Monday activities …
We’ve had a reasonably nice day here today 
I caught up with washing and cleaning after the weekend. Steve worked most of the day, Joe went to Start Right this morning. The girls both did music practice, a bit of writing each, and a little maths from workbooks too.
Abbie wrote a Christmas card for our sponsored child in Honduras – early I know, but they go to translators before they get sent to the children themselves.
Anna did another page for our London scrapbook/folder, and I helped organise all our bits and pieces into the folder too. Only another couple of pages to add and then that one is finished. Strangely, after the ordeal of the last writing episode, she was absolutely fine about doing it today, and produced 5 sentences in no time at all. Even Steve has contributed a page of writing to our project, which is a miracle in itself!
Over the weekend Steve’s Aunty Jacky offered to do another project with the children (she did the Romans with them about 18 months ago now) so we’ve suggested the Ancient Greeks thing that Anna expressed an interest in – and she thought that was a great idea, so I’m really pleased that she’s going to take that on! I’m planning a trip to the resource library to see what I can find on the subject – any other suggestions for good books etc. would be gratefully received!
Abbie’s maths was just general number bond practice, oh, and some basic shape naming stuff – which she could do standing on her head. In fact the hardest bit for her was writing the names of the shapes down – I’ve been looking at the Draw Write Now stuff as well, after all the muddlepuddle recommendations, I think we might well indulge as well 
.
Anna was doing division with remainders, which was interesting. She persisted in working out the remainders the wrong way – so for example, given the sum 24/5, she would say 5r1 rather than 4r4 … all the time?!! It was obvious that she was just working the wrong way round … working out how many she needed to get up to the next one, rather than how many left over, iyswim. I think she had just about got the hang of it by the end! She’s now playing Zoombinis Island Odyssey …
Picked Josiah up from nursery and Anna went off to school for dance & drama – the rest of us went shopping, and finished off errands at home. Steve picked Anna up from school and came home (via a digital radio shop?!?) at 4ish so that was nice. Then the kids played outside with Mollie for quite a while – poor old Mollie is a bit pickled with chickenpox at the moment, but as my 3 have all had it we don’t mind .
Had tea, now it’s bathtime (in fact I’m being yelled at to help with Zoombinis and drying small people so I’d better go), soon to be followed by bedtime .
October 18th, 2004 at 19:29
A highly educational blog ;~) DWN is lovely – i sat in bed last night having a go myself!!!
October 18th, 2004 at 19:54
DWN is one of the best thing we have ever bought – despite me being very dubious. But zoombinis – tell me, how do we get past the fleens? ARRGGHH – your comments do the same thing to me now that Jax’s do. I can’t bear it. PLEASE don’t leave them like that, I can’t bear blind typing.:-(. But the fleens – I can’t get a strategy for them at all – we end up making wild guesses, and lose so many zoombinis we can’t continue.
October 18th, 2004 at 20:02
argh, Joyce – it doesn’t do it to me at all! Jax, is there a fix?
Fleens – each of their characteristics relates to the zoombini characteristics – I usually resort to counting to get past them … can’t explain it without demonstration!
October 18th, 2004 at 20:29
Yeah, you have to pick a zoombini feature, e.g. hair, and then count how many zoombinis have each hairstyle. Then count the Fleen features until you find one that occurs in the same frequency as the Z hair. So then you can match up Z hair with e.g. Fleen feet. And so on.
Does that make sense?
Sorry to have confused you with my different colour blog, lol!
October 18th, 2004 at 20:30
Well, as it doesn’t do it to me either, I’m struggling.
Joyce, are you sure that Sarah’s comments are really doing the same thing, or is it just that the very end of her comment box is disappearing under the (same colour) right hand bar? Because they do do that for me if I’ve shrunk the browser for any reason.
October 18th, 2004 at 20:32
It might….. I’ll do it later, and see if I can get it to make sense. Otherwise it will be zoombinis at dawn at Melrose
October 18th, 2004 at 20:34
We crossed, Jax
Well, I’m on full screen, though it doesn’t seem to be doing it this time, so it may just have been a wee gremlin that’s fixed itself. But it still does it on yours 
(
October 18th, 2004 at 21:45
Yeah OK Alison now you ARE talking a whole new language LOL Zoombini, hairstyles, fleens??? Little chick is too young for Z’s at the moment but I’m sure she will be in to it as soon as she really knows what computers are for.
October 18th, 2004 at 22:31
So what age is Draw Write Now aimed at??
October 18th, 2004 at 23:20
I like Z’s – not tried it on the boys yet!!
October 19th, 2004 at 9:16
Yeah – i taught Fran to group the zoombinis by their most obviou8s to her characteristic – normally hair. Then count the fleens with the most hair of one type and start trying. She can do level one and two that way but i confess that i start to get lost beyond that. As for the wall – well she can do better than me. AND AS FOR THE CLOCK ONE ON THE ISLAND ODYSSEY!!!!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 19th, 2004 at 9:18
ooh, that clock one is hard, isn’t it? Only because its so bloody difficult to know what the time is when you start though, bad design there, I feel!
October 19th, 2004 at 13:03
I dunno – i think you definitely need a logical mind too. Plus, like card games, i can never remember how to play it. Its the only game where i tell Fran “just to guess!”