Just because.

It must be totally blissful to spend your Friday mornings like this. He's in such a deep snooze here that he didn't even react to the flash.
He stretched out a little more and started to knead his duck. The ratty crochet square blanket he adopted when he moved in with us. It is fondly known as 'Mr Heaty' - Spongebob fans will know where the name comes from. I combed him whilst he slept and he rolled and purred. Then he stretched a little more and went back into deep sleep mode. Oh to be a well loved and spoilt kitty!

Whilst I have cats on my mind. Can I give a 'Big-Up' to Theoni Pappas and her Penrose the cat mathematics books. Some people can't cope with letters and words - dyslexic - I am the math equivalent, if such a thing has a proper name I don't know it. But numbers make my brain freeze up. If I want to teach J something beyond basic arithmetic, I have to learn it first - this week I learnt to add fractions with differing numerators - I could never do this at school. I found an online guide and after a bit of sweating managed to get my head around it. I know to many I may sound as thick as a brick - but no-one ever helped me with my fear of maths so it's become a deep ingrained phobia. But Penrose the cat is great - I'm learning with J and getting a handle on stuff I didn't even know existed and at the same time am not passing my phobia on. J doesn't like math all that much but he likes Penrose and enjoys the sense of achievement from solving the puzzles. The stories that illustrate the math problem/type are amusing too. There are still some things that I can't 'see' and will ask M to help me. But I feel not only proud of boy (as always) but a little proud of me too.

Home education is always a challenge in some way or another. Most stuff I'm OK with. I'm good at english, geography, history, arts etc and even music but math and science throw me - even though I did O'level chemistry (which I did flunk at). M deals with the Science but the math falls on me and sometimes my lack of understanding is scary. We use sites like CoolMath and BrainPop which help but anything like these books that helps is a boon.

We are coming up to our equivalent of a summer break - when home-ed becomes totally autonomous with very little input from me. It's our deal. I hate the heat in the summer and get brain fug so trying to get my head around stuff like math is doubled in horror. So our deal is - that from Sept-June I set/direct a certain amount of work for J. This works for us - he needs some directional help or it would be all day, every day of pure Lego, Dr Who and computer games *sigh*. From June-Sept he is totally self directed. The only 2 rules are, he must read at least 1 chapter from his chosen book a day (no problem there - takes after his Ma and is a book worm) and he is not allowed to watch TV, DVDs or play computer games until after lunch and then for no longer than an hour. The rest is up to him. This works well and also as we go out a lot more in the summer and go on impromptu midweek camps, we can enjoy the sense of freedom that summer seems to bring to kids.

Wow for a short post - this is a long-un!