One word? When seven would do…

The chick died in the night – not at all surprising and the children were accepting if sad about it :(. If we keep one of the cockerels I guess we might get back into chick rearing again but it won’t be for a while. I think the break will be good.

Davies and Scarlett had dragged out Tarly’s Barbie stuff from her bedroom. We got massive amounts of Barbie furniture two Christmasses ago from a charity shop which rarely gets played with but gets lots of mileage when it does. They set up a whole houseful and were playing with the various Barbies, Kens (although they call him ‘Kev’ for some reason) and horses. 🙂

I had a day off from the laptop and sat with Davies to read his second Reading Challenge book. A few pages in it became apparent he wasn’t enjoying it and it was becoming a chore – precisely what I don’t want reading to be for them. He was battling through each sentence and getting nothing from the story – which was a phonics book called ‘Hen’s Pens’ – very much in the style of the P&J books I recall from early reading at school and just repeptitive rubbish really ‘Hen has ten pens, hen likes her pens’ – I’d expect a bit more of a storyline as a reward if I were battling to get through each word too really. So I got Davies to choose one of the pile of Barefoot books we still have here instead and said I’d read it to him instead. He chose Herb the vegetarian dragon which we’d already read once and enjoyed so I read that to him again with him reading the odd words here and there.

Scarlett gathered up her two books – a nicely illustrated version of this little chick from over the way and a Where’s Wally book. We’d not finished Where’s Wally so we started to do that and then realised there were still pages and pages to go so I got her to choose a book from the pile too and read that to her instead – she selected Forest Singer so I read that and they both listened in.

Then we dashed off to Tesco. I’ve been semi-avoiding Tesco but we’ve decided we really want Merlin cards and they are super cheap on clubcard deals so I might overcome that and shop there again to build up points :oops:. I also wanted a couple of new laundry baskets and a new sock and pants peg thingy for the washing line which I knew Sainsburys didn’t have so needs must. They didn’t have the peg thingy either but I did get a couple of value baskets, a pair of trousers each for the children reduced to £2 each and the loo roll which was what we actually needed and had failed to pick up in Sainsburys yesterday. It was creeping towards lunchtime and I was very proud when the children requested a banana and a carrot for a snack 🙂 I’ve a lot to learn from them I reckon ;).

Next stop was the library with their two books each. We popped into Woolworths first where we got the peg things and Boots next door for some make up for me where Scarlett used testers to put pink, purple and turquoise stripes of eyeshadow on – she looked very punk :lol:. Then into the library. Scarlett talked about her chick story and Davies pretty much retold the Herb story including pointing out all his favourite bits of the illustrations and adding in what he liked about the story :). They got their wallet, stickers, cards and activity sheets and chose a couple of more books each. Davies chose another two he can try to read himself and we’ve agreed he will try to make at least one of the two each visit one he’s read which seems a good compromise.

We raced home as we were later than we’d been expecting Lucy and The Rs to arrive with us and they pulled up at the same time as us. The children played mostly really well for a few hours while Lucy and I caught up on holidays, camping and life in general. Scarlett surprised me by giving Lucy a brief summary of FoH which demonstrated she’d taken in more than I’d realised :).

Then it was off for the last swimming lesson of the term which officially ends our termtime stuff here too – Rainbows and Badgers finished last week – ah the freedom! :). They both had good lessons to end on and I sat and chatted to one of the mums I normally just smile and say hello to. Home Ed came up as we were talking about the end of term and she asked when our school broke up so I explained. She breezily said ‘oh right – a friend of mine Home Edded for a while last year’ and knew loads about it. She was also pretty anti the testing and pushing children that goes on in school and confessed she is worried about her son who will start reception in September although her daughter (just finishing year one) is loving school and doing well. Nice to have a chat with someone informed and non-prejudiced for once :).

Whilst at the swimming pool we signed up for the Junior Summer Fitness Challenge which looks both pretty good and something D and S will easily achieve given their fairly active lifestyle. So our lounge door now has their reading challenge and fitness challenge sheets stapled to it to remind us to keep on track with both 🙂 – honestly we’re practically structured ;).

On the way home both the children spoke to my parents on the phone to break the news about the chick and to tell Grandad,who finances the lessons, how they’ve done this term and that Davies is going up a class. Nice to hear their side of the phone conversation all chatty and happy (chick news aside). We got home and they had tea and then we filled out their names and their views on the books they’d read on their reading challenge sheet and their names and what activities they’d already done since last Monday on their fitness sheets. Davies is at sounding out and spelling stage with things like that, with a bit of help. Scarlett is pretty much at tell her the letter and she’ll write it stage.

On the way to and from Tesco we’d been talking about colours. They both know colour mixing and primary and secondary colours but we got to talking about shades – and how pink is actually ‘light red’ but it has a name whereas light yellow and light blue don’t necessarily. We talked about shades of blue for example and then green and then I said that the best way to see how many shades of colours there are is paint cards. Now my Dad is a painter and colour cards were always something I loved to look through in his work van when I was a child. And I used to love working the paint mixing machine and even filling up the colour cards when I worked in B&Q so Davies rang Ady and asked him to collect an armful of colour charts on his way home. We sat and looked at them all, compared different brands and colours and I squirreled away a particlarly charming Crown one which has little descriptions next to each colour about their origin and which era of interior decor they hail from etc. Then we discussed what to do with them now and came up with the idea of cutting them up into little shapes of colour to make a big mosaic with. Davies and I made a start at chopping them up and we’ve got a plan to do some picture making with them tomorrow :).

And just to prove that we really are card carrying proper home educators this week we took out our pressed flowers from last week and they have come out beautifully and we’re planning to do more and Davies dug out the cut flowers in coloured water experiment from a few weeks ago to see how they had dried with the colour still there. He mixed the two phials of red and blue together to make purple, topped it up with water and picked some more white flowers to put in it, which began to turn purple almost straight away in the centre. Tomorrow I might even laminate something! 😉

We finished with stories and the excellent news just before bedtime that Scarlett’s DS game was indeed the one from Kirsty’s tent that Scarlett assumed was Elinor’s so got given back to Elinor. She is delighted and hopefully has learnt the lesson about keeping better tabs on her things (and indeed I possibly have learnt I should check at least once a day that they have all their games rather than believing their airy ‘yes’ each time I asked).