Hot summer days-for a change! · Monday August 27, 2007 by Ann

We have a caravan, down on the river at Stourport on Severn. We’ve had a caravan down there for years, since I was fourteen. Last week when stepdaughter Verity stayed with her son Jacob, we went down there as the weather was gorgeous and Jacob loves it.
As usual, we went to the local pick your own farm to get our fruit and vegetable supply for our stay. As we went there and picked our own, the first time Jacob came to stay down there, we have to do it each time.

We had also invited a family friend to come along with us. She has two boys-who are friends of Jacob and Nancy-so we called up stepdaughter Louisa and suggested she joined us with Nancy too on Thursday night.

During the day, we went all went swimming in the on site pool and then went for a walk, down the river to town.
On the way we talked about river management, wildlife and found some interesting stones to take home (another favourite occupation of Jacob’s-we have been looking up the origins of the stones, but need to do more research at the library). We watched barges making their way through the locks from the river up to Stourport’s canal basin and discussed the mechanics of the locks and Victorian engineering, which made it all possible.
Alice and Lucy took the youngsters down to the park, whist we cooked supper, which we ate outside. Outdoor meals on sunny evenings makes the food taste wonderful.

Then after the young children had settled down for the night, Alice and Lucy and I enjoyed an evening with their sisters and our friend.

Since returning home we have been investigating canal locks further, online. I have also been educated in the finer points of Dr Who by Jacob-he and Lucy have spent a fair old time on Ebay, investigating characters for sale.
After the demolition of a huge tin of chocolates (found hidden in the cupboard under the stairs when I did the decluttering last week), we decided to make a ‘stained glass’ window with all of the coloured cellophane wrappers. The design of course was The Tardis-can’t wait to see it on Jacob’s new bedroom window, when we go up to Derbyshire to see their new house.

After Verity and Jacob caught the train home on Saturday, we dashed off to take Lucy to her singing lessons. Her singing teacher has been away for a while, as she is a performer herself and has been away on tour and then performing in a musical.
Lucy has been learning songs from Phantom of the Opera-Lianna was playing the title song for her when we were in Malvern. Now that she is back to singing lessons, she is learning songs from ‘Les Mis’ too. She has come on so well recently with this-until the last twelve months or so, Lucy learning a new song, meant me learning it and the reading it over and over with her until she had got it into her long term memory. This was of course because of Lucy’s reading problem. After all these years of struggling I am thrilled to watch and hear her her, finding the relevant song on you tube and then finding the lyrics online and reading and learning them-and singing them, all by herself.

Lucy still says it was like a switch that was tripped inside her head-until then she knew all of the letters, knew their names and what sounds they made on their own-but could make no sense of the sounds they made together-in English written words. She suddenly started to get it at thirteen-and now reads fluently almost all of the time. She will still ask for help when it is a ‘bad day’ or when she is under pressure but the improvement is outstanding.
She was reading long horoscopes out for her sisters and our friend last week-they all sat and listened with huge smiles on their faces as they of course know of the huge difficulties she has had.

Then after the singing lesson, Lucy went off again on her travels back to Congleton, to meet up with the guys in the band to learn three new songs they have written and record others.
She will be back again by Tuesday, as we have Nancy for the whole week as her granny, who usually has her for half of the week in the holidays is on holiday. Alice has a hospital appointment, so Lucy will keep Nancy entertained til we return home. Then we have promised to take her back down to the caravan for a couple of days-so we will be keeping our fingers crossed for good weather.

We have just received the local home ed newsletters for September-always quite exciting to see the home ed scene re awakening after the summer hols, when many meetings don’t happen because the venues are full of school children.

Lucy starts a sailing course next week with local home ed peers.
Alice did this course not long after we first deregistered the children from school. Lucy started it too, but although she enjoyed being on the water all of the written instructions and especially the maths involved terrified her and she dropped out after the first day. I am so thrilled that she now feels able to cope with all of this. I don’t know yet whether she will need me to be with her when they are in the classroom or not-but she knows she can ask me to. Alternatively I am wondering if we can ask the lovely instructors to use a Dictaphone when they are in the classroom, so that Lucy can play it all back again later to help her commit what they say to memory-which will certainly help with the problems of home work.

Alice has been offered a full time job! She has returned to the soap shop for a couple of days a week until September, when she intended to find a job to fit in around her college hours-when she decides finally what to do-but the shop have come back with an offer of as many hours as she cares to work, up to full time if she wants it. Alice is now considering careful what to do about it. Whether to work full time for a year or so and do an OU course as an extra-or whether to return to some other college.

David returned from the music festival he attended last week-he had a great time, the weather stayed okay and he didn’t spend too much money and really enjoyed the music-another good use of Granny Madge’s money-enjoyment in her memory.
He was out at work at the local fuel station again tonight, but has now gone to bed early as he has the 6-10 am shift tomorrow morning, to earn extra on Bank Holiday Monday.

I have often been asked, if we have a totally autonomous lifestyle, where the young people make their own choices completely, without someone telling them what to do, how will they ever learn to get up early for work-or for anything else if we don’t make them-or if they don’t have to get up for school everyday to get used to the world of work?
It really hasn’t been a problem here, David and his sisters get themselves up and organised for whatever they want to do. In the case of work, they are there because they want to be and that is motivation enough. David will get himself up and out on time in the morning-long before I get up.

Alice is away again tonight-staying with her sister Louisa’s house. She went over last night and they have been enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend together.

Makes for a very quiet house here tonight-and gives me time to catch up.

I seem to be too busy..... Reading materials-and resumption of Home ed meetings