Friday was 'one of those days' that come around every so often. I've been struggling to get the balance right in terms tidying to make sure there's space to allow things to happen. Grumpiness abounded, arguing occurred, tears were shed and then hugs and making up happened. In among that, K did a little bit more of the fractions sheet that I'd made her. She asked whether you can simplify fractions on a calculator, so we had a look and discovered that you can't on a simple one, but on the scientific calculator you can, so she used that to check her answers. It was when I asked her to make sure she wrote her working down for the final part (adding fractions with different denominators and then simplifying the answer) that she said something that really concerned me. When she asked me why I wanted her to write her working, I explained that it makes it much easier to find out where you've gone wrong if you've made a mistake and also that if she decides to do any qualifications in the future, GCSE for example, you get as many if not more marks for the working as you do for getting the right answer. She then told me that she wasn't going to do any exams because she's 'rubbish' at everything! I'd previously overheard a conversation between K & M when they talked about being 'rubbish' at spelling. Any attempt I made to demonstrate and persuade K that she's most definitely not 'rubbish' were rebuffed and she told me she would 'take it as an insult' if I said she wasn't! I really don't know where this idea has come from, nor just how serious she is when she says it and I did tell her that it worried me a bit that she feels like this. K has conceded that some things take practice to get good at and we've agreed to go back to a little bit more structure and trying to do a bit more 'sitty-downy writing, spelling and numbers' regularly, something that happens periodically (often as much for my benefit as theirs, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing). I'm not sure, but I think some of this is connnected to not wanting to grow up - K's ideal would have been to stay 8 forever.
Since then she's finished the worksheet, quite ingeniously using counters to work out if a fraction could be simplified. I mentioned prime numbers to her, as they would be helpful for this, and have given her a list of all primes up to 100 and suggested that she might like to use the counters to see if she can work out what a prime number is. I'll leave the idea with her for a few days and see if she has a go and if not then I'll suggest we have a look together.
In other news, K & M have been waiting for A to get home from a work trip, so that they could watch Just William with him, since he's been the one reading them the stories mostly. They did so this evening, although on several occasions I heard them admonishing him for falling asleep and him claiming that he wasn't, he had just closed his eyes for a moment. Given that he got back at gone midnight last night, from a three day trip encompassing meetings in London, Brussels and Madrid, I think we should cut him some slack! While they were watching, having previously identified actors from stage and screen, they spotted another. Last seen on stage in Matilda the Musical, looking like this:
They identified Bertie Carvel as William's uncle, looking more like this:
And K & I went out to do a bit of shopping this morning and on the way saw butterflies for the first time this year. Including this one, which we looked up when we got home.
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