Day Three in the Big (French) Brother House…

and it’s been alright – but I’m soooo tired!

We started with breakfast at a fairly sensible time, then I told the children we’d start at 9 with some work 😉 J and M got going first with some Draw Write Now – M very painstakingly drew a beautiful truck, then carefully copied out the sentence underneath and added some colour with the watercolour pencils. It was only then that I realised he had missed the point of the exercise which was to draw raindrops (Truck in the Rain) hence a sentence which was not about a truck but about rainclouds and rain drops. Ah well! J, meanwhile, opted for a picture of the Statue of Liberty and a sentence about America being the land of the free, which he rather neatly (but also rudely) adapted before remembering that he had intended to send that picture in to the Draw Write Now authors to show what a good job he’d done. At least he realised that wasn’t a good idea now 😉 L joined us, did a bit of reading and then did her customary “but I can’t read – I don’t know all the letters yet!” strop *sigh* so I sent her to get dressed and change her attitude while she was at it – and then followed her upstairs, where she had a sob and a cuddle and then we both felt better 🙂 K decided he was happy in pyjamas, so did piano and then got started on a Turtle picture while J and M finished theirs, then I showed J and M the Isotiles and we worked through the first couple of pages of the online workbook with limited success – J complained his brain was aching “but look – I can make a house!” while M dutifully repeated the names of the angles and then made patterns with the triangles. K, on the other hand, worked through the same pages with great enthusiasm and no brain ache, then spent twice as long making patterns – whether because of attitude or aptitude I’m not sure! L just had fun tessellating 🙂
After that I sent them outside for a bit, with snack (cucumber, orange pieces, apple slices, pepper, cupcakes and chocolate milkshake) and then regretted it as a huge waterfight broke out all around the freshly hung-out washing! L and A were first to come in, dripping wet, while M had the greatest staying power and was still out there squirting the windows long after the others had come in and dried off. Eventually I called him in to do piano, before he could get too frustrated waiting for victims to come out and get soaked! Meanwhile L had done 100 Easy Lessons, J had done piano and K a fair bit of Lego vehicle building. We introduced M to Tutpup and then made sushi (lots!) and then J and K did some recorder playing while L and M did more 100 Easy Lessons together and A had Mummy milk. Looking back at the day I’m struggling to remember what A actually did all day – I think we were lucky and it was one of those days when she was happy to just potter about and join in with whatever looked interesting 🙂 I think there was more game playing then, and then J and I did a little music theory together (revision – his choice; he’s determined to teach me now that he’s ahead of where I got to!) while K and M did some Bitesize literacy on the computer. Realising that we have violin again tomorrow L got hers out, but J somehow never quite got that far, and then it was time to dash across town and take L to Gymnastics. When we got back we went out to the field to find sycamore “helicopters”, did a bit of urban foraging (elderberries – must look that up in French! – and plums from the hedge round the field) and then the boys made paper helicopters while I made spiced elderberry cordial and got some tea made ready for the mad rush between collecting L and taking K to Beavers. Oh and Jacques phoned to ask if everything is okay. I think it is 🙂
It was to have been J and M in the bath tonight, but somehow L and A got in there first, then M and finally J while Bob collected K and then read stories. And now they’re all in bed, A is asleep on my lap, and I need to be packing lunches for an incredibly busy tomorrow, but I think I’ll go to bed instead…