Sunshine, Shopping and Sebastian

We had an errand in town today, and what a lovely day it was! Sunshine - at last :o) We wished we hadn't taken our coats because we were all too hot. The best thing about the trip was not taking the pram. Oh yey! The first time Sebastian has been into town without his pushchair. He stood on the Metro and held the bar. We all went up and down escalators and didn't have to wait for pesky lifts. The girls got really good at escalators and every time we went on one, Sebastian said, "Fun."

Our errand was to get Francesca's Grade One violin music. We came home and practised some of the sight reading straight away. We also got through scales, arpeggios and the three peices that we are supposed to be doing this week. It's sounding quite good! The biggest breakthrough, really, is Francesca's willingness to play through three entire peices with very little* fuss.

*Of course there's some drama. This is Francesca we're talking about.

Maths consisted of some fish-feeding on the Hungry Fish app. English didn't really happen, although story tapes were listened to in abundance.

What I liked most was that the girls organised themselves a lot - deciding on useful things to be getting on with, including some collaborative play. I decided it was nice to let them play, since they were so happily engrossed.

At one point, Elizabeth wanted to practise writing some capital letters, so she got our her lined whiteboard (mum!) and I helped her to form the letters. Then I gave her her handwriting practise book and she earned some stickers for writing some rows of letters, which she seemed quite chuffed with.

Sebastian showed me how to put his little bird into its box: (the bird is on a string and can be made to 'fly' into the box - or you can do it the easier way, from the edge of a chair)

Here's Elizabeth working towards another certificate on her Maths app.

Francesca decided to get out her scrapbook and do cutting and sticking.

Then she wrote out the alphabet, lower and upper case, with a picture for each letter, on the whiteboard.

Sebastian didn't want to join in with whatever the girls were playing in their room, so I gave him the playdough again. I'll leave you with that happy occupation.