Just to make sure i manage to make someone feel inadequate ….

😉 My sister (mother of my first blood related niece, 3 weeks older than Josie) has been busy making me feel inadequate with talk of potty training and learning of letters and numbers, therefore i feel compelled to pass on the guilt! 😉 😉 😉 (Gosh, i love having a sister who blogs, it really is excellent!)
I’m attempting to make a stab at my timetable of educational events (hahahahahahahahaha…..) so made sure we had a positive start to the week.

Fran’s interest topic is most definitely Antarctica, while Maddy’s is reading so first off i got Maddy esconced in a series of EC/Studydog type activities. I’m really pleased that i paid for the $25 version of Studydog; being able to access it from either computer is well worth it for a start and there is quite a lot extra in it too. I’ve not paid for the progress reporting, but i can see she is taking stuff in; she got all the contractions right and she seems to be picking up on some of the families of words that have given her trouble, like they, the, those, these, them, then and so on. Mind you, in, is and it can give her trouble at times 😉 She has an urgent need to be able to read fairy books, so she is well motivated and while she is, i’m not going to try and rattle her brain with anything extra. Maddy is always busy with drawing, fimo-ing, beading or making something or other (fab angel out of two paper plates from her own head the other day) so i don’t really worry that aside from Egypt (which she wouldn’t let me tell her about anyway) she’s not that topic based. She’s also quite happy to sit and work away at maths on EC, or whatever i put her in front of; the trick with Maddy is just to make sure she doesn’t get caught not knowing where to put herself becasue then she drifts. I could do a lot better if i spent some time setting up little areas for her to work in really.

Fran spent some time reading more about Antarctica (i just cannot get my fingers to spell that right first time!); we bought a great book this week and when she started to browse it, she realised that it was first discovered by Captain Cook (i didn’t know that, did you?) so she retrieved the book she was reading on him a while back and reread it. later on in the day she narrated everything she could remember about it for me and i have to say, i think she did pretty well. It is quite odd to be doing a project with her that so far mainly involves reading and writing, not crafty things to photograph! (Must go back and correct my spelling.) I loved doing narration as a kid, must make sure i do it more with her. After that she watched a good bit of the Planet Earth Pole to Pole episode.

Yesterday seemed to be rather revolving around mayhem; BM has been really busy and i’m behind, i stayed up too late so i was tired, Aunty S and Mini-Violet came round and as Mini-Violet currently has an obsession with putting EVERYTHING in her mouth, it was not a relaxing visit. Plus Josie is vile to her, i had about 10 phonecalls, some boxes arrived (which i was out of, hence being behind!) and then just as they were leaving Lucy arrived with a box of beadmixes and 8 boxes of Hama arrived!

The girls very wisely got on with computerised activities; Fran very excited by the promise of Spanish on EC (man, MUST do more languages….) and i’ve moved her up to Year 5 maths. She discovered decimals and seemed to get it okay (i was rather proud of my explanation!), Maddy did some guitar practise, Fran read some more and then once i had recovered myself sufficiently, we made a start on the Rise of Islam from SOTW. Really looking forward to doing that, i’ve waited to long to do religions with the girls, i’m itching for it 🙂

I’ve moved the girls dancing lessons around so only F and M have tuesday lessons now and they are at 6.15 so i don’t have to cart the others with me. 2 accidents on the parkways though so gridlock and we only made it to the last 20 minutes. Ho hum.

This morning has started well with presents (which i’ve persuaded them to let me open when Max gets home) and a lovely delivery of jewellery beads for stock. Deeply excited about that but now need lightbox to take pics of them as they don’t supply them 🙄 Also about to outsource work work to a second person so i can concentrate on other new projects and give more time to the kids. But, this year is starting to look like it might have changes afoot, so things will get better.
I’ve got a student starting today for 2 days a week for a term, so that would help. Best go and get dressed.