Bases

Helena plays bases, and this is one of the common games I see kids play. Bases appear at the holiday programme every session, when we go to our homeschool group, when we relieve at forest school, campground hosting… whenever there other children and even when she’s alone. They often have a place to sleep, a…

War

At the holiday programme the kids like to play war “lots of war… raaaaa”  and we let them. It looks like chaos, lots of kids running around with long bamboo sticks and a few with bows and arrows all pointed at people with the accompanying loud roars. Hardly anyone gets hurt, and none badly. We…

What we did today

Helena has this idea for a book she wants to write where the facing pages will be black with white writing and white with black writing. One side is reality and the other is life inside the mind – probably because she is always away with the fairies. This is my version. The stuff in…

Lockdown biking

Like lots of other people we did some biking during Lockdown. I was astounded by all the people, especially families, out biking. We usually bike but this was biking on the road with NO cars just other cyclists. It was wonderful. We did lots of road code stuff about indicating, so far she’s only confident…

a little responsibility

There is some sort of quiet revolution happening… a revolution of responsibility, or perhaps it is initiative. That toothbrush made it’s way to the recharger with absolutely no input from me. Helena identified the problem, worked out the solution and took the initiative in solving it. That has been happening a bit recently. She makes…

Feeding babies

Our garden is in an autumnal mood… it’s damp (even boggy), there is moss, and very few flowers. but we are kind of stuck in it, with the whole lockdown thing… Helena likes to be outside, especially apparently in Autumn…. and is now wearing t-shirts and shorts after her summer of leggings and long sleeved…

Removing the stress of writing.

Helena hates writing. Writing as in the act of making letters and spelling, not writing as in the ideas/concepts, and she even appears to like editing (or maybe not and she’s just very very good at it). Helena got me to give her a spelling test the other day – self directed, and probably because…

Endless weird projects…

We often spend a lot of time at home… but this time so are others so we’ve certainly had more than usual electronic socialisation. Helena has been never endingly busy as usual but unusually has said she’s bored and wanted more screen time. All the ideas I have she’s poo pooed. Instead there has been:…

It’s all poo

Helena had her friend here after not seeing him for months. Every thing is about poo, although we have had a discussion over what exactly constipation is it’s mostly just the words. It’s all poo this, fart, butts.. talk of pooing on heads and other things. Eg “once upon a time there was a poo,…

Free ranging

No grown ups are allowed past this arrow.. I haven’t been past the arrow. The kids found this “awesome fort” after they went down a track to the other campground all by themselves (at 8,8,7, and 4 years old) and then they walked back along the road by themselves. I had total trust they would…