Having discovered that I’ve pretty much devoted a post to the boy, I figured I’d better do similarly for the Big little girl 🙂 Here’s hoping it doesn’t take me as the last one 😉
We had a breakthrough in our search for ways and means within education just over a week ago. Big feels it is very unfair that she has set requirements for work, while Small doesn’t. There are, as I’ve explained to her many times, lots of reasons for this. The most relevant is that they are different ppl with different needs, so I give them different things. I hope if I keep repeating this, one day it will sink in.
Anyway, after another couple of days of wailing about this, she decided she would try Small’s method and I took her to the library for her to select a pile of books. This has worked well, as she went for a similarly eclectic mix, and has spent quite some time learning about Bonfire night, the human body and today, Rocks and Fossils. She doesn’t have the same innate curiousity though, and it never seems to spark her off into searching something else out, but maybe that will come with time.
In other news, Em came around to do some hyperbolic crochet with me. When we eventually got sat down, it was the girls who crocheted including Big, while Small got his knitting out and did a couple of rows of that. Big really took to hyperbolic crochet, and finished her first ball of wool the following day. I spent a lot of time biting my tongue – as most ppl who read here will know, I crochet myself, and Melrose visitors may remember me teaching Big there one year some time ago. But she’d forgotten that, and now has learnt very happily from Em, including taking her crochet to group yesterday so that she could learn to do circles there. Now she wants to crochet a blanket for soa, so she’s gone out with Tim to Aldi where they’ve got yarn on offer from today. Wonder if I’ll be allowed to help with that, or whether we’ll have to keep taking that to Em as well!
And the purple hat? That’s swimming again. She was tested last week, and I don’t know quite what went on, as I wasn’t there and Tim couldn’t hear, but she was told she wasn’t allowed to tell us. I wasn’t very happy about that, especially as she got very upset about it, but all was resolved on Tues morning when the swimming lesson coordinator rang to move her up to purple hats. Unfortunately the only group with a gap was at 6pm, and there was nowhere to move Small too so he’s still at 4.30. Meaning that Tues evening now involves rather too long sitting in the swimming pool cafe. Turns out that both of her friends moved up as well, so all three girls are still in separate groups. Yay to the moving up but 🙁 to the no friends together. Did mean that I got to sit with M for the first half hour and A for the second half hour, though it was just me and Small during Big’s lesson.
The lesson was a whole different ball game. In earlier groups the children take it in turns to swim and watch, in purple they all swam all lesson through. Big got out drooping, and next week she’s got to take clothes!
So overall, things are good with Big atm, and if we could just get the temper tantrums under control, we’d be laughing. Most of the time she is fabulously mature and helpful but if anything doesn’t go quite how she wants it too, she loses it big style. But we’re working on it.
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