How to make yellow

The day started early (that means before 9am for me) with J on early cover and the delivery of some books, of the Home Education Theory type (John Holt, Jan Fortune-Wood, Terri Dowty and a couple of others - well, it's time for some background reading and theory, just over a year into the adventure!) and a pair of waterproof vegan boots for J (my lovely waterproof vegan).

F played some Wallace and Gromit and some Sims (oooh, we built a house for the first time from scratch for the latest Herb and Coral, who had the family name typed by F - eewewewedeeweewe - that was fun) with me before 11ish, when The MonsterTeeny Posse visited - and an enjoyable visit it was too, with all 3 children being largely sociable, friendly, cheery and polite, with only the odd occasion requiring sternness and/or counting and/or cuddles and my daughter providing stunning naked spacehopper entertainment, which is always a winner and will probably stand her in good stead in future years at parties. Gawd knows where she gets it from (oops! *falls off spacehopper and catches nipple under Shift key in unlikely bad joke accident*). The children played with Geomags and did loads of drawing and painting - really great pictures and ideas and F did a picture of me and wrote 'MUM' on it (prompted), which is always guaranteed to melt my heart. S did a great picture of her mum too, with (a bountiful supply of) fingers shown clearly on the hands - F has never drawn fingers like that but instantly picked this up and did several pictures with similar fingers, which was interesting. S is very good at drawing and really looks at and thinks about what she is drawing. F did a great lava painting, took lot of time to do lots of orange and black blotches all over, which did give a lava-esque feel to it. We all discussed colour mixing in some detail, due to the lack of a yellow paint pen (which I found later but, because the painting stuff had all just been put away at that point and yellow had been missed and its absence rather lamented I felt I'd better not shout 'oh look, here's the yellow' in case it led to starting all over again, so I did some unsubtle comic mouthings of 'yellow' to N instead). S had great confidence that she could personally create yellow from various combinations of other colours - I love that confidence, always a good sign in a young child, they should have that and hang on to it for as long as possible. D did a charmingly detailed pic of Wallace's hand, Gromit, a television showing Feathers McGraw and a steam train, and a ship ornament on the television.

Our chatting was somewhat interrupted by typically autonomous children asking questions and making observations that wanted our acknowledgement, etc. Still, I think we covered all but a few things, and there's always YIM! Other items that were played with included the Wobble Deck and the Leapster. F was in pretty good social form, which was great to see, happy to have company, confident and enjoying the fun. This time round she and D played together quite a lot, which was hard on S at times, but at one point F and S were being such sweet nice girls together when passing pens with little touches of politeness and smiling at each other. S is doing some lovely 3-yr old stuff, initiating excellent conversations and getting loads better at accepting justified 'no's, if that makes sense (suspect it will to anyone who has recent memories of 2 and/or 3).
I was feeling content, having delivered my work OK first thing in the morning, enjoying having company and knowing I had a relaxing evening ahead.

My fortnightly rolling timetable of visits/activities is easing into life again - it's not an 'educational' timetable, just arrangements to visit/be visited by various people and do things like Music and Movement once every 2 weeks. It helps me to know where I can fit work in and where we can plan things like walks and other stuff.

Music and Movement today - F really started off well, then lost her ability to listen and apply instructions after the first 15 minutes. The teacher was very patient. F did enjoy herself hugely though, and when she did listen, she seemed very engaged. She wasn't the only one having trouble with concentration, most of the others showed signs at different times - it's near the end of the day for quite a young age group. Much parental eye-rolling and general mutual acknowledgement of mortification across and around the room. They are characters, 4-yr olds, aren't they? This little group of six children features such differences in character, it's fascinating. One girl seems to think that she is really in charge but has to tolerate the teacher's assumption of authority to humour her for some reason. Walking back, we got drizzled on but neither of us seemed to mind. Second trip into town without buggy! No moaning! Cracked it? We left the Hallowe'en light-up pumpkin and another Hallowe'en light in the windowsill, as it would be nice to come home to just as it got dark. Sure enough, it really was!

Just before bedtime, F got into telling a variant on the Cinderella story using this pumpkin, with Barbies taking key roles and with Dozy Mog and (at a distance) me as her audience. Her vocabulary was great to listen to, with words like 'horrifyingly' liberally scattered about.

This evening I have had a really good Rioja to drink, curry to eat and no work to do - blissssss.