Pirate Dora Mania has been undivertable today, so i haven’t exactly tried. Amelie has had some really poor nights sleep and disolves into tears at the least thing and Josie can’t bear to be away from Dora if it is on, so it has been a Dora fest. Oh well, it’ll pass.
So i kept the big two away from it, as much as possible and occupied them. I wish we were feeling more inspired, but we aren’t, so i think we’ll just bumble along till we’ve moved. We have a habit of working fairly consistantly through the summer, so i’ll assume this is just one of those fallow periods.
On the other hand, the skills they are working on at the moment will open up a very new world to them and it is probably worth really putting our backs into it for a while; Fran is on the edge of being able to write her thoughts now, gradually her concept of building words up from her head is coming. I find it odd that is is so far behind her reading, but there you go. What do i know? The spelling book is really suiting her, because it is focusing on middles of words and probably the next step is to just do spelling lists or something for a while. Actually, i could get her to make wordsearches for Maddy; she’s like that! In the meantime she’s getting better at her joined up writing and we’re managing to find places it needs work as she goes along, which i think she sort of prefers to a book of exercises. So everytime a new letter join pops up that she isn’t sure of, we just practise it together a bit. I’m really enjoying watching a work through a process where the drive to do it comes from within. By the end of this year she is going to be such a different girl to the one that started the year. She’ll be a reader and writer and on her way to independence in learning. I’m looking forward to that.
Maddy did more writing too, happily learning all her caqpital letter formations; it’s a synch for her… remarkable that at 5 she didn’t know the names or sounds of any letters and yet now her day is predominantly driven by using them. And she loves Illustration Friday, so she’s doing a lot of drawing again. Sometimes the language to describe things still escapes her, especially if she is under stress and then she can draw something for me instead. Today she spent a long time creating a bear family from her favourite cuddlies (Spudge, Snow White, Teddy White and Peggy) and got upset becasue she had lost someone. So she drew it for me, so i’d remember it. Which i did, but unfortunately he went to Charity Shop Heaven (a little star came and took him!)
Anyway, they also did lots of EC, it hasn’t stopped being popular so i will have to sub to it i think, some beading, some drawing and quite a bit of playing. I’d have taken some nice photos, only Max took the camera to work to video tractor smoke or something 🙄
Tomorrow we have a day out, which Fran will be thrilled with as she has a bit of a soft spot for Kath’s M.
Did you ‘fess up to Maddy about the bear and the charity shop? I find those moments so hard…
Nope, i usually go with “well, where did you put it?” – :blush:
I have to confess to Fran now though but she never minds if it went to a charity shop, bless her.
We have never yet dared to do this with a cuddly – hence we have stacks of boxes – literally hundreds of cuddlies. P gets so distraught even parting with bits of rubbish sometimes, that we would live in terror of being found out. And she couldn’t bear to agree to part with any.
Mind you, the last time we tidied her room we did manage more conversation about her attachment to objects – and she bravely let a lot go. It was mostly just bits of packaging and so on – but a start…
you want : oops : there.
So i do 😳