Katy’s rambles about life

no stories today, we sort of forgot until after Daddy got home and it’s too noisey once he’s in teh house!!

Today she played on “Daisy Maths” - link on “Making it up” blog and walzed through the counting bit and the “add 1″ games but then decided that she didn’t understand the taking away bit so did the clocks instead. It’s a fun bit of software as far as it goes but I could do with “Daisy Too” or something for Becca (but there isn’t one!) I wondered about the Singapore Maths software - anyone any feelings on it??? She responds really well to PC type stuff but she’s sort of outgrown a lot of the software I’ve got at the mo.

She also played on Cebeebies - bizarrely enough she seems to home in on the “educational” games and is getting a lot out of them.

Then she complained that my PC chair is just not comfortable and wandered off to her bedroom to play CDs (I’ll just call her “KEvin” should I!)

She also wrote in teh final Christmas cards so taht’s pretty much done and dusted at last. I’m not sure what to do about this for next year, she really doesn’t know a lot of the children she’s sending cards to and some of her friends wern’t on the list so she’s a bit upset about not sending to some of them (cos I’ve lost adresses or never had them!!!) I do have to admit 30 cards is a marathon but it’s lovely when they all arrive!!!

So all in all a quiet, slow sort of day. I’m having an early night tonight but first I have a “date” with the OU study books…. oh, what an exciting life!

was actually rather good!

Any day that starts with cuddles in bed is usually destined to be okay really She stormed through a huge amount of Singapore EB 2a which included a load of measuring work (so I have a spotlessly clean kitchen now after repeated mopping up of the water ) then some counting and tallying work. Then she lurched to some Lang Arts work and did 3 lovely tracings over her week’s words (Sonlight K LA wek 3… we are a little “behind” on LA!)

She’s really into the Silver Chair now and still lapping up Grandma’s Attic - it’s twee, it’s overly moralistic in places (but then she’s grown up with Clifford so she’s used to that!) but you know? I could almost yearn for that sort of life some days!

She wanted some TV time so I sneaked off to play on the PC only to find she followed me and wanted to play on Study Dog. So she did Oral Comprehension 1 faultlessly and the one with “Anna 1 and Anna 2″ again, no faults. She could probbably do level 3 on them as well…. just a shame about some of the other bits!

We attempted baking and the process was good even if the results were crap. I’m going to buy an oven thermometer adn see if it’s the oven that’s wrong or the bloody recipes before I go and wring necks at the service company.

The meal out was okay, Becca loved hers and virtually licked the plate, Tim tucked in and did his serious damage, I ended up with a BLT, I almost wish I’d told them to go without me but then Tim would have felt guilty about going out without me etc and he needed a good guilt free scoff!!!

When my dad was here today he was saying that my mum had been “quizzing” Becca about what we do. Aparently she asked if we did sums and Becca said no, what are sums Granny. Oh, said mum, what’s 4 plus 4? 8 says Becca. What’s 5 and 5 then? 10 Granny! Well you do sums then Rebecca. No granny, that’s MATHS!

Well, that’s her told then! And considering I’ve not even done “maths facts” with her I’m dead impressed! All that playing with rods/counting sweets etc does work!

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…..)

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!

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!!!

her

Long lie in…. 10am!!!!! Knew she was tired but really didn’t think *that* tired!
second half of 100 Dresses
Prince Caspian
Living Long ago (henceforth LLA) clothing - Roman
Dr Seuss Alphabet book
3 pages EB 2a (greater than, less than)
DEL 1 page (sequences)
Lots of stamping cards at Ladies Crafts
Lots of chatting too!
Traced over words in 5 cards

Me

Bit more crochet
bit of housework
attempted to make “dream topping” recipe from hillbilly housewife but i don’t have a proper electric whisk so it’s not very good (tastes ace though!)
set several hotmail accounts that are bombarding me to delete from POP server.
Wondering about getting a new e-mail account to dodge the spam!
Plan to sit with OU books for a bit tonight (honest Kirsty!)

We did a lot of nothing really! She spent a good while jumping off carious bits of furniture onto floor cushions, turned her ankle and recovered only after milk, snickerdoodles (scrummy biccies) and Cebeeebies were administered to her “sick bed” aka the sofa. Then she jumped off more furniture, I think I may have mentioned her not very steep learning curve before…..

She also did some collage with a bag of bits from a friend, made a “head dress” from some cardboard covered with turkey foil (much stronger than normal tinfoil!) and liberally decorated wtih feathers, sequins and anything else she could find.

Some Christmas cards were written and decorated very modestly, sorry but this year it seems we are going for minimalist - 1 stamp, no colour so far! She is determined to do the lot herself though hence started already.

Some Singapore EB was done, she likes that. Some reading was attempted, she’s getting there, just like good old British Rail used to be….

The Horse and His Boy was finished and the next book (Prince Caspian) had to be placed in the “daytime story box” ready for tomorow. This one seemed to fizzle out a little in the last chapter which turned into a sort of “everyone lived happily ever after and Shasta, sorry Cor was a really good sort.”

Highlight of my day was managing to roll our one of the flour tortillas round rather tahn my normal array of odd shapes… sadly I have no idea what I did to make it round! Sigh

Ergemiers - Aaron and the golden calf
EB 2a - another page - too much writing for her!
Write over numbers handwriting sheet
The Raine Drops splashed by
Joderal Bank (radio telescope)
made biscuits

We still have mice (I think)

TIM HAS A NEW JOB