just another morning here

Nice combination, huh? Perhaps I should suggest it to Ben & Jerry. Can’t see it catching on though!

Anyway, we’ve had a busy day including the regular music practice, a trip out to help Steve with transport, spray painting a dalek, and lots of baking this afternoon because I thought my friend Ivonne deserved a birthday cake

Steve helped Joe with spray painting … this was after we’d glued little pony beads onto the dalek’s body … next we’ll have to use a little brush to paint the individual beads in a contrasting colour. At this point though it’s hard to tell that it’s an egg! Steve and I have enjoyed ourselves immensely helping Joe with this one, we might even make another one to keep ourselves! The patterns are in our little set on flickr if anyone else is interested

Josiah joined in with baking too – he didn’t like the fact that I was doing baking to take out this evening so he found his favourite Annabel Karmel cookbook and made some choc-chunk-cookies all by himself. He managed to drop an egg on the floor, spill some mixture at one point, and then finally upturned the bowl on the floor just as he was putting the last cookie on the tray. So the kitchen floor needs a clean, but hey, they taste great. I made gingerbread for home as well, some of which Abbie has taken to Wind Group.

Joe’s just had a good violin lesson, he learnt a new piece today, so we’ve got The Happy Farmer to practice this week. And Anna’s at Stage by Stage where they are doing High School Musical, aargh, are we ever sick of those songs already.

We’ve had a return to the Space theme here over the past couple of days since Josiah started on the latest science kit which was all about stars. He made a mini-book all about stars from muddled up factsheets in the kit (ie you had to put the right answers with the questions), and I was pleased that he pretty much knew all the facts anyway.

The rest of the kit was making a telescope but we decided not to carry on with it, as the magnifying glasses they’d sent to be used as lenses were so rubbish that I thought it would be a waste of time, especially as Roger lives down the road. (Rog, when the extension and Ten Tors are over, perhaps Joe could come and have a look through your telescope and you can show him how to interpret the constellation map he’s got from our kit?)

This morning the girls got in on the act as well. This was mainly due to Steve and my threats of getting rid of pocket money if school mornings didn’t start to be a bit more organised/less stressful … so they pulled all the stops out today. We had cups of tea brought up at 7am, by which time I’d already heard Joe doing his music practice. The girls were completely done by 8am, leaving them half an hour to do Space Activity Sheets (I brought them some home from Dynamic Earth!) when Josiah got his folder of space stuff out, and draw space pictures on black paper. Joe didn’t fancy drawing, but he read all his space books again and did a couple of ‘fill in the blank’ activity sheets.

We have also done some more puzzles – Joe especially liked this sudoku puzzle which was divided by rows/columns/colour blocks. And we have both played far too much more Sonic. Josiah has overtaken me and is now at a higher level, and it’s taken him half the time it took me to get that far. No comment. I’m sure it is teaching him *something* … if only that practice makes perfect, and that dogged perseverance is important in some situations

Then finally this afternoon after clearing out a cupboard we found a book of Easter activities, so thought we’d look through it for some ideas. Nothing in the craft/painting/card-making sections appealed to Joe, but he decided he did fancy decorating an egg, especially as he’d remembered about some competition or other that he could enter.

We decided to make a dalek egg – Dal-egg? Egg-sterminate? and other eggy jokes … thought it was an original enough idea but then found another one on the net, but there we go, couldn’t think of anything better by that point! So the latter part of the afternoon saw us printing instructions from here and adapting them slightly to fit the egg in. I said I’d build the dalek body if he decorates it, so I’ve done my bit – and he has a project for tomorrow!

Anna had a cello lesson after school, and Abbie went along for the ride. She wanted to pay a visit to the charity shop with Steve because they’re having a Viking Day at school next week so she needed to pick up some fabric for making a viking tunic. They managed to find something suitable for £1 so that was good. Any more than £1 would have been too much Photos will follow next week I’m sure.

Sun’s still shining here so I’m still happy – I like hanging washing on the line knowing that it will be dry in a few hours, it makes all the difference to a day And today’s been generally nice.

Joe started off with a Draw Write Now early this morning while the girls were still around. This was mainly so that he could cajole Anna into colouring the background and writing some of the sentences for him Still, the writing that he did was probably neater than hers! While this was going on the other three girls in the house (Caitlin & Riona were over here very early) were simultaneously practicing their recorders. Steve and I wondered if Rog & Ruth had done that on purpose?!!

Once the girls had gone, we sat and read the end of Monster in the Wardrobe which we’d started yesterday at the Music Festival. We quite like that Treetops series, they’re not bad stories. I think I did more reading than Josiah today though. Sometimes I insist on sharing the reading with him but other times I want him to enjoy the story without worrying about the mechanics of reading so it’s more fun to read to him. And often he’ll read something without really taking it in … I’m still generally waiting for his understanding to catch up with his de-coding abilities. He can read me a sentence out loud perfectly and then still turn to me blankly if I ask him what it said! Ahem, anyway. Moving swiftly on!

He went on to violin practice after the story, and that was very quick today. I told him if he could play his two pieces without stopping/making mistakes then that would be it, so he pulled all the stops out and did it. Fairly effortlessly as well. Which *really* makes me wonder why we have these torturously long and arduous violin practices!

After that he did some painting, from a Kipper kit that he had years ago. He got bored pretty quickly (it was colouring in by another name!) so had a bit of a play on Sonic Rings, then went and got the Lego out to play with for an hour or so while I spent some time with a Miscarriage Support Group person. Have had a couple of people through the group recently who’ve helped make it all feel worthwhile again so I’ve got a second wind with that whole thing.

Then came lunch, and we watched Friends and Heroes on CBBC. Because I’d seen it advertised and told Joe I wanted to see what it was like, he immediately said he didn’t want to watch it, he hated it, and it was rubbish (just like everything else at the moment it seems). However he then stood transfixed for half an hour while it was on so it can’t have been that bad

Another hour or so of Sonic, and I had a phone conversation with the other local Suzuki teacher who’s doing a group lesson in a couple of weeks. After the last disastrous attempt to join in with this group I’m more anxious than ever to get it right this time so I wanted to find out what she was planning so that Joe can be as prepared as possible. Apparently she’s happy to have older siblings joining in so I’m hoping to enrol Anna to help me by joining in on her cello. Anyway, more on that when it happens!

Then we played some other games together. We did some mindbender type puzzles from a puzzle calendar that we hadn’t even looked at since Christmas (got to about the end of January today!) so that was fun. Then we got the draughts out and had a looong game. It was looking touch and go at one point, I thought Joe was going to beat me but then he made a silly mistake at the end so I took him out.

The girls are home now and having piano/recorder lessons, and alternately playing chess and draughts with Joe. Then it will be tea and the mad rush out for violin, Stage by Stage (must write a cheque) and Wind Group. I’m missing my chauffeur tonight too … but at least that means I can take a short cut across town rather than sitting in traffic wondering if we’ll be late

Some artistic licence is required with today’s post, as despite an absolutely terrible morning with Joe we did actually manage some nice stuff too.

Started off with some pattern block play, and followed that with violin practice (surprisingly enough, this is where we skip a few details. How a 10 minute practice can sometimes last an hour and include so much stropping and rolling around the floor I never will know. And yet when he actually manages to play something he’s really good ). We talked about doing a bit more science; I produced some books for ideas and Josiah pronounced them ‘stupid’ without even looking at them. At which point I decided to call it a day and give up on him to do my own stuff instead.

Went to Sainsbury’s then into town for lunch with Steve at the garage. When we got home Josiah got his bike out again while I was hanging up washing (oops, forgot to bring it in) and fiddling around with old bikes that we’re giving away via freecycle. He did even better than yesterday – now confidently starting, stopping, and even turning corners! Then he came in and drew a bird from one of the Draw Write Now books, and managed to write one of the sentences from the page without too much trouble. The nice afternoon just about compensated for the awful morning!

The girls appeared home and we played Wii Sonic together for a bit before going to try and sort out the hamster – he’s made his nest under the wheel which is a bit daft really and I’m paranoid that he’s going to get too cold there. Still not sure he’s been persuaded to nest in the little house in the cage but there we go. The kids watched a dvd together and then we had a late tea.