So far..

Apart from having just burnt my arm on a removable bottomed cake tin (long story, which I've already bored my friends on Facebook with), what else have we been up to?

Samuel had a day long birthday celebration with one of his friends on Saturday. They kindly invited Josh to, so they went to the cinema, then to the Noodle House. Josh then came back and Samuel went on with the others to the swimming pool.

Roarke spent the day focusing on William and Jonathan. Amusingly he noted how William didn't stop talking once during the day! Where was I? A seven and a half hour Education Otherwise Government Policy Group meeting in London! It involved a tube journey on my own which was pants (I am phobic about enclosed spaces since being bullied at secondary school) and then a LOT of talking. Still, we covered loads of ground, collated feedback, argued points, and generally thrashed out the basis of another submission to the home education review from EO.

It was actually fascinating to have the luxury of such a long debate, child free, for once with other home educators face to face.

William this week did the Crucial Crew safety tests - one of the first things that Samuel and Josh did when they came out of school! For someone like William it is really important to drum those safety messages in, so I intend to get him to do it regularly. Josh kindly sat with him to do it, which was of benefit to both of them.

This week Josh has signed up to become a Young Reviewer for Bachtrack which, as well as broadening his knowledge will also hopefully become part of his Bronze Arts Award course.

We're really struggling still with William, and his violence. Only today he provoked Samuel to such a point that Samuel totally and utterly lost it, and ended up rushing into the kitchen to grab a knife... I know he was doing it more to demonstrate his pain than actually intending to harm himself, but it is still just as heartbreaking, just as scary, and still reinforces yet again how bad it could have been for him to stay in school.

He ended up with a nose bleed and fresh bruises and marks to his neck from William. William forgets it all within seconds which, as it took a while to get the story (Samuel wouldn't tell us so I had to ask Josh) it ended up too late to do anything about it in terms of any discipline or discussion with William - he simply would not remember what we were talking about.

We are trying to find ways to give Samuel the space he needs away from William but it remains difficult all the time we are here - I do hope the Council sort a 4 bed out for us soon :0(

Jonathan continues to grow his vocabulary and his precociousness. We've had to move the phone because he's worked out that he can press the call button to make the phone ring and then he picks it up and pretends he's answering the phone. However cute it is, it is still annoying - especially because he has already once actually answered the phone when it was ringing (its one of those that connects as soon as you pick the handset up) - we still have no idea who it was who rang that day as they never called back or if they did they didn't say they had first spoken to a toddler! He just held the phone and said "yes, yes, yes" but by the time we got the phone from him they'd hung up!

He also likes walking along the window sill of the bay window of our room which is equally cute and even more dangerous.

Josh is pleased that our HE group is starting up some more sailing practice soon at Danson. I gave Samuel the chance to try again (as they are also running another level 1 course) but he said a very firm no.