dodgy connections and the joys of geometry

Well,just as I was starting to congratulate myself on actually keeping regular updates,the bloody power dies for 5 hours and throws my computer into a state of confusion! Of course,said power cut had to occur the only time I had plugged the darn thing in all day,and had only just turned it on in the furtive hope of watching Leon while Peanut romped through another Scrubs box set.Cue sudden darkness and shouts of "My xbox has died! Ring of death...nooo!" For anyone out there who does not own an xbox,and is currently thinking I have let Peanut watch highly unsuitable japanese horror movies or dodgy remakes,rest assured. The Ring and Ring of death are two entirely different things! It means that the dreaded red circle flashed up before the console turned itself off. As the rest of the house,and indeed the rest of the street was without power,Peanut was quickly reassured,and picked up a book instead. I,foiled again,settled down to watch Bones on my iPod instead,cursing the fact that if Id only splashed out that extra 50 quid then I could have been watching Leon on my iPod,but no,alas,I was cheap and went for the 8gb instead of the 16gb. *curses own false economy*. Anyhow,on the subject of education,finished last week with tangrams,microbes and bunnies, and started this week with further geometry,spread of disease and more bunnies! Thats planes and cubes,transmission of disease and watership down to you! I actually tried a new technique yesterday. Peanut,fairly confident now in geometry,was given her textbooks,maths is fun website pages and a selection of plastic cubes and told she was entirely free to make up her own lesson for the session,providing she could teach it to me afterwards. She jumped at the chance,and I learnt some very interesting things about the composition of prisms and cubes and numerous other things,thank you very much. I wasnt sure how well it would work. They say on most of the homeschooling websites that you start out all textbooks and teaching,and gradually relax into 'here are the resources,knock yourself out,but Id like to see some sign of progress by lessons end'.We are obviously entering that stage now,and you know what,I like it! It sets Peanut up nicely for any future college endevours,and gets her used to the idea of managing her own study time. She still has parameters within which to work,but she can learn how she chooses.I still see results,and Im in the background supervising in case she needs anything-although she demonstrated yesterday that my presence is really not required beyond preparing lunch and the occasional technical fix.This is great for me-no more lesson planning beyond the wallchart that shows what we still need to cover and when,but the minutae of individual lesson planning may now be reduced...I like. She actually planned herself a darn good lesson to,and I have to admit,it was probably better than the one I had...outclassed by a 12 year old again-and Im so proud. Dont get me wrong,I am under no illusions.Im sure there are other subjects and topics when I will be sitting teaching when she is not so confident.Right now though? Im all for self teaching,cos at the end of the day,you cant spoonfeed kids forever,and to think you can is kind of an insult to their intelligence. I guess thats why so many of us feel lost when we leave school,we are so used to someone teaching us how to do every last thing,that we forget how to do things ourselves.Eh,what do I know? Its a thought...