Didn’t get through our routine bits yesterday due to an early morning appt for Tim and myself, but did on Mon and today. Regular maths is giving Big confidence to attempt sums while out and about – she worked out the cost of two bits of fabric in the remnant shop as was this afternoon, and got it spot on, even if fingers did have to be employed at one point.
Yesterday they did logic games instead with aunt S, and I was quite impressed with how they were both managing Guess Who. Logical processes definitely improved there. Snakes and ladders proved a game too far though, as Small had a complete meltdown when he was overruled as to whether he’d landed on a snake or not 🙁 Apart from that, they’d had a lovely morning, including a nice long walk out, which meant that they needed a lie down before swimming (given that I’d woken them up before 8. I know that’s not early for anyone who works or has children in school, but as we do neither atm, it’s very early for my offspring).
Swimming was excellent. Small completely stunned me by doing half the small pool in a very creditable back stroke (no idea where that has come from, but he seems to have got it) and they both got badges and certificates, as well as Big having it confirmed that she’s passed her test and from next week she’s in green hat. There are several other children her age/ size in that group, and it’s taught in the proper pool, so she shouldn’t end up with quite so many bruises on her knees during lessons in future!
Small is taking the lead in deciding what he wants to study as part of his three work sessions in a morning, and as it’s really the doing of something that I want to encourage rather than a specific choice of subjects, I’m really quite happy with that. So this morning he did some sticker maths, read some Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Space
and then asked if he could learn about France. So we explored wikipedia, found him a little map of central Europe, he drew and coloured in a flag, wrote some French phonetically and we looked up the name of the island nearby (Corsica). All good stuff, and completely self directed.
Big and I had a little fall out over the idea of a spelling log, mainly based around her concern as to what would happen when she’s filled the book. I can’t see that happening desperately soon – it’s a smallish exercise book, but it still has 50 pages (100 sides) so we did some extra arithmetic to work out how many sides she could have per letter, and settled on 4 for each apart from x and z which each got 2 🙂 Given that she can fit two columns of words per page, I think the book should last for a while!
Once that was sorted out, she went off and read some more myths and legends. She’s also doing a project with Tim on how this town looked a couple of hundred years ago, so while she’s doing that, I’ve planned to do some artwork/ drawing with Small and we went out this afternoon to pick up Giovanni Civardi’s Complete Guide to Drawing
which I’d seen for £8 in the shop down the road. Got Big some terry fabric and some felt so that she can do the decorated baby blanket she’s planned as well, so I foresee arts and crafts in our immediate future.
Explored the charity shops on the way home looking for Hallowe’en costumes – found Big a wonderful slinky sparkly black dress and a broom, but not so successful for Small. However he already has a red cloak and red trousers, and will be happy if I whip him up some horns and a devil tail. So all I need to do now is work out what we’ll take as a food contribution. Think it’s likely to be bread cheese and fruit!
Tim’s away off up to old house tomorrow with a large van to try to empty the shed and garage (not *quite* sure where everything is going to go but cross that bridge when we come to it) and I’m going to be hoping that baby isn’t in too much of a hurry and can hang on til he’s done up there and safely back home.
Oh, and Small lost his second tooth yesterday. He doesn’t look like my baby boy any more – isn’t it odd how the changing teeth changes the face so completely?
Leave a Reply