No rest...

And so it goes, that after a fairly lengthy lull, it seems we're back into a period of both girls getting on with things that are more overtly educational.  They have both been doing a lot of reading lately, in M's case mostly books that either she has read before or that I have read to her and K.

K continued with the Murder Mystery maths puzzle and finished it yesterday.  I asked her if she'd like me to print her off the second one (of only two unfortunately!) and she said she would, so I did so last night and left it on the kitchen table for her.  I also printed another copy of the first one for M, who having said she wasn't interested had changed her mind and decided to have a go.

I left the girls at the kitchen table having breakfast and went to have a shower.  A rather indignant M followed pretty quickly, complaining that I was going to help her get going with the murder mystery, and she proceeded to sit on the loo, reading out the questions, checking her answers with me and occasionally asking for help when she wasn't sure about something.  K meanwhile took an hour over her breakfast because she had started on the second one.

There were a few things about polygons that M needed some help on, so I printed out a worksheet that I had made for K a while back and we went through it together and I also got a mirror out to use it to look at lines of symmetry too.

K finally got dressed and both of them did some piano practice and played with their rats for a while before we headed out for their piano lessons.

Once home K & I had some lunch, although it took K an awfully long time because she was continuing with the murder mystery maths, working out most of what to do completely on her own and just checking things with me occasionally.  So she did a page of simple algebra and another of sequences, which just the very occasional hint (for square numbers, triangular numbers and primes - the Fibonacci series she got on her own).

M got a bit mardy because she didn't fancy what I offered for lunch, so after a minor grump, she decided to make some cheese scones and got on with it, doubling the recipe and only needing the occasional little bit of help and even did most of the tidying up and washing up herself too.

I think perhaps we need a different design of apron!

They were very good!

 While she was doing this, K carried on with the murder mystery, working out what to do for each of the clues and solving them herself until she'd not only worked out who the murderer was but also where the diamonds were hidden.

K then disappeared into her bedroom to do some reading.  She's currently reading Icefire borrowed from the library, having bought The Fire Within on the recommendation of the lady in Waterstones a while back and I think is intending to work her way through The Last Dragon Chronicles.  She has told me that I should read the The Fire Within, so she clearly rates them.  I might ask her to write a review to try to persuade me to do so...

M has just finished reading The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams and asked if she could watch the film again, which we have recorded, because she wanted to compare them.  Afterwards she did indeed tell me about some of the differences, particularly an extra bit that was added for the film at the end.

After tea it was time to take them and their friends A & J to korfball and then this evening we started a new book.  I finished Emil and the Three Twins at the weekend, which we quite enjoyed.  The new book is one that I picked up a while ago on the spur of the moment, as it was touted as being one that inspired J K Rowling, The Runaways by Elizabeth Goudge.  We've only read the first couple of chapters so far, but it's looking very promising.