I really don’t blog the tail end of the week, do I? We seem to have slipped into a rhythm where the first two days of the week I concentrate on the academics, then after she gets back from the farm, that momentum has been lost so we just relax for Thursday and Friday.
Yesterday the HENCAST get-together involved a tour of the Japanese Embassy. I didn’t take K along, so have no idea what it involved. When asked, B said she didn’t remember *rolls eyes* Talking to parents, it apparently included a film and talk from embassy staff, then a quick walk through the grounds. Sue (the organiser), who had been keeping an eye on B for me, said she did in fact ask some intelligent questions, so presumably took something in but didn’t feel like regurgitating it (“No seal!”, as her little sister would say). When I left, B was looking a bit unsure of herself as none of her particular friends were there, but Julian and Lauren must have arrived late as she was talking to J when I arrived. There was a picnic organised at Lennox Gardens afterwards, but as it was about 7 degrees out and neither K or I had adequate clothing, plus we had no picnic lunch, plus we had already frozen our butts off at Weston Park for the best part of an hour while B was in the embassy, we didn’t stay long! Highlight of the picnic for the big kids was finding a dead kangaroo floating in the lake. After we got home nobody felt like doing much, so we basically veged out and did our own thing and had lots of cuddles.
Today, again, nobody was feeling particularly motivated. B watched the final episode of Life of Mammals in the morning, which was about the evolution of humans and the development from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and early civilisations. She was completely fascinated by it. They played outside together for a while, while I did a mountain of washing up, and also played online Elmo games together. Very lovely to hear them getting on so well! Of course it wasn’t roses all day, but whenever B got sick of K plaguing her she’d call me instead of getting obnoxious, which was a nice change from yesterday! K had a sleep this afternoon, and B and I read another chapter of Tai’s Penguin, since I’d forgotten it was already June and she should get cracking on her MS Readathon! B got grumpy and borderline hysterical when she couldn’t figure out some words, but we had a chat about the way her brain seems to work when it encounters unfamiliar words, and after she’s assimilated what I was saying about it being a habit, and heartened herself by practising a few ways of working round this response, she went on and read the rest of the chapter without difficulty. That was about as academic as we got, although she did sit down and try to read some of the book I bought on the science behind Walking With Dinosaurs. Obviously it was pretty tough going for her, but amazingly she didn’t sound at all disheartened when she said she’d only been able to read parts of one paragraph before giving up. Now we just need to find the time to read it to her…
Must not forget Scouts…at least I know where her uniform is!
ETA: This afternoon we also watched this Youtube video, which was linked from Hoyden About Town.