From little acorns ......

Autonomous education is going on apace here. I generally feel as though I am failing to provide anything much at all, but fortunately Tamsin is mostly just getting on with it on her own. I mean, I don't get up in the morning with several resources planned and close at hand to tempt her with, or ideas of what we are going to do, but stuff happens anyway, thank goodness!

So this morning we got up in a relatively leisurely fashion after another rough night with Isabelle - she's got a laryngitis sort of thing with high temps often at night and much coughing and hoarseness, so she's been fed at night again a couple of times (well, I can't refuse a poorly sick baby) and is already expecting it more and more ... CBeebies accompanied breakfast as usual but Tamsin also found a Letterland alphabet sounds activity book which she started working through (too easy for her really, but it gave her a little handwriting practice for each letter) and then off we went to the mums' group at church where I and T both stayed in the creche.

I must digress here to comment on the newly-politically-correct version of Letterland. Has anyone else noticed? Fireman Fred has become Firefighter Fred (okay, I can see why they've done that); Hairy Hat Man has become Harry Hat Man, (mustn't comment on personal appearance???); Lucy Lamp Lady has become Lucy Lamp Light (huh?); Naughty Nick has become Noisy Nick (mustn't damage children by labelling them as naughty!!); Poor Peter has become Peter Puppy (erm, too sad for our delicate little children?); Robber Red has become Red Robot (originally a poor role model??); Ticking Tess has become Talking Tess, Vase of Violets is now Vicky Violet, Water Witch is Walter Walrus and Max and Maxine have become Fix-it Max!!! So what is that all about? I think we'll just stick with the originals - I don't see Tamsin having been very traumatised by it so far!

Isabelle fell asleep on the way home and I wasn't feeling too great what with the mastitis etc so I had a lie-down for 20 minutes until she woke herself up coughing and had to be retrieved.

After lunch I felt I had to actually engage with the girls a bit, despite still feeling naff, so I got a big lump of clay out that we were given when we visited friends who own a pottery a few weeks ago. Tamsin was more interested in carrying on with the Letterland activity book, but when I launched in and started making a clay Easter Bunny, she said she wanted to make a horse, so I helped a little with that. I also took a hand-print from Isabelle, although it's not very deep so I don't know how it will cope with drying out. I then provided Isabelle with some 'sensory play' in the form of some gloop, which she wasn't very interested in and merely dipped one finger in, looked at it curiously, offered it to me to suck (I declined!) and went back to trying to grab stuff off Tamsin. So in desperation I gave her a little bowl of uncooked rice and she happily took her time gently sprinkling it over the carpet. Ah well, it kept her quiet for a bit. Then the "whatever one sister has the other one wants" hormone kicked in and Tamsin just wanted to play with the rice, so she decorated her clay horse with it, sprinkled it into the abandoned gloop, and generally entertained herself with it a good deal more than Isabelle had, who by that time had got down and wandered off to other pursuits. I did however squeeze one more educational moment out of the clay by getting Tamsin to press her finger into it next to mine and then giving her the magnifying glass with which to study our fingerprints.

After a bit of miscellaneous playing (Isabelle is loving her stacking cups at the moment) we attempted to visit the Library, only to find it closed due to the strike, so went on to a charity shop instead but found nothing of interest there. We came home and there was one lovely moment while I was in the kitchen making the dinner when I poked my head round the door into the living room to see both Tamsin and Isabelle engrossed in their own respective Usborne books (Farmyard Tales for Tamsin, a touchy-feely one for Isabelle). Tamsin made repeated raids into my Usborne boxes and made a very good stab at reading much of the stuff herself, although she did appreciate it when I looked through the Children's Encyclopedia with her. Looking at the front cover she pointed to the picture of Tutankhamun's mask and said "I want to look at that", so I turned to the Ancient Egypt page and while telling her that it was all very old and happened a long time ago, she said "I want to learn all about everything old!". She wasn't into much of a long attention span at that point of the day, though, and we flipped on through Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the Incas, Vikings, Edward VIII, the Victorians, WW2 and the atomic bomb, and then into the "How People Live" section with a brief discussion of different cultures and how they eat different foods, dress differently, decorate themselves in various ways and so on. It's all very much skimming the surface but at least it shows her that all these things are there to be looked at, wondered at and talked about when and if she is ready to.

Isabelle crawled up onto my knee to be fed at about 6.15pm and promptly fell asleep while I was reading "Treasure Island" (Usborne Young Readers edition) to Tamsin, so she was popped straight to bed and then Bill came home just in time to do bedtime stories with Tamsin, so he finished Treasure Island and "Tom Thumb" that he got half-way through with her last night, so I had a nice easy bedtime stage tonight.

Bill has come home with a lovely Dell laptop which is going to be all for me (cheap; perk of the job), and he's currently searching Ebay for a WiFi card so I'll be able to blog in bed soon, yippee!