Soph's School of the Mad: Week Nine

Monday, Monday, with your face like an unwanted comment. They are working on the railway near our house at the minute, laying new track for a freight line. This is fine. What is not fine is Network's Rail decision to turn the LOUD BANGER track pounding machine on at 11:45pm, and then have it on for fifteen minute intervals until 4am at weekends. I am weary. So weary.

Jim's work didn't get sent through until lunchtime, so he just dicked about on Times Tables Rockstars, shrieking in dismay that he was expected to know both his 8 and 11 times table. Jack, also in a filthy mood, created a family tree. I was BITING MY FISTS trying not to take over and do a family tree stretching back ten generations.

While doing this, Jack remembered my mum was dead, and started to cry. Then he got upset because he has divorced parents. All the time, I sit, wondering why I have to deal with this on a MONDAY MORNING. THIS FELT LIKE A GOOD IDEA ONCE. Eventually, he did a cast list of his family, in which he noted that "everyone in my family is on edge". No shit Sherlock.

Then we had a rave to The Prodigy, and I taught the children to dance like it's 1992 (HISTORY), which led to me showing Jack a lot of Rammstein live videos to explain live music staging.

Alex will do anything for Youtube videos, including sums:

Tom had to work on Tuesday, which I guess is good practice for next week when he has to go back properly. So Jack wrote him a letter about how much he loves him:

And Jimmy attempted to build Stonehenge (using this game) but this happened A LOT:

I wonder if this happened much when they were actually building Stonehenge. Every Solstice, hoping against hope that it would stay up, and then KERAAASH.

Alex had a go at writing again today, and did fairly well until he decided that he could not write anymore because his hands were gone. Earlier, that morning, he bashed me over the head with a broom shouting "I KILL YOU". I've had better days.

On Wednesday, Jack had to learn about Shakespeare. "WHY DO I NEED TO LEARN ABOUT SHAKESPEARE?" he howled, "HOW IS THAT GOING TO HELP ME WHEN I'M GROWN UP?" and to my credit, I didn't start soliloquising him. Anyway, this is his artist's impression of Shakespeare:

True to life!

Jim had to do time assessments, and there was an AWFUL LOT OF SCREAMING and this face:

Hard same. Then I spoke to his teacher on the phone and agreed to make a load of resources for the kids' Bronze age topic, because GOD LOVES A TRIER.

On Thursday, Jim spent the morning doing assessments. He's going into year seven in September, in the same school. He was going to do his SATs, but obviously that didn't happen, so they're assessing his levels through powerpoints. He does them by himself, but regularly RENTS THE AIR with HOWLS OF DISMAY, which keeps you awake if nothing else.

But this meant me and Jack could do a bit more family history work, again with me desperately trying not to dominate the whole thing. Today, we looked at where his family came from. As you can see, we're pretty focused on East Anglia:

He also wrote me some sentences, including "Fred went to jail for illegally flushing a potato down the toilet." Quite.

Alex stole my phone and took photos of his most precious possessions:

Today, everyone feels like shit. Fuck all sleep, I had a breakdown last night because Tom has gone back to work and I am gently going insane, the kids are going to their dad's later which always utterly overexcites them, and Alex is grouchy. I had an email from Jack and Alex's school confirming they are not going to attempt to open up any further this term. Jim's school are very slowly trying to reopen, starting with the kids in upper school.

So Jack did some bar charts about football, and I appreciate the Premier League getting into helping home educate kids but not in a PURPLE AND YELLOW COLOUR SCHEME WHEN I HAVE NO INK. We have no ink, but we do have GRAPH PAPER:

And we reserved today to do Jim's Skara Brae work, because his topic is the Stone Age and Skara Brae is cool af. He wrote this advert, which cracked me up:

And made this advert for holidaying there. It's the wig. The wig!


And that's us done for another week, and perhaps done-in for life. Maybe I'll have cheered up by Monday, let's wait and see.