T-Bird Anni Rides Again

In between all the random blogging there has been some life and even some learning going on!  She watched Jolly Phonics Video 1 in the morning and wall to wall Magic Schoolbus in the afternoon.  She also found time to do some tidying up in her room under gentle instruction from me (cos if you ask her to tidy her room she ends up in floods of tears wailing that she doesn’t know how) and play a few PC games.  Meanwhile I tried to find the living room floor with limited success and pondered the next few months learning.  I’ve decided to try to romp through the Core 1 language arts acompanied by random read alouds from ones that have been popular over the past year plus whatever else comes to hand then start Core 2 and LA 2 at the same time so I’m not trying to juggle too much.  I think we need a break from the tour of World History anyway and we have plenty of other "culture" (history and geography) materials we can dip into to keep the routine of a story book, a fact book and some puzzles each day.  I also need to pull myself back up by the bootstraps and start doing the practical science again as we did precious little of that this time round to my shame and Aprilia’s disapointment.  I’m also thinking of doing a weekly structured cookery session with her.  I’m dithering between buying Nora’s Dinners which we borrowed from the library a while ago and enjoyed but wasn’t particularly challenging or digging out our copy of The River Cottage Family Cookbook which is more weighty in size and content but may be just a little too challenging for her or really going for it and getting the Hairy Bikers Cookbook to go with the DVDs we alreay have or going for the fast and loose aproach and just downloading random recipes off the net!  I’d like something that is vaguely instructional so she gets to learn more than just how to produce food but then I think that maybe nearly 8 is a bit young for full on food technology.  I dunno, so many decisions, so little ability to make them!

is anyone after Base 10 blocks (blue plastic ones, not the lovely Golden Bead version you know and love Jax but okay for showing place values etc) or pattern blocks (the triangle, hexagon, trapizium and paralelogram shaped tiles - not the full tub shown in the link, just 100 pieces which is probably more than enough really) or centimetre (1gram) cubes?  I’m after the geared clock from SonLight but it only comes as part of a big batch of manipulatives and consumables some of which I already have.  I’ll hunt for one in the UK if I can’t find takers for the spares taht I don’t need but if anyone is fancying the bits I don’t need it probably works out a fraction cheaper this way!

despite treating the cat, using the VAx more than it’s ever been used in years (and emptying it straight away so nothing could escape again) and putting out candle traps pretty much every night, we are still being bitten although not nearly as often as we were.  I’ve just ordered "foggers" to fumigate the whole house…..

will be placing an order around the 20th of January (maybe a bit sooner if we are organised)  As we are a bit short on ready cash, I’ll need money up front (I can give you my paypal addy) and will absolutely insist that you either visit me or invite me over to deliver the goods when they arrive cos I’m never going to get organised enough to post them on to you now am I