day 1 - recap

As I've started this on day 2, need to recap day 1 first, and looking at the time, day2 will get done tomorrow!!

Our first day in the home educating world began with us waking up to a white-out: SNOW!!! My favourite, I think everything looks beautiful with snow on it!! When we eventually all made it out of bed and I pointed this out to the kids, the eldest wanted to get snowman building! Because it was fairly early, 8am-ish, it was still dark, so I'd suggested leaving it til it was a bit lighter. Then yahooed a friend who said her kids had already been out and built their snowmen, and were back in warming up. I relented and said if they got dressed they could go out - so, we were snowman building at 8.30am while we could hear all the kids making their way to school - that has been my best bit about home educating so far!!!

I wasn't sure how the day was going to go, littlest one was glued to cbeebies when I dared to suggest we turn the tv off. Eldest was up for this, and rushed off in an excited way, and returned with our box of musical instruments (maracas, tambourine, bells etc) and 2 sheets of paper with scribbles on - which were our song sheets, apparently. These were then taken away, and she stood and sang her 'song', while directing us when we could play our instruments - bossy madam ;-)

When this got boring she said she'd like to make 'dancing dollies', and proceded to draw a dolly on a piece of paper and asked me to help her cut it out, which I did, but was then told that it wasn't right. I had obviously not understood the instructions, and we took a little while figuring out that she'd meant them cut out so they held hands. Nothing like a challenge, took me 3 attempts at concertina-ing paper and cutting out dollies that came apart, until I got it right! So we spent a happy time colouring in the dresses (I had a set, and she had one too). Had to avert a couple of frustrated tantrums by helping her do some of the colouring, whereas usually I would have said something ridiculous like 'you're really good at colouring, you can do it yourself' - finally clicked yesterday that that approach doesn't work, and ends up in screwed up pictures and an unhappy daughter. New approach worked brilliantly, even though I did finish some of her colouring, the dollies got finished, and she'd done enough of each one to make it look to everyone as her own work, and it looked nice to her too. We then had to do the faces, and she told me what expressions and detail each one had to have e.g. smiles with teeth, eyes with eyelashes etc.

I'd spent loads in hobbycraft at the weekend in readiness for our home educating fun, so had lots of coloured paper and bought glue dots (which i'd never heard of before, but looked better than blu-tac), so asked if we could stick the dollies to the coloured paper then put them on the wall. She helped me do all this, only after she'd danced the dollies round the table a few times!! She looked really pleased to have her fab work on the wall!!

She then suggested that we do magic pictures, where you draw with white crayon on white paper then brush watery paint over the top. I said ok, but wasn't sure if I had a white crayon (what an oversight!!!), but she said that was ok, we could use chalk instead. I suggested that that might not be the case, but she was adamant! So...I suggested we do an 'experiment' to see if chalk or crayon with paint over makes the prettiest picture. She drew pictures with chalk and washed over them, and unsurprisingly the chalk didn't show up, then she did one with crayon and washed over that and strangely it did show through - I won! She was not the slightest bit interested in the chalk pictures not working, she was too busy admiring our pretty pictures and asking if we could put them on the wall!!

The morning then degraded into painting (my pet hate - its soooo messy!!!), but she had fun mixing all the colours, first with a brush, then with a finger, then her whole hands - nice!!

We then had some lunch quickly as realised we'd had too much fun and missed lunchtime, and had friends coming over to play in the afternoon. After they had been shown the 'gallery', they luckily dragged us out into the fresh air for a snowy walk to the library. We read lots of stories, came home with more, plus Enchanted on DVD, plus littlest one's bookstart pack!! Very exciting - bookstart is such a fab idea, the kids love it.

Came home and collapsed in a little heap until their dad got in and he had to be shown the gallery and tiny, but unmelted, snowman by very excited children!!!

It was a fantastic day, I just hope we can keep it up!!!