Seizing opportunities.

Today we followed up on the letters we'd received last week and went to get appointments for the girls' routine eye tests.  They had appointments free just under an hour later, so we popped home and K & I got the eye model out that we've got on loan.

M is not coping very well with the heat at the moment and is consequently rather grumpy, to put it mildly, and because she hadn't wanted to come home before the appointments, she didn't want to join in.  She did tell me later though that she'd listened in to me reading the information in the instructions about the different parts of the model and she had a go at contructing the model herself later too, with a bit of help from K.  All was well with the eye tests and K asked about all the different lenses that the optician has and how she knows which one to use.  She explained that the things she looks at before using them gives her measurements which help her with this.  We also talked about what lenses do, i.e. bend light, and how much depends on the thickness of the lens, so each of the lenses she has is very slightly different from the others.

After lunch we finally had a go at the Grammar Game board game that we borrowed ages ago from C & D.  We were all going to play, but M didn't in the end because she wanted the yellow counter and I insisted that it was K's turn to get her first choice, as K had already let M have her way at least twice already today.  She just sat and watched reasonably happily though.  I discovered that K doesn't yet know the different classes of words (verb, noun, adjective etc.), but she's pretty good on punctuation (something that we have talked about in the past).  In my most recent BookPeople purchase, I bought a Basher book on Grammar, to go with the one we already have on Punctuation and K said she thought she might in be interested in having a look at it sometime.

After this we just had time to go foraging cherries in our local park before piano lessons.  We didn't get that many, but given we spent less than 10 minutes picking cherries within reach from the ground we did okay and there are plenty more not quite ripe yet.  Usually I go to the playground or for a walk along the canal with the one not having her piano lesson, but it was too hot today!  So instead we took Millionaire Deal and had a few games of that in the hall outside the room where they have their lessons.

M was still suffering with intense grumpiness in the heat, but she alleviated it herself, by asking to go home via the Co-op, where she bought an 8 pack of mini Twister ice-cream lollies for the family to share, which was rather lovely.  Finally, they had korfball after tea and then A finished off the chapter of William Again that he had started previously, while I went to my choir.