Category Archives: music

must reclaim my wednesdays!!

SB loves the drama group, but she leaves by 9.30 and returns at 12.30. at 15.20 she goes to rainbows and returns at 17.00, at 18.20 she goes to judo and returns at 19.40. ie, I get to see v little of her on my day free, and I MISS HER! especially today when crappy with migraine, and the heat really hit me just as she was about. we played castle keep and did violin practice, but that was about it. bleurgh. at bedtime we have nearly finished the orchard book of arthur and the round table [a good book, but it couldn't really follow on to michael morpurgo's fab gawain and seem fab]

BB and I have had plenty of time together, and BB is also a delight more often than a tantrum throwing stroppy 3 year old! today we sowed loads of seeds together, watered and potted on [some things might not survive!], she then chose to play with pattern blocks with me for ages [and i had to be careful to only do the allowed bits!] and then we made towers and walls with the wooden bricks. being still dirty from the seeds, we had a bath.
She started getting a bit, well, 3 so we went outside for a run, and read a book all about tigers. i made lunch in time for SB’s return home, but i think the outside bit was the last straw for the migraine i was desperately pretending wasn;t there, so i had to lie down for a bit – grr – in a cool room. cue much wailing and jumping on me to see if better yet. however, chris got out paddling pool and as the temp in the shade became more bearable, i sat out and we narrated stories for each other – BB mostly being a crocodile!

sorted tea and BB then watched a MSB and to bed, SB returned and watched MSB and to bed, and chris has gone out. SB not settling v well, as not used to daddy out.

what a beauuutiifullllll day!

it is rather fabulous to be at le weekend at last. its also rather typical that where we wanted really brill weather – last weekend and next, it was cold and will be [don't tell michelle!!] and this weekend of doing nothing it is so fabulous we have even put on suncream!

got up nice and early. merry had stayed over last night, which was also lovely, so we had got to do some gossiping and general chatting. she left pretty early this morning [well for us anyway!] so we were at least up with the larks. BB was anyway, SB stayed asleep and was much put out to find our guest gone.

no time for slacking though! a quick whizz through maths on her part, and BB doing dots to dots on poisson rouge. then piano and violin practice, then some crafting outside. we seem to have rather a lot of unfinished crafts, so will perhaps attempt to finish some before we start new ones!! There are the crocodiles still in progress. today we used 4pt milk to decorate up as animals – gleefully nicked idea from the pig at the manor borns. BB has done [drumroll please] a dinodoor!! SB is in the process of making liz the lizard from MSB. we sat outside on a rug. oh, i do like the outdoor HE!
a picnic lunch outside – woohoo!! then to the church where they were doing a bit of history of the village. more interesting for me and chris, moderately so initially for sb, and minimally for bb. they all liked the aerial shots, and spotting our house in photos though. on return we did a bit more french words – this time la maison book. TBH, these are v basic, with little context, but we pop a sentence around them and think the french sounds, so i am sure they are going to help! BB did some alphabet work as well. We also looked at a DK 4 book about dinosaur bone hunters.
Back and chris sorted out the paddling pool for the girls and they had a splash around for a bit. rather cold water though, so not enthusiastic for a great length of time! then a bit of tv whilst they warmed up – charlie and lola made a comeback! when I went outside, the pool seemed to have half emptied, and yess, huge hole!! it is the first time it has been used. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

we had tea infront of dinotopia, which both girls really enjoy. i think it is confusing the extinct thing for BB, oh well! she has been pretending to be a meeteater dinosaur and grring from behind furniture – rofl!

blogchen

just a little one as i am seriously on edge – management meetings. i am just not the right type!

Anyway, the girls had a busy day, going to nots and tots, with a bit of french and a bit of latin amongst other things. SB did a piano practice as well.

when i got home they both wanted to do a craft, so some cards for fran are half made! Sb has used a stamping kit, and bB and i have done wax splodges so far. we had candles out for a bit of demonstrating that there was air and you can use it up.[bb is particularly keen on speriments] SB also did some maths. we all read a bit more of these baby french books [they are v much for 2's but they are quick, and we try and do a sentence with the words, today we were eating or not eating various foods!] SB and BB watched some how things work based on the DK books, which they both enjoyed [and yes, some MSB] . Sb playd some chess, and read some 3rd grade detectives books.

aargh, bb awake only 90 mins after SB to bed

hmm, i am trying to back flickr, blog, think about important meeting tomorrow at work etc etc, and multitasking is not compatible with BB awake. gorgeous though she is.

Anyway, we all got up, CHris to SB to drama, unfortunately he was running late and they went to the wrong venue. it is far enough away that there was much sighing! she got to half of it anyway.

meanwhile BB and I were having a much more satisfactory time. we started off playing silly games – hide and seek frog etc, then did some seed sowing. BB quite keen to do more experiments with seeds, so we have put some different ones to chit and we will see which one germinates first. [more details on gardening blog] after we had done that we did some ‘match and sort’ with singapore 1a. she enjoys this as v easy!! [though she did say she wanted to do SB's book...] and we read one of the very starter french books on colours again.

Still desperately keen to do ‘speriments, i got out an air book, so we saw how we could blow air on each other [degenerated a bit!] and then [b******, FORGOT ABOUT THE LINK THING AND JUST PUBLISHED. THIS IS WHERE I LAST SAVED!] i impressed myself with making some really good aeroplanes.

lunch and SB home. she wanted me to show her her piano hands afterwards, so we did a piano practce, then a violin. BB joined in the violin practice – always tricky! Both girls did afrench book with me on clothes and then ordered crystal experiments, so we set them up – very brave of me to handle chemicals with BB! SB read all the safety warnings v carefully. she remembered that we had hung the rock from string before, and wanted to repeat that, so we did.

Rainbows for SB – feels that there is no time for me in her current wed timetable, so will have to change that. A surprise visit by chris parents, so i made tea and dinner at the same time [grin] and got them to read [and i won't link this time!] Katie and the dinosaurs and Digging up dinosaurs. we then read a red nose reader together before she wanted to bake pink cupcakes with smarty eyes. so we did. SB returned in time for the lickings, and we said goodbye to grandparents.

Bath, tea, BB bed, SB playing in garden, me potting up seedlings. SB bed. Apprentice, apprentice you’re fired and BB awake. playing drawing birds and dinosaurs with BB and looking at flickr pics of her as a baby. the end!!

today [quickly]

chris had minor op this am – all well

his parents came and supervised. SB quickly rattled off maths, handwriting and piano. lots of games then with nana and grandad.

when i came home she got out a fossil find kit we had picked up from a museum, and enjoyed doing that. BB separated sand and iron filings using a magnet [maganet] and v much enjoyed that. she suprised me by using the word evaporated correctly. she also used her maganet [maginfying glass this time!] to look at plastic spider in more detail. SB off to ballet, BB and i read books and played games, and then stuc straws together to make panpipes. SB off to swimming [where her stroke has gone back to 'unusual'!] came home to find nina and neurons in progress.

At SB request, box books have swapped from explorers to science books with experiments in.

getting the most out of a day

usual work day, i think cloning might be in order – though hopefully i could have the version where they forgot to clone the body fat, and that is just halved between my doubles! so having done my duty, driving home i thought i should try and do a music practice with SB [usually i feel a bit up for nothing] so i did, and we had a lovely piano practice together [we don't do these often enough!] then, whils waiting for dinner, i got some really easy first steps in french books and SB, BB and myself chanted words for farm animals, practiced saying if we would want one or not, and if we wanted an enormous one or a little one. SO feeling better that have done what they want!!

not sure what else they did with the day. SB did some french earlier, they had model crocodile making equipment out on the table! def some magic school bus watching!

After tea, sb and I watched the second half of the european womens gymnastics, which she really really enjoyed. telling me how one days he would be watching e and r, as they were v clever and were going to be in competitions! oh and that fran would be excellent at the floor! she read some of her new earth book [ours a fraction of cost as ex library!] mainly the volcano section, and the read to me the magic tree house hawaii one. following on from the fab gawain book, sb wanted some more king arthur, and we happend to have an orchard books legend of king arthur, so have started reading that to her. it is a nice read, but morpurgo def a better man with words! as i left, she was reading a chapter of the magic school bus volcano.

looking forward both to our st georges day weekend, and also to out camping trip at the bank hols :smile:

like the manor born

SB

HE group sports session [which she always enjoys]

ello

violin practice

swimming [when i had a dizzy moment and wondered whether i had come home from one workplace, but should have gone instead to the other, so had to ring them to see if i was late [i wasn't!]] oh, and her front crawl now recognisable, but breast dtroke still makes me giglle, and feet first sculling totally creases me up – and I am sure i saw the instructor giggle too.
finished the worst witch, played chess

oh, and we must take her to optician – she has gone yearly – because think there is a definite reduction in vision!

BB

magic school bus. i do hope chris did something fun with her at some point!

read a dinosaur book from DK, which actually has lots of tiny books stuffed in it, so we will lose them all [already anal - not a good gift for BB, but cheap at the book people!]

fell asleep in the sling whilst i was feeding her tea.

ISQ

well, SB reading loads- we got given some animal arks, and she has loved them, and read loads of them. also she has read the sonlight third grade detectives, all the magic tree houses, and all the magic school bus chapter books i had so far, and also horrid henry. these are all nice easy reading books for her. she has stretched herself with reading ballet shoes again, but 21 balloons was a bit difficult [well, its language is quite ornate!]. so i have bought some more 3rd grade detectives and magic school bus from amazon, as well as a couple of other things…

SB has done an enchanted learning booklet about african animals, [nearly a lapbook!!] and continued to read the ‘box books‘ about them [she chooses something to be interested in and we together find books around that and stick in the box for her to find and read as and when she fancies] she also wanted some explorer stuff, so a couple of explorer books threw themselves into the amazon basket too [all that disappointment from non-tent buying as we can't find a khyam ridgipod porch, and geting the rest without doesn't make sense for us]. She has regularly done her maths, still a fair bit of webkinz. oh, and although short we have done a lot of violin practice together, and she has done piano independently, and some with today. i think she prefers the piano at the mo, well, there is no setting up to do.

BB has continued her dinodor fest, and with chris has started to make a papier mache landscape for them to live in, she got 2 more from Merry as part of my bonus spending. SB bought herself castle keep, so we have played that every evening, and she is getting very good at it. in fact, if you click on the links, you can see my order at the mo! SB and BB have obviously got a bit more of a surprise coming! BB also been entirely fixated by watching magic school bus, though have persuaded her to let me read her lots of dinosaur themed books [katie and dinosaurs, picturepedia dinosaurs, various dinosaur fact books]

they went on an egg hunt today – as chris twittered, it wasn’t entirely successful…

Latest in a (very) occasional series.

Yesterday

After a late-ish return home on Monday it was a bit of a slow start on Tuesday. Kids started off on a bit of a Magic School Bus fest since I managed to finish acquiring all the rest of the episodes over Easter. The girls love them and they have decent science content.
They spent ages decorating the eggs they got in a ‘decorate your own Easter egg’ thing at Easter. Well SB spent some time. BB wasn’t so interested, she’d rather just eat them :-)

What else? SB did a fair bit of maths, and piano practice. BB playdoughed. I was looking up somethings for SB on African Animals as she had said a couple of weeks back that she wanted to learn some stuff on that. BB wanted me to find somethings for her, so I printed off a few Dinosaur pictures from Enchanted Learning. She painted one of those and did a bit of colouring on another.

On the African theme, I sat down with SB and looked at the the globe, the nice big atlas we have, as well as the DK book on the Earth. We looked at where Africa was, the names of some of the countries, what was a Continent, what the other Continents are. SB was able to say that it would be hot in Africa because of it’s place on the globe.

Whilst looking at the Atlas Sb noticed that some of the maps had curved edges, rather than being just a rectangle. so we wandered off onto a chat about how you have to change the shape/size of things when you translate a from a globe to a flat map. Demonstrated by trying to convert a rectangle of paper into a globe and comparing Greenland on the map with globe. I would have gone and looked up some different projections on the web, but by then we had had a powercut so couldn’t . wondered where my Peters Projection map is, but haven’t seen that for ages.

We looked at some of the different maps in the atlas – showing countries,communications physical geography etc. We looked at a good map of Africa which showed the different types vegetation cover – rainforest, savannah, grasslands, deserts etc. and looked at some of the pictures in the DK book to see what these areas looked like.

Was just about to go and sort out camping lamps, torches and candles before it started getting dark when the power came back on – which pleased the kids as they could watch some more Magic School Bus :-)

Chippy was busy though with lots of people who decided not to cook dinner (power came back on at about 5.30)

surprisingly productive duvet day

after a really lovely, but emotionally challenging easter, i have found relaxing and sleeping difficult, so having overslept this am, i declared duvet day.

[oh, just in case chris doesn't blog, he and sb did loads of map related things yesterday, as well as library and a power cut]

so, when i got up, they were breakfasting [and SB was reading at the same time] BB and i did jigsaws, read books [with a bit of alphabet and number recognition] and tickled. SB did some maths and made and wrote in a birthday card for my dad using paintshop. crafts was a clear request from BB, so i got out an easter craft we hadn’t got round to at my parents, and painted easter window decs. still having glass paint, we then painted some of our takeaway boxes – bb plans to put dinodoors in hers!

BB and i read about birds [another fascination of her is eggs], and SB read a ‘box book’ about why tigers have stripes. SB and i played about with violin practice, and then a viola that mum has given me so that i can play a lower line than before. i realised that although i have messed about with a cello, i have never played the viola before. BB baked scones with chris, and we enjoyed them as a snack afterwards.

we all looked at our science growing experiments. the ones in the dark had grown very tall to try and find light, and had pale leaves [but still tasted ok], the ones in the fridge had only just started to sprout, the dry ones hadn’t done anything, and we have topsy turvied the bean, and discussed the effect of gravity. we also started our grow your own mushroom kit. they decided the spore and straw smelled yukky. chris and i rather liked it! lets see if it works [our previous mushroom forays in leeds failed totally]

since it was duvet day, we then watched numerous episodes of magic school bus back to back [thanks to some friends oop north]. i really recommend them. yep, they are in the all pervasive american, but there is a lot of science in there, they use the proper words, and it is still enjoyable rather than worthy. i had BB trying to tell me all about the crabbity zooey ones [zooplankton] following one about food chains in the sea. and i learned something in the how hens eggs are made one!

SB did a bit of education city, and then a lot of webkinz, which she has really got into and enjoys. we also did a good tidy up. so, all in all a very productive duvet day i think! [oh, and we did lots of my favourtie things - like snuggling, cuddling, tickling and laughing]. oh, and chris set fire to the rubber seal on our pressure cooker, as he lit the wrong gas rig – sigh!!! [also cue much choking and spluttering]