Continuing the update - films, games, appeal and more.

We don't go to the cinema particularly frequently generally, but have gone twice as a family this summer.  Both films were ones based on much loved books; The BFG and Swallows & Amazons.  While the girls were, rather critical of the changes from the books, which was to be expected, we did all enjoy them both.  Swallows & Amazons did need to be taken at face value as a film, rather than as an adaptation of the book as it strayed wildly from the original, but was pretty enjoyable if you can manage it.

Somewhere we go more frequently is the Dice Cup and indeed we have been back, this time with friends A & J and their dad C.  As well as playing Mysterium (the current favourite game) a couple of times, we played a few rounds of Telestrations and a couple of new to us games.

The first new game is one that our friends have, so were able to explain how it works.  It's called Saboteur (we just played individual rounds).  The players are all dwarves who are mining for gold, but each is randomly assigned to be either a miner or a saboteur.  You take it in turns to lay tunnel cards or block others from playing, and try to work together to get to the gold, which is under one of three possible cards you are working towards, or indeed stop others from doing so.  The saboteurs have to be quite subtle though, so as not to be blocked from playing themselves.  K didn't play this one, because she doesn't like games where 'you have to be mean', but M and I really enjoyed it. 

Saboteur.

The other new game we tried pretty much at random.  It looked fairly simple.  It was really hard!  It was a pack of cards that had one them 1,2 or 3 of three different shapes, in one three different colours with one of three different sort of shading.  You put out 12 cards on the table and try to find a set.  A set is when all three cards have either three of the four criteria the same, or all but one different.  We quickly gave up trying to be competitive and just tried to find a set between us.  It was incredibly difficult and although the instructions gave the chance of there not being a set with 12 cards on the table as one in several hundred and with 15 cards out one in tens of thousands, we still couldn't find one some of the time!  The girls got fed up with this quite quickly, but C and I got a bit stubborn about it.  It really was quite interesting how hard it was though.

In other news, M & I did some more multiplication today and I have finally persuaded her to give long multiplication a chance.  She seems to have cracked it and when multiplying two two digit numbers, rather than doing 4 individual multiplication sums and then adding them up, she has agreed to do them in a column.  I've made her some worksheets for some more practice, and I'm hopeful that she'll gain confidence soon.

Today we took Beatrice, K's rat to the vet for an operation to remove a lump.  M found it a while back, when it was tiny and could be felt under the skin.  A and the girls took her to the vet, who said to keep an eye on it and bring her back if it got a lot bigger.  It did, to the point that you could clearly see if from some distance.  Given how quickly it had grown, it was recommended to remove it.  Happily it all went well and she is home again and appears very perky.

Finally, we have been working on our submission for the school admission appeal.  The deadline for written submissions (and anything not submitted in writing will not necessarily be considered by the panel) was today (Monday), so we emailed and I dropped a paper copy in to the school.  We think we've got a pretty strong case, but there's nothing we can do now until the day, which is the 13th.  M is really struggling with the uncertainty, as she put it "I don't know whether my life is going to change massively."  It's really preying on her mind, particularly at bedtime and it's really hard not being able to do anything to sort it.

She was asking about our case recently, so I told her about how we have looked at the information the school has given and shown that there are inconsistencies and we've said about it being our catchment school and various other things including pointing out that M has chosen to go to school and so wants to be there which is more than can be said for some/many of the pupils.  To this replied 'Well I'll want to be there on the first day.  I don't know about after that.'  Well, we'll see how that pans out if we win the appeal!