T-Bird Anni Rides Again

We seem to have found a new rhythm to our "school"  basically we do a whole week’s worth of one element at one go.  That’s quite easy with the fact books as it’s only a few pages but I have to say that 5 chapters of Strawberry Girl in one day yesterday was a bit wearing!  We are also chipping our way through a dino lapbook which is very good in parts and has some omissions that I find a bit irritating and which I’m going to have to cobble something together for myself…. how can you "do" dinos and not mention that it would appear that they didn’t all wander round at the same time?  Surely a quick graphic of the 3 time periods and the types of dinos in each one would be a good thing? rant rant etc

After this one I’m planning on doing a bit of Brownie badgework as her projecty bits, she has a few half done that need a bit of a gentle push to finish and one ties in nicely with the winter paralympics which start soon for which there is stacks of useful stuff on the net.

She has, this week, made an interesting discovery about aerobic activity and mood…. did you know that it makes you feel much better if you exercise?   She’s been up in the gym when there is no one else up there but has only recently started to do more than fiddle about with stuff and really start to push herself a little and has rather enjoyed the buzz it gives her and then last night she joined in with the ladies keep fit and despite it being really, really hard and her twisting her ankle (again!) she was really happy to have joined in and definitely wants to do it again next week (and gave Chris the instructor a big hug which startled him rather!)  She’s woken up this morning with stiff muscles and a demand to swim this afternoon.  Am taking this as a good thing and hoping that a bit more physical work may strenghten up some alarmingly loose and prone to drifting out of joint limbs, and hey, the swimming won’t harm me either!

Theh myriad Fairy books stockpiled on her bookshelves ready for that great day when she was able to read them for herself are, aparently, no longer wanted…. silly babyish things aparently… as declared as she was labouring through MuddleEarth which is, aparently *worth* the effort of reading    Gotta love home ed, all those ace books I’ve inflicted on her over the years have raised her expectations of what makes a good read :LOL:

Today we have had a mixture of SonLight and mother/daughter heart to hearts.  We rattled through a week’s SL science, it seems that the fact books go down better if we rattle through multiple pages at a time, I don’t think she likes the bitty-ness of a page at a time.  We also did a good chunk of Child’s Garden of Verse which she is still loving, she has suddenly "got" poetry in general over the past year or so and these poems are really hitting the mark for her.  Then we started Strawberry Girl which is going to be a bit of a challenge - I’m having to "translate" the turn of phrase so that Aprilia can keep a handle on the story as well as explaining the storyline on occaision.  She’s enjoying it though.

The girl talk is because there are body changes going on that Aprilia is really not ready for.  She’s got distinct "bumps" now and is going to need more than just a crop top before very much longer which is going to need an outing to a bigger M&S than our local one which doesn’t have anything pretty without scafolding built in (which the assistant was lamenting  was a general problem these days) and today she was complaining that they were sore and that she felt "wrong".  Not sure what to do about all this, she’s nearly the same height as me now and physically she looks, as she always has, much more mature than she is.  In some ways she is very grown up and all that but in most ways she’s just a very little girl who isn’t sure about all these bumps and curves she’s suddenly sprouting.

Today has mostly seen Aprilia slumped.  I got stern eventually and insisted that if she was going to slump she could do it in front of something educational, so she slumped on the living room floor and watched 3 Walking with Dinosaurs specials.  Fantastically done, really interesting and ticks educational boxes. 

This evening she has suddenly rallied at the prospect of going to see her cousin with Duke.  I am a little concerned about what state she is going to be in tomorrow considering that it’s now as near as damn it 10pm and they still aren’t home (please imagine an image of me with an exasperated look, drumming my fingers and glancing crossly at watch at regular intervals)

Aprilia bought Bendaroos with her birthday money - they are really very good

I bought Pooh bear cookie cutters on a whim and am looking forward to test driving them tomorrow

We did a couple of hours doing Dino stuff from a lapbooking set I’ve had laying about for ages, good fun and she’s finding out not just about dinos but also about how you find things out, referencing etc.

She painted some plastercast dino models that we cast last week

We read the last 3 chapters of Ginger Pye.  Sorry Jan, still don’t like it!

Had random discussions about very random subjects

After talking about how I get "rewarded" for work by being paid (and how I don’t believe that it is wrong to reward a child) have negociated various "rewards" for completion of various challenges including a craft kit for finishing the dino lapbook (will take us about a week I think) and pretty things for her room for a month’s worth of keeping it tidy…. Oh, and a pink calculator if she can do all her times tables (so I have *lots* of time to save up for a really nice pick calculator   )

2 loads of washing

helped Aprilia tidy her room and found 1 of the things she has made for her toymaker badge but then lost so she couldn’t take it all and pass the badge 6 months ago so now she can

1 load through the dishwasher

weekly shop

work

and then I wonder why I feel a bit sleepy….

gosh!  how did that happen then?????  Doesn’t seem that long ago I woke Duke up with a wail of "my waters just went, fetch me a towel!"  I think I may have just about forgiven him for fetching the smallest towel we own

The day has been another wobbly one for her.  Similar to Christmas but not quite so bad, she just builds herself up so much then plummets once it’s all done with.  On saying that, everything has been used/watched/played with so no having to tuck stuff away until she could cope with it this time   And a good haul of spending money, some of which she spent on a Littlest Petshop VIP bunny as I said she couldn’t have a real bunny.  The rest is allocated to make up and some tat from Argos she’s seen advertised.

She has decided that this year she is going to become an accomplished seamstress, so we started with a simple fleece top for her doll, it’s half done and so far not been too stressful.  One thing I’m noticing now that I’m looking after me is that I have more to give her, which can only be a good thing but I’m not sure she is seeing it that way yet as it does mean that I’m less prone to leaving her to it if she flounces off at the first sign of trickiness or hard work!  She’s also picked out a "baby sleeping bag" for the same doll which will also be fleece (a very forgiving fabric!) and will give her the chance to play with my poppering machine (with very close hovering on my part!) and she wants to make a "boohoo bunny" which is basically a bunny beanbag with rice in that you can heat up or chill.  ACtually I may look at getting some wheat for that, I think it smells better than rice when it’s hot and the grains are bigger so less likely to escape if there are any less than perfect seams……

We made cake today to take with us to the play barn tomorrow to share with Crystal et al (most of which I will then hoover up when I go in and clean later…..) and her party is to be in summer as the guest of honour (whose mum I really must contact!) will need to camp (and what with our garden being clay it needs to be warm-ish otherwise it’s just horrid).  She decided on only one guest as that seems to be a comfortable number for her to deal with.  I think that’s quite mature really, last year she wanted a huge party and I was quite relieved when we only got 3 girls turn up but even then she was really ready for them to all go home by the end.  I may well extend this concept and have a few other short visits for other happy campers in our back garden throughout the summer.  House guests are too stressful, we just don’t have the space, but campers are great, we can even provide the tent adn bedding (grin) and company is always welcome.