Catch Up

I keep writing notes to help me remember what we have been doing and then not blogging them, so I'm making the effort today!

Over the past week, and by no means exclusively we have:

• discussed the healthiness of apples, if they are classed as sweet things and what type of sugar they have in them.
• played shops. Chose items to sell, decided what price to sell them for, wrote the price stickers, then sold some items and we worked out what change was needed
• read M some Faraway Tree, most specifically the part where Connie gets ink on her dress
• more being read to.
• played with the pattern blocks, making pictures leading to a discussion about the differences between squares, rectangles and diamonds, introducing the idea of right angles (which I found extremely difficult to explain for some reason)
• lots of den and dungeon making, including making me an accessory to an escape attempt
• card sewing (you know, the cards that have pictures and pre-punched holes in them)
• had a film afternoon - watched Madagascar in the blacked out living room with popcorn
• discussed what camels eat. I wish I was a bit more confident in my answers. I felt the need to check my reply, whereas M had the confidence of youth, and was right anyway.
• gone to football. I love watching M playing football. He isn't that skilled in it, but he concentrates so hard. I just wish some of the others were a little less aggressive and more friendly. A lot of them go to the same school and so know each other pretty well. They can be quite mean to kids that they don't know. It makes me sad. I was impressed by M helping the coach to put the bibs, balls and goal posts away without being asked. It was only him and another child doing it, all the rest buggered off home.
• watched quite a lot of tv as usual. The Peter Pan obssession has calmed down a little, which I am grateful for, as I find that film disturbing in so many ways. Even though the dvds that MIL got from the Daily Mail are poorly produced, they cover some good stories, and this week he has watched The Odyssey, Hiawatha and Tom Sawyer again.
• more story dictation has occurred. When we are in the UK next week, I am going to see if I can get hold of a dictaphone for M so that he can record stories in his own time. Maybe we'll try to develop them a little and draw pictures to accompany them.
• learnt some French. We've done a little more with Léo and Lulu the puppets from La Jolie Ronde and I challenged M to learn a new French word at atelier on Tuesday. I said that if he did, he could have a small treat (which ended up being half a piece of chewing gum Lol!). When I went to collect him, he turned to his teacher and said, "Ima, whats twin in French?" and then ran outside to tell me the answer and demand his treat. Not quite what I was wanting, but he did fulfill the terms of the agreement!
• Today we are going to see if he can do a taster session of yoga. All his friends do it, but in the past he hasn't wanted to go. He has now changed his mind, partly I think because he will be able to see his friends regularly.

In other news, I have enrolled myself on an intermediate French course. I feel that my French is of a reasonable standard, but I'm not really progressing much, so I need a helping hand.

Tomorrow we are going to look at some camper vans. We had planned to do another Big Trip this year to Canada, but A has a contract until at least July, and the flights alone were a lot of money so we thought it would be better to buy a camper and then we can just take off more easily at weekends etc.

And then on Sunday we fly to the UK to go to Melrose for the week and then visit rellies for a week. I always get apprehensive attending these type of events, partly because a lot of people know each other pretty well, including the children, and also I can find them fairly intense.
So go easy on me! Please.