Well we rearranged out meeting for 11 o'clock, but we did meet at the kitchen table, breakfasted, dressed, toothbrushed and in M's case having done some French horn practice and in mine having hung out a load of washing. I hadn't anticipated that K would want to join in, in her own way. That meant taking herself away and quietly getting on with her grammar workbook by herself, while I worked with M. I asked her later if I could have a look, but she's most reluctant to let me, which is very K. She told me she might let me in a few years but I think I will probably be able to persuade her to show me once she'd finished the workbook, which she has done about half of over the past two days.
M told me that she thought the first thing we should do was look at the writing that she had done the previous day, i.e. the start of the shared story, and see if there are any mistakes, which is just what I had been going to suggest to her, so that was a good start. There were only a few spelling mistakes, which we looked at, including the word 'cupboard', which we'd come across at Tudor Kentwell, when it was a shelf or board for cups, so we could talk about the etymology. The only mistake I considered needed looking at properly was her use of 'there' instead of 'their', so I got a new exercise book out and we talked about there, their and they're and I wrote some notes on their use in the book and a few sentences with gaps for her to choose the correct word and fill in, which she did without any problem. The other thing that I asked her to think about was the handwriting itself, partly as she still does occasionally throw in random capital letters but also because when writing letters that have a 'tail' she writes so that the tail is on the line rather than the body of the letter. Her reasoning for this was that it is *wrong* to have the tail hanging down because it would be like sitting above someone and resting your feet on their head! I suggested we do a bit of dictation and I gave her a few simple sentences, making sure that there were some words with letters with tails. She did write some of them with the tail beneath the line, but most reluctantly and she's really not convinced!
M also told me that part of what's bothering her is that she wants to learn but gets too easily distracted by other things at home, which is why she's thought about the idea of school because she wouldn't have those things there, but that she doesn't really want to go. I suggested that we could work in the local library if she thought it would help (she didn't like that idea), but by having more defined times of what we do when, she might find that makes it easier to focus.
M told me that she wanted to do more maths too, so I suggested we have a game of Vapoosh, which she thought was a good idea. It's a game to help learn times tables, but it's also rather fun. K came in while we were playing and wanted to play too, so afterwards I had a game with her. We also continued with the book I'm reading to them, which is going down very well.
This afternoon we went to the park for a bit of fresh air and exercise and also because M in particular was hoping that we might bump into friends there after they'd finished school. We didn't, but we still had fun. While there and also near the swimming pool where the girls have there lesson we had a look at the cherry trees that were so bountiful last year, but sadly it's clear that there will be no cherry jam this year, it looks unlikely that we'll manage so much as a pie, which is very disappointing.
We've got a bit more on tomorrow, including piano lessons (which are usually on Tuesday but move to a Thursday when we have Fun Club on the Tuesday) and friends coming after lunch, so we're meeting at the kitchen table at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. I wonder if we'll get as much done as we did today!
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