The knitting day was lovely, if a bit slow to start. We early arrivals huddled around the fire as Graeme struggled to get it burning, but eventually it warmed up, more people arrived, and everyone could relax into the knitting and cuppa-drinking which was the business of the day. B had a couple of Mums helping her get the hang of knitting, and she managed a number of rows before she headed off to play with Julian. He and Lauren were late arrivals – I had managed to keep K occupied inside for the first 45 minutes or so, but when J and L arrived and Julian headed outside, she insisted on going out with him. J kept her occupied outside for quite a while before B got bored with knitting and went outside too. Eventually they brought K back in because they wanted to be a bit more adventurous than is possible with a two year old in tow, but K found a tennis ball inside and started playing with another, slightly older kid. Fun was had. I was surprised at how hands off I was able to be with K. I had assumed she would insist on going outside and I’d have to follow her around as I usually do, but she was mostly happy with being told to stay in, and amused herself quite well. I’d have been able to get some embroidery done…next time, perhaps! When it was time to go home they both had to be stripped from the waist down, as the large puddles in the car park had proved irresistible *sigh*
There was TV when we got home, but there was also B finding a songbook and asking me for a “lesson”. I waffled my way through explaining note values and why the song was using certain notes rather than others because they fit in the chord, and came to the conclusion that my ability to explain music is just as flawed as my ability to explain English grammar *sigh* There is a lot to be said for letting kids pick it up and have an intuitive relationship with knowledge…but there’s also something to be said for actually knowing why things work as well as how. I don’t necessarily believe that I would have remembered any of this even if I had been taught it explicitly at school, but I wasn’t, and since I got the how working nicely I never bothered to learn the why for myself. Maybe I need some extra edumacation…
On the other hand, once I’d finished explaining the chord and demonstrating how it all fit together, she got it immediately and was able to play it. So the how was enough, for today at any rate.
After working on that song, she played me “The Entertainer”, and has gotten pretty good at the main part. She was playing it on the setting where the wrong notes actually sound wrong, and she didn’t hit many of them. Her timing was getting pretty good too. Then she pootled around on the keyboard a bit longer, while I went out to play with K when Play School finished and she lost interest in the subsequent shows.
K had a rather fraught late afternoon- she was either frenetically happy or “sad and cwoss” (as she put it). No idea why, I just tried to ride the waves as they came… There were various sibling spats over the TV, and eventually I took K into the playroom while B finished watching Rollercoaster. We played with the Duplo (or rather, she built with Duplo and I lay like a stunned mullet on the beanbag next to her and occasionally pried apart Duplo bricks as needed), and she bounced on the trampoline. She also played with one of the rats, and investigated the mealworms. Eventually she switched permanently into manic and raced around with a torch teasing the dog, interspersed with leaping off the trampoline onto my beanbag while giggling like a loon. All in all it was rather exhausting! I’m hoping that all the exertion will tire her out sufficiently to have an early night, although she did tell me that she’d fallen asleep on the beanbag while watching Play School. We shall see…