The Brick House

Those would be my good intentions about updating this thing every day which I can hear flying past the window on the back of something pink and porcine, wouldn’t they?

Here’s what I can remember since the last update:

Thursday had HENCAST in the morning, with a scrapbooking workshop that B loved. I didn’t stick around as I had no particular desire to spend an hour and a half chasing K around the Scout Hall, but B had lots of fun working with Caitlin to scrapbook some of her Darwin photos. In the afternoon, apparently, B and K got arty and did some collage. B cut a chain of ballerinas out of paper and decorated them, as well as making a fish. In the evening E took B to watch the third Spiderman movie and I had a mini breakdown having to look after K, probably because I was already coming down with The Lurgy but didn’t realise it at the time.

Friday, I was horribly lurgified and basically flopped about while B entertained K most of the day. She read a couple of books to her while we were upstairs, including Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother Too?, complete with the now-obligatory caveat about some species having evolved to make an investment in parental care, but most do not. They also looked at the book on birth together, and B gave K a concise and pretty accurate description of the process of implantation and growth of the embryo and placenta. That’s my girl *g* They spent a lot of time in the garden because B decided to replant lots of pots and make a garden underneath the cubbyhouse. They found a leopard slug, and had an impromptu biology lesson. E came home and took them out to the Mall for dinner and secret pre-Mother’s Day activities (which the munchkins then proceeded to tell me about as soon as they got home).

Saturday, more lurgification while E took K and B to May Crown Tourney. B met up with Caitlin and they had lots of fun racing about. Sunday was mostly more of the same until after lunch, then she and K pootled about while E and I cleaned the living room and play room.

Monday had pottery 10:30-12:00, and before that the girls played together in their newly -excavated playroom. I did some more excavation, and some of the vacuuming. In the afternoon we played the geography Twister game, and I tried to stop K beating up B. I believe there was more gardening at some point. B is becoming more actively helpful when asked to do things like clear the table for dinner, although she has decided to adopt E’s technique of transferring all the crap frm the table to the floor without making any attempt at putting anything where it belongs.

This morning (Tuesday), B has already walked up to the shops and back for milk, coping with the bag disintegrating on the way back while she was trying to wrestle a dog and a scooter as well, and having forgotten her phone so she couldn’t call me to come pick her up. Naturally there was a bit of disintegration when she got home, as she let out all the stress. She has been blowing bubbles for K, and then they both went outside to have more fun with that. There was a girl next door who said she was temporarily puppy-sitting a 6-week old puppy for her brother (no idea if her brother is the owner or if she is now living next door or what), and of course B and K had to stare over the fence long enough to induce the puppy-sitter to come over and let them pet it.

B eventually yielded to my persuasion to sit down and do some writing, while K nursed her cold in front of Play School repeats. I told B I was giving her a writing prompt so she didn’t have to sit in front of a blank piece of paper, but she decided she wanted to work on her story, The Knights of the Round Saucepan, instead. We sat down with an exercise book and I prompted her to think of the plot while I made notes for her. Then she started writing the first chapter, after a discussion about different ways of employing a narrator and how she wanted to go about it. She made it most of the way down one page then called it quits for the day. So long as she does a bit of work on it every day or so, I think that will suffice as her written work. After doing that, she got ready to go out with Nannie, and is probably now still at the pool. Mum will be dropping her off at about 1:30 tomorrow afternoon while she goes to a specialist’s appointment, but will pick her up later on and take her out to horseriding.

K is quite highly strung at the moment, presumably from her cold, and kept having meltdowns over every tiny thing which went wrong. After B left, we played for a little while in the play kitchen (baked green mangos, yum), til she eventually admitted that she was knackered and would like a nap now please Mum. She’s been asleep for about 45 minutes now (3pm).

Monday was a loss in terms of seatwork, although B did do some independent reading (Peepo) and she and E looked up min-mins in the evening. Caitlin came round after pottery and stayed til 4:30, so that took care of the whole day. They pottered about in the garden, and played Runescape on B’s computer. If B gets into this it might be a hook to get her to keep reading…

This morning, B watched BTN and Science Clips (episode 4 on Habitats) on the ABC, had a shower and washed her hair, and then we went to return most of our hideously overdue library books. Miss K was most displeased that we didn’t go into the library, so we might do that this afternoon or tomorrow. After we got home, I fed them lunch and then pinned B to the carpet and pummeled her until she agreed to do some maths (actually it was less painful than that. Slightly). We watched the decimal lesson and decided that since B had been manipulating decimals since she first got her allowance it was a bit pointless to do the workbook exercises, so we went on to estimation and multiple digit addition with carrying. B was fine at the estimation, but very careless doing the carrying on paper (she knows how it works but doesn’t see the point in writing it all out). I sent her off with Nannie with the workbook and instructions to do the second page, being more careful this time. That was about all we had time for today…

Since B left, K and I have fed the animals, played in the garden, and she has watched an episode of Play School while I blogged. I am feeling very dopey and sleepy and I’m not sure what else I will manage to accomplish with her today. Maybe some collage – we haven’t done that in ages and it’s not quite as messy as painting…

ETA: K and I did some collage (which ended up with glitter all over the floor, naturally, but at least that can be vacuumed up!) and K practiced her cutting skills on paper and on the bubbles which I started blowing at her; we read lots of books together, played silly bouncing games and cuddled a lot; and K watched a couple of Play School episodes. She fell asleep in front of the afternoon’s episode, which I forgot to record, and had an hour long nap. Apparently I don’t feed her enough, because every half an hour or so she would either pop up next to me saying, “Food? Eat?”, or just go and raid the fridge for whatever she could find. By the time dinner arrived, naturally, she wasn’t hungry. Hopefully she won’t make her Daddy get up in the middle of the night to make her toast again…

B watched Gorillas Revisited, then, after Play School had finished, ABC schools TV – she was fascinated by Waterworks, although she also watched BTN Special as well. In between, she took the dog for a walk to Florey shops, and bought Z a pouch of special dogfood, and K a Freddo (what a lovely bear!). They also played with the toy cash registers for a while, although this produced a big screaming match which was not quite as enjoyable.

When I asked her to either do some washing up or tidy the dining room, she chose the option of looking after K *rolls eyes* I refused to pay her for babysitting when that meant essentially making more work for me, which she understood, albeit grumblingly. They played out in the garden for ages, including revisiting the papier mache and covering themselves with gloop, then came inside for lunch. Afterwards, B watched a Dr Who episode in her room and K watched a Play School recording. B did hep me by taking the garbage bin out, and shepherding K who insisted on carrying out the recycling.

B came up with the question, How are modern bowls made? and after some judicious googling I found a tour of the Fiestaware factory. B was very intrigued at all the differences between her pottery classes and the huge automated factory process. As a side effect of that I looked up the Yarralumla Brickworks, which were the only even vaguely comparable site I could think of nearby, and B was intrigued by my tales of going to antiques markets there when I were a lass. Unfortunately the site is now closed to the public and there is no sign that the ACT Government is ever going to get off its collective butt and do anything with it… Vague googlings have failed to turn up any useful information about any Australian manufacturers.

I have gotten a fair bit of both the washing up and the laundry done, but the tidying is defeating me somewhat… ETA: B has been quite helpful in that department – she fed and watered the outside animals, and emptied more bins, the second time with a peg on her nose since I’d been emptying the fridge of all its most noxious inhabitants. That was also the opportunity for a kitchen science lesson, on what happens when you leave a tin of pears with a hole in the lid in the fridge for several months. B turned almost as green as the pears had while I tipped it out (the pears were a sickly green, the liquid was black with a greenish tinge – I’m sure fairly shortly the tin would have been eaten away entirely and glooped its contents all over the fridge!). She has also FINALLY finished her packing.

I’ve done almost all the laundry, and everything I have done is dry or drying. I had finished the washing up, at least until the fridge de-ickifying festivities. I’m about to finish the rest of the washing up, assemble the rest of the pet food on the counter for Anne, and sweep the kitchen floor. The rest will just have to wait til we get back…

Today hasn’t quite stayed on track, since B has perfected the art of procrastination and just-five-minutes-more pleading when faced with my request to fit a minimal amount of schoolwork into the day. Plans to go to the markets and the library have henceforth not come to fruition, and she still hasn’t done two out of three of the things I had on my list *bangs head on wall*

First of all she needed to go outside to wake up, then when requested to have a shower and wash her hair, suddenly she had to go and do some more papier mache so she would get dirty before her shower rather than afterwards (excellent use of logic, but I still wanted to kick her butt!). Eventually she had a shower, and dried off lying on the beanbag on front of the heater reading about half of Peepo to herself. Then she read it out loud to me, and it was astonishing – given the chance to have a look at it beforehand, her reading was almost flawless, expressive and with poetic intonation. When she hit the part she hadn’t read, she got a bit bumpier, but, even grumpy, she was sounding it out loud pretty well. Katy was watching a recording of Play School while B was reading, but she kept getting distracted by the fact that we were reading her book, and demanding it back, so it wasn’t an unmitigated success…

Given B’s success with reading to herself, I think she might be well on the way to reading silently. She only needed to ask me for one word, “pigeons” – everything else could be sounded out phonetically. It would be nice if that means she starts feeling like she’s “really” reading! She is quite excited by this MS Readathon idea, particularly the opportunity to extort money from her loving family *g* She’s very keen to start reading for it, and is disappointed that she has to wait til June before she can do any Official Reading. Yet somehow she is not receptive to the idea of practising to improve her speed. Possibly if we bribed her *rolls eyes*

In the afternoon I made a long phone call to a local mum I know from a parenting board who is about to start homeschooling her kids, and wanted the inside goss. Her eldest daughter is exactly the same age as B, so it could be nice for our munchkin to have another age mate at HENCAST meet-ups. The mum, Melanie, is coming from the same AP background as me with a similar leaning towards unschooling, so it would be nice for me too if she decides to stick with it! While I was talking, B was getting increasingly frustrated with her spelling while she was trying to write a LiveJournal entry, and eventually deleted it in a fit of grumpy and went outside. K was playing the Elmo Keyboard-o-rama game for a while after that, then went outside too. I had to go out and break up a disagreement they were having which involved K screaming at the top of her lungs, and after both of them got more and more strung out I eventually had to hang up on Mel to go and calm them down. After cuddles and lots of validation all round, I suggested making a cake, which was agreed to with glee.

We made the Banana and Blueberry Loaf I had my eye on the other day, and K had lots of fun stirring while B measured and poured and used the electric beaters. B basically did all the work, I just found ingredients and read the recipe for her. Both munchkins were a lot cheerier after their baking exercise, even when we found weevils in the unopened bag of flour B brought back from the mill near Temora for me, and we had to scrape all the flour off the surface of the liquid ingredients and start again! Fortunately that worked and we didn’t have to throw the whole lot out. It just came out of the oven, and it’s scrumptious! Even B forgave it for being banana-y, and ate her whole slice…

Before the cake was ready, B went back outside to try to finish her curtain idea, but just couldn’t get it to work. I was reading to K, who was also still a bit stressed, and eventually B stormed back inside and cuddled up with me on the couch. After a while she perked up a bit and was reading some of the books with me. K picked out a book of photo collages, where the object is to find all the items mentioned in the rhyme, and B had a lot of fun with that. At least my determination to keep the library turnover rate high is being adhered to – I pulled out a new batch today, and K went straight to the library shelf when we’d read the pile and she wanted yet another book. Anything which means I don’t have to read Spot Goes to the Park eleventy bazillion times a day is a Good Thing as far as I’m concerned…

B has just turned the TV off after Play School and is about to go and watch another Dr Who episode on her computer, so I shall go find something to do with K before I get dinner started.

ETA: Their zest for cooking didn’t stop there. After B watched her shows, and K spent ages listening to Playground Radio while I washed up, she came to the shops with me to buy mushrooms. When we got back, I set them both up on the opposite side of the kitchen bench to me so they could chop up the mushrooms for stroganoff. K used a butter knife and was enthusiastically hacking them into chunks. She eventually lost interest and hacked the last lot into halves so I had to go through and chop up the hugest chunks, but even still she got heaps done for me. B lost interest in the mushrooms as soon as I started slicing up the kangaroo steaks, so she took that over instead and I did the potatoes. With their help, I managed to get everything prepared much faster than I would have been able to do by myself, so it was very useful as well as fun for them. The kangaroo stroganoff was absolutely awesome – I won’t be going back to beef now!

By the time we got to eat, B was watching the 7:30 Report, and now she is watching Catalyst. We all watched the first section, on sustainable power microgeneration, and now she’s watching something about GM drought-resistant wheat. We are recording Catalyst, and then Sigourney Weaver’s return to Gorillas in the Mist territory, Gorillas Revisited, at 8:30. B wants to watch the show after that too, Find Me A Family, where a family is matched up with a “grandfather”, although I don’t know if she’ll stay awake for it.

House:

• at least 1 load washing up
• at least 1 load laundry
• pick up and vacuum dining room
• keep living room clean and tidy

Beth:

• at least one maths lesson (more if they’re short and easy) + revision
• check badge book for possibilities
• think about how she wants to address reading/writing regularly – she wanted to write a story on her LJ but got frustrated at her spelling and deleted it; I’m going to rotate books every day and hope she finds things she wants to read

Katy:

• tidy up puzzles and put out something for her to do while we are doing seatwork – we didn’t end up doing any seatwork
• listen to music – I put Playground Radio on after Play School so K could listen while I did some washing up

Well, the week so far seems to be much closer to what I want than most of last term. Yesterday, we mostly relaxed, since B was still a bit strung out after the trip. Despite the fact that she was unwinding after ten days of living by Nannie’s rules, we did not rip each other’s heads off at all, a fact for which I am deeply grateful. B watched a fair bit of her recorded shows, but I did expect that she watch it show by show individually instead of full one hour Rollercoaster doses, and do something else in between, so she didn’t watch all that much. She also played her didjeridu a fair bit, which drove K completely insane with the desire to imitate her. In the morning we went off to Florey shops to buy some white bread, and spent ages playing on the playground there. K has mastered climbing up the chain net, and can almost get to the top of the semi-circular tube frame without assistance – she just needs a little bit of help to change directions in the middle. But the rest of the time she was happily doing it all herself. B, of course, had fun playing, and also liked helping K as much as K was happy to be helped. I just hung out and enjoyed the sun, most of the time!

After both munchkins had been fed, they amused themselves playing hide and seek (I was K’s “coach”), then played dress-ups in my wardrobe, and B dragged K outside to perform “a play”. K wasn’t hugely excited by being ordered about and having her clothes changed every five minutes, and eventually not even B’s completely disingenuous bribing with promises of non-existent chocolate were enough to convince her to come back and play, so B gave up. The bunnies were visited in their cage, and thoroughly fed, watered and covered in grass by K, and the chickens were watered and played with. I fixed a pot under the downspout for them to drink out of, because even after I’d given them nice clean water in their dish they were still drinking from the drips! K insisted on shutting herself in the henhouse and made us go away so she could, presumably, play at being a chicken. We also discovered that the house over the back has started to toss their food scraps over the fence, the way Chiv and Quanxin next door do. We could get more chickens, at this rate, and share the eggs with everyone who feeds them *g*

We finally got everyone out of the chook run, hosed off, and into the car to meet Grandmoogi and Anne at Spotlight. K fell asleep in the car. When we got to Queanbeyan I discovered that I did not have the pram in the boot, and Spotlight’s trolleys have big unfriendly labels on them saying Do Not Allow Child To Sit In Basket, so weren’t much use. Instead, we just had to chase a refreshed and rambunctious toddler around the aisles for an hour. Not much actual shopping got done on my part, although the fortuitous closeness of the embroidery wools to the play set provided near the customer service desk meant that at least I got to pick out more wool for K’s tunic, and to consult with B on the colours she wanted for her proposed project. I also fell in love with a faux-antique silver needle case on a chain, which I had to buy myself. We did manage to get out without me committing myself to any fabric though! We picked up E from work on the way back, and went to Rubee’s for dinner (so-called) and celebratory ice cream before going home.

Today, B watched ABC schools’ TV, including Behind the News, then the Battlefield Detective episode about the Battle of Hastings. Lots of interesting stuff about whether the Bayeux tapestry is really a reliable source, and showing how historians work by comparing different sources to try and get a picture of what happened – made my inner history geek happy! We didn’t finish all of it because Grandmoogi came round for tea before leaving for Temora, but we recorded it so I think we will try and watch it tonight so E can watch too if interested. While that was on, B helped me clean the front room by doing the vacuuming (I gave her a choice between that and clearing and cleaning the coffee table, which is a surprisingly effective technique for getting her to help with the housework!). B demonstrated her didjeridu to Grandmoogi, who was suitably impressed.

After Grandmoogi left there was a bit of pootling, including lots of chasing each other round the house, then B picked up a book and asked me to read to her. I offered her the deal that she read the short pages and I read the long ones, but she lost her temper at being expected to read read read all the time and nobody ever reading to her (she explained that she has, in fact read one book today – Duck, which contains approximately 25 words *rolls eyes*). I explained our POV but she wasn’t convinced. Eventually we compromised that I would read longer chapter books to her, so we settled down with Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine. I read a couple of chapters out of that before the smaller native became restless and wanted to go outside to paint her “dee-doo-doo”, ie. the fabric tube purloined from Spotlight yesterday by her big sister. So I arm-twisted B to go out there and help K paint while I kept reading to them. Considering how much fun B had spreading paint everywhere I’m kind of wondering why it took so much effort to convince her to do it in the first place, but that’s my munchkin all over… After painting with her hands lost its savour, she spread out loads of newspaper on the deck and started using her feet! I brought out a bowl of soapy water for hand- and feet-washing, and after I asked B to tidy up the paper, she came up with the idea of dumping it all into the tub and making papier mache! Eventually I had to call them all in from their paper and flour paste slinging fun, wash them off, and get them presentable for Nannie’s visit this afternoon. Amazingly enough B did not object to having to wrangle her sister through the clean up. Now K is watching Play School and B has just headed off for riding with Nannie. All that remains is for me to remember to pick her up at 5pm!

Since we got into such a huge rut before Beth went away, I want to continue experimenting with different ways of having more structure and rhythm to our days and weeks. Not attempting to force anything, but simply brainstorming some ideas so that we don’t end up in an electronic stupor once again…

Some stuff to do when we can’t think of anything to do

• Read books together: go through the library every day or two and pull out anything which looks interesting or which the munchkins would like to read, so we don’t get bored reading the same books over and over, and so we actually THINK about reading as an option!
• Go for a walk to the park.
• Pull out one of Katy’s puzzles or games.
• Start building things out of Duplo or Mobilo etc.
• Work on my embroidery project; teach Beth the stitch and help her set up a practice piece if she’s interested.
• Painting, drawing, collage or other art/craft activities.
• Do at least three lessons from Math-u-See each week.
• Ideas for Beth on the computer: Starfall, Chicktionary, Classics for Kids web radio.
• Suggest making a project book or scrap book of pictures and pamphlets etc from Darwin trip.
• See if she’s interested in the MS Readathon – yes, now all we have to do is sign her up and she can start collecting sponsors
• Visit the Botanic Gardens, or go to the snake park.
• Girly bonding time doing her hair, etc.

Monday:
10:00-12:00 ABA Playgroup

Tuesday:
10:00-10:25 ABC BTN
10:25-10:35 ABC Science Clips

4pm Meet up with Grandmoogi and Anne to go out to Spotlight

Wednesday:
11:00-12:00 ABC Battlefield Detectives (the Battle of Hastings)
6:00-6:30 ABC Great Artists: van Gogh

Thursday:
Not attending HENCAST activity (which is a picnic out past Captains Flat, much too far away!). Possibly arrange something with Caitlin and/or Lauren and Julian instead?
1:30 Electrician coming to fix lights in living room
8:00-8:30 ABC Catalyst
8:30-9:30 ABC Gorillas Revisited

Friday:
Pack and get ready to go to Temora
Will we leave for Temora on Friday night or Saturday morning?

Saturday and Sunday – at Temora

The Plan:
7:00-8:00 shower, dress, feed the inmates, get them dressed, lay out work; put in load of laundry etc
8:00-10:00 Take E to work, pick up Caitlin for playdate; Beth: pack something to read in the car
10:00-11:45 (+ travelling) Preschool Story Time; Beth and Caitlin, have fun at the library together
11:45-1:30 Lunch and general relaxation
Me: Pack up something for Beth to take to Nannie’s
1:30-3:00 Beth and Caitlin go to the pool with Nannie and meet up with Caitlin’s mum

The Plan:
8:00-9:00 shower, dress, feed the inmates, get them dressed, lay out work; put in load of laundry etc
9:00-10:00 Beth: English – reading Daryl’s Dinner; digraphs – vowel worksheets ?
Katy: magnetic letters and alphabet flashcards; drawing in scrapbook; puzzles; Playschool (9:30)
10:00-12:30 Beth: pottery + travel time
Me and Katy: Dickson SVDP
12:30-1:30 Lunch and general relaxation
1:30-3:00 (or during Katy’s nap) Beth: Maths (watch DVD, workbook pages); revision of previous concepts learned
3:00-whenever Artsy-crafty stuff; reading aloud on indigenous history/culture/technology; get Beth to narrate one paragraph or one page back to me