A More Successfull Day :)
For a change the boys had Bible, handwriting, and Maths all done and dusted by 10.30 this morning. They just sailed through and concentrated well - first time in ages - finishing at the same time as each other (like they are supposed to) which served to show me that the work & quantity I set them each is about equal to their ability, which I do doubt at times. So they got to take their break together and we had an altogether pleasent morning. In fact the whole day has been quite pleasant - a breath of fresh air after yesterday 
The girls were out at 'Seedlings' with Helen again this morning (oh, how I love the return of routine!!) and Ellie joined us at the table with a pot of crayons and an old colouring book - which kept her happy and feeling included for the most part
Things fell apart a bit momentarily around lunch-time when everyone (including me) got ratty and cross 
, but all seemed to settle again afterwards - gladly 
I didn't even go there with history this afternoon - couldn't face it!! I was awake at 4.30 this morning and couldn't get much sleep after that for some strange reason, so I started the day tired and now I feel I just need to curl up and sleep - and it's only 6 o'clock 
!!
I stuck with book-work for Jacob today and he was much happier. In fact the very suggestion that he might like to finish of finding out about the last Egyptian period brought tears to his eyes immediately, so I let it drop and did science instead. He loves science and we are studying classification of animals. He already knows most the 'groups' from swallowing hours of facts from the DK Animal Encyclopaedia!! I started off by getting him to 'classify' all our plastic animals - which he enjoyed and did with ease. As he is only required to know mammals, birds, fish and insects at this level, the fact he also knows reptiles and amphipians is a bonus Today we where looking at the characteristics that define a mammal - some of which he also already knew (hair and live-young). He understood the idea of warm-blooded/cold-blooded easily and was fascinated to think that Eskimos, Africans and us all have the same temperature blood inside our bodies - bless! The concept of feeding the young their mother's milk was also easy for him to understand (helped by the fact that he sees me breastfeeding of course ), so that's mammals down flat. Birds next Hmm - note to self - just thought of another book I can get off the shelf for this topic.
Joel did some more towards his grammar lapbook today and produced some really nice work, but not without some huffing and puffing 
! It seems whatever I ask these boys to do it simply is not what appeals to them! Cutting, sticking, gluing, tracing, drawing - it can't get much easier than that and is normally the kind of thing Joel is begging to do - ho hum!! Admitedly there was some writing thrown in to the bargain, but that is not really that difficult for him these days - his writing is good. I challenged him with what would you rather do instead and he said "handwriting or maths" - what do you do eh? Earlier he had been moaning when doing those things that his hand ached!! Seems I can't win. I reminded him of his moaning earlier and he decided he did want to do the sticking after-all 
, and when we did some tracing too he seemed to really start to enjoy it. We haven't really done much tracing before and this was to 'transfer' a picture of Scooby Doo into his mini-book (Proper nouns). He was really pleased with the end result, so that's a relief and will hopefully mean he is more keen to do more tomorrow...
I think one of the problems is the pull of the TV come 4 O'clock (!!) - but bear in mind they had had a two hour break in the middle of the day to play outside while the sun was shining. Sometimes I really wish the TV wasn't an option , but sadly it's not going anywhere in this house (P. is too fond of it, although I hardly watch it - that said I know I would miss the 'stick on a video' element of it when I need time-off mid afternoon/evening!!)
Tea-time!!
