The Goings Good

Apart from wanting to scream at the car situation, things are good here.

This morning didn't start off too well when I received my monthly statement from the catalogue. It showed a £12.00 "administration fee", which when I investigated further, was a late payment charge. I wasn't very happy. I knew that I had paid two payments in December, one at the start and one at the end of the month. I had received the next statement and it showed £0.00 as being the minimum requested payment because of this. So I rang them up to complain. I was ready to fight my corner, but really didn't need to. Apart form the patronizing "are you sure you read your last statement correctly madam?" they didn't put up much of a fight. It turned out to be an error (of course) and the charge has been removed. Only £12.00 I know, but it was the principal. I could smile again :-)

The new schoolwork routine is (I'm frightened to say it) working really well. I'm desperately trying not to feel smug whilst experiencing the "Yippee, we've cracked it!" feeling at the end of each day. It's hard not to though, as it really does feel like we have finally found a do-able routine that works for us, and it pleases us all. I keep telling myself that it's all too easy, but at the same time I'm kicking myself for not implementing it before. I can already see a difference in the children and their attitudes, particularly in Tiegan. She is absolutely thriving with the one-to-one attention and gets a lot out of it. It's odd because she has become a lot more "loving" if that is the right word. Lots more cuddles and "I love you mummy" being heard. That was something I hadn't bargained for, but I'm not going to complain about!

The independent working side of things is also working well for us. The children are settling into it nicely, knowing what area are meant to be doing at what time. They are no longer waiting to have things explained to them, or having to hang around whilst I explain something or help the younger ones. They are perfectly capable of getting on with their own project or computer work on their own, and are proving that daily. 'Tis Good.

Our afternoon routine is also slotting into place nicely, without being forced. After lunch we go off and do our own thing; the kids often reading, playing a game, or watching a documentary, whilst I clean out cages or sort out washing or ironing. Then we all take a walk together with the dog, before coming home and doing our family reading (currently Anne Franks Diary), or discussing some current affair or other. Yesterday we had a long (hour or so?) discussion about crime and punishment. It led on to capital punishment and we all put our thoughts forward and discussed the for and against arguments. All very thought provoking, and interesting for me to hear what my children think of such a subject. This afternoon we had a break and just played on the Wii *grin*.

We were somewhat distracted by *something* occuring almost right outside our house though. I have no idea what. Our first thought was a car accident, but we haven't heard anything on the news so can't say for sure. There were dozens of police swarming the area, one lane of the road closed off, numerous emergency vehicles bombing this way and that, and (most exciting for Callum) the police helicopter literally hovering over our house for ages. The police were outside from approximately 3.45pm until 10-30pm ish, and it meant that the children just had to keep checking on things from the upstairs window and provide us with progress reports every couple of minutes of course *rolls eyes*. I do hope and pray that it was nothing too awful, although gut feeling is obviously preparing to hear the worst.

Something new?

I haven't posted for a few days because things haven't exactly been running smoothly. Our wonderful (so we thought) car, failed it's MOT. In quite spectacular style actually. It is going to cost around £500 to get it through the test, and then we still have to have some work on the clutch done at some point (not for the MOT test, but a necessity all the same). That will cost a further £300-£400. Argh! Still, it has to be done, and we couldn't get a car as nice and great in all other ways for the price of the repairs, so we have no choice really. I had a couple of migraines due to worrying about our finances, which really knocked me back a bit as I haven't suffered with one for a while. I'm back to feeling positive about things now though and the migraines have once again ceased :-)

We suffered another sad knockback when we found dear Miss Molly (Chelsea's Budgie) not quite her normal self on Saturday morning. We didn't really know what it was, as the usual signs of bird illness weren't there. Her eyes were clear, as were her nostrils, and she wasn't fluffed up in any way. She was however at the bottom of the cage and easy to pick up. There was a small half broken feather, which pointed to the possibility of her suffering a night fright. We separated her from the others, covered her cage to dim the light, and kept her warm. On Sunday the signs were good. She was lively and very eager to get back with the other birds. We returned her to them on Sunday evening after a full day of observation, but found her unwell again on Monday morning. Sadly, despite our best efforts, she passed away on Monday afternoon. She was just a baby.

Over the past few days, I have been evaluating how things work for our family. I've been making mental notes during our "average days" to see if there is anything that could be changed in order to make things run smoother in our household. I try to fit so much into each day; the obvious daily essentials - schoolwork, pet care, household chores etc, as well as the non-essentials that are pretty important to me, such as my running and crafting. I'm not thinking about the times when we go out to meet friends or visit somewhere, just our "at home" days, which I think we could organise a little better and hopefully get into a less chaotic sort of daily routine.

My conclusion? Well, the morning schoolwork routine works well for us. The children enjoy working in the morning, knowing that they have the afternoon to do (almost) what they wish. I say almost as I do limit their TV and gaming time, and sometimes we do things like science experiments and arts or crafts together after lunch. I do think that there is room for improvement though, so we are trying something a little different.

Having noted how difficult it sometimes is to combine the teaching of such diverse age groups and skill levels, I wanted to come up with a way of providing some one-to-one teaching. Chelsea and Joseph are both at the stage now where they are making real leaps in their schoolwork, but sometimes it feels as if they are being held back by the younger ones being around. Because of this, it has been decided that each child will spend one hour with me alone each morning. During this time, the other 2 children (not including Callum in this as he will just be mingling!), will each have an hour on the computer (with breaks) and an hour of doing reading and/or project work. The computer time will be spent either on one of our many CD-Roms, doing research for their project, and/or visiting educational websites.

We tried this for the first time today, and *touch wood* it worked like a dream. Tiegan adored having me all to herself for her lessons, and thrived on the attention. We did lots of reading at her request (her reading to me) and she is picking it up really well. We also did handwriting practice (again at her request), using one of her workbooks. During my time with Tiegan, Chelsea and Joseph settled well into their work. Working independently is not something that they particularly enjoy, but I'm hoping that if the new routine works out, independent working is something that will become easier for them and they won't be quite so reliant on me looking over their shoulder.

With Joseph, I did some handwriting practice, reading, and a spelling test. Joe can read superbly, but written and oral spelling he struggles with. This term we are going to focus on getting his handwriting a little neater, and his spelling a little better.

Chelsea did some poetry, reading, and story writing. She also set up a prayer diary.

All in all, it was a very positive first day. I felt able to relax with each child, as I wasn't constantly flitting from child to child, and it was also easier to give praise for good work / efforts because of that individual focus. Each child left the table with a grin on his/her face, so that is a positive sign to take away from today. It has been easier to plan for, as I haven't had to divide the work into easy/hard/and harder categories, but instead I have been able to choose work for the individual, and it hasn't had to relate to the others in any way.

We won't completely stop working together, as we all enjoy our family projects. The younger ones gain so much from being around the older ones during work times and they learn so much from them. But after today I can see that there is another way of doing things that may suit us, and the one-to-one time will be positive for both the children and myself.

We were all done and dusted by noon. After lunch, Joseph went off to read his football encyclopedia, Tiegan went to watch a documentary on Animal Planet, and Chelsea helped me to clean out the rabbit and guinea pig hutches.

This evening Joseph went to cub-scouts and got his seconder badge, and another for being at cubs for a year. He is absolutely loving Cubs at the moment, it gives me a real buzz to see him so happy when he comes out. Tiegan had her second evening at Rainbows yesterday (and my purse is £40 lighter for the privilage!) Fortunately my brother is going to pay for her uniform, so I don't have to worry about that expense this month. She is absolutely loving it too, and even more so this week as she got her Rainbows bag and was chosen to bring the teddybear home for the week. We are still going through the counting down the days to the next session stage :-)