Getting stuff done.

Yesterday we spent all day in town, not a favourite pastime it must be said.  I don't like town at the best of times, and it's horribly busy in December.  Still we managed to get quite a bit of Christmas shopping done and I hope I can manage to finish the rest online or by making things (mostly chocolates!).  We also went ice-skating though, which was fun.  We didn't get home until late enough that it was pretty much time to get ready for the last swimming lesson of the year.

Today was one of those days when we packed quite a lot of more overtly educational stuff into a really rather short space of time.  We watched a short video about apartheid on BrainPop, which I have heard good things about from various friends, so I've subscribed for a month initially and if it looks as though we'll get our money's worth, I will change it to a year's subscription since that it considerably better value for money.  After watching the video we did the quiz together and then read the extra 'FYI' sections, as well as talking through the activity sheet.  K decided that she really liked the look of the site, but thought that it was the sort of things she'd want to do with me, rather than on her own.  She did then proceed to watch a couple more videos, including one of digestion, for which she then got 9/10 on the quiz, on her own while I was busy elsewhere, but in the same room.

Whilst stirring our lunch of risotto, I also started to read them a book that I had bought whilst in town yesterday; the children's version of Nelson Mandela's autobiography The Long Road to Freedom and then finished off afterwards while we were waiting for friends to arrive.

This morning, there were some satumas on the side in the kitchen and M was playing about with them, trying to arrange them in different shapes and she told me that she needed one more to make a square number, or two more to make them into a triangle.  She could however arrange them to make two squares.  So I asked her if she knew about cube numbers and showed her that she had enough to make a cube.

Our friends, E, C, L & J arrived shortly after lunch and while the children disappeared upstairs to play for a while E & I had a cup of tea, then we all went to a soft play place, since the playroom is out of action and much of the contents spread around the rest of the house!  E & I had a good chat and crunched some numbers to work out what it will take to keep the fantastic Asfordby HE group going.  I greatly admire all those who run groups like that, as keeping the balance between making them financially viable and available to those who like to come but for whatever reason can't commit to coming regularly isn't always easy and organisers can end up out of pocket, which clearly isn't right when they're the ones putting the time and effort into running them!

We parted ways at the soft play place and K, M & I came home and with a little bit of persuasion I read a chapter of Pied Piper, which then turned into two.  Both girls are enjoying the book, although the subject matter is challenging, but the chapters are really long, so it's not as easy to pick it up when we've got 15-20 minutes to fill for example.  I've suggested we make sure we read a chapter a day over the next few days, which are all fairly quiet, to get it finished as we seem to have had it out of the library an awfully long time.