Reflections.

Week three of home educating: the highlights.

On Monday James and I visited an animal welfare centre and spent some time hanging out with the cats, with a view to possibly adopting one. By the time we left we had fallen for a beautiful black cat called Angel. Fast forward a few days and Angel is now our cat. She is currently hiding under a cupboard in the conservatory and only came out briefly during the night to scale the windowsill and knock some stuff onto the floor. I think she must have scared herself silly as she's back under the cupboard with a look on her cute little face that says 'leave me alone'. However for a couple of hours when she first arrived home, she had a little nosey around the room and seemed, well, not too offended. James also dug out some cat-related books at the library on Wednesday and since then he's been discovering the best ways to settle the cat in to our home and how to look after her in general. (This will all help towards getting his Animal Care badge at Beavers in a few weeks' time.)

On Tuesday we got up dead early and drove to Plymouth, where we checked out the City Museum. There we found, amongst other bits and bobs, some mummified animals from Ancient Egypt, a Hippopotamus skull, various bird skeletons, and some African musical instruments and games which the boys enjoyed playing.

The rest of the week included a steady mix of maths (digital and analogue clocks), English (writing all about 'me') and science (the human body) workbook pages, diary writing, Beavers, and Gruffalo play preparation. James and I worked out how we were going to make the various set pieces - Owl's treetop house, Fox's underground house and Snake's logpile house, as well as the rocks, the stream and the lake, all out of large cardboard boxes. We found some pink fur for the mouse's ears and tail, some orange fur for the fox, and some brown fur for the Gruffalo. We haven't got to the filming part yet, as we are a bit behind with making the costumes. We're going to do lots of painting and costume-making this week, and I'm going to help James make the invitations on the computer for family and friends to come and watch the play later in the week.

There have been some tricky times, but I've decided not to focus on those. All in all, I feel that we have found a happy medium between the structure of the first week and the freedom of the second. It is still very early days, and we are both adjusting to the new pattern of living. We are finding our way, and it feels good. Challenging. But good.