T-Bird Anni Rides Again

This morning started off Far Too Early (as indeed will every morning this week) as she has swimming lessons at 8:30 every morning this week.  She seemed to be enjoying it and I’m pretty impressed at the quality of front and back crawl that she seemed able to demonstrate by the end of half an hour.  Aparently though she doesn’t like their floats, they aren’t as nice as hers, so I’ve said she can take hers and ask the lady NICELY (and yes, I fear I did speak in capitals at that point!) if she is allowed to use her own - it’s bigger, multicoloured and has hand holes it it…..  Meanwhile I swam.  On my own.  For a whole half an hour.  In a "medium" speed lane, after having been evicted from the "slow" lane by a flotilla of blue rinses and lightly perms.  It was lovely.

After that it was a trip to the library to get her second set of stickers for the reading challenge, pick up 2 reserved books, and get cajoled into renting 2 DVDs on the promise of her watching those whilst I study.  The rest of the morning was spent with her getting sqare eyes and me producing a full third of my next TMA which doesn’t need to be in until next Thursday…. there is a very real danger that this one may get in before the deadline if I’m not careful!

The afternoon was the first of 2 "Godly Play-ish" sessions at a local church.  I’m quite a fan of Godly Play, it’s sort of Sunday School meets Montessori, so I was looking forward to it probably as much as Aprilia was.  The basic idea is that stories are told with the benefit of "props" - 2d pictures for parables and 3d models for events - that are slowly set out onto the table as the story progresses then left for the children to look at and "respond to" in their own way (they are allowed to re-tell the story with teh props, provided with art and craft supplies to draw the story for themselves etc or allowed to simply sit and think about it).  This slipped slightly wide of the mark and was a little too directed (colouring pages and puzzle sheets etc) but was non the less a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon.  I was, naturally, abandoned by my offspring, but she was feeling just tired enough that she "needed" me to stay around, so I did.

I was chatting with one of the other adults (E) there who is a big fan of home ed (or is it a big fan of Aprilia, never can quite tell)  She was saying that one of the kids at last week’s summer club was very confused about how Aprilia is home edded and how *everyone* has to go to school etc which aparently Aprilia explained away in that very matter of fact tone she takes about things that are so patently obvious to her that she can’t beleive you don’t get it that she does "do school" but she does it At Home Okay?   Small child then asked how Aprilia could possibly have friends if she just stayed at home all the time (erm, she was at a holiday club….. hardly counts as staying home!!) which E found really very ironic as Aprilia probably has more friends that this child who goes to a small country school with only 15 kids in her class and who doesn’t do Rainbows or anything (she left, she’s one of the few children I can honestly say I could have wept for joy when she decided she didn’t like it….)  compared to Aprilia who has so many friends up and down the country that we can fill a whole youth hostel between us, is adored by the Rainbows, goes to Brownies, goes to Kung Fu….. poor lonely child hey?