In Which Things Take Far Too Long

Is it only Monday? Not that I've had a bad day, just that the weekend is almost entirely erased by the hecticness of all we have done.

Violin took ages but Francesca was pleased - eventually - to have got through all the things her teacher wants her to study. Normally, in a typical week, we take far too long perfecting the first tune and never quite make it onto the other two tunes (their are usually three to practise).  Francesca, being such a perfectionist, won't play through a wrong note but always wants to start right from the beginning of the piece every time she makes a mistake. Hence the 'far too long' comment. I am encouraging her to hash right through a peice and Get To The End, for once. Her teacher wants her to progress through the book much faster so, by today, we have already covered the three pieces that are required for this week. Now, we have the rest of the week to 'polish' them up a bit.

Elizabeth was interested in her Maths app for most of the violin practice. Then, when Francesca took over the phone to do her Maths app (the same as Elizabeth's but designed for older children) Elizabeth wanted to work with her phoneme cards to do some reading practise, which was good.

After that, we took a look at our little seeds - beans and peas - that are growing in our tiny pepper-jar greenhouse. The girls updated their seed diaries and did a worksheeet about germination and another about what the little seedling needs to grow. They also made a front cover for their project and we put the pages together into their new folders that I had bought over the weekend. I must say, I like having all the sheets of paper tidied together in a smart way, as one whole project, rather than all separate and forgotten. The girls were pleased with the professional-looking 'books' they had made :)

Sebastian did some colouring in while the girls tackled their work. He likes to have his own work to do.

Francesca was super-slow doing hers - gazing into space, interfering in what Sebastian was doing - until Elizabeth finished (well, I wrote her words in for her but she did a great picture on her front cover "It's a big flower pot") and was allowed to go and watch tv. That speeded Francesca up, but, credit to her, she didn't spoil her work by rushing and she worked more efficiently to get it finished.

Mum, Elizabeth loved your sheet where she had to give the pictured pea-plant some soil ("That's all black, isn't it?", water ("I'm giving it lots and lots of water to drink,") and sunshine ("There are the lines down. And the smiley face...")

Here they all are, working away.

And here's the jar of seedlings - I know you can't see the detail but at least you can see the size of the jar. It used to contain black peppercorns, from a supermarket.

Plenty of maths was done today - not only the apps (which are, really, quite simple and not too challenging) but we also emptied their money boxes and counted the cash, ready to take to the bank. We took the money and opened their bank accounts this afternoon which took Far Too Long but I'm glad we've done it.

So, it felt quite productive, which is always a nice feeling, even if I'm tired out by the end of the day.