Reading watch...

Books spotted (why yes, I'm TOTALLY ripping this awesome idea from Melissa Whiley!)
This is by no means an exhaustive list, I only did it for a few days and concentrated on the oldest two... Interesting findings!

Saurus: Flat Stanley, Invisible Stanley, WWII Stories, Fighting Fantasy book, Captain Underpants, James the Giant Peach, True Monster Stories, Kong the Novel, Starwars novel, Bird Book, various Harry Potters, various Asterix, various graphic novels including Spiderman blue and Xgen.

Roo: Horrible History Barmey British Empire, Kids Science Encyclopedia, George's Marvellous medicine, Captain Underpants, How loud can you burp?, Flat Stanley, Invisible Stanley, There's a bird on your head, Horrible Science Space and slimey bits, various graphic novels including several Star Wars, various Asterix, various picture books.

Wig - Horrible Science space and slimey bits, various graphic novels including several Star Wars, Xgen and Spiderman blue, various Asterix, Dr Who magazine (out loud! Very cool to hear him spelling out all the sciency bits all by himself!)

Fluff - Various picture books including Fred the Fireman and Hot Hippo, Astro maze book, various board books including several Night Garden ones.

Petal - Big Cook Little Cook party cook book (in a very serious manner!) various board books including Mog and me and Upsy Daisy, any magazine she can get her hands on.

Findings - as I expected, Saurus reads far more variety than Papacrow thinks :) even given he was making a special effort this week. Roo reads far more fiction and chapter books than I thought... I thought it was just non fiction and graphic novels and Asterix. Wig is spelling out words by himself now, as well as just adding to words he recognises by asking or getting.

And what happened then? That's right, Stop it lost his temper!

Pregnancy hormones have made me feel incredibly ANGRY lately. This is pregnancy number six and it has never happened before - tired, tetchy, irritable, sure. But not this. So it took me a bit by surprise - I thought I was turning into a serial killer there for a minute.

Then I put two and two together - and made me plus one! - and then of course, I mentioned it to a friend and it had happened to her too.

It's settled down now but it was odd for a while... Not only was I getting huge over reactions instead of mild irritation or impatient exasperation, but it also raked up massive amounts of anger towards someone close to me that baffled me until I realised that it was connected to a past event, an event that I've only really quite processed as far as the hurt and angst are concerned.

It set me thinking a lot about anger... I had a terrible temper as a child - with hind sight, probably the usual tantrums - but I have clear memories of raging and it terrifying me. Thinking further, it's the feeling of loss of control - loss of conscious self that scared me so - and it's also that feeling that I hated about being drunk. I pretty much stopped drinking to any significant amount when I was 19/20 and I'm now completely tea total (bizarre phrase, as I don't drink tea either) and have been for years.

I don't remember any kind of terrible childhood punishments, treatment or comments that would have made me start to suppress anger, I think that was pretty much directly a response to my fear.. but for years, I now see, I've been working - not so much to have tactics to manage with feeling angry, but not to feel it in the first place.

Which I now see is daft - not only because I know that intellectually - it doesn't work and isn't healthy, but because... You know, sometimes I am JUSTIFIED in feeling angry. I am RIGHT to feel angry - the behaviour I am angry about IS out of order and it is right to think I am worth more than that and can demand better (though not, admittedly by screaming and stamping).

All of which has given me more food for thought, as Fluff is currently in a toddler tantrum stage and Wig is currently in a 5yr old tantrum stage! It's also made me think somewhat about violent people in our society, people who have anger management problems - if that's how they feel all the time, then I feel quite sympathetic!

April Round Up

Topic of the Month was - History of Maths



We watched - The Story of Maths with Marcus du Sautoy, an OU series of programmes, and was a bit pricey but absolutely brilliant.

Horizon; Alan and Marcus go forth and multiply - Alan Davis and Marcus du Sautoy, again, absolutely brill, in fact I blogged on it separately early in April (http://mamacrow.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-maths-programme-in-world.html)

The Maths Channel - a BBC for schools series. 10 minutes a pop, aimed at 10year olds I think, actually found it to be quite good and we all enjoyed it.

We read - Murderous Maths books from the library:
Trigonometry, Fiendish Angletron
Desperate Measures: Length, Area and Volume
The Essential Arithmetricks
The Perfect Sausage and other fundamental problems
The Algebra Phantom X
All Kjartan Poskitt, all Scholastic Children's books. Roo in particular could often be found with his nose in one of these.

Marvellous Maths Multiplication, David L Stienecker, Cherry Tree Books (library)

Think of number - Johnny Ball, DK (library)

Einstien, the girl who hated maths (poems), John Agard & Satoshi Kitamwa, Hodder Children's Books (library)

The Maths Gene - Keith Devlin, Phoenix - really good

The little book of maths activities - Sally Featherstone, A&C Black Publishers. This series of books is aimed at schools and nurseries, but I actually found thing helpful, due to the sheer amount of ideas - lots I hadn't thought of or already come across - and the way they were grouped together. For what it was, quite good.

Infinite Assent - David Berlinski, Phoenix, kindly lent by my maths teacher brother-in-law Uncle J. AWFUL, terribly written, stuffed full of sweeping, unsubstantiated value judgements - I threw it (nearly out the window) after two pages. Papacrow lasted half a chapter. Not even worth it for chronology - you can get a far more comprehensive and infinitely better sited one free on Wikipedia.

We played - chess, tons of different board games, marvel superheros table top roll playing (involved dice rolls, number representation of concepts, and lots of mental arithmetic) lots of maths activities, oodles of black gammon, lots of other dice strategy games, some card games too.

We went - nowhere I'm afraid - only maths related place I could whistle up was the maths gallery in the Science Museum in London, and what with train ticket cost and me feeling pants, we didn't go. We went plenty of other places later on in the month though!

We made connections to - lots of stuff we've already played (like chess etc) and things we've already read about (babylonians have a 60 base number system for example - hense our 60 based time measuring system.)

Loose ends to tie up - none I can think of... We powered through what maths works books we had, and I need to pick up some more some time.

This month's howling disaster - weather wasn't always good, and I felt terrible for much of it. We survived though!

Non topic stuff - Gosh, too numerous to mention... Lots of karate, Saurus and Wig are in the demo squad and have performed at demos, Saurus has a had a game and a tournament with his new football club. Been out and about to a park with a large water fowl pond and big collection of trees a lot, also lots of trips - lego shop, bluebell walk etc. Also been spending lots of time on Granddad's allotment. Been reading alot as ever, Primevil (Roo) and Teen Titans (Wig).

Saurus - moods - up and down a bit, but he's quicker to turn it around, and really try and keep his attitude good instead of answering back and getting bolshy. Got a very jazzy new pair of footy boots bought for him which he's been carrying around the house with him! Aw!

Roo - GOT HIS ORCHID TO FLOWER AGAIN!!!! Naturally the small cheep supermarket one, not the expensive one from the proper orchid shop that has DIED. Patchy temper and motivation - oh well. Has a requested a poo chart, and will be getting extra pocket money for successfully ticking, so we'll see how that helps... Been drawing bugs etc a lot.

Wig - Lots of maths, reading, started to write words unaided (without tracing), still explosive temper, but has downgraded from shouting and stamping to 'bleeeh' and rolling eyes. Step at a time eh! Practicing karate kata's alot, and has been to lots of advanced training sessions.

Fluff - Been a bit brighter this month,

Petal - Can kiss properly all of a sudden! Has acquired lots of new words, including Granddad, Ta, Please, more of the boy's names, Choc choc. Building lots by herself. Likes to get out big boy books and sit reading them seriously on the sofa :) Walking really well, can walk pretty far now, if not terribly fast.

I'd like to do ... in May - sort out tennis, swimming, and horseriding. We are also DEFINITELY going to crack out the guitar and dvd this month, honestly! Yes I have said this all before! We're doing Astronomy, and hope to go to Greenwich observatory and planetarium. There's also a karate seminar in London with Bill Superfoot Wallace (a top top top martial artist) coming up! Excitement!

That was the week that was...

MY WORD we have had a busy week! I was feeling a tad better, and we had all got a little stir crazy, so we got out and about with a vengeance!

Monday - we all went to the osteopath/keinisologist/natrapath, which was great, we then popped further down the road to Brighton and went the lego shop - had an AWESOME time, sensibly used the car park so kept out of the rotten weather and saved on legs, and the shop was much better stocked than our last visit with lots of lower priced items, so everyone got something they wanted AND I stayed within the pre-agreed budget! Hooray! We even found the Build a Bear workshop and had a good look round, something Roo's been wanting to do for ages. No football for Saurus this week due to rain, so a nice relaxed evening.

Tuesday - we had the Home Schooling lady visit which was fun because she seems to have pretty much the same ethos and approach as I do to things, the kids all like her and she thinks they're all hyper intelligent and very advanced and so we all get on very nicely together :) I think the fact that we welcome her in and are happy to see her and feed her tea and home made biscuits makes maybe rather more of a difference than perhaps it should? I would imagine her job isn't always easy!
The weather cleared up beautifully in the afternoon and we spent it with Granddad down his new allotment, industriously digging up weeds (I was told I wasn't allowed to do ANYTHING! :D)
and finding lots of ants, centipedes, crysalid type things and other assorted bugs.

Wednesday - we met Nana (my mum) at a farm for a gorgeous bluebell/nature walk - it was really well set up with lots of illustrated notices depicting the resident trees, flowers, insects, birds and animal life, lots of interesting notices telling the story of all the conservation work they do on the area, two ponds (sticklebacks! great excitement!) and lots and lots of tiny caterpillars dangling from trees on silken threads. We had our sandwiches there, and a very long walk.
On the way home we popped into Sainsburys for some bits and also got some more gardening tools as they've all been fighting over Granddad's trowel, and a magazine each.
We finished the Maths DVD in the afternoon, read our magazines and had a well deserved sit down. No Football club training for Saurus, and we were toying with the idea of doing Karate tonight, but had a relaxed evening and early night instead.

Thursday - we took Fluff to the doctor's for his jab, and dropped in the cricket club forms. The boys all went to the allotment with Granddad shortly after lunch, I took Petal shoe shopping (her feet have been growing - width ways rather than length ways, but still she needed a new pair and has been pining after a pair of wellies, and for once I wanted to buy the poor child a pair of shoes that weren't from a supermarket and had not been worn by anyone else!). They all played at Grandma's with two of their cousins, and the boys stayed for dinner, the eldest three then went to karate.

Friday - We had a houseworky morning and changed all the beds, my sister A came round with her little boy P - he and Fluff have really hit it off which is nice - and after lunch we went to the library, took back ALL the maths books we had for the April topic and got out lots for the May topic - astronomy, hooray! Had a really nice time there - the librarians had all wondered what had happened to us, we've usually been there two or three times by the time Friday comes round!

Saturday - an interesting day as we ended up booked up for four things in different places concurrently. Luckily we could cancel two. Papacrow took Saurus along to football tournament, I took Wig - and everyone else in tow - to a karate demo at a local fete, and we spent ten minutes there afterwards playing games and buying toys and books - it was very relaxed and friendly and we all had a good time.

Then we met up with Papacrow and Saurus - whose team had topped their group and made the semis! Pretty good for a team just finishing it's first season! Sadly they crashed out of the semis - they were obviously tired. It was just a shame that it was the only game I got to see, as they lost by something like 6 -0. They'd only conceeded one goal before that the whole day, and hadn't lost any - oh well!

We'd only had hobnobs and Saurus's sandwiches for lunch, so I bought Papacrow and myself burgers, and a hot dog each for Saurus, Roo and Wig - which astonishingly they all ate all of for the first time ever! I must remember the winning formulae - starve them for a couple of hours first! We had a gentle dinner and evening, and watched Primeval (not Fluff and Petal).

Sunday - Off to cricket club all morning, Saurus was in the nets and bowled really well, Roo and Wig enjoyed themselves and Petal and Fluff had a ball pottering up and down and being admired. We rushed off home for a quick lunch and then I took Saurus and Wig off for Karate demo squad practice to discover that the time had been put back an hour but we had been one of the two lots of people (as it were) that unfortunately hadn't been contacted. It didn't matter, as we went off and picked up a few bits that we needed (I had been going to do this during the class, but this way I got to watch which was nice) and then hung out and played games on my phone - Guess Who, to be precise, so we can tick the logical deduction and tactical play boxes.

Sensi wouldn't charge us either, so they both got a two hour training session for free! Only three other people turned up, so they got lots of one on one attention too! We got back and they quite understandably slumped and played their consoles till dinner. Saurus took himself off to bed straight after his bath and watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on his PSP, while Papacrow, Roo, Wig and I watched Beat the Star which we're actually quite enjoying.

We're all feeling a little tired and cranky after all that and are planning a quiet week! The kids want to build a moon base in the front room and maybe even sleep on the moon one night. Nice for me as they just get on with it and I just have to supply facts/conformation of facts when required, and check spelling on log entries etc.

My phone has been AWESOME this week too - it connects to the Internet so I basically have wikipedia in my pocket. Very useful for those on the hoof questions - what do water rats eat, why are daffodils called daffodils, and what did Catherine the Great really die of, for a sample of the types of things we ask. In the past I've said 'ooo, we must look that up when we get home' and of course we've all forgotten. Now we can find out straight away that earthworms have five hearts and no brain, and it's all much more convenient.

I am VERY glad it's a bank holiday tomorrow - Papacrow has it off, and we're meeting Nana at church for a mass for my dad (as it's the anniversary of his death). I'm hoping to then get to the free vintage car show at some point - we haven't managed it for years and I luuuuurrrrve all the two tone Daimler's and gorgeous cars from the 20's, 30's and 40's with proper huge running boards you could ride on.

Hope everyone is enjoying the bank holiday weekend, and happy Star War's day for tomorrow - May the Forth be with you!!!!

Book quiz answers...

For anyone that's interested :)

Come back you fools! Dogs aren't dangerous! - Watership Down, Richard Adams. Also, of course, 'There's a dog loose in the woods' which we use a lot but I forgot to include that one.

Take off all your clothes and have a PROPER bath! - Ok, this one is cheating a little as it's from a bath book called Noddy takes a bath. But I HAD to include it - it was Saurus's fave when he was little and we read it about 5 times EVERY BATH TIME. The book itself is loooong dead, but Papacrow and I can still recite the whole thing.

We're going now Pippin. Never have I seen a shirt so fine! - Both LOR of course.

Constant Vigilance!Don't break ranks, even if one of us is KILLED! Both Harry Potter - Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix.

I'm just playing the devil's avocado - ok, this is kind of cheating too as it's from an adult book - Chloe by Freya North to be precise. But I use it SO MUCH that the kids have started saying it too!

Jam on bread and Jam on toast,Jam is the thing that I like most,I'm very fond. of. JAM! - Bread and Jam for Francis

Time for a little something... - Winnie-the-pooh, what else!

Good tea, good butter in it - Meg and the Mountain. If you don't already know these AWESOME picture books by Helen Nicol and Jan Piankowsky (help! spelling!) then go check them out RIGHT NOW!

This is not a bear garden. - Mary Poppins - probably any of them.

Xacerly! You're ferpectly right! - Asterix and Caesar's Wreath

Oh I'm definitely earning my seat on the senate. - another Asterix, I THINK Caesar's Gift.

A sound like a cannon echoed around the perfumed bog... and the SMELL! - Muddle Earth book 1.

Look Ngai! Nooooo fishes! - Hot Hippo

There are more of us than you! - Meerkat Diaries

It was YOU, blue kangaroo! - book of the same name

Blistering barnacles! - any Tintin that has Captain Haddock in it :)

Well done for spotting any of those and thanks for playing :)