Restored!!
Mood: strangely drained!
At last Blogigo is back up and running! Don't know what happened there, but as it's midnight I'll make it brief!
Jacob is still doing great at school and loving it. The head rang me today to give me a little update. Last week Jake was sent home with an ORS level 10 reading book, which he read in an evening - too easy! I wrote a note to the teacher just to enlighten her a little and ask why - as politely as I could 
. Apparently it was a mistake and he should be on level 11. I still think this is a bit too easy, but apparently the level is based on how well he can infer and comprehend, not just on his reading ability. I will grant them that his ability to infer and comprehend is probably about where they have him placed. So he can race through the school books if he likes and read more appropriate stuff at home for pleasure!! Otherwise she assures me he is settling in well, if polite, articulate and generally a bright little lad (I knew the last bit, but I never saw the former two at home).
I think he is pulling out all the stops and having a great time because of it .Shame he couldn't do it at home for me really 
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Joel is working well too in the absence of his brother and consequently we are more able to do some fun stuff. Today we did Bible Study, handwritting, journal entry, cookery - making shortbread (which included practical maths of course), listening skills and art (leaf rubbing and making a tree picture). All that before 3.30pm and with an hour out for lunch and girly pick-up and a couple of little breaks hither and thither too. We would never have achieved all that in a day with Jacob at home. Then of course Joel had swimming today too, so that was PE!
Jacob and I had a chat tonight because he can see that since he went to school Joel has got to do fun stuff at home and he feels we never did anything like that when he was here.He is, of course, in essence correct in that observation, but he doesn't quite get 'why' that is. I have tried to explain to him that it is becasue when I ask Joel to do something so that I can prepare the next bit of school (or do some household task) he simply gets on and does it with very little fuss, thus freeing up more time for us to do the 'fun stuff' like art & cooking. The fact that we never did it when he was here was because he was invariable still on his first task long after he should have finished it and that held up the whole plan for the day. I did point out to him though that since he has been at school he has been doing lots more fun stuff even than Joel - music (every day so far preparing for Christmas), art, drama & dance, PE... and that his lessons are more 'fun' because they have an interactive whiteboard and lots of 'visual' tools - AND of course it's been easy because he hasn't yet learnt anything new to him!! Today they did handwritting practice and from what I could gather they were covering the basic joins that Jake did WAY back - joining a-t and t-i- etc... (forward tail joins), so that was a doddle for him too! No wonder they think he is bright!! However they did do shape poetry today and wrote a poem about stars i the shape of a star today - that's something that was on my list 'to do soons', that we hadn't done yet and he thoroughly enjoyed it 
. He really likes poetry - touches a button in him I think. I can remember it did with me as a kid too, much more than prose.
Phoebe has been practicing drawing lions all week and has them off pat now - bless her 
.And Abbie wrote (well dictated) a story with pictures today - bizarre story line, but cute but the pic's were quite good.
