Finally, a day of sort-of school.
I had high hopes of a regime - some time-table-following and things ticked off lists, but no.
Seymour was due to arrive back, for a brief visit, on his way to work in the morning, so there was too much excitement to start work. We didn't do violin, managing only to have breakfast and wash teeth before it was time to go out the front and wait for daddy.
When Seymour had gone, the girls quickly became absorbed in drawing and writing tasks, self instigated. I was happy to let them be, frankly. I wanted them to draw pictures for Hannah's birthday and I liked the productive, peaceful atmosphere.
Elizabeth wanted to carry on learning to write. We took this picture to show daddy:
She did lots of lines of letters, in the end, with great concentration.
I managed to have special time with Sebastian, playing ball and rolling cars to each other.
Francesca had just received a new prayer book from someone and she started to copy out one of the prayers. She did the first line and then drew a lovely detailed picture to go with it (to send to Hannah). It had a fish that she copied from Elizabeth's literacy book, a jellyfish and an octopus, all neatly coloured. Quite a feat of concentration.
I had high hopes of a regime - some time-table-following and things ticked off lists, but no.
Seymour was due to arrive back, for a brief visit, on his way to work in the morning, so there was too much excitement to start work. We didn't do violin, managing only to have breakfast and wash teeth before it was time to go out the front and wait for daddy.
When Seymour had gone, the girls quickly became absorbed in drawing and writing tasks, self instigated. I was happy to let them be, frankly. I wanted them to draw pictures for Hannah's birthday and I liked the productive, peaceful atmosphere.
Elizabeth wanted to carry on learning to write. We took this picture to show daddy:
She did lots of lines of letters, in the end, with great concentration.
I managed to have special time with Sebastian, playing ball and rolling cars to each other.
Francesca had just received a new prayer book from someone and she started to copy out one of the prayers. She did the first line and then drew a lovely detailed picture to go with it (to send to Hannah). It had a fish that she copied from Elizabeth's literacy book, a jellyfish and an octopus, all neatly coloured. Quite a feat of concentration.
Elizabeth drew a multi-coloured Heffalump:
And Francesca wanted a photo of her finished work too:
Also this morning, I played dominoes with Elizabeth and Sebastian, then I read them some chapters from The Large Family. Then we had lunch.
After lunch we set off to post Hannah's present and decamp to Caffe Nero for afternoon school. Sebastian had a good long sleep and the girls did a lot of 'work'.
Francesca did about 5 pages of her literacy book.
Even Sebastian was quite well occupied when he woke up. They have good toys at Caffe Nero. (Yes, it is spelt with double f)
Comfy chairs to work on:
Elizabeth-height tables for doing sticker books:
And built-in entertainment:
Back home, via a few High Street errands, they all played outside for a while and the girls took some colouring into the play house.
Later, as I cooked dinner, they moved to the dining table and continued with colouring in (Francesca) and fast words practice (Elizabeth) - both totally self-directed.
I'm going to need to develop tasks that they can do independently and encourage them not to 'need' me every five seconds, so I can spend more quality time with each of them. They are good at choosing useful tasks to get on with but they want me to be there All The Time, checking in with what they''re doing.
Anyway, we had a peaceful and quite productive day today. Seymour is bathing them as I write. I wonder if we can squeeze violin practice in before bed?!
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