On Wed, 18 May 2011 20:36:28 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 18/05/2011 09:59, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Tue, 17 May 2011 19:12:55 +0100, Steve Walker wrote:

Unfortunately with the age of ours (3, 5& 7), by the time shopping,
homework, baths/showers, eating, etc. are fitted in, there's not really
enough time before bed for them to use one computer consecutively.

Shopping? Everyday?

Not quite, but usually three weekday nights - it may not be much, milk,
cheese, fruit, bread, things like that, but it takes time to go out and
get it. With the amount of milk we consume, we can only get two days's
supply upright in the fridge and we've had too many incidences of leaks
when they're lying down. The milkman only delivers after we've gone to
work for the day

Get a bigger fridge ;-)

We do a weekly shop at the supermarket. Normally we avoid doing
"between" shops. We always have some quick meals since people often
go out early in the evenings.

With the rest other items, we do try and plan ahead,
but changes of finishing time from work tend to mean last minute changes
of what we're eating and if we kept stocks in, we'd end up throwing too
much away. It doesn't help that the school have a habit of letting us
know at the last minute that the kids will need something particular for
school the next morning!

We have the latter problem too. However, if the school gives us too
little notice, then they don't get[1]. If sufficient parents do this
then maybe the school will learn to give more notice.

They get a lot of home work at that age? The 3 year old?

The 7 year old gets three to four nights a week, the 5 year old gets a
couple of nights and all three of them get books to read to us or for us
to read to them.

Private school?

I must admit I was rather annoyed that the school set homework for our 7
year old that involved using the Internet to research the differences in
how the rich and poor lived in Tudor times.

I don't like this assumption that schools seem to make that every
household has access to the internet. There are households around
here that don't. Some because they can't afford it (even the local
community ISP at £8/month) or because they are too far from the
exchange for ADSL to work. Dialup speeds aren't much use these days
on the web...

I can agree with that - we actually had no internet for three and a half
weeks, but that was because of a line fault.

There's no problem with ADSL around here. In fact they've installed FTTC
throughout most of the area, much of which already had cable. We are
unfortunate in that they've not installed FTTC yet and we're one of the
few roads without cable, but we can get over 7Mb/s on ADSL, so no major
complaints.

I know there are some schemes for those that cannot afford to pay for
internet at home, but I don't know what or how good they are.

Neither do I. I doubt they'd also pay for a computer.

[1] Although, for us, it's often the kids that forget to tell us.
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