Thursday, we had an informal HENCAST meet-up at NMA, then home to basically turn on TV for the rest of the night. B watched right up until the news (inc. Grand Designs and Hidden Treasures with Betty Churcher), then practised her conversational skills by starting a few lines of chat about things she’d watched. Quite funny, in an endearing way. E was working overtime and didn’t get home til after 7:30, so I was feeling a bit frazzled by the time he arrived.
Friday morning we got up to discover it was raining – yay! K wanted to rush outside as soon as she saw it, so I kitted her out in puddlesuit and rainboots and let her out. The puddlesuit is not, despite its name, impervious to munchkins sitting in puddles, and K has not quite gotten the hang of keeping the insides of one’s boots dry, so eventually she ended up taking them off and playing in a puddle in the sandpit until her poor little feet went bright red with cold. B went off to the shops on her bike with her pocket money, and came home with an eclectic mixture of treats, including a horrible pie for breakfast. Beloved, you are a bad influence!
B watched some of ABC schools’ TV (Numbers Count, BTN Specials: Animal Care, and Engineering at the Cutting Edge, which was about the Falkirk Wheel, and which kept B fascinated), then I managed to nail her to the seat for some bookwork. She elected to continue with her story first, but eventually threw a hissy fit about how she hates having to hand-write the whole story and wants me to take dictation. My attempts at explaining what I am trying to achieve through encouraging her to write rather than limp through spelling workbooks did not go over well, and Words were Had. Eventually (after consultation with E) she agreed to take her exercise book back up to the cubby house and do a bit more, which she did. But she’s still not happy. After our third attempt at getting somewhere we gave up and did some multiplication instead, which she actually enjoyed (hallelujah!). It does look to be an awesome book, and I ended up having one of those Aha! moments when I saw something set out visually which I’d never really grokked before. I like it when that happens!
She also dictated a story called The Mouse’s House, which she read to K:
The Mouse’s House
Tom was a mouse. His house was too small. He said to his wife, “We need more space for our twenty kids, and us, too. I will go and find us a new house so you can move all the stuff in.”
Tom went into the house, dodging the eyes of the prowling cat. He found a little house, just right for him. It had a bath, a bed, a shelf, a television and some food. So he called his family to come quick, quick, quick.
He told his family that he had found a house with a bed, with a balcony, with a bath, with a roof, with some walls and some food. The family came quick, quick, quick to move in to this magical place.
He sat on a chair, and told his wife to sit down too. His children ran up and down the ladders and found the food. They ran up to their mum and their dad and shouted, “We have food, we have food! Come and eat our food!”
They took a big bite, and the food was rock hard! They went to bed and in the morning they had a visitor, rude and impolite. It was big, and pink, and it had no fur. It screamed “Maaaaaaa! There’s a mouse in my dolls’ house!”
She shooed them out. The mice ran for their lives. To their old house. When they got there, they said, with fire in their eyes, “What impolite neighbours! We’ll never go back there.” So they stayed in their old mouse house.
ETA: B also did some chemistry, deciding to check the pH of the fishtank. It was off the scale in alkalinity, so we started adding some of the “pH Down” powder which came in the kit. B was very excited to see it change colour from blue to yellow from the bottom up as the powder dissolved. We decided not to add very much at a time, so as not to shock the fish, but to keep testing regularly to see how the pH changes. B now wants to make a trip to the pet store tomorrow to buy something to get the algae off the walls, so she can clean it out properly and we can get some more fish when the pH is back to normal.
She also watched ABC News and part of Stateline, which was about Derek Corrigan and the production of Bastard Boys. We’ve been talking about that recently, entailing a potted history of the union movement in Australia and the reason for the “L” in the ALP.