The seasons are a-changing

It's been a quiet few days here. The boys and I have been a bit under the weather so have spent a lot of time hibernating, reading, playing music, playing and generally preparing the house for December.

I'm not sure what it is about the changing seasons that makes me want to clean but I definitely do more-so than at other times of the year.

December 1st is marking our official winter start in this house. We've taken down the artwork on our 'autumn seasonal door' ready for it to be replaced by snowy scenes and reindeer! I have activities planned for all of advent - crafts and parties and festive trips. Very excited to start sharing them with the boys!

Video Games

I admit it, Chops plays them more than I would like. We do limit screen time (with his grudging agreement) but he'd happily play wii or playstation for most of the day. And when we're out he's always happy to play with the apps on my phone. Time for the bad parent award?!

Or maybe not! It is incredible how much he has learned directly from Mariokart, Lego Star Wars and the like. You can practically see his brain working as he tries to work out his next steps or which character or tool to use for each task. Problem solving. And hand eye coordination and motor control.

Plus, the apps on my phone he enjoys are things like Starfall which is phonics, a dinosaur maths game, a shape recognition game which he's currently doing 3d shapes on, mazes, puzzles, stories. Not a bad way to spend a journey I'd say and we do vary it with a lot of ispy, Simon says and making up our own stories.

So, after beating myself up over his use of the consoles, I'm going to embrace them and be grateful for the things he's learning from them. 21st century learning here and utilising the tools we have.

There is nothing more fun than...

water!

We had half an hour spare after tea tonight so I covered the living room floor with towels and let the boys loose with a couple of tubs of water.

Chops climbed in. Roly spent ages filling a cup with cotton reels and then tipping them back into the water.

Lovely smiley way to end the day

Welcome to Fairy-land

We visited the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens with some friends this morning and spent a lot of time in their Faery Exhibition where there is a mini fairy grotto with dressing up clothes, a seasonal area, some books and some lovely natural things for them to play with. Wizard Chops enjoyed it a lot and Roly made a very cute little fairy!

Workers Wednesday

I'm not sure what it is about Wednesdays but as usual yesterday Chops decided to do some 'table work' after lunch. He did a couple of cutting sheets which involved chopping up bugs and pretending to squash them, a writing sheet, a few pages of a reading workbook and then played the magic cauldron maths game. I can see his confidence in reading and maths brimming but he's not so sure about writing yet! Like everything else though, I'm sure once it clicks with him he'll be flying with it. He seems to go from 0-100% with things so quickly rather than trying things that he can't quite manage. Reminds me of me as I'm still not happy trying things if I'm not sure I can do them!
Roly is still babbling incoherently and being generally mischievous in the best ways possible! He's loving books about animals at the moment.

Sports Mad

Chops is into his sports at the moment, particularly football. We went to softplay with friends this morning and he would have happily spent the whole time dribbling the ball up and down the pitch they have there.
I am having a look into football courses for him but so far the one that accepts 4 year olds is full and the one that has spaces is from 5! At least we know that it'll be another 'social' engagement in the weekly schedule once we can't go to the play school groups from September.
Also looking into karate but that's also from 5 and rugby from 6.

Police Visit

This morning Chops had his fingerprints taken at the police station for what I hope is the only time ever!

We were at a visit there with our home ed group where the children were shown the (now disused) cells, allowed to try on bits of uniform, turned on the sirens in the police car and given a small talk on 'stranger danger'.

Lumiere Durham

Next steps...

Not all of these will be done straight away but here are the musings of a girl who needs a plan (for any horrified he-ers reading, he only does this 'adult-led' stuff when he feels like it and we do have plenty of time to 'just' play, honest!)

Literacy
- continue learning the digraphs from jolly phonics (ar was successful pirate themed so try to think of more like that if poss)
- practice pen control (wipeable flash cards, worksheets from twinkl etc. Aquadraw, drawing)
- do more pages in our alphabet book

Numeracy
- carry on practising addition and subtraction
- keep talking about money/units of measurement/time/fractions of stuff as he's interested (getting time game and play money for Xmas)
- find activities that involve counting to higher numbers

Advent
- need to my plan my Christmas activity bags like last year (crafts/visits/activities)

Also more fine motor control stuff (scissors, modelling, jigsaws with smaller pieces)

That'll keep us busy then along with the usual groups/board games/books/games we play. Good times. We're all definitely happier when we're busier, focused and sticking to our tv-free days.

More Friday fun

We went to play school this morning as usual for the boys to play with their friends.

I wasn't going to do any phonics today but on the way back Chops sounded out the word 'wait' on the pelican crossing and wanted to know why it was 'w-ay-t' and not 'w-ah-it' so when we got home we did the jolly phonics 'ai' sound.

This afternoon we played a dice game that I'd printed off from oxfordowl.co.uk. It was meant to be an activity for the child to do alone but I reckoned the only way Chops was going to sit and add 12 sums from rolling the dice was if we made it competitive. He won as usual. A lot of the sums he did in his head but sometimes he counted the dots on the dice or used his number square. He obviously understands how to get to the answer which is the main thing!

We made vegan brownies this afternoon. He amazes me how he knows the recipes of the things we make most often and also how quickly he can work out how much more/less of something we need to add. Mental arithmetic at its finest!

Ended the day with his swimming lesson which he enjoyed much more than he has for the past couple of weeks.

Arrrrrr

Lovely chilled out morning at home today. Made the boys some pirate hats and wrote 'a' and 'r' on them. Roly was 'happy pirate a' and Chops was 'grumpy pirate rrrrrr' and when they stood together they said 'arrrrrr' pirate style! We turned our play tent into a ship and had an adventure on the high seas.
Once we'd finished we sat down at looked at the 'ar' page in jolly phonics. Chops sounded out all five of the words by himself. Yay!

Musings about religion

How do you deal with religion/beliefs when talking to children?
Chops asked me out of the blue yesterday what god does. So I responded by telling him that some people believe that god made the earth. 'That's what I believe' he said. So I went on to tell him that others believe in science, other gods etc but he decided god it is. Fine. I accept that's his choice when he's older but at the moment stuff like that doesn't sit well with me when it's just not what I believe. I don't want to indoctrinate him and rubbish other people's beliefs but on the other hand I just want to explain all the scientific theories and tell him religion is a load of...
I want him to have a knowledge of religion and respect other's beliefs but in all honesty, for lots of reasons, I don't want him to go down that path.
Tricky. Not sure of the answer to this one.

Habitats

We went to Hardwick Park in County Durham today with our Home Ed Under 7s group for a talk about the different habitats and animals there. Then we went out into the park to take a look at them.

It was really interesting seeing the children in a 'classroom' situation listening to the education lady. They were all very enthusiastic and keen to give their answers!

We spotted squirrels, loads of ducks and swans and various mini-beasts. It was lovely to be there with so many friends and we stayed for lunch there with them and a play in the play area.

The only bad thing was Roly taking another fall and landing on his nose again. More grazes, bruises and blood. Poor boy. He was fine but looked a mess and gave Chops and I a shock!

Literacy Update

Chops and I use a few different resources for learning to read and spell - including Jolly Phonics, Oxford Reading Tree's Songbird and Read at Home series', Reading Eggs and a range of other books, websites and iPhone apps.

We went through the Jolly Phonics series today and he recognises all of the individual letters and the sounds they make. We now need to work on the different digraphs. He consistently recognises 'oo' and 'ee' (without sounding out the individual letters) so I'm going to have a look for some activities to introduce 'ai' next.

He's really enjoying literacy at the moment. When I came down from getting Roly to nap today he was looking at the phonics books and using his finger to trace the letters. I love seeing his face when he successfully sounds out a word. His aim is to be able to read the introduction on the Star Wars films!

Happiness is...

..a pair of boys who spend the morning in a railway museum and an afternoon building a rocket to fly to Mars.

This morning we visited our local museum at Monkwearmouth Station. They have an excellent children's area there with wooden train track, a ride on train and big windows to see the metros and huge freight trains go past. Heaven for my two.

We came home for a monstrously good lunch and then Chops and I set to work on sending a boy to Mars!

Messy Mondays

We go to the Messy Play session at our local children's centre every Monday. It's great. There is always a sand tray, water tray, various paints, cutting & sticking and random things like shaving foam or cornflour gloop. Lots of fun and keeps the mess out of my living room hurrah!
Chops particularly loves the sand and water. He rarely picks up a paint brush when we're there. The first thing Roly runs for is the paint! Both him and I are usually covered within a minute. It's definitely a day for old clothes!
The staff there are great and perfectly happy for the kids to mix paint and rice and gloop to see what happens. The news that children's centres are threatened with closure under this government is very sad. We've used ours pretty much weekly since Chops was tiny and I would have been very isolated in those early days without the groups there. Most of my 'mummy friends' were met there. We all come from different backgrounds but all appreciated the groups, staff and learning that are offered. If that is lost to future parents it would be a real shame. We should all do whatever we can to keep this great resource.

Ooooooo

Chops did his usual treasure hunt to find his pocket money today. It was the first time he read 'oo' without separating them and reading 'o''o' first.

Love seeing the progress!

Lego Engineering

Chops and Daddy are building Lego cars and working out how to make them go faster. 'sports cars are lower and flatter' says Chops so they remove some bricks and try again

Chops' Nursing Journey

When I started this blog, I promised myself that I was going to avoid the subject of breastfeeding but Chops has recently weaned and it seems like a big step in his development so I thought I'd record the story.

Chops was always a very intense nursling. From birth he loved his milk and was probably at the breast for 20 hours out of 24 when he was very small. Tired = boob. Waking up = boob. Sleeping = boob. Too hot, too cold, bored, overstimulated, hurt, just because I sat down. He was an enthusiastic breastfeeder! He was a very attached baby and did not settle well for anyone else. That made things difficult at times but did also mean many hours sat on the sofa with a sleeping baby.

Over the past four years he has nursed in cafes, restaurants, pubs, cinemas, museums, on planes, trains, boats, on the beach, in the ocean, at the top of a mountain, walking around Disneyworld, even on my wedding day. It’s been an amazing journey and I have so many brilliant memories of this time to look back on. In addition to those memories it's also brought me some great friends through my Bosom Buddies peer support training and our local La Leche League meetings. Breastfeeding really did change my parenting journey in every way. Without it I probably wouldn't have discovered co-sleeping, slings, cloth nappies, baby led weaning, home education. All these things impacted greatly on my life and continue to do so. If anyone had told me four years ago that we would only just be weaning and that I would also have coslept/not used a pushchair/washed dirty nappies/not send him to school I would have scoffed - but by following his lead and finding out more about attachment/natural parenting, it's made these decisions quite easy for me.

I have been fortunate that I have never had a bad word said about it. There have been times that people have been surprised that he was still nursing or asked when we were going to stop but never in a negative way really. The last time I nursed him in public was when he was 3 and a half in soft play as he had hurt himself. Since then he’s preferred to keep it at home.

It hasn’t all been easy. At around 18 months we had a bit of a blip as he still didn’t sleep at all without a nipple in his mouth. I was working at this point and really struggling with the lack of sleep so we took the decision to night-wean him. We did it as gently as possible and he was still in bed with us and comforted whenever he needed – just without the milk. He adapted to this without too much fuss and after a couple of nights we were getting some sleep at last. The only other time I’ve struggled with nursing him was in the early days of my pregnancy as my nipples were extremely painful. We had to limit the amount of time he spent breastfeeding but he still wasn’t deterred and was back to usual once baby arrived. Tandem nursing really has been surprisingly easy for us. The boys adore each-other and are really sensitive to each-other’s feelings. It’s lovely for me to watch.

Over the past year or so Chops has become more and more independent. He gave up napping so no longer needed that mid-day breastfeed. We then talked about dropping his morning breastfeed first which we did. And then finally he was only nursing to sleep at night.

The past few weeks we have been offering him the choice of me taking him to bed and giving him milk or him having longer to stay up and play with Daddy then going to bed without. To begin with he was choosing mostly milk but as the weeks have gone on he’s asked less and less for it and has preferred to play Star Wars and then lie with Daddy to go to sleep. It’s been really gradual. The past two weeks if he’s asked for milk he’s been gently told no and accepted that so I think the time is right for all of us.

So I can’t say that he ‘self weaned’ as there has been prompting from us for him to stop. But I am happy that it has been gentle for him and for me. Watching him grow and flourish and thrive on breastmilk has been the proudest time of my life. After 4 years and 1 month, we’re moving onto the next chapter...

Measuring

Chops spent some time carrying his ruler around today and measuring random things. He told me that lightening mcqueen and francesco are 7cm long and chick hicks is only 5cm so they are 2cm bigger

Words!

Roly's first word today... typically it's 'dada'!

Also thought I'd record some Chopsisms so that I don't forget them

Sat nav = sat map
Darlek = garlic
Tornadoes = gornado
Abacus = addacus

Sweet music...

My lunchtime band

We will remember them

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Chops and I discussed remembrance a few times this week and he decided to spend some of his pocket money on poppies. He was thinking especially of our cousin who recently joined the army.

Happy Home Day

Quiet but lovely day at home today.
Included playing trains/animals together this morning and Roly copying a lot of what Chops was doing.
Chops requested scrabble again this afternoon and remembered the spelling of a few tricky words. He won again.
We made pancakes as snack this afternoon and then prepared homemade soup and bread together for Daddy coming home. Roly enjoyed investigating (and eating!) the dough. Chops used his fingers, rolling pin and scissors to shape his and then decided to add tomato and cheese.
I'd printed off a 100 number square and stuck it on the wall. Chops returned to it a few times to have a look at the bigger numbers. He surprised me by counting up in 10s. Apparently it's something he saw on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!

Actions!

We were at our weekly toddler group this morning which includes a gym session. For the first time Roly joined in with the warm up (stretching up tall, touching his toes, reaching out wide) and then gave each piece of apparatus a try too. He really enjoyed going on top of and under the parachute. Nice to see how confident he was joining in with the others, all of whom
are older than him. In the past few days he's started doing the actions of a few songs too. His current favourites are Wind the Bobbin and Wheels on the Bus.
This afternoon, Chops and I played the Junior Scrabble that he wanted to borrow from toy library. Most of the adults in the family play scrabble via iPhone and he's itching to play so he is determined to learn! It was certainly challenging for him as a lot of them were tricky words with silent letters or phonemes that we haven't covered yet. He enjoyed it though - and beat me as usual!
He also did some cutting practise with his new left handed scissors. I printed some sheets from www.twinkl.co.uk and he did the first couple. The scissors did seem to make it easier for him but then his hand got tired and he switched to his right!

Numberjacks are on their way

We all enjoyed the Numberjacks live show today. Parts were a bit too babyish for Chops and Roly wasn't keen on the Number Taker but aside from that it was all good!
Next theatre trip will be panto which I really need to get round to organising

Autumn Walk

'can I have my binoculars please? So I can discover nature.'

Treasure Hunt

Just done another treasure hunt with Chops to find his pocket money. This week I introduced some 'ee' and 'oo' words which he managed well (tools, books and sleep).

Remember remember...

the fifth of November!

The boys have loved firework night.

Chops and I did firework pictures earlier in the week and then we all went to a display with Little Grandad tonight. I've never seen a baby as happy as Roly at fireworks, he loved it.

Great day!

Friday Fun

We had a fairly quiet day today. Went to play group this morning where Roly attempted to master climbing the slide by himself. He's almost there but still looks a bit precarious when trying to get his feet out to sit down!
While he had his nap this afternoon Chops and I played a few board games. I noticed how quickly he is able to do simple addition/subtraction in his head, particularly when it's a 'real-life' situation rather than just as an abstract sum.
Chops' swimming lesson this afternoon was not quite as successful as usual. He chose to get out with 5 mins to go of the lesson. A mix of feeling under the weather, not being as confident without one set of armbands ( just gone from 3 to 2 foam bands) and being (accidentally) pushed under the water by his friend. He still seems upbeat about it so I'm sure next week will be fine.

Lamination Station

It's true. My life has become so dull that I am excited about the arrival into our household of a laminator. Yes, a machine that attaches a lovely shiny film to pieces of paper.

Of course we had to try it out immediately so I printed off a phonics worksheet for Chops and off we went.

Success! Look at the shiny-ness! And that pen just rubbed right off so we can use it again.

Oh, and he completed the worksheet just fine too.

Book Review

Chops received this book for his birthday and we read it for the first time today. Typically he loved the tiger trying to eat the boy! But he did also show some understanding of the moral of the story which was not to promise something and then not do it. He was keen to role play tigers afterwards and we pretended to promise a variety of things - not to eat/tickle etc.
Then we had a look at India where the story originated. He was fascinated by the rickshaws, pictures of ladies carrying things on their heads and pictures of cows in the street. He'd like to take me there on holiday as we discovered that most of the food is vegetarian!

Bb!

We started making an alphabet book today. My plan is over the next few weeks to do a page for each letter using different mediums.

Today's letter was B. First we spotted lots of things on our way back from toddler group that begin with B. Chops then drew a bus and cut some other things out of catalogues and magazines. We then glued lentils onto a piece of black card in the shape of the letters and practised the shape of them in his Jolly Phonics book.

'A' next I think. Going to have a look online for some ideas for activities.