventive Blog Post Titles R Us.

Emily and Jon went to the library bus yesterday morning, but came back unimpressed. They'll have to go later this week on the one and only day the village library proper is open. Emily now has a long list of book she wants to borrow (or reserve, more likely, since it's only a small library). I'm hoping that this year she will read a wider range of fiction. She loves the Jacqueline Wilson-esque angst and issues books but there's a whole world beyond that. More time in the day for reading would help too.



Yesterday afternoon we raced through some maths, converting scales to real distances and vice versa. One of the things that happened during my blog absence was that we decided to hold off on formal maths for a while. Although she's perfectly capable, Emily has a bit of a mental block about maths and tends to panic over it. She's at the same kind of level as a schooled child her age would be, but unless she's going to take a maths GCSE, which seems unlikely, we're debating the need to venture into maths beyond the level that most of us use on a daily basis. Fractions, percentages, ratios, decimals, all the primary level stuff, sure. Calculus, advanced algebra, trig and the like? Not unless it becomes clear later that she's going to need some kind of maths qualification in order to get where she's going.

We also steamed through some English word roots work; we're working our way through English From the Roots Up - in typing this I've just found some online flashcards and matching games to go with the book. Would really like to get back to learning Latin at some point, but we struggle with consistently doing any one thing which is a bit of a problem when it comes to language learning. We'll see.

Then we moved onto history. At the moment, Emily's studying modern history as in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Yesterday afternoon she created timelines for the major world events of the 50s and 60s - 50s being a recap because we did all that before Christmas. For each decade, she's doing the timeline, studying one event in depth (for the 50s she chose the Coronation, for the 60s it's going to be the moon landing) and researching the music, fashion and cultural trends of the decade. In theory. In practice, it's been going on for ever! Some useful websites for this were Connected Earth which has a fab downloadable cheat document for hassled parents ;-) and Topic Box which has lots of useful links. I've just spotted that Connected Earth also has a History of the Internet unit which might be right up Emily's street.

This morning I felt poorly, so Emily amused herself while I amused a parrot; this afternoon she had a session with my Dad using small basic to do some programming and turtle graphics. My Dad has been providing lots of physics education for Emily over the last few months - he normally has the pleasure of her company each Monday afternoon, but he was poorly this week too so it was moved to today. They've done all sorts of complicated stuff with amazing equipment - very impressive! Just before Christmas he taught Emily a load of card tricks using various mathematical principles and she performed them for us on Boxing Day night, very memorably :-))

Tomorrow's education will consist of car mechanics.....well, I'm taking Emily with me to get the car MOT done and they have a viewing bay - does that count?

The problem I'm facing at the moment, home ed wise, is being spoilt for choice. I keep coming across so many fabulous internet sites but I usually don't remember to use them, can't find them again or get bogged down in a topic that we really should have moved on from (or from which we should have moved on, with my grammar hat on). I wish I could be better organised and plan ahead more, but with so much else to do we're (as usual) flying by the seat of our collective, shiny pants.

A Fresh Start for 2010

Five months since my last post and less than twenty posts all last year -- this year, I'm going to get back up to speed with this blog.

I can't begin to cover what's gone on in the last five months, so we'll just draw a line under that and start again. We all plodded along happily enough and we have two new additions to the family, brother and sister kittens Lucifer and Lilith, now five months old and about to start adventuring in the garden once this dratted snow has finally gone.

We celebrated Emily's 11th birthday on the 2nd January and she enjoyed a birthday sleepover party the following day. She then promptly fell poorly for a couple of days, so we didn't get back to work last week with the exception of Friday when we did finally get something done.

Emily's future ambitions are now heading away from vet and towards feline behaviourist or (human) psychologist. She continues to grow up rapidly, with an impressively expanding range of both talents and preteen mood swings. I continue to go through the occasional panic about whether or not we can provide a good enough education to allow her to fulfil her ambitions....but then if I didn't sometimes feel that I'd be unwisely arrogant, I think. It's good to be kept on your toes by these doubts sometimes. Motivation is an issue at the moment when it comes to home education "work" and has been for the last six months or so....where once Emily was full of beans and keen to get on with whatever we were doing, it frequently becomes a battle nowadays as she'd rather read, sleep (!) or play on her computer. All productive enough in its own way, sure, but we don't work function well in that completely unstructured environment for long.

Meanwhile, Jon's mediumship is going from strength to strength and he's working out what his future plans are in that arena. I'm working on a non fiction book proposal and making a real effort to kick start my writing in other directions too. I have a feeling that 2010 should be a good year for us, if we can all pull our socks up and get on with it.

It'll all work out :-) We just need to get back into a proper routine....although if I were paid for each time I'd said that on this blog over the last five years, I'd be a rich woman :-)

Cassie

Two days ago, I was wandering around the garden, with Juliet and Severus, looking for Cassie-cat. Out of nowhere, she called to me and I saw her sat a little way away. I picked her up and walked around the garden cuddling her for a few minutes and talking to her. After a while, she wriggled to get down, so I placed her back on the grass. Without looking back, she stalked off, purposefully if rather unsteadily, towards next door's garden.

She hasn't been seen since. The intervening 48 hours have been chilly with persistent heavy rain and Cassie-cat was extremely frail. We've searched, put up posters, called, asked permission to search neighbour's gardens and posted leaflets into the nearest 40 odd houses. We had some very kind responses from people and one or two reported having seen her earlier, but not since my garden cuddle.

Although when a cat goes missing there is always the faintest of hopes that they will turn up again eventually, with Cassie-cat in the condition she was, I think in our hearts we all have to accept that she's gone and she's not coming back. We had been going to keep her in, but she was desperate to go out - and we wanted what were sure would be her last few days in any case to be as happy as possible and on her own terms, following her own instincts, so we let her go. It was nice and sunny at the time. All we can hope now is that she curled up somewhere out of the rain and slipped into a peaceful sleep.

Cassie-cat and Merlin came into my life many years ago as tiny kitten fluff balls. I hadn't yet met Jon; Cassie and Merlin were my faithful companions through five or six years of a fairly tumultuous time in my life. They were my first "grown up" pets, the first I had after leaving home and the two of them will always hold such a special place in my heart. Merlin was the joker, into everything and everyone, the handsome, playful attention-seeker. Cassie-cat was the beautiful sage, much more cautious but with a depth of wisdom about her that you couldn't ignore. Together, they were witness to a lot of tears during that "pre-Jon" period of my life. I think - apart from the obvious grief of losing a much loved pet - that might be why I feel so utterly bereft at Cassie's loss. After we lost Merlin a while ago, she was my last link to that strange other life I led. Back then I was slim, pretty, confident and relatively affluent - not happy, but a very different person to the one I am now. She knew the other me in a way that my beloved Jon and Emily didn't and when they came into my life she gave them her undying loyalty and love too.

Poor Emily has wept a river for Cassie-cat; not knowing the exact circumstances of what has happened to her is very tough. So many unknowables to torture ourselves with.

Cass Cass, we love you and we miss you. We're so sorry we weren't there for you at the very end, but it seems that was the way you wanted it, perhaps hoping to spare us and you the pain of a protracted goodbye. The more I think of it now, the more I think you knew you weren't coming back when you walked out of the garden that last time. Sweet dreams, Caca-wa-ah-ah and happy reunion with your brother Merlin. It must have been a very long two and half year separation for you both.

Poorly Cassie-Cat

Poor sweetheart. She's sixteen years old now (I think) and until very recently had been in fine fettle, if rather thin, purring, nuzzling, chasing bits of string and enjoying padding around her territory.

Four or five days ago, she started coming home with soaking wet feet. Didn't think all that much of it at the time, because it has been quite wet - but she's been coming home with soaking wet feet *every* time she goes out, much much wetter than the other cats, and wetter to a higher level up her legs. She's also stopped grooming herself and has stopped taking an interest in pretty much anything except food. No purring for the last couple of days either.

Last night, we were trying to dry her paws off for her and spotted patches of very red and sore looking skin. Kept her in, to see what her feet would be like when dry - still red. We don't normally keep her in because she claws and claws to try and get out, which won't do poorly feet much good or indeed her mental health much good. She doesn't appear to have any pain there and doesn't object to her paws being touched and is still walking as well as can be expected for her age and stiffness. This morning she was absolutely desperate to be let out - and then she came back with soaking wet feet again. They're wet beyond what you might expect from a cat walking through wet grass. I suspect she's visiting a pond or something in a neighbouring garden and standing in it.

I don't know whether her feet are sore because they're wet all the time, or conversely whether her feet are sore for some other reason and she's getting them wet because it helps soothe them. It looks like a trip to the vet might soon be in order, although we'd been trying to avoid that because it puts her under so much stress. There's also, of course, the thought that the vet might voice the opinion that she's come to the end of the line and that the kindest thing would be to put her to sleep. While Cassie's not exhibiting any signs of actual pain, we'll hold on for a few days and see if it clears up, otherwise we'll have to see. Her quality of life seems to be disappearing. It's so sad. We lost her brother Merlin two and a half years ago after a long illness - to see Cassie cat now fading away too is heartbreaking. Lots of tears being shed here while we try to work out what's best to do.......if only she'd get back some of her spirit and start to purr again and take an interest.

Still Here: Quick Catchup Plus Links

Well. Only 15 posts on this blog so far this year....not a good thing.

It would be impossible to properly cover the missing ten weeks or so between my last post and this one, not to mention mind numbingly boring for anyone who doesn't have a close personal interest in our lives...and those that do already know what we do. So I'll settle for the edited highlights before getting back to home ed. Lots of text here and no photos except in links....bear with me!

Following my brother-in-law's death, his partner Barbara came to visit from Canada and stayed a while. As soon as she left, Emily's friend Maisie came to stay with us for a two night sleepover. On the Saturday, we took her to a falconry centre near us and the girls had a whale of a time there. We also went strawberry picking and they made fantastic strawberry and white chocolate cakes together. A few days after that, Emily went to St Bees with my Mum and Dad for a little holiday; as it turned out, they only stayed a couple of days, but they did have a lovely time while they were there, marred only by the discovery that the excellent Sellafield Science Discovery Centre was in the middle of closing down.

During June, Jon and his father both celebrated their birthdays and around that time we went on a family trip to Magna too, which was excellent. Emily and I also visited Bempton Cliffs and saw some puffins! Photographs from Magna, Bempton and from the falconry centre are here. I'm so far behind with blogging now that I can't upload them individually here. Eep. At some point (brain fog) we also visited The Collection in Lincoln with Jacki, Mei Lin and Jasmine, who we've continued to see every Friday, alternately at their house or at ours.

There were assorted hospital and doctor trips scattered throughout this period and at the beginning of July Jon went away on a week long mediumship course, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Last week, Emily and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Price on its first showing at our local cinema; loved it to bits. Emily's still doing karate and kickboxing every week and last weekend she went to Maisie's birthday sleepover party, which she enjoyed very much. Preparation is already under way for Emily's 11th birthday party sleepover, lol.

All four cats and Lulu the parrot are still well, healthy and happy...and shortly to be joined by two new members of the family in a few week's time....two new kittens, half brother and half sister to Severus, born to Sevi's mum at Jacki's :-)) Lulu's antagonistic and aggressive behaviour towards Emily suddenly vanished a few weeks ago and she is now very affectionate towards her junior flock member ;-) Lulu is starting to talk and has mastered "hello" and "good girl" and just today is making huge efforts to say "peep-o" because I've been playing peep-o with her at teatime for the last few days.

Since my last post, Jon has done two more paranormal investigations, which he has thoroughly enjoyed. He was able to give lots of accurate information on both and on the second one in particular some brilliant video footage was captured, showing two unidentified figures. A brief clip from this investigation is on the paranormal team's website. The footage is very dark, but immediately after the screen says "someone makes an appearance", you can see a figure which seems to be wearing glasses appear, peer over Jon's shoulder and then move away. You might have to stand up and/or darken the room to see it properly. Anyway, this figure was not anyone present on the night, was not noticed by anyone at the time and is not a reflection (Jon isn't standing in front of mirrors) and remains unexplained. Later footage from this same investigation (not online yet) shows a glowing white figure in a doorway, again not noticed by anyone at the time and as yet unexplained.

Home Ed
Emily has been getting through quite a lot of education recently. She's working on maths with my father and has been working on a whole variety of things with me. We're just about to start a gothic literature project, studying Dracula, Frankenstein and Edgar Allen Poe.

We're on the verge of wrapping up a world war two project, which has been very successful. During the course of that, Emily's done a lot of work ranging from understanding appeasement to debating the causes of the war, from the morality of the Dresden and atomic bombings to the intricacies of D-Day, from the horrors of the holocaust to the everyday life of British residents and the home front. She interviewed my Mum, who lived through the Blitz as a young child, and read about my Dad's very different war experiences in Northern England. We've read part of Anne Frank's Diary, watched the Anne Frank Film and also watched Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Carrie's War, as well as newsreel clips from the time and the horrific first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Was going to watch Schindler's List, but changed my mind....that would have been a step too far for her age, no doubt. An amazing resource for all of this has been World War II at the National Archives - this is full of detail and has indepth investigations to carry out for many of the turning points and issues of WW2. We've also very much enjoyed a D-Day souvenir pack that my Mum and Dad picked up from a second hand shop, which had facsimile newspapers, letters, telegrams, maps and notices dropped for German troops.

Emily's really enjoyed this modern history. I'm not entirely sure the horrors of it have fully sunk in - my voice would often catch as I was reading her something, and tears would prick during some of the films; Emily on the other hand has taken it very seriously but not particularly emotionally. Perhaps she's just that one generation too far removed from it all; perhaps she's just being ten. Either way, I'm confident that she has a very good understanding now of what went on, why and how and probably a better understanding of the moral issues than many schooled kids would have. She would like to continue with modern history, so after a break from history I think we'll move on to looking at things like the Cuban missile crisis and the cold war.

We've also begun some work on the Antarctic, watching a documentary about the Scott-Amundsen race to the pole and creating an annotated wall map of important points in Antarctic exploration history. We're now moving on to look at the wildlife and at the environmental concerns surrounding the continent. Two excellent sites useful for this are Discovering Antarctica from the British Antarctic Survey and Classroom Antarctica from the Australian government. Both packed with lots of ideas for things to do.

We've been gradually getting back to doing more arts and crafts too. Emily's two thirds of the way through sewing a beautiful white kitten soft toy and recently we've also done lots of photography (forced perspective photos and a colour/texture photo montage) plus chinese brush painting, pattern mandalas and the Northern Lights in chalk pastels. Photos of some but not all of these are here - some of them inspired by the lovely Elle at Ellie's Treasures and in turn by a site I found linked (I think) from Elle's site, Homeschooling Ideas.

Emily has also been doing a LOT of baking and has conjured up all manner of cakes, cookies, biscuits and muffins. She has also been teaching herself animation techniques on the PC and continuing to work on her Warrior Cats book. We've been having many morality/ethics/citizenship type discussions too, including about animal research, the essence of Britishness, immigration and the law.

So, that's maths, English, history, geography, art, cooking, citizenship and IT covered - lol. I'm still trying to work out how to approach science from now on. This is a tricky one. Emily loves science, especially chemistry and biology, but she's at an age now where most of the "do it yourself at home" type experiments are a bit lame and we don't have access to secondary school level equipment in most things, although I know my Dad's got a few things up his sleeve for physics. It's too dry to just work from a textbook except in very small doses, but watching experiments online doesn't really cut the ice either. I think we'll have to watch lots of documentaries instead and I'll try to dig up some interesting ideas from a few sites I have bookmarked, like these ones:
Physics and Ethics Education Project
Bioethics Education Project
Creative Chemistry
The Naked Scientist Experiments
E=TC3
BBSRC
Active Science
BioEd Online

Phew, bit of a brain dump there, but hopefully someone might find some of those links useful. We do have some great science resources, I'm just now sure what to do with 'em. I did post earlier in the year about a great book which shows you how to create a "proper" chemistry lab at home, but we can't really afford that at the moment. We shall see.

Anyway. That's where we are. Financially, Jon and I are still muddling through chaos, with bad news piling upon bad news when it comes to contracts and earning opportunities. But we're managing and we've got plans....so I'm feeling relatively confident about the future. And am determined to get back to blogging properly!

Sad Family News & Notes from the Asylum

It's been a roller coaster few weeks here, with some exciting highs but also some terribly sad family news and related family tensions.

My brother-in-law, David Harper, died on the 2nd May, in Canada, his adopted country, following a short battle with pancreatic cancer. David's death was unexpected, as the news until then had been that although in hospital, he was fighting well and expected to make a good recovery, but I gather that complications with his lungs set in and in the end it was all too much. Our thoughts since then have been very much with David's partner Barbara and his four children, and my own concerns have also been for Jon, who is dealing with his big brother's death with quiet strength and dignity.

Jon's passport has expired and although we were ready to head to an emergency renewal appointment in order for him to be able to attend David's funeral in Canada, my elderly father in law, who lives with us, pretty much emotionally blackmailed Jon into not attending - for reasons that make me spit with fury and which I shan't go into here.

Sadly, my relationship with my father in law has become ever more strained since the news of David's death - at one point, he accused us, behind our backs, of ignoring him and not caring about his grief, despite the fact that he never has anything to say to us other than to complain or belittle us, and despite the fact that when invited to join us at any time he's usually totally uninterested and rates watching TV far more important than being with us. Oh, and despite that fact that he couldn't care less about Jon's grief for his big brother, even moving Jon to comment the other day that he feels he may spend the rest of his life being blamed for not being David and that his father perhaps feels that "the wrong one" died. I'm disgusted with the way father in law has behaved.....but as anyone who's read here for a while might now, this kind of behaviour from his is sadly nothing new. I can make allowances for grief causing people to behave oddly - but for him, I'm afraid it's normal. I could rant for hours, but out of respect for my brother in law's memory, I shall - temporarily - leave it at that.

Jon was asked by The Henley Standard to write an obituary for his brother, as they grew up in the Henley area and David was well known in the community there. I'll add a link to it when it goes into this week's issue.

On a happier note, Jon's first paranormal investigation on the 1st May went exceptionally well. I'm so proud of him. He had no idea where they were going right up until the time the arrived but he was able to tell the investigating team, among other things, details of the floorplan of the ruined building (which room was the kitchen, that there used to be a walled garden in such and such a spot, etc, all verified), information about the landscape of the area before the building existed and details of various spirits who were communicating that night. Notably, he gave the names Rosalind and Samuel and told how Rosalind was searching for two children who were not her own, but for whom she was the nursemaid; further details emerged from his spirit link about how Samuel (who it turns out was Rosalind's young boyfriend) had been looking after the children during a flood during which one of them drowned and that he had been full of guilt and remorse. All of this was verified too.

During the investigation, the team took lots of recordings, both video and audio. On the audio recording, there's some very clear EVP, including a voice saying "Jon, go now, it's my fault" and repeating again "It's my fault". Fascinatingly, this took place during the time at which Jon was holding a "conversation" with the spirit contact Samuel and the EVP on the recording is hear during the pauses after Jon speaks each time, during which the people present heard nothing. I gather from those who've heard it that it's spine-tingling stuff! On the night, the team noticed that during Jon's pauses, as he was listening to spirit, their sound meters were recording spikes in the gaps, even though nothing could be heard.

There's a report about the evening on PP Paranormal's site here. We're all exceedingly chuffed and very proud of Jon :-)) This Wednesday, Jon is going out on another investigation with the team, again to an unknown but apparently prestigious location, this time with the press present and an audience of staff members from wherever they're going too. Can't wait to hear about it!

The other week, Jon took Emily out and about to the Newark Air Museum, which she much enjoyed, and we've also been to visit The Deep with friends. We had to cancel a planned trip to the National Parrot Sanctuary for a variety of reasons, but will be going soon. Meanwhile, Jon came back from a shopping trip the other day with a sparkly surprise - he'd had his ear pierced :-)) Well, re-pierced, since he'd had it done before as a teenager, but had been wanting it redone for ages and hadn't got round to it.

Emily's at her kickboxing grading tonight before visiting friends. She had a mini trauma earlier this week when she half knocked out a molar tooth, leaving it at a very weird angle and bleeding profusely. She has quite a fear of dentists, so that caused a few tears, but ultimately the dentist advised down the phone that there was no need to attend unless it didn't come out on its own within a couple of days. It did, eventually and as an added bonus the matching one on the other side also popped out this morning, with no warning, lol.

Home ed wise, things have been progressing nicely. Emily's been doing lots of maths and English, and a fair bit of history and science too. We didn't get all that much done last week as we were all somewhat thrown by news of David's death, but we're starting to get back on track now. Towards the end of April, we did do some fascinating microscope work, more of which will follow soon as Emily loves doing that. Some photos:

Emily's cheek cells, stained blue so you can see the cell nucleus.

Blood cells....mine, lol. Emily didn't want to volunteer her blood, even in the interests of medical science ;-)

SandTable salt


Fashion designer has apparently gone on the back burner, career-wise - Emily has decided, very seriously, that she wishes to become a vet. Lol, probably one of the most academically demanding things she could have chosen - I read on one of the university vet school sites the other day that they had nearly 200 applicants for every place this year. Eeep. Whereas we could most likely have found a way around formal qualifications for entry into a fashion course, I really don't think that Emily's going to be able to waltz her way into an incredibly competitive vet degree course without at least some of the relevant bits of paper. For which, we're talking a minimum of seven As at GCSE, plus top grades in biology, chemistry and either maths or physics A levels. Double eeeeeeeeeep.

Should Emily still want to go down this route in a few year's time, we'll have another serious think about qualifications and I'll talk to admissions tutors etc about home education....and yes, we have plenty of time...and yes, of course she might change her mind....BUT in the meantime this does back up my instinct that faffing about for the next six years "hoping" that everything will be OK doesn't quite cut the mustard. We'd already decided that we were going to be knuckling down to some serious work, so we still will. It may or may not ever lead to any formal exams and bits of paper and hoops to jump through, and time will tell in that department, but for now we're going to focus on plenty of science (and lots of sewing, lol, should fashion design make a comeback).

Oh yeah, and before anyone goes away thinking what a terrible mother I am for putting all this pressure on my sweet little ten year old....I'd like to point all that all of this "career focused" stuff comes from the little ten year old herself. She's very aware of her future and very determined and actually wants to work hard towards a goal. None of it was put into her head by us. Some ten year olds haven't even thought about any of this kind of thing, which is great. Some have, which is also great, and mine has. *Steps off soap box but is tired of feeling that I have to defend my home ed approach*

I found some brilliant and rigorous "old fashioned" science books, one each for chemistry, biology and physics. My Dad was going to do lots of physics with Emily anyway, so that's sorted, and we'll take our time working through the biology one. As far as chemistry goes, I found this amazing book which goes into enormous detail about what you need to set up a "proper" chemistry lab at home and where to find the equipment and chemicals. The shop bought chemistry sets are all very well and good, up to a point, but quite frankly health and safety stuff has dumbed them down soooo much that you have to wonder why they bother at all. If Emily's still serious about the vet thing by the time she's, say, 13, I think we will go ahead and kit her out with some proper equipment.

Jon's been working very hard in the garden and it's looking absolutely divine out there. The vegetable patches in particular are pretty impressive, I think. We have a huge variety of things growing out there :-))

Web of tiny spiderlings, from the greenhouse. Ugh. All very well and good, but Jon left them out of the greenhouse during a windy spell....so next thing we know, there are hundreds of tiny spiderlings....everywhere. Double ugh.


Lulu is now nine months old, and after a very wobbly week during which the stress of everything else didn't exactly sit well with a very demanding parrot, we've finally figured out that apparently the parrot "terrible twos" can start around now in African Greys. Indeed. And they have. Our beautiful girl is adoring and loving one minute and an absolute little devil the next. She's figuring out where she is in the pecking order and acting up, pushing the boundaries, just like a little toddler, bless her. It's infuriating at times.....but now I know that it's normal at this age, I can relax a little bit more and not get so stressed about it. Lulu's a real handful sometimes....but if we won the lottery, I'd still want a houseful of parrots, so I guess she can't be all that bad!! She's just being a parrot. She's doing her job. It's our job to understand her natural behaviour and work with it rather than trying to stop her being a parrot. We're getting there.

And some tabbies, to finish with. Kibby Juliet, looking rather alarmed, plus a rare sight these days - the two tabbies, Romeo and Juliet, together in the same place and not hissing at one another. They were inseparable as kittens, but they seem to have taken a dislike to one another recently. Funny moggies.

Working Out Rather Nicely

Life is motoring along and things seem to be coming together rather well, for a change.

Jon has some exciting news: he's been taken on as the medium for a paranormal investigation group and will be going off on two investigations in May. Very much looking forward to hearing all about those :-))

We had a very pleasant Easter; skipped a big Easter dinner this year in favour of an evening of family games and buffet instead. Couldn't miss an Easter egg hunt, though - this year we hid a dozen plastic eggs in the garden, each one containing a cryptic clue to somewhere else in the house, where Emily found some little gifts, mostly books and the inevitable chocolate, lol.





With the arrival of her new bed and mattress, Emily is now finally and firmly ensconced in her "blue room" for real, and the junkheap aka the pink room aka the old bedroom is now a spare room cum parrot training room. Speaking of parrot training, there's been a definite improvement over this last week. Emily and Lulu and either Jon or I are now making a point of spending ten minutes a day in the pink room, where there are no distractions for Lulu and nowhere for her to fly off to out of reach. Using the clicker and bits of custard cream biscuit (!!) as her all time favourite reward, Lulu will now take treats from Emily without puffing up or biting and will tolerate Emily putting her hands near Lulu. In order to help Emily get over her fear (because the bites do *really* hurt), she is temporarily wearing gardening gloves during these ten minute sessions.

It's natural that Emily is wary of putting her hands near Lulu, given her experience so far, but unfortunately of course that has "rewarded" Lulu and reinforced her behaviour - if she lunges at Emily, Emily moves, which is what she wants. So we have to break that cycle by proving to Lulu that no matter whether she lunges or bites, Emily's hands are staying put. I do believe it will only take a couple of weeks of consistency for her to finally figure out that Emily is a senior flock member ;-) and could do with a little respect.

The last couple of days, Lulu has been out of her cage from 8am until 6pm, in a combination of free upstairs, free downstairs and in her huge garden cage. She was worn out yesterday evening and couldn't wait to get back into her "home" to go to sleep, bless her. She does enjoy being out in the garden though and now willingly steps into her big garden cage. She's also enjoying being "showered" with the hosepipe on mist setting. Jon has been working soooo hard in the garden and it shows - we have an amazing selection of vegetables on the go now and the fence and veggie beds have been painted and cleaned up, as has the brick border at the end of the garden, new grass seed is down in the bare bits, flowers are sprouting all over the show - it's a delight :-)

Home education has been going very well recently too. Among other things, over the last ten days, Emily has studied longshore drift in physical geography and has completed lots more work on the second world war, including interviewing my Mum about her experience of life during the Blitz - my Mum lived just outside London, in an area full of munition factories and the like, and much of her area was completely destroyed. She was five when war began and has some very vivid memories to describe and fascinating information about her father's work; he was responsible for finding food, temporary accommodation, clothing etc for those who had been made homeless by the bombing in their area.

Yesterday, Emily started having maths lessons with my Dad, which they both seem to have rather enjoyed. She had another one this morning, and that will be a daily thing for half an hour or so once Autumn arrives and Mum and Dad are around here instead of up at St Bees. She'll also do a couple of hours of physics/technology with Gramps once a week. Yesterday afternoon, we enjoyed working on the earthworm and soil survey - we were sent a pack for this a while ago from Opal. Emily found sixteen earthworms altogether and had great fun measuring and identifying them and classifying our soil; she was bare handed most of the time, but having discovered that some of the worms emitted yucky yellow fluid when handled - very hard to wash off, too! - the gloves came out, lol.


This morning, after maths, Emily and I started on a study of Anne Frank's Diary and the holocaust in general. Emotionally demanding, to put it mildly. This afternoon, we had a debate about the pros and cons of capital punishment, including mock interviews with Emily taking the part of someone on each side of the debate in turn. She then wrote up the arguments in an attempt at a formal essay - I was very impressed with her efforts at that, especially considering it's the first time she's tried to do a full scale essay of that nature. We've also been doing a lot of English mixed in among everything else and we're looking forward to getting stuck into projects from this Letts KS3 Star English book. I've seen a lot, lot, lot of English textbooks over the last few years, but this one is completely different. It's a series of indepth investigations into (for instance) the origins of the English language, with research tasks for children to undertake and report back on; it looks so much more fun than the bog standard, uninspiring workbook route.

We're off to swimming tomorrow, The Deep on Friday with friends, an RAF/WW2 museum next Tuesday and the National Parrot Sanctuary later that week or the beginning of the next one. It's a busy time, but things are falling into place nicely :-))