Feeling Better

Today was MUCH easier. Hey, I even had time to rustle up something to put on autocook for teatime AND I baked bread.

Here's a quick photo-diary of our day.

Francesca practised multi-tasking - reading one book whilst listening to another on tape.

Sebastian did some woodwork. Don't be put off by the sad face. He's much better today and has even been singing.

And Elizabeth was... hanging around?

My day was made much easier by the fact that a friend did the playgroup run, both ways, for me. This freed up lots of time for Francesca and I to get on with some work.

We did some 'money maths' from Heinemann (her request) and I helped her to add tens, rather than persisting with her laborious finger one-by-one counting. I was heartened that she actually let me explain and really tried to apply what I was teaching, rather than just shouting at me to leave her alone because she was doing it Her Way.

We looked again at the developing story, modelled on Roald Dahl and Francesca keenly added a couple more sentences of dialogue. I was able to teach her how to use speech marks and the associated punctuation.

Violin practise happened without fuss, while I kneaded dough.

Later, when Elizabeth was home, we looked at their bean sprouts and discussed how beans, chick peas and lentils are grown and harvested.

We looked at these links, thanks to my support team(!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S2MI_kSGU8  Video showing a large field of dried bean plants being harvested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BodCyEiyVw4  One showing a petrol driven(?) hand held cutter for grasses such as rice crop or wheat.

http://www.ukagriculture.com/crops/field_beans_uk.cfm  Nice pictures of beans growing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnFDgpqUl38  Video of lentil crop and when to harvest/  Boring man talking but images good

http://www.extension.umn.edu/farm-to-school/toolkit/promoting-food/promoting-dried-beans.html  Fun facts and other stuff worth looking at.

Then Francesca kept the computer on and did some typing practice and looked back at some of the video clips we'd seen in our microbes work.

Elizabeth played trains.

Sebastian, pottering about, didn't want to miss out on the photo shoot.

Elizabeth had an impromtu piano lesson from a neighbour. I went to take a loaf of bread round and Elizabeth said, "Ask if I can have a piano lesson this afternoon!" I don't know where that request came from, but my neighbour later informed me that the (toy) dog had suggested piano lessons and Elizabeth had known just who to ask(!) Anyway, a 'lesson' was arranged and Elizabeth learnt about "two black notes and three white ones," so that's interesting.

The day culminated in Gymbobs, and back to the autocooked tea. Success :)