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Highland dance finale, sushi, school reports, and a cat pic
The finale for Elizabeth’s school of Highland Dance end of year show was last night. We went to the opening night and it was fantastic. Yesterday I was wishing I’d bought a second ticket so I could go and watch it again but they’d completely sold out. Never mind, we’ll get the DVD when it […]
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Online schooling
The kids have been attending a 100% online school now for about 18 months and overall it has been great. They go to My Online Schooling which is based in Edinburgh and teaches the English school curriculum. I feel they’ve had a more consistent education than many other pupils in the UK who’ve had a […]
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Meatless Farm and Elizabeth’s biology poster
We had Meatless Farm burgers for dinner last night. I’ve become a Meatless Farm convert: they’re UK-based and much cheaper than the Beyond Burger but with similar ingredients. Both are made with pea protein. They taste delicious too and are good for a quick, easy meal when you don’t feel like cooking. As part of […]
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Full lockdown for Scotland
The covid situation in the UK is pretty dire right now with close to 60,000 cases per day. It’s worse than it was back in March at the height of the first peak. I read that hospitals in London are now cancelling vital cancer surgery. This is the reason covid is so deadly. It may […]
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Online schooling
The kids started back at their online school yesterday. Everything went very well and I think they even enjoyed it. They were both ready to go back. Elizabeth started labelling all her notebooks last week and transcribed her French dictionary into the new book. The school gives them a nice structure to the day as […]
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Crochet, cat, courses, and hair cuts
I’ve spent most of my Sunday crocheting. I didn’t get to the allotment this weekend which means it’s going to be full of weeds next weekend. I find it hard to stay on top of the weeds at this time of year. But here’s what I did with my crochet hook. It will eventually become […]
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Roots Catering, science experiments, and my crochet fox
We splashed out and ordered the three-course meal from Roots Catering on Friday night. Roots is an Aberdeen vegan food business. In normal times they sell vegan burgers by the beach. During lockdown they switched to an online purchase and delivery model for their burgers. Once a week they do a decadent three-course meal which […]
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The lightboard
I started doing a course on coursera.org and I noticed the lecturer was using a clear whiteboard in front of the camera which enabled him to draw on the whiteboard while facing the students. It was very good so I searched for glass whiteboard and discovered it’s called a “lightboard” which is a glass whiteboard […]
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State schooling in Scotland, more on the DC situation, and long-term changes after lockdown
There’s an article in The Sunday Times about Scotland’s “failed lack of leadership” for state school pupils during the lockdown. This echos my own thoughts and I have wondered why there hasn’t been more criticism about this. The lack of education of state school pupils during lockdown is appalling and I really don’t think they […]
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May you live through interesting times
There’s a Chinese curse, may you live through interesting times. On a personal level, the Christchurch earthquakes make this pandemic seem like a walk in the park because that was a much tougher period of time for us. Nevertheless, both events brought strange changes and have made me think of the Chinese curse. But there […]
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Online school
The kids started online school today and so far so good. You can choose which subjects they study and they each have seven. Classes are live via video link and they’ve all been reasonably small. I think the biggest class they’ve had so far had only 12 pupils in it. One of Daniel’s subjects today […]
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All humans must self-isolate by order of the Daleks
I saw this on Twitter yesterday. I don’t know where it was taken but it’s obviously somewhere in the UK – the scenery, the sky, the houses, the signs, and the Dalek on the left side of the road all point to somewhere in the UK. Things are getting pretty serious. pic.twitter.com/OLc6egO9V5 — Ben (@Jamin2g) […]
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Resources for kids at home #COVID2019
It’s the first day of homeschooling and the kids have been following the timetable they created yesterday. It’s likely this will change as we figure things out but it’s working well so far. The schools have also provided work for them to do but Elizabeth hasn’t been given much yet as I think the teachers […]
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19th March 2020 update #COVID2019
Schools will be closing on Friday this week for the foreseeable future. It’s unlikely they will open again before the summer holidays which means they’ll be shut until August and potentially longer than that. Much depends on what happens in China when they lift their restrictions. Children of key workers and vulnerable children will still […]
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Parent-teacher interviews, visiting relatives, and investing for retirement
Last night we had parent-teacher interviews at Daniel’s school (if any locals came trick or treating at this time this is why we didn’t answer the door then. We were out for a bit). It’s the first parent-teacher interviews we’ve had at Daniel’s new high school so we really didn’t know what to expect. Expectations […]
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State schooling
Daniel started high school last month and he’s loving it. I was worried about it all summer but I needn’t have been. He’s settled in so well, his best friend is in his class, and he’s enjoying the wide variety of subjects he gets to study now. He especially likes home economics where they get […]
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Scottish education, doggies, and Brexit
The Scottish state-funded education system is brilliant. Daniel will be starting secondary school in August and they have a transitioning program for pupils that starts in primary 6, two years before they leave primary school. This began with short visits to the secondary school and has culminated this week with pupils getting to spend two […]
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LGBT lessons and protesting parents
Parents in Manchester have been protesting outside schools about the No Outsiders programme which teaches kids that it’s ok to be gay. When I first saw the protestors I thought schools must have been showing kids x-rated pornography, but it turns out all they are doing is explaining that some kids have two mummies and […]
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My kids are amazing and I was on TV!
It was parent-teacher interviews at school last night and I’m so proud of the kids. They’re just amazing in every way. Elizabeth, according to her teacher, finishes her maths work in class then goes around from table to table helping other pupils with theirs. Her writing is also exemplary and she is spelling to the […]
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Build your own computer kit for kids
Elizabeth received a Kano computer kit for Christmas this year. It consists of a Raspberry Pi with all the other bits required to build your own computer and learn to code. She’s very interested in learning programming and I’m very happy to encourage this (although I keep trying to tell her there’s much more to […]
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