Last week the kids would have been starting their second year of school. Instead:
Monday
Their grandparents took them to swimming lessons. M apparently did his first swimming with face in the water, trying to time breathing and strokes. They have a private two-to-one lessons with the most amazing teacher. She’s fast becoming the official swim teacher of Bristol’s home ed community!
Both kids had Tang Soo Do in the afternoon. This is a mix of schooled and home ed kids (well, us and our friends make up the home ed component, but we’ve got our eyes on converting a lovely mum who isn’t too keen on school. Ha!)
Tuesday
Every other week we have a home ed pottery class. It is THE only activity we’ve done where neither kid has ever wanted to take a break from it. It’s us and three other lovely families we see quite often anyway, so it can get quite loud and crazy – which is not to everyone’s liking! It’s proper pottery, going from sculpting clay to firing to glazing to firing. S currently making fish ponds and tea sets, M still slaving away at his ever growing collection of spaceships.
After pottery we all stay to play and drink tea in the garden. There’s a trampoline and swing set, so we often stay about an hour before heading to the park along with people from the home ed class after ours. This week featured the (surprisingly large) Not Back To School Picnic, which was handily in our usual pottery park. There was swimming, ice cream eating, monster chasing, and whatever they got up to when they were out of ear shot!
Wednesday
Gymnastics! I could write several blog posts on gym and the various conundrums we have, but I will say both coaches are fantastic. My kids are now among the oldest in the sessions, as it is not geared for home ed kids so has younger ones in. We often meet home ed friends in the class, and S is coming around to the idea of moving up to the big kid classes with a friend. friend, are you reading?! No pressure but you’d better do this!
After gym this week we drove round to a large park and playground by some other friends’ house. Spent a nice few hours trying to stick to the shade, whilst marvelling at the very odd misty fog shrouding the land…whenever the sun wasn’t blazing down and making us all melty. Stayed pretty much all afternoon.
Thursday
Met friends at the Scrap Shop……another place completely deserving of its own post, and I will do one soon. But home ed people can go on the list to get into the warehouse bit. Imagine a huge warehouse full of every sort of junk/treasure you can imagine. You get loads for less at four pounds! Except this week. We bought a tyre. Wtf.
After the scrap shop we went to a city farm/playground. Spent a huge chunk of time there, much of it was me debating about a scheduled tour of a shiny new police station. Due to my mix up with tickets, we weren’t going to the same session as friends. M didn’t want to go, S did. We went out to dinner, when suddenly everyone decided that no, we did want to go. We had plenty of time so I plugged the postcode into the sat nav and away we went. Then my sat nav betrayed me, we accidentally got a driving tour through an ugly industrial area, followed by two villages in the country, followed by my wife’s instructions betraying me, followed by me wanting to cry.
We gave up. Then out of nowhere (not sure where I had the energy from) we went to the shops to get a few things we needed, which morphed into S buying her first pair of slippers she’s actually worn once we got them home. Bunny slippers, of course. Suzy met us there and it was like a bizarre twilight family trip.
Friday
My brithday! Stayed in today, as it was quite a full on week. Can’t remember what all we did, but I remember us talking about the wheel of the year and making a cool seasons wheel picture. Lots of lego, lots of garden time, lots of reading.
This day, like all other days when we are at home, was full of snuggles and random projects, S writing in her diary, minecraft (all three of us are working hard on building a family world which IS pretty awesome. Cake mountain, a cabin house, villager island, a shark rollercoaster, pirate ships, cave houses), YouTube, angry birds figures, the superheroes and their houses revival, etc.
Kids and Suzy then took me out for a lovely surprise dinner out!
Phew!
A fulfilling and very busy week!
Curious Adventures 