new year...new neurosis...

Well,December has vanished in a haze of sleep deprivation and stress,xmas day was lovely, the rest was work, work, work for us all.Only Peanut gets away with having the luxury of time off at xmas.Fortunately,its all about her anyway :)
Anyhow, Maths restarts with a recap of the essentials of KS3.I want her to be confident enough with fractions,trigonometry and algebra that she can do them without thinking about them. Thats the plan anyway.English,we have moved on to 'White Fang' as Peanuts passion for all things canadian and wolf related-yes,the Due South obsession continues... Speaking of Canada,still looking forward to returning this year. :) Science wise,we are starting physics this term...batteries ahoy! History continues with modern history,apparently much more interesting to the Peanut brain.
Well,on to the main subject. Two days ago a jolly little letter from the LEA plops onto the mat.Fair enough,time to send them a few samples of the Peanuts work and report on what we were doing last year. No problem. Oh no,now it seems we have a new 'elective home education advisory teacher' who has invited herself round to our house 'to offer advice and support'. Strange,we have been at this 2 years now,and the last coordinator was always perfectly happy with Peanuts work. I was so pissed when I read that letter,in fact, Im STILL pretty pissed off,as I understand this woman has no legal right to just come around without my permission,and yet here she is,setting herself an appointment and just assuming that she can waltz in and start poking around our home! Obviously,because I home educate my child will be found,white faced and trembling,locked in a cupboard while I sit on my butt and drink neat homebrew with my feet up...
The irony is,if we had received a letter from this woman introducing herself and asking if it were possible to visit at some point then I would have been okay with that.Its more the fact that she made an appointment to come as if she has every right! Is this how its going to be now? If I refuse this visit,will she just come back with some kind of official paper,or recommend Peanut sent straight back to school because its 'obviously best' ?! From what I saw of our temps this year,they were nice kids,but half of them couldnt spell-my favourite example was one who spelt 'Oasis' as 'Owasis' -and it WASNT a typo...most of them couldnt figure out basic stuff like 7.50 + 7.50=15 without a calculator and yet they all reckon they got good exam results...somethings not adding up..literally...kind of makes me wonder. Of course,everyone second guesses you when you home ed,because if they all had to go to school and 'learn to deal with it' then you should have to send your child there too. Just parr for the course I guess. Still,start the New Year and bring it on...