The week before XMyth

Blokey is back at work for 4 days, then he's off for Christmas. Sam has been battling one illness or another for weeks. This last week it's been a nasty dose of conjunctivitis, thankfully, today it's starting to improve. Trying to keep his eyes ( and hands) clean, putting antibiotic drops in his eyes regularly and keeping him calm whilst I did these things has been 'interesting'.

He's up early Monday morning firing loads of questions at me. I escaped for a run before Blokey went to work, and thankfully his meds have settled him down by the time I returned. As Owen has now got up, they both decide that they don't want to 'do ANY learning today'. I had planned on winding things down anyway so just asked if I could watch Blue Planet after my breakfast. The children had already started watching Vincent and the Dr. We love this episode, and they keep pausing it to ask me questions about Vincent Van Gogh, the Impressionists, mental health, synesthiesia, Paris and Art.

We look at some of Van Goghs paintings.

I explained how clever this particular episode is, many of the scenes are reconstructed using Vincent's paintings and sketches, we laugh at his Scottish accent and the anomalies that are woven into the script.

Starry night sparks a theory on this and we had a long debate.

And I did my usual embarrassing Mum thing where I cried at the final scenes.

Next we watched Blue Planet - Coasts.

Again pausing the programme and talking through some of the filming that intruded the children. So yeah...no learning going on here at all 😱🤔

There then followed a lengthy discussion about a Minecraft and the new features recently added. You can now collect fish and marine life in a bucket. There are also blocky Dolphins, sunfish, swordfish and coral now on the servers. 

Sam: I can see a large aquarium coming to our server in the very near future.

Owen was up first today, looked after his pet snail, without being reminded and also showered and brushed his teeth without incident!

After breakfast he built a fabby rollercoaster in Minecraft.

Sam slept in and was rather interesting to pin down for the first hour an a half he's trying to speak to me in a mishmash of broken German and Dutch. As I speak neither, and he's got a very faint grasp on both, it makes for much frustration. I made 'chocolate bread', which thankfully seemed to help proceedings along. 

We then went through the resources cupboard and played Wildcraft. Always a fav game with Peanut, although he still can't look at the hornet or wasp sting hazard cards, they scare him still.

Sam also worked on his English.

Sam and I chatted about his plans regarding marine biology and I reminded him that next year he will be old enough to try scuba diving. He's been thinking a lot about the wildlife camera documentary, he thinks he would like to be an underwater cameraman

It was the last Jujitsu of the year...so that means games and Christmas hats are in order.

On Wednesday, a friends illness means a change of plans, so we all spend time giving the house a spruce up. The boys are getting so much better at this and I can leave them to certain tasks with confidence now.

After we had done our jobs we water the first of the Masterchef finals ..final week! Exciting.

Later they played with with their local and non local mates ( online )  and we had a quick visit from some of our home ed friends.

The following day we watched another of the Masterchef professionals.

Sam baked some more of his 'chocolate breadzzzz'.