Crazy & cosy!

We’ve sold our sofa and two armchairs and bought two of these! Yes we’re a bit crazy! But they’re so cozy and fun and were half price! So if you want to pop round for a cosy coffee feel free, but we only have two chairs so we can only have one guest at a time to see just one of us 😂 😂 

Sunshine & Freckles 

Sunshine and Freckles, that would make a good name for a blog!

I love the sun for many, many reasons, one of them being Buzz’s freckles come to life! Look at them! Perfection! 😍

 

Silly things to do with Chrupki (Polish corn pufs – 100% corn and nothing else – kinda like eating those polystyrine packaging thingies! But at the same time very morish and healthy (no sugar, salt, oil etc. etc.).

 

We made up our own clapping routine. I did the first 8 claps, then Buzz the second 8 claps, then me the third 8, then Buzz the fourth 8. Maybe we’ll add to it another day. Oh and feel free to subscribe to Buzz’s You Tube channel – click on the video and it should take you there.

 

Budding Graphic Designer!

I’m so proud of Buzz today. I’ve been teaching myself to use Inkscape, a free opensource design programme. I decided it would be really useful for Buzz to learn to use it too, it could potentially open many doors in the future. As well as this, he is very creative but in a mathmatical way. He’s never been into colouring or drawing, but he loves drawing diagrams, and if he does draw a picture it has to be very precise and scientific. For example, the other day I drew a sun, you know, that typical way most people draw a sun – a round ball with lines coming out all around. He said “that’s not what a sun looks like” and proceeded to correct my drawing with a non-spiked sun with red heat spots and solar flares!

So I felt that working with vector images on a design programme might be just his cup of tea when it comes to creativity. And it turns out I was right! I spent a few minutes showing him some of the basics, then left him to have a play. Half an hour later I encouraged him to choose a youtube tutorial to work on. I’ve been using Nick Saporito‘s channel, his tutorials are excellent. Buzz chose to create this Heartbeat Design Vector. It may not look like much at first glance, but if you start watching the video you’ll realise there’s so much more to it than first meets the eye! I really didn’t believe he’d cope with it, in terms of the focus and time needed to see it through – it’s a 13 minute video (which we have to pause and rewind a lot to follow the instructions) and is created for adults or older kids, not young children. However, I was completely wrong.

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Buzz grasped the concept and the language so quickly, quicker than I had! He’d hear something once and then remember it. Or Nick would say something that wouldn’t have made sense to me if I hadn’t worked through some basic tutorials, but Buzz seemed to understand it, as if it was a language he has always known. It took about 2 hours, a he loved doing it too. He was so proud of himself, and this is really important. He struggles a huge amount in some areas, and can get very upset and cross at himself (and us!) if he can’t get something right. The world is black and white to him, and if it’s not right then it’s wrong and bad, there’s very little room for middle ground. It’s exhausting for him and for us (as it was for school) to work in the areas that don’t come naturally to him, so I’m super excited to have found another area of strength and enjoyment!

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Homeschooling With Brian Cox


Buzz loves watching science and nature programmes; he soaks it all up like there’s no tomorrow. It’s amazing how much we can both learn thanks to people like Brian Cox, Chris Packham and David Attenborough. Today we’re watching Wonders of the Universe with Brian Cox and have learned about entropy amongst other things. In our pyjamas! 

Homeschooling is made easier for us by the fact Buzz loves to learn. I feared that school may well have quashed that out of him, it seemed to be beginning to, because he wasn’t able to conform to the set way he was supposed to learn. He needs time to explore and put to the test what he learns, to talk about it, to explore it with all his senses, to enact it, otherwise it’s just skimming over the surface of him. Thankfully we have all the time he needs!

Tongue Twisters

I suggested we write a poem as Buzz always comes out with very poetic sounding phrases, but he suggested we write tongue twisters instead. Homeschooling is mostly Buzz-led so that’s what we did. Here they are. Some written by Buzz, some by me. Let us know which was the hardest to repeat over and over as we’re having a competition between us!

Ali asks Alan about antelopes and anteaters.

Busy buzzy Barnabas bakes bread beautifully.

Can cows count cantankerous crickets?

Does Darren dance delightfully?

Elephants eat elderberries early in England.

Gorgeous guineas graze on grass gratefully.

Lily lies laughing like Little Lola.

Silly Sam sings silly songs on sunny Saturdays.

Timmy titters to tiny turtles.

 

Garden Galore!

We only intended to make a little broken pot garden (pot got broken in the latest wind storm, but nothing is trash in this household!), but we got carried away and made three little gardens: a broken pot cascading garden, a hanging basket, and a little miniature village. The bare patch on the village has grass seeds, we will be making it into a little playground on a lawn.

Fun times!

 

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