Having talked to K & M recently about how they want, not exactly more structure, but a bit more 'something', I asked them to write down in a 'brain splurge' what it is they would like to do. K, taking me at my word when I said 'a page', wrote quite a lot, including quite a long list of specific science experiments from our big book of Science Experiments and recipes, mostly from Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes. M's list was rather shorter, but like K's included my reading particular books to them. Now that we're finally sorting out the kitchen, we've got more space back both in the playroom and in the kitchen (even though it's still not completely finished), so the plan is to get into a rhythm of doing a bit of the above mentioned 'something' (other than my reading to them, which generally happens anyway) each day.
One thing that was on M's list, was something that we tried for a month nearly 3 years ago, which was 10 minutes a day writing. Then it was quite a lot of nonsense that M wrote, but today she told me that she'd decided to write a letter. M wanted to me to join her, so I found the exercise book that I'd written in before, while she started on a letter and I took the opportunity to show her how to set a letter out. It turned out though, that the letter she was writing was in a pictorial code, so not so much writing all after! I suggested that she make sure that at least every other day the writing she does is in English, which she seemed to agree with, although I think she may want to finish the coded letter first, which may take a while.
M was quite keen for K to join us too, but she didn't want to (it wasn't on her list of things she wanted to do), she did however have workbooks on her list, so while M & I were doing some writing she started on a Grumpy Grammar workbook. It is aimed at a year or two younger than her, as I bought it a year or two ago and it's been languishing in a drawer somewhere. I was quite impressed with how much K's handwriting has improved and she is now forming her 'a's correctly, I've suggested that she work on writing on the line with the tails of letters such as g and p hanging below it. She was aware herself that she had used capitals when she shouldn't have done in a couple of cases, but had clearly grasped the point of the exercises, there was just one exercise where I think she hadn't read the question properly, because it asked about what a character does in the morning and she had filled in the verbs as if it had been asked what the character did that morning. She also off her own bat got out a maths workbook, and did some of that too.
As it's the last day of the month, today was also bedroom tidying time, something K & M have been gradually working on, with more or less good grace, for the past few days. The quite frequently decide to work together on each of their bedrooms, rather than on their own, which mostly seems to work well for them.
In other news, it's been a while since I've blogged about what we have on regularly, so here it is:
Monday: Asfordby twice a month and Brownies for M.
Tuesday: Korfball and piano lessons weekly, Fun Club once a month (piano lessons move to Thursday for that week)
Wednesday: Swimming lesson for both girls, French horn lesson for M and ice-skating once a month.
Thursday: Scouts for K and friends who come to Nottingham for maths often come to see us in the afternoon afterwards.
Friday: Cricket for M.
Saturday: Ballet for K.
That sounds quite a lot, but as most of these are evening activities, we have plenty of time during the day to get up to other things. M in particular has asked me to try and find a drama group for her to go to, although I'm not entirely sure how we're going to fit that in! I'm looking into things that are on over the summer, when some of the activities they already do will stop, at the moment.
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