The Brick House

* played the memory game with -ain cards; brainstormed words which sound like “ain” and showed her how there are two main spellings (-ain and -ane) and some exception spellings (-ein, -eign, -ayne)
* watched Take on Technology (ABC, 10:00); Our Earth (ABC, 10:15); Atoms of Fire (ABC, 10:30) and Wild Weather (ABC, 11:00)
* listened to the news story about Beazley calling for a leadership ballot, and then we talked about the history behind Beazley’s leadership and various challenges to same, and the reason why I was all excited and hurdled a Katy on my way into the living room to watch the rest of the news story *g*
* built models from the wooden pieces we bought on Wednesday
* lunch
* built a car out of boxes and played with Katy
* visual memory
* reading: I Wish That I Had Duck Feet, Dr Seuss
* writing: wrote about the Zoo trip yesterday. Got very pissed off with me about having to do it and I doubt that she was concentrating very hard by the end
* went through the packing list for the Scout bike ride/sleepover tomorrow, and got most of the stuff together. Then we actually read the part about the route – Belconnen to O’Connor via Weston Park! We pulled out a map and had a look at probable routes, and B decided that she wouldn’t be able to make it all the way. We will take her to meet up with the group at Weston Park before 1:30, so she can ride the rest of the way and stay for the sleepover.
* watched Rollercoaster
* played in the garden with Katy; got in with the rabbits and worked on hand-training them (if she’d do this daily instead of whenever it strikes her fancy she might actually get somewhere!)
* tutoring with D

* got home from farm ~10am, then looked after K while I showered, and ran about getting stuff packed for the zoo field trip
* in the car, asked if Band-Aids came in black as well for people who don’t have pale skin, and we talked about the kind of unquestioned assumptions that can lead to pale Band-Aids being labelled “skin colour”, which closes out people who aren’t white (this is stuff I got to grips with at university, mind you!). I thought the original question was pretty awesome.
* 11:00-12:15 – farnarkled with the organiser about payment, then we wandered around the zoo
(Beth went off by herself, with her phone, but none of her particular friends were there so eventually she ended up trying to find me, and we went back to the cafe to have a quick lunch then more farnarklage about splitting up into tour groups)
* 12:30-2:30 – behind the scenes tour of the zoo, feeding animals, meeting the snakes, and talking about How Animals Learn
* reading: read some of The Rainbow Fish, and also discussed how distasteful the plot is in terms of punishing people who stand out from the crowd
* played in the play kitchen with Katy
* watched Aussie Animal Rescue and the Pet Show
* played more computer chess
* shut the chickens up for the night
* helped me lay out fabric for her new Court garb, and watched me draw up a cutting diagram to make the most efficient use of the small piece of fabric

* let the chooks out
* watched The Colony
* visual memory: words using -ain and -ail
* watched We Are From: Turkey (ABC, 10am)
* word building: more worksheets on -ain and -ail; playing Memory with -ain and -ail picture/word cards
* reading: more on Starfall
* took Katy through the ABC component on Starfall while I had a shower, then played with her with some Fisher Price online games
* writing: wrote “My ABC Family” and a sweet letter about the people she loves, which she had me scan and copy so she could give copies to Nannie and Pa
* drew and painted pictures to put in with her letters
* 1:00 – swimming with Nannie, then out to the farm til 10ish tomorrow morning.

Katy – napped from ~1:00-3:00, then went out with me to Jamison Salvos, where we scored mightily. Lots of gorgeous wooden fruit for her kitchen, dress-up clothes and shoes for her Christmas basket, a wooden dragon mobile, and a basket of big, colourful wooden shapes with notches in the sides for fitting together. Now (4:30) she’s watching the recording of this afternoon’s Playschool episode.

* walked the dog
* watched BTN and Our History
* maths: we looked on the packet of milk powder to see how to make it up. The pack gave the quantities to make up 1L of milk: 4 cups of water to 1 cup of milk powder. Beth was able to work out that if she used one cup of water she needed to add 1/4 cup of milk powder.
* word-building: looking at “-ain” and “-ail”; 2 worksheets; extemporised a poem using the rhyming words
* writing: edited and transcribed her report on the Egyptian exhibition (which Katy later scribbled on – AAAAARGH!)
* helped water and feed the rabbits and chickens; checked for eggs; helped me put laundry out
* swimming with Nannie (meeting Caitlin)
* playing on the computer (dress-up dolls, computer chess)
* reading: Starfall.com
* watched more of The Colony
* knew (unlike 3/4s of NSW Year 10 students and the NSW Minister for Education) that Australia Day commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet

Katy: walked the dog; watched half of Playschool; pottered; went down for a sleep by 11am (only a micronap as she was up again by 11:30!); played in garden; watched the rest of Playschool; came to Kippax Salvos and Aldi with me; watched afternoon Playschool

* went out to check on the chooks and discovered that Susan had gotten out of her cage and that Zebedee had tried to Make Friends with her. We caught her and put her in the inside cage, and luckily she appears to have suffered nothing worse than an enthusiastic slobbering from the dog.
* put her keyboard down on the floor in the dining room so Katy could play with it; played her Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, then a few other things, and eventually put it into auto mode and started dancing with K (too cute!)
* started watching the reality historical program The Colony we borrowed from the library (it looks pretty awesome, I might have to watch it too!)
* went to Corroborree Park and Belconnen Mall with E, then out to Warrambui for Casual War (after E had schmoozed, he came home and she stayed at Nannie’s for an hour or two since they hadn’t paid to be there on the day, then they went back out for the feast)

Katy: played with the keyboard with Beth; dancing with B; stacked the round stacking bricks with me and had a ball knocking them over; went to Corroborree Park then Belconnen Mall with E; home for sleeps; played in the play kitchen with me; read lots of books; did lots of puzzles; put the shape-sorting post puzzle together in about thirty seconds flat; checked for eggs (and decided not to carry them inside this time!); investigated the contents of various mesh bags in the new storage tub; played with the dolls’ house; played with balloons; was unbelievably gorgeous.

Sunday

* watched the first three episodes of The Colony
* tidied some stuff in the living room and her bedroom; mopped the kitchen; washed down her bedroom door
* played in the back garden; watched Rollercoaster
* washed down cupboard doors and fridge in kitchen
* tidied her bedroom
* played with Katy
* watched Dr Who episodes
* cooked sausages, bacon and fried mushrooms for tea
* entertained K in the sandpit so E and I could fix the chook run
* took K over to visit next door
* watched part of Hannibal: Enemy of Rome before she fell asleep

Katy: pottered about; went out with E to play in the chicken run while he fixed the fence; naptime

* fed chickens and checked for eggs
* writing: wrote about the visit to the Egypt exhibition yesterday; I suggested she use the technique of finding the spelling by copying from the exhibition brochure, so she did. She spelt “home” and “group” perfectly, and made an awesome attempt at mummified: “mummfid”
* reading: read one of Katy’s books, Bathtime by Maureen Roffey
* watched the last part of Wild Weather, which we recorded
* artsy-craftsy stuff – drawing, stencilling etc
* watching The Floating Brothel again
* visual memory: did the same words as yesterday, remembered all the smaller ones, and didn’t make any mistakes
* word building: we started out doing a worksheet to practice what/when/where/why/who/which but it confused the munchkin mightily, so we abandoned it and brainstormed other ways we could practice that would help her remember them. We decided on a combination of bingo, visual memory practice, and the memory game. Then we played the memory game from the other days with -ar family words and she beat my butt again *bangs head on wall* When’d she get so good at that game, dammit?
* arts and craft
* we went to the Mall after Katy woke up cos it was Too Effing Hot; basically just pootled around and window shopped altho we had a minor drama in Darrell Lea 🙁
* Scouts 6:30-8:30 (canoeing); also took pictures of the Flat Travellers with some of the Scout troop
* shared reading: The Grumpies (she read a couple of sentences on each page for about half the book then I read the rest)

* delivered back from farm 9:20ish
* visual memory: had no difficulty with words like “regular” or “quasar” or “sonar”
* writing: edited “The Knights of the Round Saucepan”; wrote me a letter complaining about how much she hates doing this
* went to shops to pick up picnic food
* checked mail and found the flat travellers had arrived!
* HENCAST picnic at ANG from 12 – took pics and picked up publicity material for the flat travellers’ scrapbook
* tour of Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre, 1:30-3:00. Generally she spent most of the time with Caitlin and went through the exhibition with her while I tried to make Katy go to sleep; she did that just before the end of the exhibition so we spent a while poking through the exhibition shop
* maths with E – worked on fractions(?)
* science: watched Catalyst
* Australian history: watched The Floating Brothel (the voyage of the Lady Juliana)

* fed chickens and checked for eggs
* we had to take E to work, then went for a quick ogle at Little Red Engine. After that we headed straight to the Belconnen Library for storytime, which was a bit of a bust as there was a huge group of kids from a childcare centre and we couldn’t even hear the reading half the time. K doesn’t have a lot of sit-down-and-listen happening even when she can hear the story, so we gave up and let her roam. I picked up all our reserves and B chose another DVD, then we went home. Hot and WINDY!!!
* writing out her letter to Nanny Frog. I don’t think she likes copying…
* cut out and painted a cardboard photo frame
* reading aloud: Rain (water cycle)
* word-building: played word-families memory game, at which she whipped my arse
* decorating her photo frame
* played house with K
* went to farm with Nannie

Katy: played with the train table at Little Red Engine; library; Playschool; playing house; reading books; more Playschool; played with various toys together and read some books; went out to check on the bunnies and the chickens, gave the chickens more water, then found two eggs (one of which broke as K was carrying it into the house)

* fed chickens and checked for eggs
* helped tidy dining room
* fitted tangrams back in their frame
* word-building: -ar worksheet and wordsearch
* editing/proofreading letter to Nanny Frog; we read through it first to see if it said what she wanted it to say. We looked for places where the flow of the text suggested the need for full stops/commas, and added them as appropriate, also checking for correct use of capital letters. We looked at the spelling, and where the word was phonetic I helped her sound it out and check for missing phoneme/letter correspondences, and encouraged her to exaggerate the sounds in her mouth so she could feel what sounds she was making (eg. the minimalist ‘n’ in -nk). After we’d gone through and edited the original draft, she asked me to write out a clean copy so she wouldn’t get confused when she copied it out to send to MG.
* watched BTN and Our History
* visual memory: she is beginning to remember some of the words straight off, without sounding out
* reading aloud: 14 pp. The Cat in the Hat, then read a couple of boardbooks to Katy
* played house with K while I made a lunch platter, now they are eating in the play-house corner using an upturned laundry basket as a table *g*
* playing with magnetic letters with Katy – she was using a baking tray to write out her and Katy’s names, etc
* sorted through a box of bits and bobs I bought from Vinnies a while back to find the pieces she wanted to make cards
* wrote an entire page of a story about the Knights of the Round Saucepan. I think she is channelling the Goon Show…
* made a card, helped Katy make one too
* swimming with Nannie, meeting Caitlin (from HENCAST) and her mum and sister at the pool – Caitlin is possibly coming over for a quick visit afterwards, time permitting
* Caitlin couldn’t make it but they will be seeing each other on Thursday at the ANG (neither of us booked into the tour to see the Egyptian antiquities, but we will probably meet up for the picnic with the other HENCASTers then wander round the exhibit by ourselves
* observed that the spider seems to be moistening the bottom of her eggsac (something which I have read about, apparently it helps the spiderlings to escape)

Katy: played house with her new cooker in her re-jigged play house area; watched Playschool; came outside with me while I hung out the washing, and tried to hang out a load on her little clothesline (I helped do most of the pegging but by the end she had gotten the hang of squeezing, just wasn’t quite co-ordinating the peg with the line); more independent playing; playing house and with the magnetic letters with B; playing in various kitchen cupboards and drawers; playing with the foam shapes from the box o’ bits ‘n’ bobs; splashing in the sink; playing the saucepan orchestra; made a card (well, chose and arranged bits, we did the gluing); napped; watching second Playschool episode

The Knights of the Round Saucepan

In a led far far away…
No no no it is far far far away
OK in a led f far away that…
No no it is far far far far away
OK in a led far far far far away…
No no no it is…
You now it is no no no no
Humph
Thank you. In a led far far away that is far far fom yor has or ene uthar bod’s has the knits of the rad sos pen. Naw the knits of the rad sospen ur not vere smut.
Oy wy hod tat

* took K out to feed the chickens, and found an egg
* wrote the first draft of a letter to Nanny Frog. I explained that we were going to do a draft/edit/copy process and that perfect spelling was not the object of the first draft, which freed her up to write and not constantly ask me for spellings. She wrote half a page, quite a respectable amount I think. I was interested to note that she used -ck endings a lot, for words like “snake” and “thank”. I will be interested to see if that’s because we’ve practised a lot with ‘ck so she has it set as a sort of default, or whether she still finds it hard to hear the difference even after we’ve looked at the other word families in more depth. Wot she wrote:

Hallowe Nenny Frog Thack you for the snack. ofr hir we haved sum wid wethar it snod then it wos sticking hot & I hated it. me & ded tock zebedee (ur dog) to the dog day at.

* looked through the new book Kitchen Science for ideas – I said we could do an experiment later if we get through everything else first
* making a mini scrapbook with stickers and stamps
* reading aloud: The Journal of Watkin Stench
* 11:00-12:30 Pottery lesson
* played with K and the gorgeous vintage toy cooker I found at Aussie Junk (squee!), while I made lunch. She is complaining of being tired a lot, I think she may be coming down with something…
* I read the rest of The Journal of Watkin Stench, then a couple of pages from The Spread of Settlement which covered the first few years of the colony and talked about the attempts to farm in Sydney Cove and Rose Hill, then the crossing of the Blue Mountains to the interior, to give some context
* visual memory
* reading aloud: another couple of pages from “Goldilocks”, plus “There Was A Crooked Man” from the same book. B is increasingly confident in applying sounding out strategies without prompting (eg. she got “lumpy” entirely without assistance by chunking the word). She has a tendency to sound out words like “felt” as “flet” or “dark” as “drak”, so I am reinforcing that she needs to look at whether the consonant is before or after the vowel. She encountered the sound “-igh”
* drawing: we discovered that K had quietly spent our reading time pulling the bumwipes out of the dispenser and making a huge bumwipe mountain on the floor (scrublet!), so after I picked them all up and put them in a spare box, I let B have one to play with and she is drawing with textas. We talked about whether the colours separate into their constituents as the colours bleed (yes)
* tutoring with Dennis – he had to bring her home earlier than expected because apparently she breezed through all the material at top speed *g*