Katy’s rambles about life

Stories…

Finished Family Under the Bridge - some of it washed right over her but she got enough of it to enjoy the story. I’m going to put it in the Christmas box to pull out again next year.

Holly the Christmas Fairy - another one for the Christmas box! She loved this one, it’s got just enough “suspense” and “excitement” to keep her wide eyed but not enough to get her frightened. I’ve read it to her in 3 days and she’s demanding the next fairy book is started tomorow. I think that give her a year or so of reading and these would be within her ability as there aren’t many long words, lots of pictures and generally fairly easy to predict. That is assuming she ever reads…… (yes I know she’s not 5 yet!!!)

Lion Storyteller Christmas - 3 a day from this one at the moment. The book is in 3 sections so it’s 1 story from each bit. It’s a nice variety of stories, the pictures are good and they are written to be read to small children so it’s a winner really.

Jesse Tree - still managing to keep up with this although she’s lost all interest in colouring the pics in so I’ve been graciously given permission to do that bit! Next year I will finish the embroidered symbols that I started early this year (in preparation for this Christmas you understand….) and we will hang those I think!

Life (but not as we know it…)

On Saturday night I took her to the local “village hall” to hear a big brass band concert. She loved the music but it was too loud for her little ears in the hall so we stayed in the foyer. Chatted happily to all and sundry, did the hands on hips and “I don’t go to school” routine to some poor unfortunate that asked if she was looking forward to breaking up from school for Christmas…..

Sunday evening was the church carol service which she totally abandoned me in and sat with the vicar’s wife instead. Sigh, such a poorly socialised, tied-to-my-apron-strings sorta gal isn’t she.

Major event of yesterday was the Christmas tree! It’s up, Tim draped 2 sets of lights on it then we let Becca loose with the tinsel. Then we tried to find enough branchy bits in the tinsel to hang stuff on.

Then Tim decided that we didn’t have enough lights and legged it to the garden centre for more…. there’s 25% off everything Christmassy there at the mo so he got 2 lots, shame 1 lot look like the blue strobes on the front of an ambi when you switch them on but hey! they look pretty good on static! he also bought Turkish Delight which I sat happily eating in a black skirt and dark blue top… the result?

(yes, I know it’s a vile pic, for some reason Tim can’t get my camera even vaguely in focus, don’t think it likes him…. either that or it doesn’t like making me look vaguely human…)

And finally… one of the piggies has ventured up to the higher levels of the cage

but the other one is still struggling to remember that those big wooden ramps are a bit handy for getting up and down to the first level (where the food is) and insists on trying to climb up by the side of said ramp and fall off the edge of the platform once she’s dined….. not the sharpest pencil in the box that one!

Granny has offered to teach Becca to knit (yipeeeeee!!!!) and was going to buy stuff this week so I said not to bother and hoiked out the pins and yarn I’d stashed for a Christmas pressie for her - seemed a good idea to me, you know, here you go mum have this lot and best of British to you…. Becca saw, Becca took possession, Becca demanded knitting lesson like RIGHT NOW MUMMY. Mummy sighed, got the book and started….

Through the fence
catch the sheep
back round the front
and off we leap

and you know what? she did 2 or 3 stitches pretty much un-aided and a lot more with a bit of help from me.

So if anyone wants a good book for knitting I’d get a First book of knitting for children!

She watched Clifford yesterday and it was all about drawing and how you don’t have to be dead good to do it. So today we went to Partners to stock up on glue etc (we do this regularly!) and she spotted a little notebook with plain pages and asked for it. It is now her sketchbook! She drew a scarecrow with fantastic attention to detail then “signed” it and wrote the day as I said artists always date their work. ( So that was handwriting taken care of then!!!!) She also drew me and Tim and insisted taht I drew her!

This mornign though we had a real breakthrough - she has finished Study Dog. She’s been so close for ages but those ****** 2 sound consonants are a total mystery to her. So I actually dropped the “what does it sound like” and did “if it’s a c and it’s followed by an e the chances are it sounds more like a capital than a little one” There were only a few of those to deal with (it was the “oral comprehension” at the end of the whole thing) and after she got past those she romped the rhyming words (because if they end the same they probably rhyme…) and the find the word ones (because if you put your arrow over them they are read to you so you just need to remember what you are looking for!) and we got to see Dr Zeeeee being made visible again. Cue ice cream with chocolat buttons on top for a celebration!

She has been really “textbook good little girl” all day (well, except for insisting on wearing PJs all day, even when we went out) and even sat quietly playing with teh pattern blocks whilst listening to my Spanish course then she casually joined in with the speaking practice bit…. worked out when I said “me llamo Katy” that I was saying my name is and replied with “me llamo Becca” she then did the rest of it wonderfully. Can she do my assessments for me???? In fact, can I enroll her in something just for spoken Spanish next year?????

We were at crafts this afternoon and she happily sat with her buddy making cards the whole time. I managed to stamp and colour 5 “family cards” but one is scrap as I picked up the wrong stamp pad and it didn’t dry properly so it smudged really badly and spoilt teh card (sulk, moan…) Never mind, better to find out now than be rushing them in 3 weeks and have to use it regardless.

Big news of the day is that Whirly has finally worked out how to get up the ramp to the “dining room” in the cage although she still insists on going back down to the bottom lemming style (sigh…..)

Sitting down with the colouring sheets seemed to hlep her a bit to get her grumps under control. So we moved swiftly on from them to 2 hours of Hama therapy. She half filled a big circle board and I did a Catherine wheel wich I will fuse tomorrow probably. I may even take a pic of it.

After that she did the final part of SL K’s lang. arts week 2. So she’s now written out most of her address and has been introduced to the concept of abbreviations, house numbers, street names and towns in addresses. Sounds lame but actually being told that and having written it out she now can say her address properly and understands what she is saying. give us another 2 or 3 years and we will be finished with LA K!!!

She’s also read one of the RAZ level aa (dead easy) books to me today and got all excited about it. And she read the odd word or two in one of her Topsy and Tim books (hateful, boring, twee little books that she adores…)

By far the highlight of her day though was what arrived in the post…. “More Stories from Grandma’s Attic” sent by Merry but more exciting than just being a book for her in the post was…. Merry had written in it!!! Oh the excitement, a book written in specially for her!!! And from Merry who’s house she went to and HAD STORIES!!! Some days I wish I was excited about little things like she can be….

She launched straight into the next Stile book this morning - “early reader book 1″ - advised me that it was “too hard mummy” and promptly waltzed through all the initial sound pages flawlessly.

Then she demanded “the book with the clown on it” (that would be Singapore EB 2a then) and did 10 pages from that. yes, 10. So I can now quite happily say she “gets” bigger/smaller/taller/shorter and as an aside can tell the story of the 3 bears….

Stories went quite well, she really loves In Grandma’s Attic so that’s on to find sequels or similars for. She’s also really enjoying the “history” book which is currently giving us a whirlwind tour of clothing through the ages.

This afternoon was crafts and she abandoned me in favour of one of the ladies within minutes and happily made cards with her all afternoon. This woman deserves a medal, she’s just so patient with her!!!

The hour seems to have changed fairly successfully here thankfully and she’s gone to bed pretty much at her normal time. Mind you, I never managed to part her from her PJs today so it was a fairly quick process getting her to bed!

I have a knitting pattern for a wrap over cardi taht I want to make for me. i have yarn ready for it. Then I realised I don’t have the right size pins and wondered about crocheting it instead. No problem! Found a website explaining how to convert patterns between knitting and crochet and set to with a gauge square. Using the right sized hook for the yarn and the right number of stitches and double crochet (or single crochet if you are in the US) for the prescribed number of rows (aparently 1 row of dc=2 knitted rows) I get a gauge that is roughly 1 inch too wide but 2 inches too short, the piece is also really hard, as in it doesn’t drape and feels nasty etc not as in difficult to do.

So I’m off to do a gauge square now with a big hook (cos I don’t have enythig in between a 5.5 and an 8mm) and see how that feels on the grounds that a bit of extra width in the pattern I can live with, I have a little extra width of my own to contend with you understand…. and if using an 8mm hook gets something like the right height and any sort of drape I’ve won and if not I’m off to the shops for 5.5mm pins to knit it after all!!!! (or I’ll see how it knits up on 6mm pins, what’s 0.5mm between friends after all…)

Butterfly rag rug made from crocheted strips of fabric….wonder if I have enough scraps in my stash to do this with…

please can I do it more often!!!

This morning she cleaned her table off as soon as she had finished breakfast and we sat and Hama-ed for quite some time. In fact she finished a whole flower in 1 sitting which she has never done before.

Then she danced her way through Boogie Beebies (irritating programme but it gets her moving!!) before switching off and doing 3 full pages of Miquon (number lines… as seen on Schools TV the other week so now fully understood…. ) and getting a third of the way through teh 100 square which is the next page on. She wrote most of the answers herself too which is something she’s refused in the past. Then she did 3 dot-to-dots (that’s sequencing numbers to 20 then…) “helped” by one of her dolls!

After that it was stories and discussing ideas raised by stories and a spontaneous demand to look in the Encycleopedia at something. And then some more stories…..

Heading towards bedtime she grabbed all her reading books, dumped them on my lap and started working through them. All 10 of them. These are ones she is sort of familiar with and are pretty easy going but she was genuinely reading (as in pointing to the words and not muddling up minor details like “a” instead of “the” which she normally does if she’s reciting) and got all excited about the idea of reading.

Bit more Cebeebies then up to bed for bedtime stories…. she insisted on a First hundred words type book and promptly did a pretty good job on half of that too before having anything read to her.

So, thank you Jan and your wonderful daughters! You inspired her to great things, pass the coffee will you… I’m worn out!!!

So… do I edge it in plain red or leave it alone? Still can’t decide! It curls in at the sides which I think edging it would cure but then who care? it’s lovely for keeping my shoulders warm on chilly mornings (yikes, I’m sliding down that slippery slope to Muffin-dom again…)