Just M.

M and I had a snuggly bedtime chat recently.  She is finding life a bit tough at the moment and really not keen on the idea of growing up; she's wanting to do more 'work' but finding that when the time comes to do so she gets distracted or doesn't fancy it.  She also told me that she really wants to know what it's like to go to school, but is very clear that she doesn't actually want to go.  M came up with some ideas (mostly about limiting computer use) to help with getting more work done.  As a result, we had a look online at some workbooks and I've bought her a few.

The following day, when I came downstairs for breakfast M was sitting at the table with a box.  She had decided that she wanted to construct a model dinosaur, which K & M had been given for Christmas a year or two ago and K had agreed that it okay for M to make.  It was aimed at 8+, but it was really rather fiddly, so we had a go together.

Pressing out the parts

Putting the parts together.

All done.

 After lunch, M painted the model and we added the parts to make it move and M wired up the circuit.

The finished article.

I mentioned in my last post that M has also recently started a story, which she is writing in chapters.  It's about a family of caracals, a father and four babies (their mother is dead), and he is teaching them to hunt cottontails in the desert.  The story is also illustrated and I think that the inspiration has probably come from a 'how to draw' book, that M has also been doing quite a bit of, as there are both caracals and cottontails in the desert section in there. 

The drawing book.

A day or two later I asked M to have a look through her story and see if she could spot any mistakes.  She did find a couple, including using the wrong spelling of 'there', so she asked if I could make her a worksheet with there, their and they're.  Rather than reinvent in the wheel, I had a look online and found three online exercises on just that topic, so bookmarked the links and popped them in a folder for M.  She got all of the questions right and in addition discovered that this page had exercises for various other homophones (to, too or two; its or it's; whose or who's) which she decided to have a go at, as well as some of the others you can see down the left hand side, doing very well on most of them.

The workbooks we ordered arrived and since then M had a go at one of the exercises in an English comprehension workbook.  Since she'd never done anything like this before, we had agreed to go for one aimed at a few years younger than her, so it was pretty straightforward.  She pretty much dived in and had a go at the first one and did fine.  We have agreed that she'll do a couple of them a week.

On the crafty side, she decided to join in with K in making some clothes for a particular doll.  So she borrowed a crochet hook, got out some yarn and just started.  After doing the main part and adding on some arms, it looked a bit of an odd shape, so she added some more until she was happy with it.  She has still got to weave the ends in, but apart from that it's done.  She cunningly used one of my stitch markers as a sort of button/hook thing, it works rather well!

Belle in her new cardie.

In other news, M is still getting on well with her French horn, her range continues to expand and her teacher is really please with her.  I'm still mostly having to encourage her to practise, but occasionally she will do so without me saying anything.