There should be pictures to go with this post. There should be a lot more photos on this blog in general, but my camera broke and I have a rubbish deal on my phone contract so uploading photos from my phone is costly. My usual route to putting photos online relies on DH taking pictures on his phone and emailing them to me. Which is long-winded to say the least.
Oh well, I'll edit them in later!
We started with some reinforcement of the whole time-telling thing from yesterday, which really confirmed that she doesn't really get it. Yet. I know it will come and she *wants* to get it, so we'll keep working on it till she does. She also did a couple of the literacy tests. Of course she is not actually being *tested* but she loves these books and races through a couple of pages a day. One of today's was about adding a prefix to make an opposite, eg,legal/illegal. The question gave you the word and then a choice of two possible prefixes. One of them was "noble". Now it is possible that my intelligent, very articulate nine year old actually has a very limited vocabulary, but she'd never heard the word "ignoble!" It tends not to crop up often in our daily life, nor even in our reading! I do wonder how many children her age would know it! She did know "abnormal" though, which reminded me of a long-running private joke I had with a friend at secondary school when we would make up opposites of "normal" based on almost every other prefix, so we were "disnormal", "unnormal", etc. We never considered "ignormal". I quite like that!
We did a little bit of research on the origins of Halloween in the Celtic festive of Samhain, after which Hannah drew a picture of a Celtic man preparing the Feast of the Dead. We went to Celtic Harmony Camp earlier in the year and after that, she dressed in the costume of a Celt at one of our regular history fairs so the man was reasonable accurately portrayed, down to his red hair. However, her interpretation of the meal left a little to be desired. It included a pie (possible I suppose), grapes (trade with the Romans?)...but also coffee and spaghetti bolognese. I am not an expert in food history but I am fairly sure the Celts did not have these things. Maybe modern pagans would include them.???
We then had a break for lunch which necessitated attacking the pumpkin, which I eviscerated and went off to turn its innards into rather tasty soup, while Hannah made its exterior into a gore-bespattered pirate. It was her first attempt at carving and it was better than any of my efforts in previous years! Here is obviously one of the places the photos I did not take should go!
Later, we touched briefly on how the early church imposed Christian festivals on top of existing pagan ones and talked a bit about how we would feel if someone told us we couldn't believe what we did believe, but had to believe what they told us to! We were going to look at the origins of trick or treat and other Halloween customs, but she was too busy getting her costume together for actually going trick or treating. So she got ready and then we painted spooky castle pictures. I will put photos in tomorrow, honestly!
Wednesday 31 October 2012
Tuesday 30 October 2012
In which we catch up on last week
Last week, Hannah was probably as ill as she has ever been in her life! We've been lucky (or she has a very robust immune system due to full-term breastfeeding and decent exposure to dirt) and, other than colds she has had a real illness only three times in her life (one stomach bug, one throat infection and very mild chickenpox if you're interested). She had a coldy virus last week that developed into sinusitis. DH is sucsceptible to sinus trouble and it is so unpleasant. Poor child spent a week just lying on the sofa with a vile headache, sometimes in so much pain she could barely move her head.
She was finally well enough by Friday to go to her grandmother's to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha with the rest of the family, but wasn't well enough till today to do the work we had planned about it. Actually, it was last year's work that we just didn't get round to then. I'd printed off a lapbook from someone's blog but it was just a few things to stick into a folder, nothing required any actual work, so Hannah chose to stick it into her exercise book for Religion and Philosophy and write her own explanations underneath each picture as I read to her from a book about Hajj. She was quite fired up about going to Mecca when she is older.
We also did some work on time as this seems to be something she forgets on a regular basis. I think she can tell the time and mostly she can, but she seems to get very muddled all over again on a regular basis. So we went over it again and for the moment, it seems to have sunk in! We might spend a bit more time on it tomorrow though just to reinforce it.
She whizzed through a couple of pages of literacy tests (oops, almost typed "testes" there...I know testing is bollocks but still!) and ran into a couple of words she didn't know so practiced looking them up in a dictionary, which is another, useful for life in general, skill, like time-telling, that seems not to stick in her brain and needs frequent re-visiting.
After all that, we watched Saturday's Merlin and talked about story structure, went to the post office and supermarket. Time to relax...well time for Hannah to relax, time for me to make fajitas for dinner!
She was finally well enough by Friday to go to her grandmother's to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha with the rest of the family, but wasn't well enough till today to do the work we had planned about it. Actually, it was last year's work that we just didn't get round to then. I'd printed off a lapbook from someone's blog but it was just a few things to stick into a folder, nothing required any actual work, so Hannah chose to stick it into her exercise book for Religion and Philosophy and write her own explanations underneath each picture as I read to her from a book about Hajj. She was quite fired up about going to Mecca when she is older.
We also did some work on time as this seems to be something she forgets on a regular basis. I think she can tell the time and mostly she can, but she seems to get very muddled all over again on a regular basis. So we went over it again and for the moment, it seems to have sunk in! We might spend a bit more time on it tomorrow though just to reinforce it.
She whizzed through a couple of pages of literacy tests (oops, almost typed "testes" there...I know testing is bollocks but still!) and ran into a couple of words she didn't know so practiced looking them up in a dictionary, which is another, useful for life in general, skill, like time-telling, that seems not to stick in her brain and needs frequent re-visiting.
After all that, we watched Saturday's Merlin and talked about story structure, went to the post office and supermarket. Time to relax...well time for Hannah to relax, time for me to make fajitas for dinner!
Friday 19 October 2012
In which we were too busy to blog...
Wednesday was just a manic day! Hannah went to a Victorian Pharmacy workshop in Richmond Park, which is about as far from us as it is possible to be and still be in the same city so we needed to leave early. She went in to do her thing and I walked for an hour in Richmond Park in glorous autumn sunshine! She really enjoyed the workshop. The children dressed up in Victorian caps and aprons and were shown how to make extracts of various substances, tooth powder from salt, spearmint and something Hannah claims was icing sugar but seems an unlikely ingredient in tooth powder to me! They also used pill rolling gadgets like this to make pills from playdoh! The printed label on the box says "Not to be taken".
I had to rush her away from new friends she'd made and we made a valiant effort to get back across London in just over an hour to get to her first LAMDA class. Poor thing; she was so excited about starting and then we missed half of it because of traffic! She has to make a selection from about half a dozen short monologuesand I'm trying not to influence her unduly in favour of the Anne of Green Gables piece, just because I love the books so much! She's wary of needing to do a Canadian accent, but it's the easiest to act, in my opinion.After LAMDA, we raced off again to Irish dancing.
After all the running about I was too tired to write it up!
Then actually there was probably plenty of time to blog, but Hannah is coldy and floppinng about not doing much and all we've done is go to the cinema as part of National Schools Film Week. DH took her to see The Lorax yesterday and I finally got to see Brave with her today! Brilliant! Also we saw a family we used to see at Mad Science and it's always nice to catch up with the people we see only sporadically!
I had to rush her away from new friends she'd made and we made a valiant effort to get back across London in just over an hour to get to her first LAMDA class. Poor thing; she was so excited about starting and then we missed half of it because of traffic! She has to make a selection from about half a dozen short monologuesand I'm trying not to influence her unduly in favour of the Anne of Green Gables piece, just because I love the books so much! She's wary of needing to do a Canadian accent, but it's the easiest to act, in my opinion.After LAMDA, we raced off again to Irish dancing.
After all the running about I was too tired to write it up!
Then actually there was probably plenty of time to blog, but Hannah is coldy and floppinng about not doing much and all we've done is go to the cinema as part of National Schools Film Week. DH took her to see The Lorax yesterday and I finally got to see Brave with her today! Brilliant! Also we saw a family we used to see at Mad Science and it's always nice to catch up with the people we see only sporadically!
Tuesday 16 October 2012
In which nothing special happens
I'm determined this time to write even when it's just a day and nothing much happens...although whether I will hold myself to that on the days she does nothing but watch cartoons remains to be seen.
Today was a work day for me. I'm doing two half-days a week at the moment. Hannah asked me if I would set her work to do while I'm out so what happens is that I write a list of things on a white board and leave anything she needs for it out on the table. She's not under any pressure to finish it and if she needs help that DH is unable to provide, she can just wait. And as always, life is welcome to intervene!
Today she did two pages in a literacy workbook and about half a sheet of division sums before she and DH went over to his sister's. While she was there, she read some of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which she has just started. I've made myself stay hands-off where reading is concerned. Reading is my passion; it's as necessary to me as eating or breathing, but she is not me and I don't want her to feel under any pressure to read. I do wish she could discover the pleasure of getting lost in a story and not wanting to put it down and I hope that will happen now she is reading better stories. I have no problem with her reading the formulaic series of books about puppies or dinosaurs, but they are pretty predictable and the characters are not particularly well-developed so there's no incentive to read on, either to find out what happens or because you care about the characters.
However, now she is onto the later Harry Potter books, I am going to have to encourage more daytime reading or she will never get through them at all. I think I'll probably get them on kindle for her as well..she will never manage to read Order of the Phoenix in physical form!
She's also learnt how to pay a cheque into the bank today. How useful that will be in future I don't know..probably by the time she is managing her own bank account cheques won't exist, but she gets a kick out of doing grown up things.
Today was a work day for me. I'm doing two half-days a week at the moment. Hannah asked me if I would set her work to do while I'm out so what happens is that I write a list of things on a white board and leave anything she needs for it out on the table. She's not under any pressure to finish it and if she needs help that DH is unable to provide, she can just wait. And as always, life is welcome to intervene!
Today she did two pages in a literacy workbook and about half a sheet of division sums before she and DH went over to his sister's. While she was there, she read some of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which she has just started. I've made myself stay hands-off where reading is concerned. Reading is my passion; it's as necessary to me as eating or breathing, but she is not me and I don't want her to feel under any pressure to read. I do wish she could discover the pleasure of getting lost in a story and not wanting to put it down and I hope that will happen now she is reading better stories. I have no problem with her reading the formulaic series of books about puppies or dinosaurs, but they are pretty predictable and the characters are not particularly well-developed so there's no incentive to read on, either to find out what happens or because you care about the characters.
However, now she is onto the later Harry Potter books, I am going to have to encourage more daytime reading or she will never get through them at all. I think I'll probably get them on kindle for her as well..she will never manage to read Order of the Phoenix in physical form!
She's also learnt how to pay a cheque into the bank today. How useful that will be in future I don't know..probably by the time she is managing her own bank account cheques won't exist, but she gets a kick out of doing grown up things.
Monday 15 October 2012
In which some of us are dragons from Northern Ireland
I don't even know where to start with this one, except that I truly believe that imaginative play is one of the most profound learning experiences and besides that, it's fun...for them playing and for me, overhearing randomness and trying not to laugh!
Hannah's friend is here today and they started by L towing Hannah up and down the laminate floor in a fleece blanket, the dog in pursuit and both of them shrieking with laughter. Somehow the game evolved into something that involved Hannah being a baby dragon. I made her some wings out of a small fleece blanket (bit of a theme there today!) tied on with string. There was a break from the dragon game for lunch and watching Transformers then back to being dragons, this time randomly with Northern Irish accents...no idea why!
In other news, the Cooking Round Britain project continues. Last week, when I didn't bother to blog, we made Aberffrau biscuits which were featured on Great British Bake Off. These are very simple, shortbready type biscuits, baked in the shape of a scallop shell. Originally the biscuit dough would have been pressed into an actual shell, but as we don't live in Anglesey,whence the biscuits come, we didn't have a scallop shell handy and pressed the dough out into circles and then made lines in a scallop shell pattern with our fingers. There are two explanations for the choice of the shape: one links them to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, whose pilgrims wear a scallop shell to denote their quest. The other is far more romantic, a legend that once a Welsh Prince was holding his court in Aberffraw (not too unlikely, the place also hosted the Eisteddfod in the distant past), and his wife was walking on the beach there, and spotting a pretty scallop shell asked for a cake to be baked in the same form. Take your pick!
There was supposed to be a pattern of alternating sweet and savoury dishes, but cooking on a Monday naturally lends itself more to sweet stuff that can be taken as a snack to drama and not so much to cooking something for dinner as we don't get home till gone 8! Maybe next week we can cook on another day and do savoury. This week we made welsh cakes. These were very easy and most delicious. I would almost always have the ingredients on hand so it's a good one to add to the repetoire of quick snacky things to make. These could be from any part of Wales and am not quite sure what to do in terms of the Welsh counties, which traditionally were quite few but there now seem to be 22 of them, some tiny and because they are modern creations, they don't have traditional recipes. I think we'll have to just make all the recipes we can find for Wales and colour in all the counties when we're done!
Just come back from dropping the girls to drama and am very excited because Hannah is starting her LAMDA classes this week.
Hannah's friend is here today and they started by L towing Hannah up and down the laminate floor in a fleece blanket, the dog in pursuit and both of them shrieking with laughter. Somehow the game evolved into something that involved Hannah being a baby dragon. I made her some wings out of a small fleece blanket (bit of a theme there today!) tied on with string. There was a break from the dragon game for lunch and watching Transformers then back to being dragons, this time randomly with Northern Irish accents...no idea why!
In other news, the Cooking Round Britain project continues. Last week, when I didn't bother to blog, we made Aberffrau biscuits which were featured on Great British Bake Off. These are very simple, shortbready type biscuits, baked in the shape of a scallop shell. Originally the biscuit dough would have been pressed into an actual shell, but as we don't live in Anglesey,whence the biscuits come, we didn't have a scallop shell handy and pressed the dough out into circles and then made lines in a scallop shell pattern with our fingers. There are two explanations for the choice of the shape: one links them to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, whose pilgrims wear a scallop shell to denote their quest. The other is far more romantic, a legend that once a Welsh Prince was holding his court in Aberffraw (not too unlikely, the place also hosted the Eisteddfod in the distant past), and his wife was walking on the beach there, and spotting a pretty scallop shell asked for a cake to be baked in the same form. Take your pick!
There was supposed to be a pattern of alternating sweet and savoury dishes, but cooking on a Monday naturally lends itself more to sweet stuff that can be taken as a snack to drama and not so much to cooking something for dinner as we don't get home till gone 8! Maybe next week we can cook on another day and do savoury. This week we made welsh cakes. These were very easy and most delicious. I would almost always have the ingredients on hand so it's a good one to add to the repetoire of quick snacky things to make. These could be from any part of Wales and am not quite sure what to do in terms of the Welsh counties, which traditionally were quite few but there now seem to be 22 of them, some tiny and because they are modern creations, they don't have traditional recipes. I think we'll have to just make all the recipes we can find for Wales and colour in all the counties when we're done!
Just come back from dropping the girls to drama and am very excited because Hannah is starting her LAMDA classes this week.
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