I’m not a morning person. Anyone who knows me will testify to that effect, so when I found myself wide awake shortly after 6 this morning, I was not amused. However, I decided to make use of the quiet, and got up and got started on a few bits, and actually knocked a couple of things off my to do list. I was impressed.
And then the day started properly, with children and work and stuff. Got through the morning fairly well, but by the afternoon, lack of sleep was beginnng to make itself felt.
I rallied a bit around lunch, and we read another couple of chapters of the book. It’s getting pretty exciting now and Big is very into it. Small listens, but bumbles around doing whatever as well, guess I’ll probably find out some day that he’s been taking mental notes! He floored me today with something he said, can’t remember what it was, but was a polysyllabic word that I hadn’t hear from him before, and used utterly correctly. And this from a child who still can’t pronounce ‘sp’ and therefore eats breakfast with a ‘foon’.
And after lunch, I took it into my head that we’d do some maths. Now one of these days I’m going to learn that going head to head with Big doesn’t do either of us any good. We manage better when we’re doing something we are both interested in, and right at the moment, despite her voluntarily doing workbooks yesterday, she isn’t all that interested in maths. So it took the best part of an hour to do a page worth of questions (pictorial questions this is!) and recite the 2x table successfully right the way through.
And after that, I tried to do some paperwork. Don’t quite know who I was kidding! I did get the washing hung out and played tag with the wasps for a while, then I called it quits, loaded the kids into the car and headed off to the library so that we could pick up the Reading Mission card for Big.
It was a different librarian this week, and she was ever so kind to Big, explaining all about how the system worked and asking how we’d heard about it. She looked a bit taken aback when I pointed out it was our third year! Small briefly wanted a card, but went off the idea just as quickly, which was just as well, as they really didn’t seem set up for that. Makes me cross actually, if it’s all about encouraging children to love books, why on earth haven’t they got a set up for young kids to bring their books home and get stickers?
Oh, and the library were having a sale on tudor books, so Big was rather thrilled when I rifled through the box and grabbed her a load. What *is* it with little girls and the tudors??? They had two copies of Tudors (History Insights S.)
, so if anyone fancies a copy, give me a yell and I’m sure we can do a deal 😉
On to Morrisons to spend my Smiles voucher and get tea, and pick them up a magazine each. Took Small seconds to find a Bob the builder mag, but Big agonised over a wide variety of pink things. Actually, by the time we were done, I was hopping mad. How come once children get past about the age of 4 they are supposed to be either pink or violent? The only non gender specific mag I could find was Art Attack, and she didn’t want that because the free gift was texture pads, and she already has texture pads. So she chose some pink thing about fairies, or princesses, got back to the car, and then sobbed all the way home as there was absolutely nothing in it that was worth more than about a minute of her time.
🙁
Anyone think we could get a magazine published that wasn’t quite so pink or violent? What do the rest of your children read?
Right, and now I’m knackered again, so I’m going to go to bed and hope that this time I sleep through til morning. Office tomorrow.
Comments
17 responses to “Two chapters, 2x and early mornings.”
I have ‘isssues’ with childrens magazines. I always get Art Attack, Magic key, CBeebies, when I let them choose we get something pink and trashy, something violent and just as trashy x2! It’s difficult I wantt them to choose but I want to choose something, oh you know ‘wholesome’,lol.
Well we don’t do them really cos they’re simply so overpriced. You could buy a book for the same price as most of them and the ‘free gifts’ are generally utter tat.
But that said, when they get the rare treat of choosing one D will go for something like Wallace and Gromit (no surprise there then!) or Disney Pixar and S will of course go for the pink!
DK Findout(http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/cs/uk/11/features/magazines/magazines.html) is a fantastic mag – non gender. Ideal for Big more than small though – content is for around 7-11 so they say.
Pink stuff. Pea gets Girl Talk. I don’t have issues with it though. If they want them they can have them. Does it really matter?
Mine are a bit older and Daniel, anyway into more obscure stuff. He likes New Scientist and The Economist at the moment! Charlotte favours the Simpsons magazine.
is your library not doing “BookCrawl” then?
http://www.bookstart.co.uk/bookstart/schemes/Book%20crawl.php4
I think the idea is that it is sort of Reading Mission/ Voyage/ rollercoaster for babies
We’re into the Beano and Bob the Builder here. L’s too small for magazines yet, so pinkness hasn’t arrived.
Personally, although I hate the whole gender stereotyping commercial lot of ’em, I let F have mags (one a week usually) as pink and trashy as she likes, partly because I’m pretty sure that otherwise the pinkness and trashiness will become like a beacon of the forbidden in later years, which might be much worse! If she can get it out of her system with a few pages of nothing about princesses once in a while, all well and good.
There are some ‘good’ mags out there though – animal-related, science-related, etc.
I hate pink, full stop. But I have adjusted very well to its presence in my life as Nic can testify! Just hoping she goes hippy/goth in teen years, but she’ll probably stay pink.
I honestly don’t think it matters too much what magazines they get because sooner or later they will realise that the tat that comes with them is just tat which teaches them a good lesson in marketing, plus they will grow out of them quicker than you realise. And if they have to buy their magazines out of pocket money, they will think twice about spending that much – a good lesson in budgeting. I think small person had to start buying her own magazines aged 11 when she got a monthly allowance rather than pocket money, which also coincided with her having a proper bank account and doing internet banking.
Small person reads Bliss (when she has enough money to buy it); although it is not what I would choose for her to read necessarily, some of the stories have sparked some interesting debates about social issues and injustices which have helped her to form an opinion on things. She currently thinks girls who get pregnant as teenagers are wasting their lives and that doing drugs is a fools path. Can’t argue with either of those 😉
Mine buy their own, unless I want to buy them one (e.g. long car/train journey). I buy Buttercup’s, as she doesn’t get pocket money yet, and she usually picks one of the TV characters ones. Top choice here is Doctor Who Adventures 🙂 If I’m buying, I’ll get Magic Key, DK Findout, something like that.
I don’t know if we’re suffering from more rural newsagents or something here but we can’t even get things like the DK Findout magazine anymore. M sometimes looks but usually decides against getting one. He gets the Horrible Science magazines monthly and does read them. I’ve toyed with subscribing to Discovery Box http://www.bayard-magazines.co.uk/gammebox/discoverybox.htm after we got some good ones in a charity shop or there’s Aquila http://www.aquila.co.uk/ that I keep seeing ads for but haven’t seen a copy of.
C still gets Click which she really enjoys (http://www.cricketmag.com/ProductDetail.asp?pid=6).
We get Aquila, and Hannah really likes it. But she’s also allowed to buy whatever she fancies for herself. Actually, “allowed” sounds odd, as I don’t think of it like that, she just does.
I let Big have her choice – they don’t get mags very often at all, they were just using up what was left of my voucher 🙂 But what annoyed us both was that there wasn’t really a choice – she wouldn’t choose something overtly boyish with masks and weapons on, and most of the girlie ones that she could read were utterly boring. She’s had Witch before, which wasn’t nearly as bad, at least having stories in it and loads of comps, which she does enjoy, but either we’re between issues or they were all sold out.
There wasn’t DK Findout, Magic Key or anything other than Art attack that wasn’t very pink.
Just wondered if there was any call for a less gender specific (which I will admit does irritate the life out of me!) more generic magazine out there. Or if there was one that I haven’t found yet.
I think there are a few – usually enough to choose from – but I just scrolled back up to see where you’d been buying them – ahhhh, Morrisons! I bought comics in there before we came back from Pembrokeshire, and they had a tiny selection, no better than our corner shop.
Nat Geo are allegedly about to start up a UK edition of their Kids magazine (nee World magazine which I loved to bits back in the Seventies).
So I’m holding on until they do instead of placing an order for the US edition.
ooh, i had the kids one as a child. pressie from transatlantic aunt. it was great