Salve

I am waiting for people to come to book swap, so I thought I'd do a quick post, although I'm not actually sure anyone is coming, as I have had two people cancel already this morning, and I don't think anyone else confirmed they were coming. Oh well, at least we have a tidy apartment.

Yesterday after atelier we went straight down to the lake to play. The weather has been so hot that on Monday we stayed in with the fan on and the shutters down, but I decided that we really needed to get out of the house.

Its strange how M will complain about walking home from atelier (max 10 mins), yet was perfectly happy to walk 30 mins to the lake....

We found a spot on the sand under a tree, and M played with his playmobil while I tried to read a book (Up Country by Nelson de Mille). I explained that if he took his playmobil onto the sand they were his responsibility, so we had a quick discussion about responsibility and I was reassured that he understood.

Time seemed to go very slowly, and I somehow didn't get much of my book read although M was very good at not disturbing me. Lunch was nice though; I'd taken salad and some cold sausages and then at 2.30pm I'd had enough and we went to the cafe for ice cream.
After that we went to the playground next door, but that didn't last very long as M didn't like the swarms of little flies.

A little stand off over where we were going next (I suggested the nearby Roman museum, M didn't want to do anything, go home, stay in the playground, go to the beach again), but it was resolved when I stated that I was going to the Roman museum and if he wanted to, he could stay there. Not a usual tactic of mine, but he wasn't offering a viable alternative.

It was the first time we have gone to the Roman museum. 8CHF for me to get in, so not too bad, although not really a large place. They had a graffiti exhibition on, so we got torches to shine on the walls (the place was pitch black) to see the exhibits, and there was exciting glass pebbles under our feet, making it a quite nice sensory experience.
Even though we went round it twice, M wasn't too keen on lingering though, which was a shame as I was struggling with the translation in places and it was pretty interesting.

At the end they had set up a graffiti wall that you could add to with the styluses (or is that stylii or stylus'?) so M obliged by scratching his name in it.

We then went round the normal museum. By this point M was really flagging so it was super speedy, although he was quite keen on sticking his head in the coffin....

We then walked home and I was impressed that M understood with minimum fuss that he had to walk as I had too many things to carry. Walking any distance has always been a problem for him. Not sure whether thats through laziness or just having thin legs (they really are ridiculously thin for his height), so it was nice to see him strolling along beside me.

Back home and a bit of computer time. I've signed up for the free trial of Education City, and although A doesn't think that we should pay for that sort of thing, I think it is just what M needs, as he can do it with minimal input from me, which he seems to favour at the moment. So if anyone has a code they would like to share, that would be great. Is that how it works?

Well, it looks like noone is going to turn up today, but never mind, its given me a chance to catch up with a few things.

Welcome to Polvere Nera!

For those of you in the dark, this is the Gunpowder Italian restaurant that M and I spent part of the day creating.

As with most things here, it centred on Playmobil. Mainly pirates, knights and romans, with the main emphasis on goodies and baddies.
Hence the italian restaurant that he wanted to create was constantly in danger from baddies attacking it, until I suggested that maybe the baddies could just come to the restaurant to eat as, after all, baddies have to eat too.
So I translated Gunpowder to italian and we made a sign for the restaurant, M colouring in the letters, and built a restaurant complete with terrace from the playmobil castle.

M then decided on the food (pizza, salad and pasta), drink (apple juice, rum(!) and water) and dessert (donuts and ice cream) and we made a menu. He wanted to try to spell the words out and managed donut and rum. I was pleasantly surprised, particularly with the words that he got wrong, as he made a good phonetic attempt. Will have to look into the Montessori stuff I was reading the other day about reading and writing.

We have also played lots of shops, with me as the shopkeeper and M as the customer, leading to lots of 'maths', with M having to decide what coins to give me and whether to give me too much money and get change, or to make the amount up with more than one coin.

Obviously he has played a few games from the playmobil website, spent 5 minutes in the sandput on the balcony, and watched a bit of CBeebies.

Thankfully he let me make a batch of ratatouille and an apricot cake without too many disruptions. The weather is just too hot for arguments, although when the needle is pushing 30 degrees, arguments are never too far from the surface.

I really need to blog about the weekend too, as we went camping for the first time this summer in our new tent, spending Friday and Saturday night in Enney, near Gruyeres castle, which was holding a fete de St Jean including medieval re-enactment type stuff (a bit like Kentwell, I guess)