Update on my 100 Things!

Back in July, I wrote my 100th blog post. It was a list of 100 things I want to do within the next....how-ever-many-years.

I've just had a quick read of it and realised I had quite a few things to cross off, more things than I thought!  Those worth a mention are as follows:

No.6 was to get my Folksy shop up and running.

• Well, here is the link to my shop: Top Floor Treasures.  I hope you'll have a look and let me know what you think (not much stock yet, but it's getting there!)  I have also set up a Top Floor Treasures blog (not many posts, again, getting there! lol) and a TopFloorT Twitter account (yes I've been a busy bee!)

No.25 was quite an important one for me.

• I wanted to take Amber to see her great grandmother's grave as she wasn't able to attend the funeral last year. We don't live nearby so it's been difficult to get there.  Several times this summer we passed by on the way to/from somewhere else but either forgot or just didn't have time.  Last time we passed through, we went. Amber didn't appear to be sad or anything, and I see this as a good thing. She only has the very vaguest of memories of my Nan before she became ill, when she had a normal brain, unafflicted by Alzheimers.  These are good memories and I will make sure she never forgets them. She also has some fun memories of things they did together after my Nan started to get ill, but before she went into a care home.  After that, we have memories we'd perhaps rather forget.  I'm glad Amber now knows where her great grandma's grave is and I'm confident she'll be able to find it if she ever wants to show her future children.  She also had a look at her great great grandmother's grave (someone neither of us ever knew).  There are several other family graves in that cemetery and I feel it's important she knows who they were, and what sort of people she descends from.

No's 32 and 33 - Be supportive of whatever Amber and Jason decide to do.

• Amber is extremely focussed on her dream of one day becoming an actress.  I have supported (and continue to support) her in the things she does with her Youth Theatre Group and I have recently agreed to her joining the Paul Nicholas School of Acting & Performing Arts, which she attends every weekend.  She knows it is going to be difficult for me to continue to be able to afford her attending both these groups each week, but I hope she also knows that I want her to succeed in her goals, and I will fund it for as long as I possibly can (and IF the money runs out we will have to have a family whip-round or something! lol.) 
  
• Jason is also very focussed on what he wants to do for a living: restoring old VWs.  I have been (and will continue to be) supportive by helping out where I can - painting, rubbing down, etc (the easy bits!) and helping with his blog for as long as he wants me to.

No.45 - Sell the things I no longer want on Ebay.

• Finally! I have got round to selling all but 2 of Amber's old fancy dress costumes and old Brownie uniforms on Ebay.  Hurrah! These have been taking up space for YEARS, lol.  Bizarrely, the costume that had the most damage (rips, stains, bits come unstitched) attracted lots of bidders, while there were identical *perfect* costumes listed for less money. Weird, eh?

No.47

• Well, my trusty 6 year old reconditioned computer was threatening to have a disastrous and ugly death, so those thousands of photos finally made their way onto CDs.  Which reminds me, have taken loads more since then.....better get them on CD too!! Hope it doesn't take me another 6 years because I really don't think this computer is going to last that long (and that's *after* Jason has changed the motherboard and done various other things to it!)

No.98

• Yes, I DID have a better birthday this year :-)
  

Photo Catch-Up

Lots of photos of things we've done/places we've been since I last did a proper post!

Visited the Tower of London...

Visited the Science Museum...

Went to Holt Hall Field Study Centre Open Day...

Been to a Rare Breeds Centre...


Jumped in autumn leaves...


Been to Sandringham and played in the Queen's garden...

Been on holiday to the seaside....


Been for a look inside Ely Cathedral...

Attended a mosaic workshop and made a photo frame...

Amber came up with a slogan and made her own Home Ed t-shirt...
(photo copyright Matthew Usher for the EDP newspaper)

Took part in the national Not Back To School Picnic event...

Phew!
I'm exhausted just looking at what we've been up to, and there's been much more besides!!

The 2007 Guidelines for Local Authorities on Elective Home Education

OK I've had a very long blog-break, we've done so much over the last 6 weeks that I don't know where to start! But we'll get to that in my next post....when I've got a bit more time.

Right now, the most important thing I've got to say is this: it would seem that around the time of the deadline for submitting evidence to the Select Committee Inquiry into the home education review, the 2007 Government Guidelines for Local Authorities on Elective Home Education have suspiciously gone missing from the Department of Clothes, Shoes and Frillypants! (the nickname was inspired by Ruth at The Jumps who has a better one - this particular government department really don't deserve our respect in calling them their proper name.)

Luckily, some excellent home education bloggers had kept a copy of these very important CURRENT guidelines! It does seem very suspicious to me that they would go missing from their usual place online at a time when many people and LAs may need to refer to them. Maybe all this suspicion directed at us law-abiding home educators has made us paranoid, but people NEED to be able to refer to those guidelines! So, as many people linking to them as possible, as in the above link, is necessary to get them to the No.1 spot in Google's page-rank.

Why don't YOU link to them too? And when you do, please link back to Renegade Parent.
Thank you :-)

Others who have blogged this issue, and who may have more info are:

Merry ---> Where have all the guidelines gone?

Debs ---> 2007 Elective Home Education Guidelines removed from DCSF website

BlogDial ---> 2007 Guidelines for Local Authorities on Elective Home Education

Ruth ---> The mystery of the missing guidelines

Maire ---> 2007 Guidelines for Local Authorities on Elective Home Education

Globeonmytable ---> EHE Guidelines 2007

AEUK ---> Missing: The 2007 Elective Home Education Guidelines

Lynn ---> 2007 Guidelines for Local Authorities on Elective Home Education

Elaine ---> Elective Home Education Guidelines 2007 England

Firebird ---> Farewell 2007 Guidelines for Local Auhtorities on Elective Home Education

Fun weekend!

On Saturday, we went to visit Jason's parents and then later on Amber went to the wedding reception of my mum's next-door neighbours. She had fun, playing with the other children there and made some new friends.

On Sunday, we took ourselves off to RAF Marham. They were hosting the Richard Burns Memorial Rally for the second year. We've only ever seen rally cars on TV, so thought it would be fun to go and watch them race around the airbase. (Some great photos of the rally cars can be found here.)

An added bonus was a flypast by the Red Arrows (see video below) and a Lancaster Bomber. It was a hot, sunny, noisy day and lovely to spend it outdoors with the people I care about most.

When we got home, Amber went down to her granny's house for tea, while Jason and I had a big meal and watched a cheesy Sunday film :)

Dragon Day

Our local library (and many others, I believe) are running a Quest Seekers reading challenge over the school summer holidays. The idea is to get kids reading more. They have to read 6 library books over the holidays and they get a set of stickers to put on their special Quest Seekers poster for each book they read.

Amber completed this task very quickly as she is a proper book-worm and reads one or two long books every day.

This morning, our library put on an event for the children taking part. There were about 50 children there, all packed into the small children's area with their adults. One of the librarians read a couple of stories to the excited children and then it quickly turned into complete chaos when she said that they would then move on to making shields.

There were about 50 children all crowded around one desk, trying to grab the paper, the best pens, the glue sticks, the scissors, and the sticky tape. Mayhem!

Amber ended up with the last few stubby pieces of broken crayons and set to work. It was so crowded, with everyone sat on the floor and people trying to squeeze past everyone else, that we eventually moved to a different part of the library and had a desk to ourselves! Here's Amber's shield:Amber then entered a competition to come up with a name for a dragon, and chose Diego...then changed her mind and chose Drusilla (I saw some of the other entries - Lucy, Bertie, Roger...)

Next it was time for the dragon hunt. Amber was given a sheet of paper with questions about dragons, and had to find the answers by searching all over the library for the small posters that were put up with details about all different dragons.

Unfortunately, we must have taken too long over the shield and the dragon name, because on returning to the children's area, we discovered everyone else but one other child had gone home! The librarian had taken down all the dragon posters and put them in a pile on a desk. So we read through them all and were happily finding the answers when the other child's mum said "ooh we should swap answers with you". I smiled at her, but was thinking what a cheeky woman! She obviously couldn't be bothered to help her daughter find the answers and would prefer that she cheat.

OK, I know it wasn't a competition, and I'm probably over-reacting but it was something for each child to do on their own and I just thought it was bad manners really! It was something fun for our children to do, and she seemed to just want to get it over with by copying the answers Amber had. People like that annoy me! Maybe it's just me. I just don't see the point in bothering to do it at all if you're not going to do it properly.

Anyway, we got it finished, Amber enjoyed herself, and we're going back next Thursday for another event. Then in early September there will be a Quest Seekers presentation of medals for those who completed the challenge, which Amber is really looking forward to.

PS: I have edited this post and added some photos.

Learning about America

A letter arrived in the post today for Amber, from her pen pal Angela who lives in the USA. Amber had sent her a postcard of Cambridge, and had written on it that Cambridge, Massachusetts was named after Cambridge, England. Angela wrote back about America once being an English colony, which prompted a bit of a discussion about it.

We then went on Google Street View and looked up Angela's address. It didn't quite hit the mark so we had to search up and down the very long street until we eventually found what we thought *might* be her house. Amber decided to take a screenshot so she could email it to Angela and ask if it's the right house. She also gave her instructions on how to look up our house on Google Maps - however, although the Street View team have been here, it's not online yet. Going by the satellite view, our house doesn't exist! It was only built last year, so all it shows is a patch of waste ground. Amber still thought it would be interesting for Angela to see our town though.

In her letter, Angela said she thought British postage stamps looked odd and interesting, so we thought we might send her a few different ones next time. She has also asked Amber to explain the British money system to her. So Amber is going to draw around each of our coins and say what the equivalent coin would be in America and write about the different pound notes we have. We may even send her some coins to keep because it's nice to have something like that from another country.

I think it's great that Amber is able to learn about America from someone who actually lives there, and as Angela is also home educated, she is learning from Amber about England too. Brilliant! If your children are HE bloggers, they may be interested in reading Angela's blog.