Nobody is really up to par even today (with the possible exception of K who was sick for about five minutes on Tuesday afternoon), so we haven’t done much. B didn’t go out to the farm on the grounds that we don’t want to infect Nannie with leprosy a couple of weeks before she heads up to Darwin to help Rachel and Al with the latest addition to the family, so Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday were spent quietly at home. On Wednesday she helped me test out a couple of spelling programs online. As a result, we found one which she enjoyed a lot, and which I think looks like it would definitely be worth the investment of US$10 per month as a trial.

We didn’t go the the HENCAST get together on Thursday as it wasn’t something we were interested in even if we hadn’t been sick. There wasn’t much on TV so B spent most of her time at the computer. On Tuesday, the science documentary she watched was called Naked Science: Birth of the Earth. Today she watched BTN Specials on Egyptian antiquities and who should have the right to own cultural heritage, Waterworks: taps and toilets, and two back to back episodes of Animal Camera: Surveillance on Survival. Waterworks really is brilliant! I can’t find it referred to in the on-line guide, but I know she also watched a repeat of Mendeleyev’s Dream: The Periodic Table either yesterday or the day before, because I remember listening to it.

This morning we got back into our groove and did some more Smartkiddies while K was watching Play School and before B’s shows started. We realised that every time I had said the next step was to spend 10 minutes at the Master Class level, she was getting intimidated by the big long list of things to do, so when I explained this morning that actually all she was expected to do was pick one thing she got enthusiastic again. I decided that she should go back to the level 3 work and see if there was anything there she had missed which we would need to go over, so she did the first Master Class unit there. She didn’t manage to get it under 2 minutes, although she happily did it twice over and got her speed down by a minute the second time (while getting 25/25 then 24/25 right, so she knows her stuff). Then she pootled around on the Year One level and breezed in a couple of those units – as one would hope! Meanwhile, I have printed out the Revision Worksheet for the first two modules which she has completed, and she assures me she will do them this afternoon when Nannie gets here. Then we can get on with Module Three next week, which is 3D shapes and looks like fun.

While B was watching her TV, Katy got out her button board again and did a couple of patterns (flawlessly) while I washed up, then wanted to do something with me so we went through the puzzles crate and did a couple of those together. She really likes one fractions puzzle we have, fitting half and quarter circles together to make wholes. This time, after we’d finished the puzzle she spent a while exploring what happened when you took different pieces out of their colour-matched positions and put them into different slots. She and B have also been playing with Duplo (B made a run for the rats), and doing some painting and collage-making. After the BTN Special on Egyptian antiquities, B got down the globe and was figuring out where Egypt was, then pulled out some of her books on Egypt. Nannie should be here soon to take over the reading, as Katy decided to amuse herself by disassembling my laptop keyboard…grrr!