writing

The diary of a child travelling in Steerage on the SS Great Britain

~ lornafowkes ~ Leave a comment

As I walked along the dockyard I got my first view of the mighty ship, the SS Great Britain. It was bigger than I expected and I started to feel very excited about the journey we were going on. The noisy crowd hustled and bustled their way towards the gangplank and I felt nervous that I might lose my mummy, daddy and sisters as I was budged and banged along.

We finally made it aboard the ship all together still. As I looked up I saw the towering masts and wondered how big the sails would be when they were opened. A very tall, serious man told us that we weren’t allowed past the white line on the deck unless we had a First Class ticket, which we did not have. So we had to go down three narrow, dark staircases to find our bunks in Steerage.

The bunks were very narrow and short and I had to share with one of my sisters! Mummy had to have our little sister in with her so she made a little hammock for her to sleep in. The blankets were thin, itchy and woolly, not as nice as at home. There weren’t many other children on board, only in First Class and we weren’t allowed to play with them, so I felt a bit lonely. Daddy had to sleep in a different area to us with all the men. We went to see him but it was very smelly (like stale ale and sweaty clothes!) so we were pleased that we were with mummy. The lady next to us had a new baby who was crying lots but we helped to look after her and she thanked us for being so helpful.

On the first night I felt cramped and scared because of all the loud noises. We were very close to all of the ship’s machinery so we could hear the floor creaking, cogs crashing, chains clattering and the loud, powerful blasts of the siren, which put fear into my heart. If it was ever quieter I could hear rats squealing and children crying. Lots of people were seasick so the smell was disgusting. I wasn’t, so I had to keep going up two flights of stairs to get fresh water for everyone!

In the daytime we played chess, cards and tag in the corridors to keep ourselves busy. We were allowed on deck in the afternoon to get some fresh air, but it was very crowded and cold. At mealtimes we were usually only given herring (fish), bread and garlic. I was desperate for some different foods. One day I was really lucky when we were up on deck because I saw an apple roll from First Class, past the white line and I grabbed it! I hid it in my dress pocket and shared it with mummy and my sisters when we went back to the bunks.

The journey seemed to go on forever, but we got used to it and were lucky that we had a routine to keep us busy.

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By Mummy, Poppet and Pickle 19.10.2016

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Blood, Blogs and Brownies :)

~ lornafowkes ~ 4 Comments

This week is my chance to have a break as the Stinker is off work. But, of course, I’ve packed it almost completely with trips away and activities to keep the Ps busy!

After a fun-filled, hectic long weekend away with family and friends, I was quite glad when today brought minging weather and an excuse to just stay at home for the day.

I spent the morning painting (Our whole house needs an update so still loads to do!) while the Stinker amused the Ps with retro computer games! It all ended in tears when Poppet pushed a chair into Pickle and split her eyelid open – apparently blood everywhere but I was luckily in the shower so missed the whole event! Luckily it had stopped bleeding by the time I got downstairs (after being screamed at hysterically by Poppet that I was needed – cue end of relaxing shower!) so I still managed to get out of the house to do some shopping and sitting in our local cafe on my own…

… almost.

I knew I would see someone I knew, as that’s what happens when you live in a tiny town, but I was lucky that the person I bumped into was a good friend (and actually the friend who had given me the voucher for the cafe as a birthday present last month!) So we enjoyed a cuppa and catch up together and when she and her daughter left I had another cuppa and a yummy piece of gluten free raspberry chocolate brownie – yummy 🙂

I enjoyed just sitting quietly (while other people had to deal with their children), thinking about friends and family and our current journey in life. I doodled a bit and made a few notes relating to my plans to start another blog. But mainly I just drank tea, ate cake and relaxed.

I returned home to a very relaxed scene (all watching a film), so left them to it and made dinner. It’s been a very relaxed day, despite the ‘Attack of the Poppet’ incident, and I hope we can have a few more days like it before the Stinker goes back to work next week!

 

Losing my cool…

~ lornafowkes ~ 21 Comments

So I’m usually writing about the fun aspects of home educating, with the odd traumatic day thrown in for good measure, but I don’t often write about the days where I lose my cool and wonder why on earth we are doing this!  Last week I had one of those days and have avoided thinking about it too much since. However, I kind of see writing as therapy and figured it was time to get it off my chest…

Our mornings are generally slow and steady as it’s rare that we have to rush out of the house before 10ish. This is one of the lovely aspects of home education (although on those occasional days when you really need to be up and out it’s definitely harder!). So the day I lost my cool was no different to usual; we didn’t have to be anywhere in a rush so the Ps played happily upstairs while I sorted things in the kitchen. Little Piccalilli came down as she wanted her breakfast, but the big Ps continued in their contented play.

As it neared 10 o’clock, and I remembered that we had to be out in half an hour, I called upstairs that it was time to get dressed. Well, you’d have thought I’d just thrown a grenade up there and declared war by the reaction that followed… Suddenly the calm, peaceful morning turned to chaos and the happy siblings turned instantly into enemies. The screaming started, followed by a lot of banging, followed by loud shrieking (which I think was meant to be crying in an attempt to get me to go up). I tried to ignore it initially – isn’t that the done thing? Let them sort it out themselves? Don’t get involved in every sibling battle? Well, after a few minutes of screeching and obvious physical fighting I thought I’d better check that nobody was truly hurt…

When I got to the top of the stairs, Poppet was standing in the middle of the room naked and screaming – Pickle was nowhere near her and I couldn’t work out what the fuss was all about! I lost my cool instantly… I screamed at her to get out. She screamed at me that Pickle had been sitting on her and hurting her (which seems to happen a lot!). I screamed at Pickle that that was inappropriate behaviour. She screamed at me that Poppet had taken her clothes away. I screamed, they screamed, we all screamed… and no ice cream was involved at any point!

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I completely lost it; I told them I was leaving; I told them they were going to school the next day; I really lost it…

Thankfully I had a tiny bit of self control left and on hearing Piccalilli downstairs calling for me “Mummy stop shouting”, I realised I had lost it and went downstairs. Piccalilli got me a tissue and we had a big cuddle.  When the big Ps came downstairs they were very remorseful, as was I, and we talked it through.  We discussed why getting dressed and other transition times always seem to be so difficult and we discussed the types of behaviour that we all displayed that was negative and how we should have behaved. We wrote and signed a new family contract and agreed to have another meeting in a week (tomorrow) to discuss how we were getting on.

I am not proud of losing it.  But I am proud of how we dealt with it and turned it around. We are all doing pretty well at sticking to the new family contract but transition times can still be tricky… we’re working on it though!

 

New Year, New Challenges…

~ lornafowkes ~ 2 Comments

I don’t often bother with resolutions as it feels like setting yourself up for a fall! I do like to set myself little challenges though so have given myself a few challenges for the next few months.

  1. Mindfulness – The lovely Stinker gave me a beautiful colouring book for Christmas. I plan on using this regularly and doing lots of colouring and relaxation with the 3Ps
  2. Meat-free – We have decided to avoid buying meat throughout January for a few reasons including the high cost of good quality meat. I’m not at all daunted by this as I’m not really bothered about meat, although I might miss bacon! I have a feeling this challenge will extend further than January…
  3. Dry January and February – I read recently that unless you’re an alcoholic it’s pointless having dry months, but I think this is a silly statement to make. We are doing it for health reasons (to lose a few excess kilograms!) and to save money.
  4. To write another blog – Don’t worry I plan on continuing to write this one on a personal level but I am thinking of writing one giving advice about different aspects of home education and healthy living… I’ll keep you posted as to how I get on!

Weekly Review!

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Today has been a hectic day of going to a baptism, followed by afternoon tea and then fish and chips at a friends house with the 3 Ps. The Stinker stayed home to play footie, but didn’t ’cause it was called off, so did jobs around the house! I’m exhausted so I thought I’d follow in my friend at Too Long Didn’t Write‘s footsteps (who is also doing the 30 Day Challenge of writing daily) and give you a round-up of my week…

So  Last Sunday it was all about how our lives seem to be going in Different Directions more and more these days, with Poppet heading off to Beaver camp while the Stinker spent time with Pickle and I spent time with Piccalilli.

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On Monday I reflected on Piccalilli’s language development in Language of love or hate?! and considered the need to begin assessing kids so young!

On Tuesday we had another visit to the fab museums in the city (Adventures in the City Take 2!) which thankfully went to plan with no illness or accidents 🙂

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Wednesday was all about thanking my wonderful mum for all her help over the years, in Mum’s the Word…

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On Thursday I enjoyed thinking about how I’m Feeling the love again… with teaching.

Yesterday was fantastic Forest School Friday… so I shared my thoughts on the importance of rewilding.

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I hope you’re enjoying my ramblings as much as I’m enjoying writing them (most days!!)

 

Feeling the love again…

~ lornafowkes ~ 4 Comments

It’s over a year since I left my permanent, part-time teaching job (after teaching for 16 years). I’m sure lots of people thought I was mad, as these sorts of positions are hard to come by, but I knew I’d be happier out of the profession…

Initially the plan was for me to do supply teaching for a day or two a week, but then Poppet’s experience of the education system started to go horribly wrong. I felt hypocritical about continuing to put her through something that I, as both her mum and an educational professional, did not agree with and had to leave myself due to stress and exhaustion ~ so to home ed.

Now the idea of spending my days cooped up in a sweaty classroom (I taught hormonal 11 year olds!) fills me with dread and, despite the fact that nanny is on-hand to help out with childcare (see Mum’s the Word), I can’t face the thought of supply teaching! Of course we could do with the money, but we can also live without it.

I am feeling the love with teaching again though and particularly enjoy researching and planning topics for the Ps (see Seven tips for ‘planning’ a topic), so much so that I’d even consider doing it for other people!

I am finally starting to feel again like that enthusiastic, 20-something teacher starting out ~ what I do is worthwhile; I am making a positive difference for the children I teach (mine in this case!); I have something to give. It feels good, but does it make me want to return to the classroom? No way!

One of those days…

~ lornafowkes ~ 4 Comments

It really has been one of those days… You know the ones where everyone is at each other and nothing goes right?

It started with me waking up exhausted… how does THAT happen? The two big Ps woke up getting at each other and the little P woke up whinging. The Stinker left for work as usual but,  following a request from Pickle, had left the Lego box out on the dining room table… Most days this wouldn’t be a problem but today it riled me! It scuppered my plans to get loads of learning activities done in the morning while it rained and I ended up looking like the evil parent (as usual!) when I asked if we could hold off Lego until we’d finished something we’d started yesterday.

The day didn’t improve. That’s not to say it was all bad – we spent a lovely hour in the garden raking leaves and playing with water (it is unseasonably warm right now!) – but on the whole we all wound each other up!

As soon as the Stinker got home I requested a pass to get out for a few hours. Of course he didn’t mind, but the problem with living in the back of beyond is that there is nowhere open (apart from pubs and as I’m off booze and feeling in need of a gin and tonic it didn’t seem like a good place to go! 30 Day Challenges)

So I got in the car and I’m currently sitting in the coolest motorway services ever! You think I’m joking but no, these services are relatively new and only sell local produce and just have a really cool Artisan feel to them… I plan on coming back often!! (Check it out!)

I’ve been drinking tea, eating chocolate brownie and reading a crappy magazine. But mostly I’ve been reflecting…

I realise that the reason today went wrong was completely down to my inflexibility, which is quite ironic considering I wrote yesterday how the best thing about home ed is the flexibility (A ‘Typical’ Day…).

So I’m feeling ready to return home and give everyone big kisses and cuddles and apologise for being a grump!

A ‘Typical’ Day…

~ lornafowkes ~ 6 Comments

Since we started home educating Poppet just over 6 months ago a lot of people have asked how we structure our time, so I thought I’d give an insight into how our days and weeks usually/often/occasionally go!

There are different ideas about home education ranging from full-on structured days (very similar to being at school) to complete unschooling, where essentially the learner makes the choice as to what they want to learn, how and when.

“What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child” George Bernard Shaw.

We are somewhere in between the two and this shifts for us depending on how we’re all feeling and what else is going on around us.

As I talked about in Black holes… I don’t like to completely prescribe what the girls learn and so they are involved from the outset in deciding what our topic should be and anything they’d like to know about relating to that.

I do however feel that the basics (of reading, writing and maths) are extremely important so do aim to do these regularly. I’m lucky that Poppet and Pickle are both fluent readers so that bit is easy (Right now they are snuggled on the sofa reading together while Piccalilli naps and I write).

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In terms of writing I like it to be meaningful so we’ve written postcards, letters, diaries, short-stories, shopping lists and more. We don’t sit down and write every day but at least twice a week they are writing something with purpose.

With maths things are a bit more structured and we do sit-down maths most days. I have a plan that we follow unless other things come up – for example last month Poppet wanted to learn more about telling the time than just o’clock and half past, so we did loads of time games and activities.

As I come from a teaching background, I know too well how often we try to teach children mathematical concepts that they are not ready for or hold them back just because it’s not part of our plan…

As for the other stuff (the other main question I think home educators get asked is “What about socialisation?”) we attend lots of groups and have made many friends.  Currently we attend three different social groups, where the kids play and do art and craft activities mainly; occasionally they put on shows as a whole group (around 30 kids ranging from 2 to 14). We also meet up with other home ed families at museums or the park or other days out (You’d be amazed how quiet places are during term time!!) Poppet is also learning the cornet and recorder as part of a band and there are all sorts of opportunities to join other groups all the time.

I have to say, if anything, our life is sometimes too hectic!

But the best thing about home ed is how flexible it is – if you fancy a duvet day you can, if you want a trip to the beach you can. Anyone up for the beach today? No!

30 day challenges…

~ lornafowkes ~ 4 Comments

So this month I have set myself a couple of challenges: one of which I envisage to be pretty straight forward; the other will be a bit more tricky!

Challenge 1: No booze

IMG_20151101_173403I’ve taken this challenge in different forms many times over the years. I always remember the time when I was in my final year at uni and everyone thought I was mad for having 3 months booze-free! I find it easy though as I don’t really enjoy feeling ‘drunk’ (as I recently explained in Now and Then) and would rather save the money. I do think I might miss my Friday evening glass of wine but there are only four Fridays to get through!

Challenge 2: Writing daily

I’ve taken this challenge along with my new Blogging friend (Toolongdidntwrite) as a way to push myself. I’m also thinking about using it as a way to get my girls to write more, as writing for a purpose is much more meaningful (so look out for a few guest posts from Poppet and Pickle!)

However this could prove to be a more difficult challenge – as I’m so new to Blogging I’m worried about a few things:

  • I might have nothing to write about.
  • My writing could end up a bit boring!

So,  I hope I find enough to write about and don’t bore people along the way!

Wish me luck…