just another morning here

Made pumpkin pie today That was after a very slow start for everyone (couldn’t get myself going, never mind the kids – had to wake them all up at 8am! still got Joe’s violin practice done, that amazed even me!), and doing the Sainsbury’s run. Scoured the net for recipes that matched the ingredients that I had in the cupboard, didn’t take too long to find a suitable one – I just wish I didn’t like eating it quite so much!

Currently it’s just me and Anna in the house, which is quite nice really. Steve has taken the other two to swimming lessons, don’t know where Emma & Robyn are, but we’re enjoying the peace and quiet (and pumpkin pie) while doing her homework together before her dress rehearsal this evening.

Really interesting to see the way she’s been taught to do long multiplication, breaking it all down and using a grid, then adding the grid answers together. It seems to be working for her, when she can remember her times tables at least. (lol, just checked it and there are just too many places for a dizzy blonde to make mistakes – she’s either made mistakes with the multiplication or with the subsequent adding up, I despair )

Despite nothing having changed between HE and school with her mathematical ability, she’s also just written a whole page on ‘The Most Worrying Night’ (a night in an air raid shelter) which is far and away better (and more) than she would ever have written before school. I guess part of that is an age/maturity thing anyway but another part of it is the school & Anna combination which does seem to be a Very Good one.

I spent the afternoon in school hearing readers from Josiah’s class today … despite enjoying it when I’m there, I can’t say I’ll miss it after next week.

Right, I’m off to cut out a skeleton and make some dinner.

We’ve had a bit of a mini theme going on here today, fuelled by a lady coming to our HE group to show and talk about reptiles. This morning after doing a few errands with Steve we came home and settled down to do some lizard paintings. I’d prepared outlines for the kids from the first Art Crazy magazine, which came with a couple of free watercolours and this template, so the idea was to do colour by number and shade mixing, but it turned out to be a bit more of a free for all!

The kids really enjoyed painting (I hate getting paints out so it doesn’t happen very often, terrible mother that I am), and while they were painting I read to them from an animal encyclopaedia all about reptiles in general.

note Joe in this picture is actually squeezing the watercolour from the tube onto his painting …!! off to HE group after lunch, which was completely chaotic as usual, although it was nice to catch up with a few people. The actual talk was really interesting, Anna particularly loves things like that and she’d been reading her book beforehand. She (and I – very proud mummy moment) was really chuffed to answer a question correctly that no-one else (out of the 30 or so kids up to age 15 there) answered – it was about this particular type of snake, and i think she’d just happened to see a picture of one in her book and remembered what it was called – she’s got a bit of a photographic memory for things like that! Anyway. The talk was slightly spoiled by a particularly badly behaved child of an incredibly libertarian and obviously didn’t believe in discipline or confrontation of any kind type of parent, who was downright rude to the lady doing the talk, most of the way through. The parent didn’t remove the child at all, and it was a major distraction. Ho hum. No further comment!

After the ‘talk to everyone’ bit, the kids were split down into groups of five to actually handle some of the animals, so they got to hold a snake themselves, and again they enjoyed that. I was cross that I forgot my camera, but here are some photos of the lizard paintings …

Anna’s, Abbie’s, and Joe’s, in that order.
I love Anna’s caption at the bottom of hers – it says ‘I love Reptiles’!! This is also the title she gave to her piece of writing this evening, I’d better watch out otherwise she’ll be wanting some weird and wonderful pets too – and hamsters are one thing but anything slithery is quite another!!me (via the library to change books) we played a bit, then after tea the girls worked on some reptile themedwordsearches and Anna did this Reptiles Quiz, and then a page of writing about her day, in beautiful joined up writing. It did take about an hour to extract said writing, but I sat and wrote a letter to a friend while she was doing it so that helped somewhat. She had wanted to write about the day, but when it came to it, the sentences she was saying that she wanted to write were way longer than she could actually manage to write, so I had to condense things for her, and she kept stopping and starting, so it was a hard work to help her to finish, but I think we were all pleased with the result, I’ve promised her she can laminate the things she’s done tomorrow to keep as a mini-project to add to if she wants to.

This evening we’ve had a lovely unexpected visit from an old friend, so have been catching up, chatting about all sorts – which is what I’m so looking forward to about Melrose next week too, don’t let me forget the wine ;o)

Okay, here’s the poem, just for you, Esther! Just so you know, her inspiration for writing it came from the song on the Sound of Music ‘These are a few of my favourite things’, … it just about fits!

The Sweet Shop by Anna Clarke (aged 6)

Strawberry laces – long, red and floppy
Rainbow drops – multi-coloured and fizzy
Creme eggs – round and gooey in the middle
These are a few of my favourite sweets.

Cola bottles – sizzle on my tongue
Sugar mice – chocolatey and nice
Lollipops – delicious to suck and last for ages
These are a few of my favourite sweets.

Poetry Zone
A quick ‘extra’ blog entry … Anna won a prize in a poetry competition! We’re all proud of her, especially as it was the first poem she’s ever written. Now unfortunately she’s revelling in all the gruesome descriptive language found in the Seriously Scary Poems books she got as a prize, but there we go. Well done Anna!