On Monday, Tim took Big up to Yorkshire to spend some time with L. Obviously first of all we had to have traumas as she thought she’d packed the day before, but she’d forgotten things like cuddlies, and coats and purses (which she then couldn’t find) and so on, so there was a bit of hassled running around and finding things before they finally set off around 10 o’clock.
I’d expected Small to be hard work in that I thought Big did a fair amount of entertaining him. Turns out that actually I must expend quite a lot of energy keeping them in harmony with each other (or trying and failing to do so!) as he was an absolute doddle on his own. Well, apart from the intense educational aspects of it!
By 10.50, we’d had his new science kit from Playmerrily spread out all over the floor and discussed it (unfortunately it needed cress seeds which we didn’t have so we couldn’t start it there and then), I’d printed a Woodland Log from the Woodland Trust Big Summer Challenge (I’m going to be very cross with them if I find out that I can’t find my way to all the other good stuff that I’ve noticed being talked about on facebook, but haven’t printed out just yet as we’ve a paper shortage!) and we’d talked about that, we’d done some Scratch which was sparked off by him blogging the night before (must go back and add that to the post about the night before!) which in turn led to a discussion of what a degree is (stand up, turn right around, that was 360 degrees, so half way round was 180 and so on) and also what percentages are (rather like fractions, 100% is 1, 50% is half and so on), he’d drawn a profile picture of himself in Paint.net for use on his Scratch profile page and we’d uploaded that as well as his Scratch project so that we could link it on his blog, and he’d created various games through various game creator websites.
Phew. I was shattered!
He then found fusion fall and signed up for his first MMORPG. I’m so proud.
He played on that pretty much all day after that, with variable requirements for assistance. To begin with when he left it it logged him out and made him start again from the beginning which was traumatic for all concerned, but I later discovered that that was because he hadn’t finished the (not mentioned or demarcated in anyway) tutorial level. It has hugely expanded his vocabulary, not always in good directions (not impressed to find use of the word cretin for example, which is not a word I’d feel comfortable with him dropping into polite conversation) and though we never doubted it, has proved yet again that his concentration span far exceeds his need for food.
I managed some OU work, although tbh, I am loathing these courses and it’s making concentrating on them really really difficult. I hoped they would mend maths for me, and that I’d actually start understanding it, instead I think it’s proved that I’m not a natural mathematician at all, and maybe I’d be better off sticking to computing or philosophy or something of the sort.
Finally managed to persuade him into bed with a chapter of Kensuke’s Kingdom
at around the same time Tim arrived back from his dropoff journey, and that was Monday.
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