Our evening read-alouds:
I need to make an appointment with myself to work on K’s portfolio (I don’t intend to register, but I am planning to keep an ongoing portfolio anyway so that if I ever get involved with the department or there’s any suggestion of truancy I can show officialdom that our kids are not running wild).
Some ideas for portfolio-stuffing:
TBC…
Friday
K played an imaginative game where she was acting out the Moon Maiden from The Little White Horse. Decided she wanted to draw a map of the world but didn’t know where to start, so I suggested she ask Mr Bat to print one out. H played with Duplo. K got very interested in her map so we looked on Google and she asked me to name lots of different countries, then we thought about all our far-flung family members and looked up where they live, and then we started looking up placenames from books we’ve read, like Green Smoke.
Mr Bat took them off to Kingston or elsewhere to do some Supa-Seekrit Shopping. I pootled about at home, then went up to Franklin and treated myself to lunch at Petty Sessions, and went on to Huonville and went to Vinnies.
K and H, at various times, played with the blocks and the animals as well as the Duplo, so we tidied all that up before bed (trying to make this into a habit every night). K also got interested in sorting through the cards for the World Families game (terribly Eurocentric with ONE family for the whole of Africa, but European countries as small as Scotland and Switzerland represented *rolls eyes*), so we might have to actually play it one day… The kids and Mr Bat went out prospecting for kindling with the torch while I got dinner on. After dinner K and I finished reading The Little White Horse. She’s very eager to choose a new read-aloud but all our chapter books are in boxes. May have to peruse the library catalogue and put something on hold…
Thursday
Was our post office and library day. In the morning I assembled a package for Kris and family, and K made a card for Fern and dictated a letter. Then she made a card for Lucy, back in Canberra, which we have not sent yet because the glue was not dry when we left. I had to print out a new copy of my BOS letter and actually sign it this time *blush* We dropped our books off at Geeveston Library and I picked up my holds, then read books to the kids and helped K choose another pile to borrow. We left when H started getting restless, and went across to the PO to send the mail. I couldn’t actually FIND our post office box, since apparently they don’t believe in arranging them in numerical order or anything. After we’d sent our mail off, we went down the street and checked out the second-hand shop, which was closed (opening hours 10-3), and spent 50c at the lolly shop before going home. I hid in my room for an hour or so and made another spiral dangle while Mr Bat and the babies made a cake. In the evening K and I read the penultimate installment of The Little White Horse. After they were in bed, I sorted beads and started thinking about a bracelet theme.
Wednesday
We went to Cygnet to get out of Mr Bat’s way for a few hours. I drove around for a while to get the lie of the land, then we went into the village and went to the op shop. K and H played with some toys and I found some books and clothes. Then we bought some bread rolls and more veges and some dolmades to round off our picnic, and went and sat in the park and stuffed ourselves. We checked out real estate office windows and then drove home, but H went to sleep in the car, so we ended up going home via Scotts Rd and Esperance Coast Rd and the Huon Hwy up from Dover so I could check out some more real estate prospects while he slept.
Read The Little White Horse to K in the evening, then when the squids were in bed, got out my beading supplies and made a green spiral dangle.
Sunday (recap)
This morning K has spread the scrap cards all over the floor in the dining room, altho she was allegedly doing some cutting. It’s a lovely day, so mostly they have been outside, with the stated aim of making a pirate ship in the back garden, but also playing in their bedroom with the animals, the kitchen toys, and with a long scenario involving being in a caravan and going on a journey. Mr Bat went through all the shoes and tried them on each kid and found out which ones fit and culled the rest. Other than that we’ve been doing a lot of tidying and sorting!
Today Katy started off wanting to do her phonics book, and did about ten pages of that. Hugh wanted to be doing something with us too, so I set him up with playdough. After a while, Katy decided she wanted to do playdough instead. I suggested she might want to do a leadlite kit I found in the craft cupboard, before I realised that we don’t have any alfoil. I gave her the modelling clay I had just unearthed instead, and she made some complicated scenes with purple people sitting at the bus stop or on top of hills, and birds balancing on pegs in the sky, etc. Hughie came up with a maths concept story book which I bought the other day, Abu Ali Counts His Donkeys, which we enjoyed so much I read twice.
The two of them played for ages while Mr Bat and I brought in and sorted, respectively, a huge pile of boxes from the shipping crate. I gave Katy a book about making things out of junk, although most of the ideas involved things we didn’t have in our still-rather-understocked busy box, so eventually she gave up on making a castle with a couple of toilet rolls. Instead she amused herself for ages with a box of old cards, cutting and taping to make a big collage which we stuck on the corkboard. Her fine motor skills are really coming along, I noted. I also uncovered the bag of matchbox cars, so they played cars together on the play mat for ages. At various times they also had the toy animals out, and the threading beads/pictures, and the stacking plastic bits, and the kitchen toys. Katy played with the feltboards for a while as well, although she did it up on her bunk bed so Hugh couldn’t get into it! I read a few more books to them together. What else? I think they were playing outside for a while, and they also went to the hardware store with Mr Bat.
And Katy and I are still reading The Little White Horse aloud each night in front of the fire – we are nearly half way through now.
We watched a couple of videos the last two days which I should probably record somewhere.
Yesterday we watched the first edition of Supermarket Secrets, a British program all about the nastiness which is industrial food and farming. Depressing but not surprising, although I don’t know how much K got out of it (she insisted on watching the whole thing though).
Then today I followed a chain of links and ended up at a snippet from another British program about the Norfolk village of Happisburgh, which is falling into the sea at an alarming rate. There was an updated snippet as well, and it was quite alarming to see how much had disappeared in the space of about 12 years. Since B will be in Norfolk in a couple of months, and staying under an hour’s drive from Happisburgh, she is now desperately keen to go and see it for herself. We looked it up on Google maps, and it really hit home when the map overlay on the satellite picture showed roads heading straight out into the sea…
Unedited (and presumably incomplete), as she wrote it:
We set of to melbourne in high spirit at about 6:30am. We stoped
at the Dog On A Tuker Box (Never realy got why it was so
inportent) Then we stoped at Glenrowan to see Ned Kellys Last
Stand it was a bit scarry but heps cool. We got back on the road
and contenud on. With lots of efert finding our way around the
city we finely made it after 8 ½ hours of travel. There were two
other girls there Earen and Vicktoria. we sherd a room with two
of the wemin ledders. There were three banks and naturly we
were on the top.
The next day we went to the harber and sailed on 30 foot yachts.
They were so cool I loved the solt spray on my face as we went
through the serfe. Tipickly I stayed At the bow only coming back
to ster the boat. It was over befor I new it dicpit the fact we were
out there for about 3 and ½ hours. Then we hade lunch and went
to since works witch was really fun not quit as good as Questecon
but still pretty cool. It was time to go back to the camp and have
a swim at the beach witch was literly out the front door and about
ten meters away.