Sewing stuff

As I have mentioned previously, both K and M are very keen on me reading to them and one of the things they like to do while I am reading to them is sewing. The two current media of choice are binka, M still loves making bookmarks which make really nice presents, and felt.

One day in September this year, K was being very secretive, not letting me see what she was up to at all. She adapted a pattern she found in a craft book, I believe it was a knitting one, with 5 simple rectangles. She left the result for me to find on the computer desk:

Recently at an LLL meeting each mum was given a little felt badge with a question attached. M was inspired to make some herself:

And for the grand finale, K worked on this jacket for Tabby Kitten for about a week on and off. She didn't use a pattern for this and I think just made it up as she went along. The body is one piece of felt, with buttons sewn on and button holes snipped in. The sleeves she sewed up tubes of felt and then snipped one end (like you would if you wanted to glue a cardboard tube onto cardboard) and sewed a cross on each section and tied it off individually. Then for a bit of glitz she added the sequins on the back.

One of K's Christmas presents is a craft book & kit, which includes patterns and the idea of drawing the pattern and then it cutting out, which isn't something she's gone for yet, but I'm hoping if the idea comes from a book instead of me, she's more likely to consider it!

Seeing it work

I sometimes wonder whether punctuation and grammar is something that I need to try to "teach" a bit more. I know that the amount that K in particular reads, will mean that she's seeing it in action a lot and to some extent will pick it up from that. In addition to that, I occasionally talk to them about things that crop up on the occasions that we do some writing. So full stops and capital letters have cropped up (so, although both girls are still pretty random in their use of capitals they do both know that they come at the beginning of a sentence and for names of people and places for example), as have apostrophes. The use of apostrophes for missing letters came first, but at the same time I mentioned about their use with possession.
This afternoon K wrote a letter to Father Christmas and as we're spending Christmas at my parents' for the first time this year, I suggested K added a PS to let him know where we'll be. Apart from help spelling 'house', K wrote the following completely on her own: PS. I will be at Granny's house.

Conversations.

In theory we do a lot of our learning through conversations. Well, that and me reading classics to them, which is pretty much what we've been doing for the past 6-8 months or so.
Today though we talked. A lot. Some of it was with both girls, but quite a bit was just me and K, as M was at a friend's for tea.
In the course of a couple of fairly short car trip and about 20 minutes looking at our new big atlas we managed to get from the 4th July and American independence to politics in Northern Ireland, via the British Empire, the Commonwealth, Falklands War, time zones, terrorism, tides and gravity, looking up places and finding them in an atlas and more besides.
It was so lovely to hear K's black and white take on things. As far empires are concerned, she is firmly on the side of independence and thus when I said about Ireland was under British rule but now only Northern Ireland is, but that some people want not to be she was on the republican side. When I pointed out that some Northern Irish people want to stay as part of the UK, she thought they should move house, so we unpicked that and she conceded that it was a bit more complicated than she'd thought.

Granny here

Granny has been and gone now, she came to stay for a few days this week. K & M always love having her here and it gives me a bit of time too. In this case that meant time to be ill! I also had a chance to go into town by myself and get some Christmas shopping done.
M has been playing the piano so much lately and now K has started doing so more too. This is great, but I do wish they would do so just when I ask them to get ready to go out or do some tidying!
We've started making Christmas cards now as well. And speaking of Christmas, we're going to be spending Christmas away for the first time since A & I got married. Until now I'd always felt it would be a bit stressful going away for Christmas, but now we can be a bit more flexible with mealtimes among other things. I really wanted them to have the opportunity of an extended family Christmas, with grandparents and other family around. I also hope that having children around with help cheer my little brother up a bit at a difficult time for him, having been made redundant. I'm really looking forward to it and I think K & M are too.

Some recent happenings.

I'm going to try to keep this fairly up-to-date, but before I do that I thought I'd better start off by having a look back at what we've been up to lately.
For the past 6 months or so we have mostly been reading, or rather I have been reading to K & M. It began with Swallows and Amazons (all 12 of them), followed by the 7 Chronicles of Narnia books and then we moved on to some Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, we're waiting for the library to get Little Lord Fauntleroy in and I've also found that I have a copy of The Lost Prince). As well as reading the books, we've been watching various tv and film adaptations of quite a few of the above, which has been quite interesting.
M is playing the piano quite a lot at the moment, and K is a bit too but has also been sort of composing a bit too (she's been playing a piece backwards with a few alterations and writing it down in her own way).
A while back, following a conversation with K & M about what I feel my job as their HEing mummy is (namely to help them learn to read, write and know how to find stuff out and think for themselves), we made an agreement that we would, all 3 of us, spend a minimum of 5 minutes a day for a month doing writing. We stuck to that pretty well and I think that, although we're no longer doing it, it did serve a purpose. Previously it wasn't something that they would think of doing, but now they do occasionally (particularly M) and it has shown them that they can.
Finally, other popular things at the moment seems to be sewing, either binka or making little stuffed things from felt.

I think it's time to blog.

This blog is for my own benefit really, I haven't yet decided who I'm going to share it with, if anyone. I try to keep a record of what K, M and I get up to but am not brilliant and keeping things up to date and knowing me I think I will do better if it's on my computer!

Over the last few years, since we've started officially home educating, we've been through periods of doing lots of groups and meet ups and others of doing not many, partly depending on what is out there at any particular time and partly based on our varying needs. At the moment we are doing a few monthly things with other home edders: Fun Club, Wildlife Watch and Ice-skating. Apart from that on a weekly basis both K & M are doing swimming, ballet and piano lessons and K is going to Brownies.