A very busy weekend!

M & L did the 5km Park Run on Saturday morning three-legged (although they didn't manage to run as such) to raise money for Children in Need in just under an hour, which K accompanying them as support. Soon after they got back, they went to help out at the church Christmas Fayre with Scouts, making bacon butties and then in the afternoon it was time to clean the rats' cage.

Sunday we had a lovely treaty day planned, including meeting with friends at the Dice Cup, but unfortunately illness prevented them coming, which was a real shame, but we'll try again in the new year.  We did still have a good time and tried out a couple of new games as well as some old standard ones.

We played were Dixit and couple of times and attempted to play a Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets Quidditch quiz game, but after reading the rules and having a look at the questions decided to skip that.  A new game that we all really liked (so much so that we've bought it for friends for Christmas) was Qwordie.  It's a cross between a quiz and a word game, that works really well.  There are questions which each have several answers and you have to collect letter tiles in order to be the first to spell out a correct answer.  Most of the tiles have letters, but there are also blanks and 'steals' which allow you to take a tile from another player.  The winner is the first to cross the winning line, which is marked on the tin and having won a round, you stack your tiles from that word and when your stack reaches the winning line that's the end of the game.  There are three winning lines to give options of a quick game, or longer ones.

The tin! (I forgot to take a photo while we were playing)

We also had a bit of a play with, but not a proper game as we'd run out of time, Dimension.  It's a 3d logic game, where you have 15 coloured balls of 5 different colours that you have to stack whilst fulfilling the instructions of 6 cards, relating to number and position of the different colour balls as you can.  You get points for the number of balls and managing to do what is on the cards, whilst losing points if you don't manage.  It's not always possible to manage them all, as sometimes the cards can be contradictory.  It'll be interesting to have a proper go another time.

Having a go.

The reason we ran out of time is because we had tickets to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  We all really enjoyed it - it's so good to have a new Harry Pottery thing to enjoy.

In other news I forgot to share the lovely birthday cards that the girls made for A for his birthday, so here they are...

M's card....

...and K's.

Just a little update.

The mornings are still less than easy for M (and me!) and she is finding the tiredness a big struggle at times.  However, M is pretty good at getting her homework done in plenty of time, doing most of it on the day it's set.  She has started going to concert band with her French horn on a Friday after school and is enjoying that, although a knock-on effect seems to be that she's missed gymnastics later that evening from being too tired a couple of times (although she might well have done anyway I think).  I'm really pleased that she did decide to give band a go and is enjoying it, as playing music with others was such an enormous part of my childhood and adolescence and is one of the few things that is harder to offer in a home ed setting, at least before a certain level of proficiency. 

One M's main reasons for deciding to try school was sport.  She wanted to be able to do more and different sports.  Since she started a few weeks after everyone else, she missed some of the PE lessons doing netball before they moved on to something else.  Despite having had just three lessons of netball and during those only one match, she was selected to play for the school in an under 12s tournament at another local school.  She was slightly concerned that she doesn't know all the rules, but decided to go for it.  At the parents' evening her PE teacher had said that she has a good tactical awareness and clearly her korfball ball skills are transferable to netball!

Meanwhile, K seems to be getting on well with maths on Khan Academy and science lessons are going very well too.  English however is incredibly slow going, as she seems to take days to write just a couple of lines of the story that is the final assignment of this unit.  We have had a talk about this and that K has been trying to hide the fact that she's not making much progress, and have a plan that she'll try doing the English first before moving on to the work she does online and see if that helps.

A busy half term.

Half term has always been a bit out of routine, as various activities stop and we also try to meet up with schooly friends, but with M at school this time it's been more significant.  And very busy!

M had an 'insect day' on the Friday and we met up at Wollaton Park with three other home ed families, who M particularly wanted to keep in touch with.  There was plenty of imaginative play, running around and also a go or two on D's 'hoverboard'. 

On the Saturday, M and A went to do Park Run with our friends across the road.  M and L did well and although it wasn't a personal best time, they managed to run the whole way with no walking for the first time.  A didn't do so well and pulled his calf soon after starting, so had to stop. M then later went shopping with L and H.  We also had a beautifully neighbourly late afternoon/evening.  Our new next-door neighbours popped round bearing chocolate brownies in the plastic tub that M had given them some flapjack in and stopped for a chat and cake.  L from over the road was round at the time and H (her mum) popped over to check she was there, as the girls had come back to ours from the park and hadn't told her where they were.  H came in to say hello to the new neighbours and invited everyone to come over for a glass of wine.  It was soon after this that K and I had to go to the supermarket to do some shopping for her Scout expedition with the other members of her group.  By the time we got home, our house was empty, so we joined the others over the road.  It turned into such a lovely evening.  I'd made a big saucepan of soup, so I fetched that and H got out bread, ricecakes, cheese and ham and we all ate together. 

This really got me thinking about how fortunate we are with our neighbours.  Our immediate neighbours in all directions are all lovely, but since H, C & L moved in about 2.5 years ago, they've made such a difference.  While various families have always been friendly with each other, they have the ideal space and the inclination to host get-togethers, and we see much more of most of our neighbours as a result.  As well as that, they have become really good friends and have been so helpful and supportive, particularly with the whole school appeal process and subsequent settling in period. 

On Sunday, K went on her Scout expedition.  This involved four Scouts who had planned the travel and food and practised putting up their tents.  They met the leaders on Sunday after lunch at a local bus stop, they then made their way on their own to the campsite, which was a bus ride and walk away.  The leaders were there waiting for them, but didn't help as they put up their tents, cooked their own food, slept and cleared everything up before making their own way home again the next day.  Everything went smoothly and K really enjoyed it.

We had A & J round for most of the day on Monday.  M, A & J played The Game of Life in the morning and we had a very late lunch when K got back from her expedition, mainly because my pizza dough had gone horribly wrong because I forgot to multiply the water by 1.5 when scaling up and had to start again! 

Tuesday K was back at science in the afternoon, so we had C, G, L & S round in the morning, so M and G could spend more than the few minutes they get together most Tuesdays and Wednesday we went to the Dice Cup with different friends. 

Thursday was supposed to be our quiet day, but it didn't quite work out like that.  Partly it turned into a horribly shouty day unfortunately, although it ended with everyone making up and hugs.  But also, M ended up spending up quite a bit of time with L across the road, because she had come down with chicken pox for the second time and really needed company and distraction.

On Friday, we headed off to Ironbridge, picking up M (the dad) en route and meeting C and M (mum & daughter) at the youth hostel at Coalport.  We had a lovely weekend with them, including a visit to the China museum (next door to the youth hostel), a night walk, a visit to Blists Hill, the Victorian museum, pumpkin carving for the girls, card games, a visit to Enginuity and the Darby Houses (plus the Museum of Iron for some of us), and a walk to the Iron Bridge itself.  We had all been more than once before, but the museums are really good and plenty to get out of them.

So all in all, a lovely half term, although not as restful as it could have been.  The clock change has helped make the transition back to early mornings not as difficult as it would otherwise have been though fortunately.

Now we're back to the school routine after a couple of days.  M's definitely not happy although does seem to be a bit more settled and she is still finding her feet with the social side.  She feels that the girl that she thought was most likely to become a friend isn't as keen as she is, and having had a conversation with L this evening, who is on the other side of a similar situation, is trying to work out how to deal with that.

Another schooly update.

We're now three weeks in to M's school journey and although there are still some glitches that are yet to be ironed out, she seems to be settling in a bit.  Generally from what I can gather, socially she seems to be getting on fine and since meeting another mum at the parents' evening we have sorted out a lift share a couple of afternoons each week.  We've only done it a couple of times so far, but M and her friend A have spent some time together after school as well.  In fact they chose to get some homework done together last Thursday after school at our house.

As far as the academic side of things is concerned M seems to be doing fine too.  She really doesn't like homework, but often gets in and gets at least part of it out done and out of the way immediately.  Homework has changed absolutely hugely since I was teaching, nevermind since I was at school.  Admittedly it's 13 years since I taught, but text books seem to be a thing of the past, at least in terms of each child having one that they take home with them.  In addition to that a significant amount of homework is now both set and completed online, in SNA's case on showmyhomework.co.uk, along with other websites, such as hegartymaths.  The vast majority of the homework she has been given so far has been online (mostly maths tasks) and learning vocabulary for French and German (which fortunately she doesn't find too difficult) along with some finishing off classwork and drawing exercises for technology and art. 

Until a couple of days ago, M had been very vocal in her dislike of school.  She has stated very firmly that she made the wrong decision in going to school and was not happy.  She understood why we had said she had to continue until Christmas, but that did not stop her railing against it.  I was absolutely gobsmacked when yesterday morning she said that it seemed like everyone expected/wanted (I can't remember exactly what she said) her to stay at school and that she might stay for the whole year.  I reminded her that it's her choice and that it doesn't matter what other people think of her decision to which she replied rather grumpily that she knew that and I had told her that a million times already!

M has made it through to half term now, as tomorrow is an inset day.  That feels like quite an achievement and I'm cautiously optimistic that the next half term will be a bit less of a struggle.  M is talking about starting an after school activity after the holiday, probably either the concert band or a sports club, which I'm hoping will help her continue to settle in.  As to what she will decide at Christmas when we talk about options again, I have no idea!

Settling in.

We had a lovely but rather busy weekend, not ideal in terms of rest but it fulfilled M's wish to keep in touch with friends.  On Saturday morning M and A got up early (well early by my standards) and joined our neighbours, H, C & L for a Park Run.  M and L got their best time yet and it was A's first time and he apparently did pretty well too, although struggled to go up and down stairs for the rest of the weekend!  Later that day we were invited to a barbeque at our lovely neighbours' and had a lovely time.

On Sunday, it was the weekly cleaning of the rats' cage in the morning.  Then there was some conflict over getting homework and other things done.  That's putting in mildly really, but we resolved it eventually and finished with cuddles.  We met friends who we haven't seen for a while for cake in the afternoon.  We had a lovely catch up and they came back to ours for a play afterwards.  We finished the weekend with K's birthday meal treat, which had been postponed from the previous day, which was takeaway pizza in front of Strictly Come Dancing.

This morning was hard.  M really didn't want to get up and she definitely did not want to go to school.  When we got there, she told me that we had broken our promise that she could change her mind if she thought she'd made the wrong decision.  When I reminded her that the agreement had been that she needed to give it a really proper go and that we were working on the basis of going for a year, that less than two weeks really wasn't a proper go and that we had already compromised by saying we would reassess the situation at Christmas, she wasn't impressed.

Things seemed somewhat better when I picked her up after school fortunately and we returned a short time later for parents' evening.  As soon as we walked in she spotted a friend and went to chat to her and there were several other girls she went to talked to as well.  Having spoken to most of her teachers, she has made an overwhelmingly positive impression, that she was doing well with the work.  We spoke to one of her two English teachers, who said she had an excellent understanding of what she read, could predict what might happen and understand what a character might be feeling.  Rather predictably the thing she noted as needing to be worked on was M's handwriting, which is fair.  Most of the teachers said she was quiet and encouraged her to volunteer answers occasionally, although one (who M has said that she likes and who is less strict than most of the others) said she was rather chatty!

Talking on the way home, M said that she does understand why we're saying she has to say until Christmas, she just doesn't like it, but actually when I suggested that she might even change her mind by then (with reference to doing different sports later) she didn't disagree.  I'm feeling much more hopeful that she will settle in and enjoy the experience, whether she decides to continue or not.

Meanwhile at home, K and I had a conversation about what is reasonable and realistic for her to be doing and together came up with a loose timetable for her.  She had been trying to come up with one for herself, but it's been taking so long that she's not been doing much work!

She then did some maths on Khan Academy, but very frustratingly (from my point of view at least) she got stuck straight away.  It wasn't anything to do with the maths, but with her refusal to accept the standard notation used.  What she was doing was solving a problem that was written with a couple of letters in place of numbers and finding the answer by replacing the letters with the values given.  She really, really does not like the fact that you don't use multiplication signs when letters are used instead of numbers and insisted that if p=6 and q=8 then pq should =68 rather than 48.  I got very frustrated and raised my voice slightly when asking her to just accept the standard notation and solve the problem.  K got rather upset and after a big cuddle when she couldn't tell me what was wrong, she told me it was because I'd shouted at her.  I'm inclined to think that it was more likely to be a reaction to the emotions that have been running high at home over the past couple of weeks, but after a big hug she did get on with the maths.  She reconciled herself to accepting the notation by writing extremely large multiplication signs when solving the problems.

I found out this evening that she has led me to believe that she had made more progress with the English course she is doing than is the case, so we've had a chat about honesty and agreed that we'll check in with each other more frequently.  K is very private and doesn't want to show me what she's writing a lot of the time, so it's tricky to find the balance between respecting that and keeping an eye on how she's getting on and supporting her to make progress.

In addition to the new situation for the girls, changes are afoot for A too.  It's not entirely settled yet, but it's very likely that he will be changing jobs soon.  Assuming this goes to plan, the new situation will mean possibly more travel (although less of the very long day trips that he currently has), including around a week each month in Amsterdam from January.  The biggest change, however, will be that when he is here he will be working from home rather than going to an office in town each day.  We told the girls this at the weekend and their reaction was a unison, 'Working from home?  That's just wrong!'  Another new thing to get used to.
 

A week in.

It's been a tough one.  Very tough and very emotional.  There have been tears (M's and mine), lots of cuddles and talking and a bit of shouting.

Although M had anticipated that school would be hard to start with, neither of us really appreciated just how hard she would find it.  The first day was, of course, a massive culture shock.  She knew nobody in her year and only a couple of older acquaintances from gymnastics in any other years.  In addition she started a few weeks after everyone else, so they are just about at the point where they know what they're doing and where they're going.  The final straw was that we had arranged to meet in reception after school, just for the first day, and she didn't turn up.  She had been swept out of school with everyone else and not allowed back in by the builders who control the path through the demolition site of the old school buildings.  There was absolutely no mobile phone coverage, so she hadn't managed to contact me and vice versa.  After 10 minutes or so of waiting, with various teachers looking around the school for her, one of the teachers and I went to look outside, where I found her waiting by the car.  She had managed to hold it together until that point...just.

Since then M has not wanted to go to school.  She accepts that she needs to give it longer and that it's very early days and that there's a lot to get used to, but she doesn't want to go.  I don't think the work has been a problem, although in most of the lessons they seem to be part way through various projects.  The one subject for which she'd been put into the top set and was completely out of her depth that was an issue was maths, but she's now been moved and her form tutor is now her teacher, so I'm hopeful that will improve.  There are some subjects that she quite likes, PE and technology in particular.  Some of her first impressions were that 'everybody swears and people have drawn penises on the chairs'.  Although she's been very clear that she does not like school, every day so far there has been something that has been either 'okay' or she has liked. 

As far as friendships are concerned, M is very mature and realises that they take time.  She has said that there are people who are friendly, but that she doesn't know if they are being nice because she's new or if they really like her, so we've talked about those people being potential friends.

Her form tutor has been excellent.  He has been very responsive to emails and phoned yesterday for a chat, although since I was just on my way to pick her up (Wednesday is the only day I can't pick her up at the end of school, so she stayed to do homework in the library, which is an option until 4pm) I met him rather than talking on the phone.  He has been very supportive and helpful sorting out a couple of issues that we've brought up and he is clearly very on the ball, putting extra support in place very quickly when he has noticed it was needed.

We are all aware that it's still very early days but given how hard M is finding it, rather than keeping to what we originally said, that it would be for a year (although with the caveat that we would of course take her out if she was very unhappy), we have said we'll take it a term at a time.  Knowing that if things are no better (and I do think that they are improving slowly) by Christmas she won't necessarily have to go back has helped M somewhat.

It's parents' evening on Monday, which will be interesting.  I'm aware that the teachers won't have much to say, given that it will only have been school days, so some may only have seen her once or twice, but I see it as a good way to get to know the school better and see if there's anything we can do at home to support M.  It will also be my first parents' evening as a parent; I've been to them as a pupil and a teacher, so this will complete the set!

And in other news, it's K's birthday today.  She's turned 13, which is pronounced 'tenty-three' because she does not want to be a teenager.  She got up at 6.50am, so that she could open at least some of her presents with the whole family there before A had to leave to at 7.05am to catch a train.

Working towards a new normal.

Last Friday we went to visit the school at which M had been offered a place when we first applied for a school place at our local school back in June.  We have had several very stressful months, which were very much focused on one goal.  It was only after finding out that we were not successful in that goal, that M was in a position where she could really consider other school alternatives to continuing with home education.  Given that we would have inevitably had to go through another appeal process for any of the other three local schools with the chance of success being probably slimmer, we did not consider those.

However, one of the things that stood out for me about M's decision regarding school was that she 'didn't want never to have been to school'; that she wanted to experience it.  So knowing that we could visit another school and there would definitely be a place for her if she and (to a lesser extent) we liked it, it made sense to do so and M agreed.  So on Friday we, that's M, A & I, went along to have a look around SNA.  It's a brand new building (they are still knocking down the old ones) that they have only moved into this term.  As at 'the other place' (that's what we now call the local school), a deputy head showed us around, but that's pretty much where the similarity ends.  There was no feeling of being whisked around as fast as possible, and we all sat down together and had plenty of opportunity to ask questions afterwards as well as while we were being shown around.  Because the school is not ridiculously overfull the class sizes will be smaller and it sounds as though there will be flexibility of movement between sets if necessary as a result.  The school itself is less than half the size too, which I see as a very good thing.  The only things which SNA compared unfavourably against 'the other place' were the distance (it's definitely not walkable, so either a car ride, at least to start with, or the bus) and therefore logistical difficulties of clashes with K's home ed activities and that M does not know anyone in her year group there although she did wave to a couple of older girls she knows from gymnastics though.

It's always handy to have insider knowledge, which we don't have about SNA to the same extent as we do for 'the other place'.  However, a colleague of A's has family in the area whose children have been through the school and who is the sort of person who knows everyone locally and from what we have heard through those channels the school has a very good reputation for the pastoral side of things.

Following our visit we asked M to make a decision by Monday evening.  We wanted to give her time to think it over and the chance to talk to people if she wanted to.  She did have another chat on Saturday with her lovely friend/neighbour/childsitter, who is doing A-levels this year at 'the other place' and has been so helpful and supportive of M throughout the whole process.  The pros and cons list that they did together and that we then added a few more things to was really helpful.  When I asked M what she was feeling about the option of going to school on a scale of 1 (definitely not going) to 10 (definitely going) she told me she was on about 5.5.  By this morning, I thought that she had probably decided and that she was going to go and I think that she's made the right decision for her for now.  I shared my thoughts with her; that if she thinks she will want to experience school at some point now is a sensible time to do it and that although she had wanted to go to school with her friends, she would make new friends quickly at SNA and that didn't mean she'd lose touch with her old ones.  Also I reminded her that one of things she'd said when she originally decided she did want to go to school back in May, was about wanting to experience school and that she would be doing that and that this decision was about this year and we would review it at the end of the academic year anyway.  If school doesn't suit her, then she can return to home ed and she will have got out of the experience one of the things that she wanted and if it does then she can continue.  Finally, I encouraged her to tell me sooner if she had decided, because it would be useful to hand in the form as soon as possible if she did want to go and the fact that we had both filled in the form (there were two copies in the pack we'd been given on Friday) in the morning meant that we were ready to do so.

Around lunch time M decided and told me that she does want to go, so I phoned the school and arranged to take the forms and speak to someone at the same time about starting.  It was a different member of staff from last time, but just as helpful and welcoming.  She asked my opinion on how best to integrate M into school and offered the option of part time for the first week.  I said that I thought diving straight in might be better, but that doing so mid-week rather than a Monday would be a good idea if we went for that and asked M what she thought.  M said she didn't mind, so we agreed a starting day of this Thursday.  That just about gives us time to sort out her uniform and some last bits and pieces.

This is going to take some getting used to and M is really rather nervous, as am I, but I am confident that the school will help her with the transition to school and whether this is the end of the road of home education or merely a pause, she will be okay.