Ady cooked pancakes this morning for breakfast. Actually he’s been cooking them most mornings for the children but today I partook of one too.
Davies had ‘homework’ from Sea Scouts as part of his Global Challenge badge and had to choose an international charity and find out some facts about it. He and Ady had decided to choose Greenpeace so we looked at the form he’d been given to fill out. First of all he learnt how to spell Goddard. He’s written it before but only ever with it spelt out by me. Just as he learnt the days of the week in one ten minute sitting when it was relevant and he felt the need he cracked Goddard in just a few minutes and every so often throughout the rest of the day I asked him to spell it again and he could.
Next he read the form out to me and was pretty fluent knowing most of the words by sight and sounding out the odd word like ‘global’ ‘challenge’ and ‘international’ but not really needing any help other than me agreeing he’d got it right. Practise is definitely required to get him really fluent but it is quite amazing seeing him actually able to read now – gives me courage to carry on leaving Scarlett alone too :). We talked about how you would find out the answers to something you didn’t know and he came up with: asking someone (me actually!), looking in a book, checking the internet, trying to find a film or tv programme about it. We checked the bookcase to see if we had any books on charities or Greenpeace specifically but we don’t (I think we have a copy of Dear Greenpeace kicking around somewhere but I wasn’t going to try and dig that out as I’d get all cross about the state of bookshelves ;)) so we booted up the computer and I asked Davies to do it all with me watching. He said he’d use google and type in Greenpeace – he knew how to spell green but wasn’t sure about peace but he already knows to watch the box and see what drop down suggestions it makes so once he’d got to greenp it came up with it and he knew that was right.
We found out when they started, whether they have any patrons, what they do and ‘any other information’. Davies wrote it all down and was very wary of writing too much when I told him he might have to be able to read it out back rather than just hand it in so went for brevity. We talked about genetic engineering, whaling and I read out the brief overview of Greenpeaces issues. Ady has since looked at it and decided he’s not done enough and needs to do more. Personally I think he’s done as much as he wanted to do; if it proves not to be enough then he’ll know for next time, if it’s about right then he won’t have put effort in he will resent later by doing more. I can see how this sort of task really wouldn’t suit Davies. I’ve said we’ll look at it a bit more tomorrow though if Davies wants to.
Scarlett and Ady went off out, ostensibly to get a joint for roast dinner but with theatrical winks about upcoming birthdays ;). Davies played x box and I sifted through photos online organising my flickr a bit better. It was nice to be snuggled up together on the same sofa while doing our own seperate things. 🙂
My parents had arranged to come over in the afternoon so they arrived around 2pm, followed eventually by Ady and Scarlett returning. We had tea and mince pies and then as Ady had got a very large joint of pork and because I was feeling both generous and slightly wanted to show how straightforward it can be to cook a full roast dinner with trimmings for six people without massive amounts of stress I invited them for dinner.
Mum nipped home to get the Christmas puddings we’d taken over there on Christmas Day but hadn’t been eaten. We had a nice few hours and I got Dad to tell Davies and Scarlett about life when he was their age. He had no electricity, TV hadn’t really been invented, the toilet was outside, the bath was a tin one brought in and filled with hot water warmed on the open fire. All cooking was done on the open fire, as was drying the washing. He said they ate lots of rabbit pie and rabbit stew. The kids asked about evacuation (lots of children from Liverpool were evacuated to North Wales where Dad was), what he got for Christmas (an apple and an orange and they were both put back on the sideboard again once he’d taken them out of the stocking!), rations for sweets and chocolate (‘Chocolate! Chocolate! I didn’t see chocolate until I was in my teens! There was a war on!).
Dinner was delicious if I do say so myself and included parsnips from the allotment which went down well.
The children disappeared upstairs to play and had to be coerced to bed around 9pm with Mum and Dad leaving shortly afterwards. Unfortunately neither child went to sleep and I had Scarlett wailing about a scary audiobook and wanting to sleep in our bed (that was a no! I did go and sit with her til she fell asleep though, poor, very overtired little girl) and Davies was still listening to his radio. Definitely some fresh air and exercise tomorrow along with getting them up a bit earlier to try and break the cycle. Scarlett also needs some more light and frothy audiobooks too.