The Plan: [substantially edited because while we did most of the things on the list, we didn’t do them in the order given]

• shower, dress, feed the inmates, get them dressed, lay out work etc
• Beth – English: reading, pillow fighting, handwriting workbook or copywork, on-line games, etc. Explore the possibility of her learning poetry off by heart. Also see if she wants to keep working through the Spirit book we were looking at before she went away.
• Katy – Playschool (9:30), puzzles, magnets, colouring in page/s
• errands: library; op shop
• Beth – Maths: 1st workbook page/s, play with manipulatives; Katy – nap
  
• me – reading aloud (indigenous history and stories)

So, we did all the work-type stuff on the list, anyway. Most of the rest of the time they were playing with blocks, with rather more success than yesterday or I would have thrown the whole basket in the green shed!

Beth does not like her handwriting book, so we decided that she would do copywork or write letters to people to get the practice instead. She said that she’d rather do something like that because workbooks are so pointless. We experimented with various online phonics games, and she was contemptuous of all of them except Chicktionary, a Boggle-style game where you have to find all the words you can make with seven letters, against the timer. Beth hated the timer, since she could only find two or three words before it went off, but we had to download the game to make it work without one. She spent an hour using the demo version and we filled up all the spaces given between us, plus found some more words which didn’t fit on the gameboard but which got us extra points anyway *g* I think it is definitely worth looking for similar games which won’t cost US$20 to install the full version, but if we can’t find anything else with the same level of functionality, it might be worth paying for. The number of ways in which it will help her practice spelling and word building skills is definitely worth it, plus it comes with a built-in spell-checker function so she can experiment with combinations to see what works and what doesn’t. Much better than spending the money on pointless spelling workbooks which she will hate and refuse to use *g*

We worked in the Math-u-see workbook for the first time, and she ended up quite happily working her way through the first lesson, and even insisted on doing the review exercise when I said she didn’t have to. I think she doesn’t quite want to admit that she likes it, given how much she has complained! After that, she went back to her pastime of building a city out of blocks, and I finished reading the chapters on pre-European history in Shipwreck, Sailors and 60,000 Years. I decided to stop reading it there for the time being, and pulled out the rest of the enormous pile of library books on indigenous history and culture. I read a couple of Dreamtime stories and a story about an ancient family which is just at Beth’s reading level, so I might get her to start reading that next week. We finished Willie the Whale, after a bit of grumbling from Beth about how I was making her read such terribly long stories *g* Next week, I’m going to start requiring her to read more than she has been, as it is quite ridiculous to take a whole week to read one reader! I also want her to start doing some more writing. We will see how it all goes.

Scouts started again for the year, and Beth was terribly excited to find out that they will be doing abseiling at the upcoming camp! After we got home, she watched a few of her shows, then I offered to read more Pride and Prejudice and she leapt at the chance. Funny little thing that she is *g*