It's not all sweetness and light.

Today we have had an exceedingly shouty day.  The provocation for me was that, although it was them that choose to do far more thank you's than necessary, K has been dragging her feet hugely, not in a moany way but today she spent over 4 hours sitting at the table, supposedly writing a couple of thank you cards but in reality listening to a story cd and getting distracted by apparently nothing and staring into space.  Occasional reminders to me of what she was supposed to be doing provoked little response, and asking her to turn off the cd so she could concentrate didn't work either and eventually I lost my temper and shouted.  A lot.  There were tears on both our parts, followed by some more shouting, but eventually we calmed down had a huge hug and then some thank you's were done.  I hope that something good has come out of this though, because we had a chat and a snuggle and I shared my concerns with K about what I thought she needed to get out of her home education, mostly about English (and we talked about different reasons for writing and why it's important to be able to do so well) and Maths but also how everyone sometimes needs to just get on with things that they're not particular keen on doing sometimes, like the thank you's.  I also suggested and she agreed at least in theory, that perhaps the time has come for a bit more structure, so we'll see how we go with that.  I've got various workbooks and text books that we can dip into and see how we go anyway, as well as plenty of people I can turn to 'in real life' and online for ideas.

In other news, yesterday I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  We started off snuggled in my bed before getting up and found that it was a 'scary bit' every time we got to the end of a chapter, so ended up having porridge and brioche for brunch at about quarter to twelve, before finishing off the last couple of chapters.  K & M then immediately put the cd on of Stephen Fry reading the book and have been listening to it pretty much constantly ever since.  It's really quite entertaining listening to them reacting to events in a very different way from the first time round, now that they know what is going to happen and the twist about one character in particular!