Being 'behind'.

One of the many great things about HE, is that it doesn't really matter if a child hasn't done something that (according to school timetabling) they 'should' have done.  I discovered today, having got to the character 'Add', that although K's mental arithmatic isn't bad given time and quiet, she was very reluctant to write down working in more tricky addition sums.  It turned out that she wasn't really sure what I meant when I asked her to write her working talked about 'carrying', even though she had obviously grasped the concept without realising that was what she was doing when adding numbers in her head. 

So we had a look together and I made up an example, something like:
  1 000 056
+   999 985

I showed her what I meant by carrying, writing a little number one as a reminder, getting the answer 2 000 041.  Then to emphasise the point, I did the same sum, but instead of carrying, I wrote the whole number we'd got from each column down as the answer, ending up with 19 991 311!  K found this very funny and I think helped her understand.  After this we worked through the few questions I'd put on the worksheet I'd made for her and she started to gain confidence.  I suggested that she would probably benefit from a bit more practice and she agreed, so I have used this website to make another worksheet for her.  It may well be that children in school have already covered this some time ago (K is 9.5), but it's only recently that K has been willing to consider doing things any way other than her own, but now that she is, when we do come across something that she doesn't 'get' immediately, she's willing to listen and give it a go and generally, when I find the right way to explain it to her, she cracks it, has a bit of a practice and is ready to move on, at her own pace.

In other maths news, I like playing Words With Friends on my phone and M in particular likes to help with suggestions.  Following a particularly good set of letters today, I was 220 points to 115 with my friend, which M was very impressed with.  I pointed out that I had nearly double and asked how many more I'd need to have exactly double and M answered correctly, barely pausing to think about it.  We seem to have had quite a few of these instances lately.

Look what I've found, Mummy!

Firstly, some maths.  Yesterday, K finished off the worksheet I'd made for her on 'units'.  She matched up the metric and imperial units that went together and then chose suitable equipment and, using metric units, measured:  her handspan, how much a particular mug holds, her weight, how long she could hold her breath, the weight of three apples and the distance from our front door to the bottom of the stairs.  That was the last of the first chapter, about the 'Number Bunch', which also included Zero, Infinity, Minus Numbers, Fraction and Decimal Fraction.  We will now be moving onto the 'Special Sum-things', basically the four operations, plus x (who is, apparently, "a nameless secret agent who haunts maths equations"!).

And now for what it was that was found.  Today was Asfordby, with the topic of recycling.  There was a bring and swap table, a good way of re-homing unwanted items, the remainder of which was taken to a charity shop.  K & M took some books and a few other bits and pieces, not as much as I'd like, but at least they parted with more than they brought home!  We brought back some animal figures, some animal sponges for painting and a top for me!  As well as this, there was paper making, although neither K nor M had a go, and box modelling.  K helped her friend Z make a gerbil cage (they did realise it wasn't exactly appropriate material for the purpose!) as well as a little thing of her own.  M spent most of the time outside playing with some of the boys.  At one point she came in, saying 'Look what I've found, Mummy!' and dumped something on my lap.  She and O are sharing ownership, but it's going to live at O's house, much to his mum's delight I'm sure!

A dead frog, with some of the skeleton showing through the dried out skin!

Mostly about two different trips out.

M's birthday is pretty much over now, but lingers on in a couple of ways.  She is writing her thank yous, on what are actually little present tag cards that we found in the scrap store, but they do the job nicely.  She was happy to write on them because there's small so she doesn't have to write much, I suggested it to encourage her to write a bit smaller and more neatly!  She is also enjoying using or playing with a number of her presents, such as the origami kit and her Lego among others.

Elephant's head and swan, made from one of M's presents.

On Friday it was a glorious day, so after some playing in the garden, when I was allowed to take some photos of a rare occurence, both of my girls in a dress/skirt!  We took a packed lunch and headed into Nottingham on the bus, with some of M's birthday money in my pocket.

 

First we headed for Market Square and joined quite a few other folks to have a bit of splash in the fountain. 

 

M had received one present which we already had (a really good choice, the card game Boggle Slam!), so we headed to Waterstones to see if we could swap it and since it had one of their stickers on they were happy to do so and we came away with Pit instead.  We haven't had a go yet, but have lots of other cards games in this series, so I'm anticipating we'll enjoy it.

The Victoria Centre was next and eventually, after much deliberation, M decided on some more Lego rather than more Playmobil, this Lego Creator Log Cabin.  She's already built and taken it apart a few times and seems very happy with her choice.  We headed back for more splashing about in Market Square, before heading home, via Hotel Chocolat (they usually have tasting and they didn't disappoint).

This morning, M and I went to deliver H's thank you to her at ballet and then to the farmers' market where we stopped for a chat with Barry and bought some chocolates for A for Father's Day next week (any excuse, Barry's chocolates are amazing).  K had decided not to come with us, because she was busy constructing a pregnancy pelvis, from a kit I'd bought at The Works in town yesterday.  A friend, E, had tipped me off that they had some good ones, but sadly they only had the pregnancy one left.  I have also ordered the other two that they had left online though.

K busy assembling body parts.

A 2 or 3 years ago we went to the British Geological Survey's Open Day and really enjoyed it, and when I asked the girls if they'd like to go to this year's, they were both quite happy to do so.  We got there at about 1.30pm and had a go at various activities.

Setting off party poppers by adding weights to the string.

This one is to demonstrate that although geologists know about the stresses and conditions that cause earthquakes and can predict that they are likely to occur soon, they can't know exactly when.  When we took part in this activitiy the results for how many weights it took to set off the party popper varied between 8 and 23.

M walking like a dinosaur.

Discussing the results.

The spaces between the footprints can help determine the height of the hip joint of dinosaurs and how fast they could move.  M was a pretty nippy Deinonychus, apparently.

We did a Treasure Hunt, which led you round some of the site and told us about various things, including the British Geological Survey itself, different types of rock, weathering and fossils and ended with chocolate and a couple of little pieces of polished minerals to take home.  We also looked at different types of rock, sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic and put some drops of vinegar on some of them to see if they would dissolve.

After this we went to the Fossil Fun section, where they had some very impressive specimens.  When I pointed out the different periods, M pointed out that they weren't in the right order, as the Permian and Jurassic sections had the Cretaceous in between them.  The man there agreed, and said that he hadn't thought about putting the tables in order and that perhaps he should have done.

A Permian fossil.

On the Cretaceous table, there were some fossils to handle and use a little eye magnifier to look at more closely.  K said that she thought the first one she looked at looked like a bee or wasp and wasn't far off, since it was a beetle.  When M picked up a different one, the man said that that one was very tricky and only one person so far had correctly identified it.  M had a look and said that it looked like a cricket to her, and he was very impressed, as it was, indeed, a cricket.  At this point, K said that she hadn't heard what M had said and had a look herself and said that she thought it looked like a grasshopper or a cricket.

M identifying a fossil.

And K's turn.

We had a quick look at a few more things and M had a go at panning for (fool's) gold, we've got the result drying out on a window sill, although there's still quite a lot of sand there too.

It shut promptly at 4 o'clock, so we went to see A playing cricket, arriving at tea.  We stopped for a while before heading home, where K did some of a worksheet I'd made for her on Units (continuing to work through the different characters in this Maths book).  So far, with a bit of talking through things, she's been filling in a table of different things we might measure (length, volume, time, temperature & weight), with examples (height, liquid in baking, a race, our temperature when ill, ourselves), examples of units (cm, litres, seconds, degrees centigrade and grams) and tools or equipment we might use to measure these things (ruler, measuring jug, stopwatch, thermometer, scales).  M wrote another thank you, this time to Christopher, her cuddly toy dog, who had given her a bouncy ball, which oddly he had wrapped in three layers before making a gift bag to put it in to give to M for her birthday.

So busy!

Yesterday was Fun Club, with the theme being 'Giant Games and Co-operative games'.  K & M both had a lovely time, although I saw very little as when we arrived, I realised that I had left M's carefully decorated birthday cake at home!  So they stayed and had fun, while I drove 25 minutes each way to fetch it - whoops!

M (as a dog) and her tiger cake.

Then after lunch Fun Club decamped to the park.  I stayed behind to help with washing up and tidying as my girls are fine going with other people, so there weren't smaller children waiting impatiently for their mummy to be ready to go.  So I didn't seem much of my girls at Fun Club at all!

After Fun Club, we dashed back across town for K & M to meet what looks like being their new piano teacher.  Our lovely friend C, is no longer taking private pupils, although she carried on with K & M a long time after she had finished with most of them, and due to her surgery last autumn K & M hadn't had lessons for quite some time now.  Both girls took to E, who already teaches two of their friends, so we're going to give it half a term and see how they get on.  Their half an hour lesson also gave me a bit of uninterrupted one to one time with each of my girls, which is quite rare, and really lovely.  K and I talked mostly about rats, the pet sort.  We visited a colleague of A's last autumn, who had two rats and the girls were really taken with them.  At the time I said that if they were still really keen on the idea of getting a couple next Christmas (so that's this year now), then we would seriously consider it.  K is still, indeed, very keen on the idea, so I have suggested she look into it and so some research, so she can know what it would involve and I would see that she is serious about it.  She thought that was a good idea and has already found some information on the internet and is planning on seeing what they have in the library.

M made a snake for C, who we met up with on her birthday.

Today is M's birthday (it's finally arrived, having started it seems rather a long time ago!).  She was up very early and after having breakfast with K & A, brought up some of her presents to open before A went to work, on the bed with me rather bleary eyed!

We met up with friends, E, C, L & J at Belton House for most of the day.  It's somewhere that various friends have recommended and we hadn't ever got around to going, but will certainly be going back.  It's got a fantastic adventure playground, really lovely grounds and an indoor play area in the cafe and we didn't even get as far as the house!  We did do plenty of tree climbing and nature spotting though, including baby rabbits, ducklings, goslings and tadpoles.

A tiny fraction of the tadpoles.  There were thousands!

Quite amazingly nobody fell in!

All the small people

C & M

K

M

Everyone but me!

We finished off with an ice-cream for the small people and hot chocolate and chocolate brownies for E & me in the cafe and indoor play area, and agreed that we would definitely return soon.  If it hadn't been for swimming lessons for all the children, I think we would have stayed rather longer.

We got home from swimming to have chicken curry for tea with A, who'd got home in time to cook for us to eat soon after we'd got in.  Sadly, while we were having tea, we received news from A's cousin that his aunty, who at 85 has had many on-going health problems, some quite debilitating, for some time now, has just died.

That notwithstanding, M has had a lovely birthday and told me just before she went to bed that she'd had 'some brilliant presents', these include a Lego creator car, a number of photo frames and notebooks (she is very into both of these at the moment).  She also got a Harry Potter mug, although since it came direct from the seller with no clue as to the sender, it's going to be tricky sending a thank you for that!

More cake!

We haven't been in much today!  This morning we headed to an LLL Toddler meeting, hosted by some HE friends, who have a trampoline in the garden which is always a good thing as far as K & M are concerned and they really like L, who they also see at gymnastics and Fun Club too.  They spent most of the time in the garden, again making the most of the lovely weather.

We popped to the Co-op on the way home, and saw C, who also goes to gymnastics.  That reminded me that there was a HE meet up at our local park.  It was a group that meets up regularly on a Monday, but that we don't generally go to as we go to Asfordby every other Monday, but since it was a park meet up on our doorstep when the weather is so glorious, it seemed daft not to go along.  So after lunch we headed down there, K & M on there bikes and had a (mostly) lovely time.  K is struggling to cope in larger groups at times, particularly with situations that are in her view unfair, or if someone is spoiling a game for example.  One of the younger children kicked her and she kicked back, which I saw, so we had words about that.  When calm she understands what is and isn't acceptable, but finds staying calm enough to remember that very difficult at times. 

Then we came home and I made a quick and easy cake to take to share at Fun Club tomorrow, which M decorated.  I must admit I found it very difficult to let go and let M help with the Snake cake (in the end she did a very little bit of icing, one eye and the tongue!), but I have no trouble letting her do her own thing entirely.  She stuck with the wild animal theme of yesterdays party...

At lunch time M asked if she could read the prologue of the first of a set of books she'd been given for her birthday to me.  I was very surprised by this as neither of my girls has read to me for an awfully long time.  She quickly changed her mind when K returned to the room, as she didn't want K around when she did it, but when I asked her later, when it was just the two of us, she was happy to do so and did very well.  The book was Midnight for Charlie Bone; the series has been recommended by a few different friends and from the little I've heard and seen so far, I think it will go down very well.

The Party!

Finally, it was party day.  The party people consisted of K & M and 6 friends (all girls this time).  We were very lucky that the weather was gorgeous, so plan A of a trip to the park for some of the time went ahead.  The theme of Wild Animals seemed popular and firstly, we played the game that M had come up with.  Everyone (including A & I) were given a little plastic animal to study, then they were all put in a cloth bag and we took it in turns to try to find our own by feel alone - not as easy as you might think!  This was followed by Pin-the-Joey-in-the-pouch, made yesterday by M.

It was won by K, who had the cunning idea of seeing how where the pouch was compared to her face (it was level with her nose) before her go!  Next was pass-the-parcel, with various Wild Animal related forfeits in the layers, such as 20 questions to find an animal, finding 10 words from the letters of hippopotamus, Chinese whispers with an animal related phrase, imitating an animal for the others to guess.  After this we went to the park and while there, in the wooded part, played an 'ambush predator' game.  It took a few goes for it to work properly (as some folks got a bit confused with hide & seek!), but then it went pretty well.  The 'prey' sat on a convenient log and the predators spread out.  The aim was for the predators to sneak up on and touch the prey without being spotted.  The prey didn't look up unless she heard someone moving, then she was allowed to look up and if she saw someone they were out.  Then it was home for tea and, of course, the cake!

M was given some lovely presents, including her very own Mad-Eye Moody magical eye, made by C!  We didn't have time to do the Wild Animals Quiz I'd prepared at M's request, because the weather was good (that was plan B), but I've emailed it to everyone so they can have a go and it may well come in handy for a HE group sometime.

More birthdays! Mostly about the cake though.

We've had a few days of more birthdays, both celebrating someone else's and preparing for M's party tomorrow.  Yesterday, we joined lots of other folks for a lovely gathering to celebrate D's birthday at Wollaton Hall, and M gave D the new wand we'd made for him (my having lost the one she's original planned on giving him).

Today has been all about the cake.  Usually I'm given a very specific brief on what K or M would like for their birthday party cake, although I do occasionally have to put restrictions to keep things within my capabilities.  This time to start with M asked for 'a wild animal' cake but left everything else up to me.  I had more or less decided on a lion's head, but then changed my mind and thought I'd do a snake.  When I suggested this to M, she was very keen on the idea and asked for an adder, since we'd seen one on Monday.  Here's how it went.  Firstly I did a search for some photos of adders to use as inspiration.

Then I made a fairly randomly chosen selection of sponge cakes.

Cut them up and arranged them in a snakey way.

Covered it all in buttercream.

Piped on the V on the head and the pattern down the back.

Added the eyes and tongue (by M) and the message.

Turned the left overs into Victoria sandwiches with whipped cream and jam!