A catch up.

As I mentioned, Granny has been here for a few days, so apart from the usual weekly activities (gymnastics and swimming for both and ballet for K) we've had a fairly relaxed time.  We had a sort out of clothes, finding out what they've grown out of and finding what fitted from a new bag of hand-me-downs (some really lovely stuff!), as this is something that for some reason K & M both insist is only possible when Granny's here.  We also went into town and all three of us spent some of our Christmas/birthday money.  I bought a spatula/thermometer to aid me in my continuing adventures in chocolate making, to go with the moulds that I'd ordered and arrived Saturday.  K has finally bought the playmobil campervan that she's had her eye for months if not a year or more, and apparently had gone down in price from when she last looked at it, so she was very pleased.  M couldn't decide for quite a long time and considered another dinosaur to go with her rather large collection, but eventually settled on this lego creator house.  Today she completed one of the 3 designs and is very pleased indeed with it. 

Front view

Front view but with man on skateboard

Side view

Back view opened up.

It's really well designed, I particularly like the little 'sacks of flour'! 

K & M have both been writing their food diaries for Brownies.  It's really quite interesting to see how much neater K's writing is, and how she has naturally come to use upper and lower case letters correctly, rather than randomly as M still is, despite little or no input on the subject from me.

Today has been quite a busy day, M has made her lego house.  While M & I were at church this morning K went on Pottermore.  They have both watched some Life of Mammals.  I introduced K (and then M joined us) to Khan Academy as I thought she might like to use it to help practise her tables, but she's really rather taken with it, although the videos she's watched so far have very much been consolidation rather than anything new.  She found it particularly funny in one video when the lecturer suggested that since 9x11=99, 10x11 might be tenty ten and insisted on watching all of the videos on basic multiplication and basic addition and subtraction.  While it was on, I suggested that although the number line they showed isn't necessary for them at the moment, it may come in useful when we talk about negative/minus numbers for example.  When I gave the example of having £5 and spending £7, K immediately came up with the answer of having -£2, which she thought was very silly because you shouldn't spend money you don't have.  Both A and I agreed with this idea, but pointed out that occasionally it is useful, for example when you get a mortgage to buy a house.  Other than this we have finally started Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, after a bit of a break.

In other news, I used my new thermometer and moulds for the first time and had a go at tempering chocolate again (no fancy filling this time, just kept it simple).  I did some in a silicon heart shaped ice-cube tray we've got, but they didn't come out well at all (the silicon's not smooth enough for chocolate), but the ones I did in my one of my new professional moulds came out rather well.