but i hate doing the buggers, can’t use their website – i used it when first set up, forgot password, and somehow can’t be re-entered… and i have never filled out the self emplyed bit before, and it has all sorts of questions i can’t answer! i earnt about £1500 self employed over a year, and spent about £800. but the form has all sorts of weird bits in it!!
so i’ll blog instead. got up late, girls watching monsters inc, had shower [took ages to brush hair], did violin practice with SB – haven’t practiced for ages so lots of wails and gnashing of teeth there. read some books with BB, then lunch, and both girls did some maths and SB handwriting whilst BB did some french story with me. SB then did french conversation. i realsied what she actually got upset with on wed [or so she says] is that she couldn’t spell to write car experiment on the paper and thought j and chloe would laugh at her. no idea why, and chloe had j spell experiment for her. i will print it next time though. She does have entirely dire spelling though, and absolutely no way of working it out. since her reading is so fab, i am a bit of a loss as to why she can’t spell car… but we will make an effort to do diolch words spellings, as we let them slide a bit. i’m not overwhelmed by the fact her spelling is so bad if it doesn’t bother her, but if its going to make her wail and be miserable, then she has to learn!!
lots of running abour wildy, playing with kids k’nex and bb doing counting buddy blocks with the maths manipulatives and they wanted to go out roller skating. we got about 20 m and had to return for a wee stop 
but the next attempt far more successful. beautiful day for it too, and the churchyard has lots of slopy pavements to practice on. also a bit of gravestone investigation as well. should have taken the camera, as the light on the church was gorgeous, oh well! its not as if we don’t have a few photos tucked away!
returned when girls worn out, snuggled and read books – including a bit of SOTW as we have slipped a bit in it – it only takes a few seconds, but somehow… and a quickie recorder practice as well. watched a quite dire spanish lyrical video – bought ages and ages ago. but girls liked it, so i face booked!! yummy tea, and then bedtime. i am enjoying the pirates of pompeii reading to sb at the mo, and she read me some arthur in return.
PS, i am bolding again. i really miss it when i don’t do it!
oh, and BB bought me flowers
Bit sad that she thinks they may laugh at her. C’s spelling highly variable as was shown on the papers she showed me that she’d written.
SB’s prob could be due to that blummin A/C game experience
Nice to get flowers.
I had trouble doing tax return online and then sorted it in the end but can’t remember what I did. Think I reapplied.
Joe’s spelling is pretty bad as well, which always surprises me as his reading is good too. But it will come. Anna’s used to be awful, but now she’s pretty good, and I never made her learn her school spelling lists
I was surprised last week at Boys Brigade, as they were doing some writing about last year’s Junior Camp, and the general level of spelling was um, invented, to put it nicely. This was 8-10 year olds. (Ernest had done his at home already, by dictating it to me, lol!) I suppose I’d assumed that at school they would be somehow made to spell correctly ….
that sounds a relief. i will work on SB’s self esteem. i had forgotten about blasted AC experience.
and thanks V much for link Alison. SB at phonetic stage, and hates writing – so i imagine writing more would improve, but as i said, *I* am not the driver for this, so maybe we will do a bit of spelling and try and encourage writing!!
It’s moslty self interest really on the spelling front. I get bored having to tell her/write down how to spell something, and like H says sometimes we ahve a fuss when she spells somethign wrong. She is keen to learn how to spell things properly.
Had a classic moment with BB buying the flowers – she had said she wanted to buy some for Mummy, so we went into the florists. Of course like her muj, she instantly alighted on the most expensive ones (£3 for a single Amarylis, 2.50 for a Rose) I suggested looking at cheaper ones so we could buy more.
We chose some and she seemed happy with that until we had them and were ready to leave the shop when she broke into a big BB wail becuase we hadn’t bought the ones she had wanated too
She does this rather well at the moment, she has stamps her feet and shouts NO! with her grumpiest face on 
I had assumed at mainstream that children are corrected, certainly the work I’ve seen from other schools has spelling mistakes corrected, at Montessori the approach is that we leave invented spelling in writing as it is as we don’t wish to inhibit the writing and we concentrate on spelling rules and grammar conventions separately. Also using the Stile trays that tbird showed me in the summer which are ludicrously popular with all children.
If she is *really* bothered (as opposed to just a bit niggled) by spelling then ACE do a “spelling dictionary” that is infuriating to use until the penny drops and you see just how logical the system is! There is also a workbooky thing that you can get to go with it which teachs them how to use the book and how to learn the spelling rules.
Just to come over all Montessori for a second (I do it from time to time….) reading and writing are two discrete skills even if they do seem to be oposite sides of the same coin. She learned to read easily enough and she’ll learn to spell in her own time too.
We are loving teh Roman Mysteries here too, I’ve been warned though taht some of the later books are more “teen fiction” with some of the story lines, we shall see….
They might well be corrected at school; whether or not it sinks in is clearly a whole different story!
My nieces and nephews here, and those in the States, never have their spelling checked. The teachers want to encourage ‘creativity’ and they think that by correcting the mistakes the kids will lose interest in creative/expressional writing. Something my sister-in-law has trouble getting round–hard to correct the kids work at home after the teacher has said the work was excellent!
You have the monopoly on useful innoimatrof-aren’t monopolies illegal?