And that was 2006

OK what do I feel about the year behind us? It was a good one in many ways, far better than 2005, which was dominated by bad health and money problems. But I feel sad that F lost a wonderful grandpa, my lovely dad. However, he had had a long and happy life and it was good that she had him in her life for 5 years and I enjoyed seeing him being such a generous and loving grandpa. It was also good that F came to the funeral with us and that we can continue to have relationships with the family on dad's side, particularly as my half-brother I is, after all, F's '2nd favourite uncle'!
I've been struggling with a format for this end-of-year round-up blog. Tried categories, tried months, but you know what? Both got awful wordy and went off at a tangent. So I'm restricting myself to lists, pictures and a bit of wordage at the end.

3 of F's milestones/achievements
No more buggy
End of physio
Starting to write
3 new activities:
Yoga at home
MMs Monday group
Drama
3 special days:
perfect day on a sandy beach in May, before dad got ill
drama show
birthday pool party
3 trips away:
Kessingland
HalloweenCamp
Pre-Xmas Xmas at my mums
3 things to do more of next year:
Swimming
Reading
Music/Dancing
3 things to do again
Kessingland
NicCamps!
Spontaneous trips
3 things that are part of most days:
Casual maths ('four twos are eight because it's twice two twos' she informs me between splashes in the bath)
Funny conversations
Cuddles
3 things F enjoyed making this year:
books
ice-lanterns
bath bombs
3 socializationnesses we enjoyed this year:
MonsterTeeny visits
parties and groups
popping to the park
3 things F enjoyed playing with this year:
Leapster
Ponies and Barbies
Gears Gears Gears
3 things that got easier this year:
travelling
working
making/baking together
3 things we continued to enjoy this year:
giant bubbles
watching films and Dr Who together with our 'scary bits' protective duvet
XBox and puter games
3 new things that I think we might do next year:
F might start going to a pre-martial arts group locally
F might start going to local Badgers later in the year
we might make some more local home-ed contacts
3 personal hopes:
to get fitter (yes I did say that last year, no it doesn't appear to have happened)
to do more writing (yes I did say that last year, it did happen intermittently)
to buy our own house and move in (just need to save or borrow a bit more for 10% deposit)

And if I had to choose just one major achievement/development of F's that marked this year, it would be her starting to write. Just under a year ago, she suddenly got interested in writing words and even sentences. This has continued intermittently through the year, and she now probably writes something on average more than once a week, with phases of more, phases of less. Sometimes it will just be her name or other words she already knows how to spell (mummy, daddy and cat being the faves), sometimes she will ask for new words to be spelt and actually initiate an exploration of the mechanics of the whole spelling thing. It's been a fascinating and very enjoyable year for observing and participating in this as an entirely natural process - she has moved towards literacy in just the same way that she moved towards mobility or speech - occasional leaps forward, occasional falls and steady forward progress that isn't always visible or comprehensible to an adult. One of the most interesting things to emerge is that she already likes to play with the elements of writing, experimenting with backwards words and anagrams, making up words, etc. Evidence that play and learning are completely intertwined and that children don't need to 'learn the basics' before being able to play with the ideas involved. By playing with language, we make it our own, we exercise the linguistic bits of our brains and, over time, we add something to that language. Also, as a species, our interest in play has always served us well (had to write an essay on 'Homo Ludens' once and the reading for it was quite inspiring stuff). Ooops, have got off the track haven't I? So, anyway, over the year, F has gone from just copying words to asking for spellings and discussing/playing with 'magic E', 'sneaky E' and other such items and turning words around, taking letters off and adding them and seeing what the difference is in how they sound, etc. She now knows what most of the letters of the alphabet look like in upper and lower case, can write them and knows what sounds they can make. I don't think she knows the alphabet itself, but that seems kind of dull and unnecessary at the moment, given that she doesn't have to use it for anything. She is basically discovering literacy for herself and it's going pretty well. She is definitely tackling writing and producing language more than reading, often dictating long stories to me too, or making books with a largely picture narrative, so it will be interesting to see how this develops over the next year. I think quite a few 'home-ed' children find that writing is more interesting (active?) than reading and, since I've identified F as a kinaesthetic learner, it's hardly surprising that she prefers writing, and tends to like to jump around a bit between letters too!

So, there we are, it's been a year, really. Work has gone really well, family life has been lovely and I hope for more of the same next year.
Have a good New Year's Eve everyone and I hope 2007 holds many good things for you. We're staying in with curry, wine and 2 episodes of 'Heroes'.