eating our way round the world
in my bid to do a bit of something different for a month or two before starting Core 2, we are doing cooking and also some geography and random other bits and bobs. So I thought I’d do something very novel and dig out some old resouces that I’ve had sat on a shelf for years (you know, the books and things you think will be utterly essential when you first start out and then realise really don’t fit your style) and have a browse. So this week we are cooking ourself round the major continents, looking at where the recipes come from and if they are special for festivals or every day sorts of foods. As a byproduct of this gastronomic tour she will complete everything she needs for her advanced cook badge which has got her very excited as she is having a bit of a surge of badge grabbing at the moment and is after a few "instant gratification" badges to remedy the long haul projecty ones that she is plodding through one poster at a time (they have some sort of poster fetish in Guiding!)
She’s been surprising herself today by reading the subtitles on Forbidden Kingdom (some of it is in Chinese) and thus proving that reading is happening even if it’s not at the speed she wants it to! I’ve suggested taht we use my Daisy Player to play some of the Harry Potter CDs at a slightly slower speed and see if she can follow along for just a few sentences, I know this is a really successful way of getting struggling readers to leap ahead and I think that the likes of HP is going to interest her a lot more than the usual "follow along with the CD" type books you buy what with them usually being for very little people!
I also spent some time downloading a few books from Guttenberg or similar sorts of sites today so we have a few extra books to read and was rather surprised to see that one of her fave books from last year’s SL is old enough to be available. I think we have read Understood Betsy 4 or 5 times already, I may end up needing to download it as our copy is beginning to look decidedly well read already!
And my next OU offering arrived today and instantly got me cross. Not only is it close packed text again (they seem to have decided that paper saving is more important than students having white space between lines - which is aparently wehre normal people write notes) but they are expecting us to read 5 full novels in 6 weeks as well as teh course books taht go with them AND there is an anthology of shorter texts that we need for the course that you can only buy from the OU, so why not send the ****** thing with the ******* course then?????? Grrrrrr mumble whinge moan.
Ah-5 novels in 6 weeks–the joys! The busy Folk(well-mostly lazy teens!) back home use Cliff Notes for just that situation.
Comment by Elizabeth — January 19, 2009 @ 11:29 pm
oh now, I got one of my OU mailings and it had “this page intentionally blank” and that really winds me up. I’ve brought my OU to CP, do you think I stand any chance of doing any?
Comment by Jax — January 20, 2009 @ 12:18 am
Hmmm, Cliff notes…. may resort to those yet! I’ve got a few weeks before the course actually starts and I’ve read Pride and Pred before so I can just trip quickly through that one, I’m 3/4 way through Great Expectations so I won’t need to re-read that one so all I need to do is track down the rest of the books (hopefully on Guttenberg so I don’t need to buy so many) and wade through those! I’d intended to pre-read all of them before the course started but you know how those good intentions go don’t you!
Comment by tbirdanni — January 20, 2009 @ 9:38 am
Jax yes, you get “this page…” fairly often, it does seem a bit bizarre! I did one course where they did “this page left blank for your notes” instead which I thought was a bit of a lame statement too!
I’m sure you will at least look at the outside of your books this week
I did manage to do 15 mins a day at a previous year’s Melrose but totally failed last year due to forgetting to pack the power cable for my laptop!
Comment by tbirdanni — January 20, 2009 @ 9:40 am