Ups and Downs

... the downs being largely my fault as I've been inexplicably tearful and moody all day which, much to my eternal shame (but hey, never claimed to be perfect) usually reflects on the general mood of the household and how the day goes. Still. Glossing largely over that bit, what have we actually been up to in the good times?

Quite a bit, I guess. Emily spent a while this morning making more Tudor bitty dolls, and turning a box into a theatre for them. By the time she'd finished, she had quite a collection: Henry VIII, Wolsey, Jane Seymour, Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon, Elizabeth as a child, Elizabeth as Queen, a peasant, and Titania. It was fun making up plays for them even if the theatre was rather precariously perched at times!

After lunch we made some aged parchment by soaking ripped and ragged bits of paper in tea and then drying out in the oven. Perfect for quill and ink scrolls and ink drawings enhanced with glitter glue. The ink got everywhere, but Emily had fun writing letters to Henry and letters from Elizabeth demanding to know what Sir Walter (or was it Sir Francis?) had brought her back from his explorations. I blame that Blackadder episode where Queenie demands gifts. That's been a long-running and much loved scenario round here!

At various points during the day, Emily also enjoyed sticking up lots of her Tudor work and drawings on the wall above her bed, once the long lost blue tak had finally re-materialised into our dimension. It tickles her that me and Daddy can't reach the bit above her bed now (she has one of those midi sleeper beds)! She says she's very proud of her work, which was lovely to hear. Oh, and there was lots of playing in the garden, in the rain, and having water fights with Jon. They're watching a modernised version of Midsummer Night's Dream at the moment, having finished the BBC Romeo and Juliet one a couple of days ago.

Last night Emily unearthed from somewhere an old box of Xerox labels, and spent ages working out exactly where in Microsoft Word she had to put pictures to make stickers. Took lots of trial and error, but she stuck it out. This morning we talked about templates, and made one for the labels, and in her own words she now has a "passion for making stickers". She made a nice set of "crowns" ones before she went to bed.

We also spent some time using our Dazzle art software. I love that program! It came highly recommended, and I've been very impressed with it so far. By the way, for any interested parties, the single user price on the website shows as £79, but for home educators it's actually less than £50 or so (can't remember exactly, but it was under that). We did have the Art Attack software, but it drove us mad - couldn't figure out how to properly save stuff or anything, it was extremely unintuitive and frustrating.

Although aimed at primary age children, Dazzle uses the same principles and terminology (eg masks, layers and so on) as adult software, so when she's ready to move on to a "grown up" program it should be a doddle. Emily's already got a fabulous grasp of MS Word and Publisher, and Excel when she can be bothered (which isn't often, I guess spreadsheets are just not as much fun or as much use to a 6 year old, lol) but even I get confuzzled with Paintshop Pro, for instance, so we wanted something more child friendly as art and design software. One of the things we've been doing today is "tracing" famous Tudor portraits in Dazzle and then using the watercolour function to manually paint them as realistically as possible. Gives very impressive results! You can do mosaics and things too. Anything you want, really. No, I don't work for them!