This morning was a lazy one, filled with not a lot Some watching TV and films, lots of sitting around drinking tea and the children with some sort of sixth sense suddenly decided to play with the pretend food and ELC electronic till and pretend money that I’ve been eyeing up with a view to ebaying :roll:. They were taking it in turns to be customers and messing about with prices etc. I could have stepped in and made it all educational I suppose but a) they were playing and that always seems like a really crap time to wade in and say to camera ‘hey boys and girls how much change would we get from our one pound coin if we bought those bananas at 29 pence and that tin of cat for for 14 pence?’ and b) I couldn’t be bothered ;). Davies did some messing about with his toy scales and balanced numbers like 8 & 9 with 10 & 7 showing some level of understanding about both the fact that the must add up to the same and the whole one less than that must be one more than that type stuff. I read Tarly a couple of stories that she brought me and it was just a nice laid back morning.
After lunch we were slightly delayed by Davies remembering that I’d promised to do some animation with him so I told him to make some plasticine models for us to animate later. He sat and made a really good Shaun the sheep, which was excellent as a model but not suitable for animating. Scarlett sat and made a really good model of me. She said it was what she was going to make, she spent ages choosing the hair and clothes colours and called me over to look at it. It is certainly the first clearly recognisable thing she’s made out of plasticine, so hurrah for Tarly 🙂
Then we went out. We needed more logs for the fire so we went up the downs to our log collecting place and found loads of perfect ones cut up nice and small for us by the log man. Davies had brought his wellies so he went gathering smaller logs and I tossed some over near the car for him to load in the boot. Ady tried to teach me to use the axe but I confess to being slightly scared of it which is preventing me from using it remotely effectively (cos let’s face it, it’s not as though I don’t have enough weight to get behind it! :lol:) but I’ll keep trying. I also managed to clamber up a log pile reaching for that ever elusive perfect bit of wood just out of reach and tumbled down again getting big grazes and bruises on my shins for my trouble. 🙁 Ah well, war wounds worth sporting I reckon 🙂
We headed over to Dad’s for an hour or so where Davies spent ages playing on the piano. He came to tell me he’d mastered the correct fingers for the scales and he was actually quite close. I think if we had the money Davies would be signed up for piano lessons, drama lessons and probably at least another two or three things at the moment. I can’t decide whether it’s a good or bad thing that we don’t and he isn’t… I showed him some scales and left him to it. We came home via Sainsburys where I seemed to buy loads (the food for the rest of next week with money cadged from Dad) but didn’t even spend a tenner :). Once home Davies and I discussed animation again and I explained how a simple plastcine figure would be best for a first go, it needed to be something easy to manipulate with one or two basic moves. He struggled to get to grips with that as he had in mind a total recreation of the 90 minute feature film of the Were Rabbit but finally settled on making a snail. Rather than animate the figure we decided to use the figure in an animation and he came up with the idea of his trail making something, I came up with the idea of it spelling his name (oh bad autonomous educator sneakily getting in writing practise :oops:). It was actually not as lengthy to produce the film below as I’d have expected despite it having over 100 frames. Slightly predicatably he didn’t find the rather painstaking editing process as interesting as the initial modelling and moving stuff so I’m guessing his future career doesn’t lie in fine tuning type work 😆
He hasn’t actually seen the finished film yet as he got engrossed in eating dinner and watching ‘you’ve been framed’ while I was putting it together so he’ll get a special screening in the morning. I’m sure he’ll be pleased with it and it will inspire him to greater things and maybe start to hone which area of the whole thing he is actually most interested in.
My CRB check for the library job came back this morning so I’m anticipating a phonecall from them on Monday to arrange a start date which is all very exciting and as I have a vague plan to get up and watch meteor showers in six hours time I think that will be the point where I bid you all goodnight. Goodnight 🙂
I have to ask – what are the green things on your legs? Were you wearing kneepads, or legwarmers, today?
Comment by Alison — 18 November 2006 @ 11:54 pm
Not sure I will check with her. They could be my green DMs I suppose, put on rather higher than the end of my legs, or they could be the green bruises on my shins 😆
Comment by Nic — 19 November 2006 @ 8:25 am
do you know the fingerings for the minor scales (left hand?) Anna was asking me the other day and I can’t for the life of me remember … can do the major ones but after that I get lost, I obviously never played them ‘properly’!
Comment by Sarah — 19 November 2006 @ 10:13 am
oh and about the money for lessons thing. Probably a Good Thing – on a month by month basis we spend more on kids’ activities than we do on food! (well maybe not quite more, but it’s about the same). I do sometimes wonder whether they will end up using any of it in their adult lives? I mean, I like being able to play the piano and I do do it, but not for more than my own pleasure … and Steve’s done more band playing than me, he was in a band proper gigging for at least the first 7 yrs we were married but he never had lessons on his instruments – neither of us do anything any more. That’s a whole blog post on its own I suspect!
Comment by Sarah — 19 November 2006 @ 10:16 am
erm. Band proper gigging?!! 😳 you know what I meant, just typed the words in the wrong order there!!
Comment by Sarah — 19 November 2006 @ 10:17 am
Apparently they were ‘dots on my trousers!’ 😆
Nah, don’t know the fingering Sarah, my piano knowledge never got beyond one term of lessons when I was about 10.
My Dad learnt piano up to grade 8 as a boy and says he was really quite a talented pianist in his youth. But he refuses to even touch the thing now, it sits at my parents gathering dust with Davies being the only person to ever touch it! If we could justify the space I’d have it over here – as soon as enough plastic toys have left the building I will! 😆
Personally I do think it’s A Good Thing that we can’t afford any of the lessons I might otherwise sign them up for. Of course there will always be the exceptions to the rule of children who became professional musicians / dancers / sportsplayers and would have been nowhere near as talented without that early guidance but over and above lifeskill type stuff like swimming and general socialising stuff like Badgers I think the rest probably comes under the ‘luxury’ items heading.
Comment by Nic — 19 November 2006 @ 1:41 pm
Yeah, and in 5 years’ time he’ll still be only 11 which is never too late to start something like instrumental lessons or whatever else – in fact in some ways it might be better to do it then when a child has some understanding of the commitment required – rather than now when the commitment has to come from the parent.
Comment by Sarah — 19 November 2006 @ 3:58 pm