!schooling 0000C18c - C22n | Mar 4-9

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Bit of a short week this week due to Labour Day public holiday, and also (or perhaps because of that) a little bit disorganised. We did the zoo on the weekend, spent Monday cleaning the house which was rather festy. We didn’t get around to doing maths bookwork but did some Minecraft related spatial stuff. 8yo’s writing is getting neater and he is growing in confidence writing lowercase. We’re getting less freakouts about inability to form letters and other such things. He’s been having nightmares again so I’ve suggested he turn them into stories. He’s not so sure about writing horror but he has started thinking about stories he might like to write, including a self-insert Pokemon fanfic. I’m hoping to develop him out of the Mary Sue stage while he’s still young, he seems to be starting to grasp the concept of balancing characters.

!schooling 0000C11c-15n | Feb 25 - Mar 01

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8yo

8yo decided to do Khan Academy for maths, and happily worked through a few addition/subtraction stacks. After he giggled at me a few times for taking longer than he had to work out the problems, I told JJ that he could supervise at least 8yo’s maths from hereon (it won’t happen as I’ve said that a few times from about two thirds of the way through last year, and I’m still supervising everything except when I’ve asked JJ to supervise due to work). He didn’t watch any of the videos as he understood the basics behind the stacks and just needed some assistance with the 4 digit stuff.

Life and !schooling in 2012

Apparently there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the moderator department, which meant I completely forgot about the moderation until the new moderator rocked up on my door towards the end of my work period. Oops. Fortunately I work from home and can make up hours easy, and I hadn’t gone out to pick up my shiny new computer yet, though I had gotten dressed to do so. So all she saw was that my place is a mess, which is about normal and I don’t clean up for anyone!

Drawing on the Cintiq

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4yo likes experimenting in all media. Recently I let her have a go with Pixelmator and my Cintiq. This is what she came up with.

Now I have to go to Carousel to get her more paints and a canbus.

ryivhnn v2

Rapture and armageddon and all that are upon us, and as per usual JJ has taken the kids to 6yo’s Auskick game and I stayed home, trained the dogs (could have gone for another 5mins on top of what I did do but I got defeated by the cold) and ripped through an Anki session with a Lojban gismu deck. We know we’re not going anywhere.

Review: Wacom Cintiq 12WX

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I’ve been lusting after one of these since shortly after they first came out. This year, I finally had to retire my beloved Intuos3, partly because it was getting laggy and jittery in its old age after much use (it was a wedding present, wedding was 6 years ago), and partly because my toddler walked off with the pen and I haven’t seen it since. Following was angst over whether I should take the cheap simple upgrade to the Intuos4 or splash out and be broke for a while getting a Cintiq.

Post-zoo entertainment

We hit up the Perth Zoo today, and I finally got around to getting the zoo membership passes. So now we can visit regularly without it costing an arm and a leg! We inadvertantly stayed there the whole day too. Maybe it was the cart. I’ve been avoiding going on the “adult and kids’ prices” days because it’s always packed out, on the other days it’s fine and we can always get a cart. Then the kids can hitch rides whenever they’re feeling a bit tired and we don’t end up walking over half the zoo before they’re complaining of being tired.

Three decades, and some dolls

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I recently hit three decades. I spent most of the actual day finishing up the coding for the site that’s going on the kiosk Sprat and I are doing for the Christmas Island Tourism Association and cleaning for the party on the following day.

4yo requested the whiteboard so I took it down for her, and little arty girl knocked herself out drawing on it. 6yo came in to me at one point asking how to write an F. I explained it as like an E but without the bottom line (and previously I’ve described the E as a backward 3 as that’s how he was writing it, just straighter). Later he very excitedly came out and asked me to come look at something he’d done for me.

Organisational skills? What organisational skills?

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What’s been happening at Wannabe Farmstead? Feels like a lot. I was out with the dogs at the oval when it occurred to me:

• I can sort out and adjust training “schedules” in my head fast from observing the dogs while working with them
• I can work out learning styles and interests of the kids from observation and interaction and work out where to go and things to do that they might find interesting
• I can work around family stuff with minimal dramas
• I can do things for clients on time (provided they get me what I need when I say I need it by)
• I cannot organise my own way out of a paper bag

I should probably do something about that last point.

Painting lessons

1. when you have autonomous big kids who can set themselves up, poke head in every so often
2. make sure they know that the glass jar the brushes stand in is the paintbrush rinsing jar and that they shouldn’t use drinking glasses
3. ditto palettes, so they don’t substitute food bowls
4. choose non-toxic paints in case the above happens
5. never leave toddlers unattended. Ever.

All post clean-up. The projects are stuck fast to the table due to having been quite wet. The toddler had spread paint all over the table and was happily gooping it around. Was contemplating getting a photo but opted to not have him tracking paint around the house as we were heading out.