HE, at last!

I actually feel like I've got something worth blogging today, so here I am at last. Nothing particularly exciting, but got going by about 9.30 this morning with some maths for Jade! This is big news. She's found maths so much harder to grasp than the reading/literacy side of things, and despite being almost 7 she's still at a Year 1 level in maths, and (I noticed today) still using her fingers to add 2 and 2! But nevertheless she is getting more comfortable with it all and is actually quite enjoying being given a page full of simple adding sums. Yesterday I introduced her to 'tens' and 'units' for the first time, and today I showed her how to add double-digit figures by putting them in columns and adding the units column first and then the tens. She got that fairly well! So for the first time I feel we are making real maths progress. I must make a big effort to make sure we do a little bit every day, rather than leaving it for days or weeks at a time (avoiding the angst!).

Then, it being such a lovely sunny day, we took a pile of books out onto the trampoline to read out there. I read them some Bible, Leading Little Ones to God, Wild Places (Jungles) and In Grandmother's Attic, interspersed by some jumping and fun!

When we came back inside again, I introduced Shannon to the letter A - following the Letter of the Week plan in a vague kind of way. I wrote both capital and lower case letters on the blackboard, she traced over them with her finger, she had a go at writing them herself and really did a pretty good job! We talked about some of the words that start with the letter 'a'. She can already recognise most of the Letterland characters but not when they are pure letters without the characterisation. She can recognise 's' on its own, and one or two others, but Jade knew her alphabet thoroughly at age 2, so it will be interesting to see if Shannon does not have quite the same aptitude for literacy that Jade does have. Not that it matters - it's just really interesting to see two people developing in their own individual ways, and I love to wonder if any of these early differences really do end up predicting later aptitudes and strengths.

I then went through some spellings that I found on another page of the Brightly Beaming website. Jade was enjoying being asked if she could spell the words and she wrote them on the blackboard, so we just carried on until she started to get fed up and in fact she could do most of them - just needed help with 'woman' and 'two' and I'm pretty sure she'll remember those now. I'll do more of those as and when she's interested and happy to do them.

Had lunch, and then I did my usual afternoon slump when I was devoid of any energy or motivation to do anything educational. I think that's the part of the day when I really need to be left alone to recharge my energy a bit. Chased the girls out into the garden again and I did some tidying up and sorting through of stuff. Sharpened some coloured pencils, chucked out some bits of tat, put odd bits of toys and puzzles back where they were supposed to be. Did get Jade to do another 5-minute burst of simple maths sums. I also found myself sitting next to Jade's recorder and book of simple tunes, so I taught myself to play "London's Burning" and then taught Jade. She's pleased to have a new tune to add to her repertoire which until then consisted solely of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" - and so am I!! Then we took a short walk round to the library, spent a happy hour there and all came home with a lovely pile of books.

L from next door came round then, and the girls all played relatively happily out in the garden while I caught up on e-mails and did some dinner. While snuggling with me on the sofa, Shannon was reading out the numbers she could see on the calendar - she can recognise all the single-digit figures now. They watched a small amount of TV, then we switched it off and I read to them both - just Horrid Henry and Holly the Christmas Fairy so not exactly highbrow but they both enjoyed it.