Painting Eggs, Writing Stories, Tarantulas and More

Seymour has given Francesca a "Things To Do Today" pad onto which she has written her To Do list for today:

1. get up
2. get drest
3. have brecfast
4. wash teth
5. tv til 9:0 clok
6. to do list
7. riting story
8. lining abot tarantulas
9. collage whith mummy
10. play whith Sedastian
11. droring
12. cullring

All of which she was able to tick off by the end of the day. More on that shortly.

It was nice, her being so self-motivated. Notably, no violin, but I'm letting that go for a while. It's just no fun starting every day with a battle.

After half an hour or so of story 'riting' in which some incomprehensible things happened to a dinosaur, a dragon and a monster "who were NOT good friends" over a page and a half of A4, Francesca was desperate to learn about tarantulas.

For some reason, she is insatiably keen to find videos of a funnel web spider eating a bird. I heard several commentators say that this rarely happens - tarantulas tend to eat more rodents and insects than actual birds - but, no matter, Francesca is determined to find a video of some actual bird eating.

Now, I'm fine with the occasional British spider, even the big hairy ones. I'll happily capture them in a cup to take them elsewhere, although I'd jump a mile if they crawled on me. But tarantulas...

It wasn't my ideal topic for video footage with my morning coffee. I did try to steer Francesca in the direction of the cute water voles who were making the news today but no. Tarantulas it was.

So, I guided her through some of the less scare-mongering information about these large spiders, notably the BBC page on tarantulas here (we didn't watch the first clip...) and then I suggested we do something with all this new-found knowledge and make a Powerpoint presentation to show daddy.

Which kind of made me wince to suggest it because my computer has a version of Powerpoint that is SO Old!! and I wonder, should I be getting her to make a web page instead??? Anyway, we went for Powerpoint and I showed her the basics and helped her to make a few slides and import some images.

She made several pages and we will show them to daddy but not tonight as he didn't get home in time.

Sebastian has been quite grumbly and demanding all morning. I hope he doesn't get too fat while I keep fobbing him off with food.

Francesca and I added some more to her spring collage and I think it's finished. Oops - still no picture. Never mind.

Then it was time for Francesca to play with 'Sedastian' which involved dancing vigorously to Vivaldi's 'Winter'. Elizabeth was back at this point so she joined in too.

Sebastian wasn't much taken with this version of play. He'd rather have his 'daddy car' (as he calls it).

Daddy Car wanted to be photographed too.

After lunch it was time for the 'droring' and 'cullring'. Sebastian did some jigsaws.

The girls finished their seeds project, colouring in the last few sheets about photosynthesis, chlorophyll and cellulose. We listened to the photosynthesis song a few million times(!) and looked at some cellulose cell walls (onion epithelium) under the microscope.

I helped the girls to find sticks to support their little pea plants and showed them how to pinch out the tops. We even put more peas into soak so we can have a bigger crop.

By this time, Sebastian was really fractious. When time I came to showing everyone the timelapse videos of seeds sprouting, he was sitting on my knee looking like nap time. I popped him in the pushchair, coat on and everything, to rock him about a bit, but that didn't work. There was nothing else for it, we had to go out.

Ten minutes later, we were back, mission accomplished, with a sleeping boy and were, thus, able to do this:

Painting some blown eggs with my gorgeous shiny new pearlised pastel coloured acrylic paints from Baker Ross.

It was harder than I thought it would be, to acrylic paint on egg shells but it was fun. We're going to let our initial attempts dry before adding more coats.

Francesca has a special tiny egg that Grandpa gave her and, for Elizabeth, I blew an ordinary hen's egg.

At risk of this post becoming a bit listy again... Then Elizabeth did some 'cutting and sticking' - by which she means phonics work with more of her phonemes:

Francesca did some 'cullring'. By which time da boy had woken up all grumpy and was being pacified by CBeebies, so once the cullring had been acheived, the tv lured both girls in while I made omelette for supper.

So there you have it. Another day. And it felt like a productive one.