T-Bird Anni Rides Again

Well, okay so no "formal" drawing today but then she was well and truely busy all day and there was a fair chunk of craft-ish stuff.  First there was Jungle Jims which filled the entire morning, we were teh first there at jsut past 9am and I finally dragged her out at 12. 

Home for lunch and found that we had had a parcel delivered, Zoombinis have arrived at our home!  So naturally we needed to install and play.  It was a team effort as the logic of some of the games escaped her completely but we managed to get 10 of the little critters to Zoombiniville after about 2 hours of play.  I felt a bit torn actually, part of me wanted to explain exactly how you worked out some of the puzzles (look for the characteristic that all the ones that could go that way posessed, is there a characteristic that couldn’t go that route etc) but part of me wanted her to puzzle that out for herself.  I ended up sort of thinking it out loud so she got teh idea of my thought process (wait, what am I saying?  Me? logical thought process? no wonder the poor kid couldn’t get it!!) which had some success.  I’ve suggested she works on teh games she really doesn’t "get" in practice mode for a while as aparently once you ahve completed a game a few times it moves you up a level.

That pretty much brought telly time, playing with bits of paper and making a mess time and tea time.  At which point there didn’t seem much point embarking on any sort of formal-ish anything really.

And me?  Well I did a load of crochet whilst she tore round the play equipment and, um, that was it really! 

Well, obviously this depends on the Family Railcard arriving in time (why oh why did I not order it when Joyce blogged it the other week???) but if it does then it will cost me under £60 for the pair of us to get down and home again in under 4 hours on the train but then having a 4 mile walk (or cadging a lift off someone??) from Shorham-on-Sea train station (and either a bus or cadging lifts to get across town to our train station) as opposed to about £50 in fuel and roughly 6 hours of me battling the M6, M25 and various A roads, shouting at the SatNav, getting a numb bum but having door to door transport.

I can see the advantages of both really.  Aprilia would love to go by train and it appeals to me too as someone else gets to do the work whilst I just need to entertain one child (which I would still need to do a bit of if driving) but it’s the hassle at both ends of the journey as trains don’t take you door to door!!!!

So. Opinions in the comments box! 

Well, that went well then!  She had a little bit of a wobbly over drawing the bird at the end of the session but did everything else really happily.  She started off dashing off the shapes without much care but then noticed that my circles were actually vaguely circular, asked why and then slowed down and realised that yes, mummy was telling the truth, if you go a bit slower you have more chance of getting it right.

I’ve spent a bit of time tonight with Paint putting together a "crib sheet" of all the different lines etc in the bird for her to trace over one at a time then put together to make another attempt at a bird tomorrow.  She struggles a bit to pick out the individual bits once the drawing got past 4 or 5 elements so hopefully seeing all the bits totally seperate will help her see what they look like (did that make sense?)

Music today was in the form of the Sound of Music which she warbled her way happily through.

Funny moment of the day was when the boy next door called round in the morning to see if she was playing and she said she would be out once she had finished her homework!  He looked very confused  

Tomorrow it’s Jungle Jim, shopping and more drawing.  May try for a brief violin session in there too. 

Well, it didn’t seem lke much point to get back into the routine for 1 week before we scoot off to NicCamp so instead we are going to work through the Drawing wtih Children book, do some music, do baking and generally fill the week as productively as I can manage.  Music tends to get forgotten here which is a shame really as when she does try she’s progressing nicely at the violin.  then again, I think ther’s a case of needing to lead by example here, I don’t practice enough either! If the weather is good we may go into the forest.  We are commited to Jungle Jims on Wednesday but she also wants to go just with me on Tuesday, then there’s Rainbows (Wednesday pm), swimming (Thursday after lunch) and music group practice (Friday evening) and at some point I will need to shop otherwise baking ingredients will be in short supply and there won’t be any cheap white socks for the Rainbows to make into sock puppets.  And before anyone tells me you are supposed to recycle old socks, I know but we don’t have any worn out ones at the moment and by getting white ones they can use felt pens rather than me needing to buy loads of bits for them to stick on.

I will also be trying to sort out the house a bit as it’s slipped rather badly and hopefully grub out all the weeds from the lavender bed so that I can bung in the daffodil bulbs before it’s too late.  There may also be mass leaf gathering and leaf bin filling (especially if we manage to get into the forest!) as our solid clay garden apreciates the nice loam that results from all those leaves left to rot for a year or so then liberally mulched over all the beds.

So I shall be ready for a rest by the time I get to NicCamps and therefore apologies right now in case I am foul tempered. 

After Aprilia spending ages helping me create some mind maps for my exam, I decided she was ready to have KidSpiration loaded onto her PC.  I gave her a quick tour of it today then lost her for several hours whilst she played with it.  Only thing we couldn’t get to work was the voice bit because she doesn’t have any voice software on her PC (and aparently it relies on what is already installed, must install Read Please on her PC and see if that cures it.

I have to say, I know that the original idea of mind maps was that you produce them by hand as part of the learning process but Inspiration/KidSpiration are really, really good if you work better with a keyboard than with a pen.  It’s by far the best bit of software I have on my new PC and certainly worth every penny to buy it.

Other than taht today we nipped up to Petty Pool to get a few bits for Rainbows and whilst we were there had a good walk around the site which is basically a rigourously managed woodland with a small adventure playground, a special area for Rainbows (with a shelter and small sized benches etc) and lots of little paths to explore.  There’s a camping area for the bigger girls and cabins for the less hardy.  We were there for about an hour and felt much better for the fresh air although I did hve a funny turn going over the suspension bridge.  My own fault, I had totally forgotten how swaying bridges make me feel adn gaily strode out onto it, got half way and was not at all sure if I could make it (think Donkey on the rope bridge in Shrek but with a small "ogre" and a big, ought to know better "donkey")  Thankfully there is a footpath round the side of the bridge (it doesn’t go over a streem, it’s just a play thing really) so when I take the girls I’ll just nip round that way!

I just about resisted some retail therapy today.  Duke told me taht Lidl have artist stuff in including an easel/box of the sort I would love to have some day but really, really don’t need.  We do have a habit of buying all the stuff in a fit of enthusiasm in this house then not really making best use of it all so I’m not going to.  Well, not yet, if I get really good and to the point of wanting to go set up in teh wilds somewhere to do a bit of landscape stuff I’ll nip off to the art shop in town who has them at a similar price and treat myself.  For now I’ll stick with a book, a pencil case and my lovely little watercolour set. 

or are there a few fragile tempers on the Early Years list just now?  Probably is me actually, I’m feeling short tempered myself and that always means I notice other people being peevish more easily!

Aprilia is with mum and dad until tea time today and so far this morning I hve….

Sorn-ed Duke’s "projet bike"

paid off Duke’s remaining credit card debt and the few other remaining small-ish debts (the money from his endowment came through  so I’ve cleared the debts! )

Checked over the Rainbow accounts to make sure I’ve not forgotten to put anything in

Sorted out what I need for the next 2 meetings including 2 new starter packs which I need to nip to the depot to buy the bags for (the trouble being that then all the other girls will want the Rainbow bags and at £3:35 each for 10 girls…..)

Done a quick rough and ready budget for next term for Rainbows and realised that I hvae enough on hand to buy a parachute and a few other big games!

Done a quick rough and ready budget for our finances to allow for Duke’s nicely regular income and the changes to outgoings caused by clearing debts, closing endowments and changing to a full repayment mortgage!  Really really wish we had ditched the endowments years ago, they have barely kept up with what we are paying out in interest on the mortgage and having more paid off means we pay a lower interest rate so they were costing us more than they were making

talked on the phone with Harley (who is up and down more than a whore’s drawers at the moment) and my MIL who asked me if I had any learn to crochet books she could pass to Alex (her youngest grand daugther, the nicest one of the lot IMHO!)

found on-line UK crochet instructions and printed them off

read a good chunk of Drawing with Children which I got from this second hand book site

So taht leaves….

Baking for Duke - he’s been hankering after caramel shortbread for weeks, I have all the ingredients I ust haven’t got round to throwing them together yet

Swimming (in just over an hour)

Rediscovering the bedroom floor which suddenly dissapeared under a mountain of clean washing a few days ago

Doing waht I had intended to do on my "day off" and sitting down with my drawing books to draw the flower, leaves and (half peeled) orange that I actually remembered to buy when I did an epic shopping trip yesterday (how on earth it’s possible to spend over 2 hours in Asda I have no idea but I did and I have very full cupboards to prove it!) 

bah, housework can wait!  Off to bake then draw whilst the baking is doing which should just be done in time for swimming….. who needs to see our vile carpet anyway!!!! 

I started the Christmas shopping today…. 1 pressie down, only 199 more to go…… (well that’s how it feels anyway!)

Having made a rather lovely yellow gingham frock for her at the weekend, which she wore to go to mum and dad’s today, I set to making a "posh frock" for her ready to go out again with mum and dad tomorrow!  I made it from some velvet and "tartan" (I can safely say it’s not a real tartan, I don’t think any of them have purple metalic threads through them but hey ho)  It’s awful.  Really, unrelentingly awful.  If you don’t hold your mouth just right then velvet is the most unspeakably vile stuff to sew with (but looks lovely so I keep putting myself through the same hell!) and this stuff was obviously possessed by some deamon from the darkest pit. Then there wsa the pattern itself… I didn’t realise the pattern was for a drop waist dress and  the skirt dimentions (it’s just a rectangle so there was not pattern piece for it) are a little off - I checked to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong but then realised that it must be a misprint as the size smaller has a bigger skirt!  so it’s a very straight skirt which just hangs there looking limp as ther wasn’t enough fabric to gather it and make it flare out at all.  And that’s the end of those two bits of fabric as they were both "left overs" from previous projects so I can’t unpick and piece it out with more fabric.  I’m not sure I can even shorten the bodice to make it sit at her waist as taht would make for a really short skirt which I don’t like her wearing (cos of those rather gorgeous curvey legs that my darling parents make rude comments about)

So now it’s half past ten adn I’m wondering  if I should rummage in the stash again, find a bigger bit of fabric and make another one like the yellow gingham one (lovely pattern, works perfectly but takes for ever) or if I should just go to bed, send her off with the new frock and tell them it’s drop waisted and meant to look like that….. Hello bed…..

Harry Potter 4 arrived this morning and already she has watched it twice.  I think most of the plot is totally lost on her but she still enjoyed it.