I'm Bloggin' it!

I think “education” probably ends for January today – we’ve got guests most of the rest of the week, next week is busy and then it will be February. *SHRIEK*

The girls are being generally very good about my decree that lots of visitors and holidays means that we basically work fairly hard the rest of the time. Today Maddy and i finished off 1B of her maths, fairly effortlessly really. It was a huge incentive to her to start the orange book which comes next, not sure why. Mostly she has done this book for my benefit; it has given me an insight into how she works and her a feel for how the books work, but it hasn’t really stretched her. Not that she’s found it all easy, but really, she has quite a decent feel for numbers. My plan is now to do some games from my Cuisenaire rod books that she and Fran do together; both of them could use some consolidation on mental maths and i think that will fit the bill. Maddy can manage everything in the book but needs a little prompting with subtracting up to 20. It is more she needs to remember her method than anything else. Anyway, she did 10 pages of that, then some ETC, proving that her reading has come on a lot since we dropped that as being a bit too hard a month or so back.

Fran and i wizzed through a couple of reviews and then 2A’s section on 2x table. We skipped most of the pages as she is rock solid on those (and has been for ages) but we kind of played speed games with it and there were some word problems that needed some thought. I think she’ll be more than ready for the 3x section that comes next. She worked on her own on writing and ETC; book 5 is challenging her just enough to make it worth while and definitely adding to her vocab too. She read a big load of Percy Park Keeper books to Josie too, so that covered the bases nicely 🙂

Fran knitted several rows this morning, which was very companiable as i knitted too. Maddy and Amelie shared a Spot cd-rom. It is new to Ams and an old friend to the others but it hasn’t been out for ages. Brought back some memories; Spot in the background felt like getting out a soundtrack to a previous life 🙂 And just for balance, they’ve also played Shrek on the gamecube together too, so that covers IT and Socialisation. Was relieved (she says ironically) to get a call today from our EWO to say he’s looked at “bits of the report” 🙄 and he is happy with our provision. Well, thank goodness for a stamp of approval 🙄

Last night Fran and Maddy were very taken by some of the poems we did – they’ve learned 2 or 3 (short and funny ones) and have been reciting them. I think we might make that a feature of the year if we can. Today we’ve hama’ed some camels and horses, Amelie did a black heart 🙄 😆 Tomorrow morning we’ll hopefully have time to learn a bit about them and have a look at some maps too. I’m going to use this week as my once-a-month break and take reading to CP with us. I’d like to use what they’ll be of this week to consolidate what we’ve done.

We’ve also tidied loads and done washing, jobs and so forth. other unbloggable but positive stuff is perhaps afoot here too, which is interesting. Still, in the short term, i’m quietly confident that we are getting on top of things. Feeling thinner, and more frugal, is definitely good (I’ve got such a spending habit, it is awful!) – now i just need to crack being tidier and more organised. So later, i’ll be sorting myself out a checklist that means i can be sure i’ve achieved all my goals for each month. *Onwards and upwards*