Trying to get my head back together!!!

Hmmm.. reformatting is sort of a bit like opening boxes after a hurried house move – lol! Despite so far being fairly smooth its left me feeling a bit frazzled, particularly as i can’t yet get all my email accounts unclogged. However, its nice to have a clean hard drive :~)

Couldn’t sleep last night for some reason so consequently felt destinctly fragile this morning. However, fortunately the children were quite obliging and played nicely together, then did more jigsaws (this time Fran really did manage the 100 piece one of the sea without thinking she needed help!)and Maddy did a really lovely drawing of my brother, sister and BIL. She has quite an eye for detail really, i must encourage her to draw more. She also got a fringe cut, which is a tad short due to her looking down at a crucial moment! Oooops! However it has made her look a bit like Beth, which she likes!

Managed to get the printer working again in time to do a nice diary entry for Dave the Duck which i shall try to add later when i eventually find something to size and crop photos with. I’ve always used Image Composer but i can’t find the disk – Fireworks is a bit complicated so i need to pick a random piece of software to use. I do have a disk full or six of them from Tim, i wonder which will be best? Any ideas anyone?

Once Maddy went out, Fran did a wordsearch of all our names (again!) and then settled down to watch the educational bits of the Finding Nemo dvd which she really enjoyed. So in a fit of “lets recap on this previous theme”-ishness, i have printed off the Nemo pdf to look at tonight; might find something interesting there to do. Had quite a good look at the Film Education site, lots to do there, i really might consider doing a “Disney Home Ed” summer! lol! Pocohontas, Brother Bear, Nemo, Fantastia, Mulan just for starters would make great themes. (Hmmm.. Aladdin, Hercules, Tarzan, Lion King, Jungle Book… this is capturing my imagination!… still going Robin Hood, Return to Neverland, Peter Pan, Fox and the Hound for an interesting start to politics and moral debate!!!! lol! Gosh – i could do a year!)

Fran did yet more maths from the Learning Rewards book – its getting a bit trickier now we are getting towards the back so we have agreed to stop that one for a while and use a couple of other books for practise of what she has done so far. She is pitifully driven by gold stars that girl! Its not actually that she can’t do any of the stuff but i’m not sure its of much use to forge through a maths book without a bit more practical application so i want to perhaps play a few games or do a bit of Montessori stuff to back up what we have been covering.

Finished off by reading “I wonder why the Sea is Salty” together and recapping on some of the years sealife interests. If this happens to hold her attention again i can have an easy week all round, i’ve still got plenty of that type of stuff kicking about.

I’ve got a bit of an art idea kicking about in my head that might be interesting but i need some intelligent back up – if i manage to get it from where i think i might, i’ll run it past you :~)

Everyone is watching Monsters Inc now and its Rainbows in an hour, so i shall mosey off.

Edit – was slightly horrified by Fran pointing to a dragon fish in a book today and saying “Does he breathe fire???” “Errr… no. He’s a fish, what would happen if a fish breathed fire under water?” *Blank look from Fran* So off we went to the kitchen to light a match and stick it in water, and she had so NO IDEA of what was going to happen that she backed away… and yet she could easily tell me what firemen put on fire to put it out. Sigh… really MUST start some sort of practical science effort! Amusingly however, when i related this to Max later on, he knew immediately that her reaction would be to put her hands over her ears!