Homeschooling

Here's a lowdown of who does what-




Bud attends a local secondary school,
Flower is home schooled
and Petal is getting increasingly interested in joining in and doing what her big sister is doing.






Flower is learning her time tables, and up until this week I've really struggled to find teaching time tables exciting- the options were learning the old fashion boring parrot fashion kind of way or using a workbook-neither was grabbing mine or Flower's attention until I found this.






We will definitely be looking up some other Waldorf teaching methods. Petal just loved the fact that she could join in and clap and play and Flower ( and Bud-although he would never admit it) were really engaged and got it straight away.

Well that was easy peasy lemon squeezy.

(The kids have probably watched this video 5 times already and it shows what happened when the storm hit our area on Friday. Thankfully the last couple of days have been much better weather wise and low and behold we even managed a family outing to the local park this afternoon :)  ).


I've heard the what I would of classed as the old wives tale about cleaning with lemon juice and with the girls in hand we gave it a go. I had got some lemon juice from the supermarket a couple of weeks ago in prep for shrove Tuesday thinking it was mid February only to realise because Easter falls in April this year it isn't until March. When the kids spotted the lemon juice I buckled into a shrove Tuesday dummy run.


I've got to say I was impressed I took a before and after photo of the sink and the taps really came out shiny although I don't think that the  after picture really does it justice. The laptop that I'm using to post doesn't seem to like putting photo's onto blogger? so when I get 5 minutes I'll go on Malcolm's computer and post them up.

Yet another storm!

As I start writing this I have Flower next tome trying to write out Petal's birthday card, she sits down and try's to read the front of the card she starts reading' to-my-lov-e-ly-sister...lovely? she's spent the day shouting'. When anyone has said anything to Petal about her birthday tomorrow she looked at them and shouts no.. she makes us laugh.

 I turned on the TV this morning and one of the reporter said that its the wettest start to the year in 250 years! Yesterday we had hail stones (Ice-cream according to Petal), thunder and lightening, rain and sun all in the space of half an hour, totally bazaar. The kids were glued to the window fascinated.

When Malcolm came back this afternoon he took the older 2 for a walk to the seafront because the waves were the size of the houses on the front. About an hour later we had police one side of the road and a fire engine at the other side stopping traffic from going down onto the seafront.







Our 5 a day.

Follow my blog with BloglovinNormally we are a supermarket fruit and veg buying type of family. I usually look for what is on offer and make my selection from there. Thinking about it now don't think I really pay much attention to where the fruit and veg is grown, whether or not it fair-trade or if it is organic my main concern has really been that the sell-by-date lasts long enough for when I calculate it will all be eaten. That doesn't mean that I always calculate it right, last week off the top of my head I'm pretty sure I threw away half a bag of potatoes as well as almost a full bag of carrots because they had started to sprout things that they shouldn't of. So I think it's fair to say that I'm not very savvy when it comes to buying my fruit and veg every week.

One of my biggest mistakes I think is that I don't really write down the veg and fruit I'm going to use for each meals the same way that I write down or at least have a mental list of what meat or fish the family will be having throughout the week. I can see doing that could definitely cut down on wastage.

I've also spent sometime on the computer looking up alternatives to the supermarket there is a local veg and fruit box delivery service offered as well as a small farmers market every Friday in our town, perhaps worth a snoop?

Soap nuts.

Laundry...the chore that never ends! At least in our household, no matter how much I try and do there always seems like another 1 or 2 or 3 more loads of laundry needing to be done. And, I have a confession - I have a thing about buying washing powder as a treat. Is that a weird this to admit? I don't mean I only wash our clothes as a  treat haha but that I usually buy only the cheaper washing powder day to day and buy a more expensive one only sometimes.

Anyhow, the quest for soapnuts  doubled up into a bit of a homeschooling lesson for Flower last night as she sat next to me whilst I looked them up on the internet after finding a reference to them in the book I mentioned in my last post.

For anyone unfamiliar with soapnuts they aren't actually nuts but a fruit found on a tree. I believe that they contain saponin a soap that lathers when it comes into contact with water. Soapnuts have apparently been used in Asia and Native America for thousands of years.

You can get them cheap on the internet, It seems to have lots of positive reviews and the only criticism I found so far from one reviewer is that the recent batch of soapnuts were not create quite as much lather as another batch that they had but still did the job- so sounds promising.

Instruction wise  I've read that you place between 3 and 6 in a muslin bag into the main drum and they last for about 5 washes, although many people tend yo use them until they start to disintegrate and then throw them on the compost.

I'm hoping to buy some off the net in the next couple of weeks and then I will write a review up on here.  

Getting set to P.A.R.T.Y!

January and February are always busy for our family because there are so many birthday's.In January we celebrated Malcolm's brother Tony's birthday and his Mum's birthday as well as my Gran's and now in February it's Malcolm's birthday (on Wednesday) and Petal's birthday (on Saturday). Can't believe my baby's turning 2 already, I know it's a cliché but the time really has flown by and I guess like most Mummy's can relate to it feels a little bittersweet.

After work today I went into the card shop to buy some cards and on the till was a little dog holding a heart in its mouth that I brought for the other kids to give to Petal for her birthday, at Flower's request. Quite fitting really as she spends most of her time not as a toddler but as Max ( Malcolm's Mum's Yorkshire terrier).

Not sure what we are going to give her this year? all the kids are given and have so much ( I guess that what happens when your kids are the only grandchildren, great-grandchildren and nieces and nephews on both sides of the family). I had a phone call from my Mum at the weekend asking what Petal would like for her birthday and I think I quite undiplomatically begged her not to buy anything too big. She suggested buying her some clothes which sounded like a good idea to me :)

A place to start.

This afternoon whilst the girls were playing with their home-made playdough, I was thinking about how to put my green challenge that I posted about this morning into action and it got me thinking that I had a book somewhere on tips and products on how to live a greener lifestyle.


I had brought the book when Petal was probably 3 or 4 months old because I passed it in the local pound shop when I was looking for something else and thought it looked like an interesting read and I think when I got home I skimmed through a couple of the pages and then left it to sit on the bookshelf.


So, with the girls preoccupied in their activity this afternoon I made myself a cup of tea and started reading it. To be honest some of things that I read about disposable nappies and the contents of the  products that you put on your family skin and use around the home really made me wish that I had read the book 2 years ago.


Near the end of the book is a section for healthy snacks  for toddlers and one of the recipes is for apple crisps. Very simple just cut the apple into thin slices of apple rings place under  a hot grill, crisp and sprinkle cinnamon (in our case nutmeg as we are out of cinnamon) which I made for a evening snack. It was eaten before I could take any picture but according to the young critics of the house it was yummy and tasted of apple pie! Sounds like it could be a keeper.