Normal is good.

The children tootled through the morning with “A Little Princess” which Fran found in her stocking this year; avid readers of several years might remember that this film (and it really is a dire representation of the novel) reduced her to hysteria and sobbing at the age of 5, so i was surprised she wanted it, but FC did his duty and she’s been loving it. My veritable raft of literary sneers have also inspired her to try the book, which she is apparently going to give some time to when she finishes “Matilda” – i won’t hold my breath 😆 i think they also did some fimo-ing and watched Raven, among other things.

Once the rep was gone and we’d navigated lunch (woe is me, i miss my biscuits) Fran settled down with her Poles book and read about Shackleton and Maddy did some guitar practise since her plectrums had arrived. She’s on to lesson 3 and navigating G A B fairly well; i think tomorrow might even bring her to Merrily We have a Roll Along which she’ll be terribly excited about. Loving listening to her as she’s excellent at hearing whethers she’s made a correct or pleasing sounding note. having to fight (my sister will laugh) to avoid thinking “Oooh, i really want to learn too, i know, i’ll buy a guitar and do it with her!” a parental, well-intentioned over-involvement syndrome that both of us suffered from in our music playing youth 😆

Fran migrated on to a SchoolExpress unit on Antarctic and did a really good job on it; i do love those units because the handle info, comprehension, reading, writing etc so nicely. She spent some time on joined up writing too. My god, she’d hate school (or school would hate her); she must have stood up, sat down, jiggled, wriggled, moved or relocated 50 times during 10 pages of work! :wall: 😆

Maddy had moved on to the web-based version of Studydog; the upside of spending $25 on it is that she can use it on any computer. Didn’t seem so stressed by it today, so that was good and all in all she probably spent an hour at that. I’ve sourced (i think) an alternate version of HappyMais (on clearance at BM so when it’s gone, it’s gone) which will be okay but i’ve yet to find out what the prices are like. And i’ve spoken to my dad about a potential small family publishing business!

Amelie has done some Studydog and some writing (the inevitable cat, mat, sat, hat, rat series) i’ve done several loads of washing as a soap nut convert ( i rebought, i like them that much!) and i’ve played with Josie on some little bits of this and that while trying to rescue her sister from her. Think she ended up watching Fran do money sums on EC as her preferred entertainment of choice!

Now, if i could just find my camera…. i can’t wait till next week, i’ve bought a pop up light box thing to take pictures of stock and made stuff in. never occurred to me there’d be an actual ‘thing’ to make pictures of that sort easier!