A tale of two days.

On Monday, Smallest had a screen ban. We won’t go into the details of why. As a result, she did craft. And maths – actual hands on maths with the Plastic Base Ten blocks. We did a Montessori style three period lesson to introduce the unit, ten, hundred terminology – she already knows it really, so we very quickly added in the thousands too. Then there was some experimentation with the blocks – this set interconnects, so there was house building and so on.

Tigerboy came along and got involved and of course he built a gun.

(Just *what* is that about??)

Did a quick three period with him too, but he wasn’t really interested, no point in pushing it.

I think there was some reading as well. And a fair bit of actual playing, instead of minecraft playing. And she was heard telling Tim later on that even though she hadn’t been allowed to use screens, she’d had a really good day! (Insert surprised tone of voice.)

Today they were all back on the screens. There was an intercession when a parcel arrived (if you follow me on instagram or twitter you’ll have had a sneak preview of some of the contents) and that lead on to some reading, and a bit of writing, but overall the day was largely minecraft oriented.

And there was far too much screaming. Mainly from Tigerboy, as his frustration level with not being able to manage minecraft is growing. But both Smallest and Small end up frustrated as well, trying to deal with him, and it has a cascading effect.

Food for thought there, and time for me to strew a few more physical items in their way as it were, to draw them away from the virtual worlds. As the weather improves it helps hugely – we’ve been outside a few times, but Smallest in particular suffers from cold hands and feet, and it’s hard to spend a lot of time in the garden when she’s turning funny colours.

I think tomorrow though, we’ll try to make sure there are definite happenings.