Time to catch up...

End of August:

Whizzed by - we had a difficult fortnight or so with F having a lot of meltdowns, resulting in a 'consequence' of me saying we wouldn't go out for a week and might not go camping the week after, depending on how things went. The issue was not that I expect her not to get cross/upset about things, but about trying to move past it when it happens. Not going into more details here, but things are loads better now, thank goodness. We only went out once that week, and we did miss camping, but I think it was necessary and worth it.
One of the things that really helped was that we started doing some art activities together using prompts such as the following:

Draw a picture of a bad day, then draw a picture of a good day

Draw a picture of something that you did together with somebody else - did you both enjoy what you were doing? What did you like about it? What did they like about it?

Draw a picture of yourself in the middle of a large piece of paper, then draw lots of pictures of things/people that you like all around it

Close your eyes and remember a place where you had a happy time, imagine everything about it, the colours, smells, feelings, and then open your eyes and draw it/paint it
Write your name on a big piece of paper, then decorate it so that it fills the page

and lots more similar - basically good for self-esteem and for thinking and talking as you draw/paint about what you like, your feelings, other people's feelings, etc. They've really worked well for us - just giving you that time together plus activity that you are both doing, to distract and allow proper conversation to go on whilst conscious brain engaged elsewhere, that kind of thing. Highly recommended, got the idea from M's blog having just happened on this post when stumbling about on the Internet trying to think how to tackle these things.

Beginning of September:

F has returned to some of her more philosophical themes - has initiated conversations of the 'why are we here' and 'out of all the planets in the universe, isn't it weird and amazing that here we are on this one' type, along with wondering what it is like to be dead, and other such things. I am rubbish at philosophy - I always want a finite solution, give me maths any day, but I have made a big effort to open up and just accept that we can talk about something without it seeming to me that we 'get anywhere'. I can do it with feelings, quite happily, but am a bit rubbish about doing it with ideas. These days, anyway - maybe it's too much sobriety! But have done a lot of listening and wondering along with her as she covers this stuff.

Other things F has been doing:
drawing the world, freehand, from looking at her globe - had a few goes and got one she is satisfied with now, so has pinned it up on her noticeboard - it's great
reading a bit of history (think it's Usborne 'History of Britain') and got as far as the Romans
doing a bit of maths - J got her some sets of resources for fractions and multiplication including a board game - she has a very good grasp of how numbers/maths works I think - I got her a book on patterns in maths as I think that's her 'in' to it, having seen the patterns in the multiplication number square, for instance - she's interested in symmetry too
playing with magnetic words on the fridge (magnetic poetry set)
playing Viva Pinata a lot on XBox
bouncing and swinging - we finally managed to put up her swing, though it still isn't finished - we need more ready-mix concrete stuff to stick around the legs! But it's OK for gentle swinging so she's enjoyed that
being supportive to me as I worked through the last stages of the national Not Back To School Picnic event - she got involved and in the last 2 weeks I kept her up-to-date every time new picnics were added to the map and told her how many we had - we both got very excited when we saw the numberr get to 30, then 35, then 40!
helped me cook dinner

Me - got a cold/cough now but thoroughly enjoyed doing the picnic event and am so pleased that everyone seems to have enjoyed it - and you never know, all the publicity about it might even have played a part in getting Graham B worried enough to make his plea for more evidence...
It was good to get a chance to speak live on LBC about home-ed for 10 minutes last week - really enjoyed that one, nice to have an interviewer who listens and uses her brain.
Really enjoyed our local picnic too, we have a lovely local community of home educating families here and it was great to see so many of them turn out for the afternoon - many of our children know each other well and see each other frequently. Also good to have grandparents there, including my mum, and to be able to talk to a local MP. I got about a dozen texts from other picnics saying 'bubbles' which was very satisfying, somehow. Photographs and a short piece on our picnic were in Friday's Argus. Whilst at the picnic I took a short phone interview for the local BBC news website - they didn't do a great job but it's here.

This week, I'm catching up with some paid work, then we're off on holiday to Devon next weekend - hooray, can't wait!