busy busy busy...

I wanted to get a quick post in because we've been so busy and I'll only end up forgetting and not blogging for a month again.

We're on for a busy week this week. Yesterday was our usual gymnastics and swimming routine, with a little lunch and socialising with good friends thrown in. We saw these particular friends last week as well as their youngest has a broken leg so they're not getting out much. The kids all had lots of fun pouring water down the drive, watering the plants, wearing the grass clippings and playing with the duplo before we disappeared off to swimming.

At gymnastics over the past few weeks the older two sprogs have been making great progress. Little has figured how to do a handstand properly, and as of last week can now do cartwheels properly too (when I say properly, I mean with straight legs and no falling over). Yesterday Small figured out how to do a backward roll into straddle stand, which he is utterly thrilled about and keeps doing over and over to show that he really can do it! We also bought both of them goggles for their swimming lessons a couple of weeks back, although as yet I am unsure if it has made any difference. They're both still in that phase of swimming where they're not really making any progress... which I don't think is helped by the fact that the lesson is a touch overcrowded. I am sure we should continue with the lessons, but at the moment I feel a little like we're paying a large amount of money for not much progress.

On Friday the sprogs all did some Reading Eggs/Eggspress, and we discussed how they thought they were doing and agreed that Little and Small would both try to do a lesson each every couple of days, depending on how it fit into our schedule. So this morning Small turned the computer on at about half 8 and did a lesson, and then decided he wanted to have a play on Mathseeds. We tried Mathseeds on Friday and it wouldn't let me log in for a trial, so I emailed their customer services and heard back yesterday that they had sorted it for me, so we thought we'd give it a go. Small raced through several lessons as quick as anything and then got stuck on part of a lesson that wasn't loading correctly, and got annoyed and gave up. Cue another email to customer services. Then Tiny had a turn on Mathseeds too - starting from the beginning with the number 1. She enjoyed the lesson, especially the catching butterflies, but each lesson part took so long to load and was then very short that eventually she got frustrated with having to wait for 2 minutes for something that only took her 30 seconds to complete, and she got down and left. I don't blame her. After that Little fetched out the laptop and did a comprehension lesson on Reading Eggspress, and was excited to note that she only had 2 lessons left to do before she could move on to the next level.

This afternoon, we hopped on the bus into town and Little went to a new 8+ group that has started up recently. When she started going she requested that she be able to go by herself without me and the younger two sprogs. As the group is being run by a good friend I agreed. I dropped her off and Small, Tiny and I walked to the market to get some meat from the butcher, and some fruit and veg and bread. Then we nipped into Cancer Research and managed to find a few books for the grand total of £1! (I love charity shop bargains!) I got 2 science books, a Brambley Hedge music book, a 'kitchens through the ages' book (history), and The Ardvark who Wasn't Sure :) Small also found a classic die cast bus and Tiny found some bangles. When we went to pick Little up she came out from her group with a bowl full of bath bombs which they had made during the group. We got the bus home (which was really crowded as it was not only late but the previous one had blobbed), and half way home a friend's hubby got on the bus with one of his daughters and she and Little spent a while talking about horses and then Little gave her a bath bomb... this is a girl she's never met before! :) shame she wasn't so keen to give one to Tiny who was desperate to be given a gift from her big sister.

This evening Tiny asked if she could help us put up our new greenhouse. My mum and I went to pick it up on Sunday afternoon/evening. It took some dismantling, and we hadn't planned on putting it up yet, but we thought 'well, why not?' so we spent a couple of hours putting the frame together this evening. We would have got slightly more done except we had some issues with the base which we eventually discovered had been put together wrong originally (explains why the back base piece was warped when we dismantled it), and once we swapped two of the sides over we made good progress. We've not put any of the glass in yet, and we've to replace 2 pieces that were broken, but it looks good so far!

Tomorrow morning we will be doing our final prep for our new science group on Thursday! I've a bunch of partly written posts on the various experiments and activities we have planned sat in the blog back end. People keep emailing me and saying they are coming and they hope it's not too late to tell me! I've a sinking feeling that I've not got enough supplies, and keep feeling like I've bitten off more than I can chew! I've been in contact with Lisa from An Ordinary Life? who also runs a home ed science group and she has been giving me lots of tips, ideas and support.... so thank you Lisa!! *blows kisses*