One Day, I'll Be Organised

Hmmm, it's been an interesting few days, mostly characterized by my complete lack of organisation/forward planning. Wednesday afternoon was nice; we went to a local park with Romy and Hazel but it was soooooooooooo cold that after about an hour we headed back to theirs for an altogether cosier play.

Thursday, on the other hand, was a bit of a disaster. Everything Emily wanted to do was hampered by said lack of organisation. We couldn't find this, we couldn't find that, the CD for this was broken, the software for that didn't work, we'd lost the equipment for this, we had the equipment for that but couldn't figure it out, we'd lost the bit of paper for that and the book for this had long since vanished under piles of "stuff" only to reappear, I daresay, when it's absolutely the very last thing you want to find. Sigh. So there was a fair bit of frustration all round.

We did accomplish lots of maths, and Emily also wrote a "senses" poem based on recollections of Normanby Hall. When it came to doing anything remotely more interesting that English or maths, though - well. In the end, we did manage some music - looked at animal hasthas (at least I think that's how you spell it - the Indian dance hand movements) and used them with Indian music to make up a story, then Emily had fun with lots of percussion instruments (found whilst we were looking for something else, natch) making up sequences of sounds to suggest animal movements like swimming, leaping, crawling, jumping etc.

Emily also spent some time on the Dazzle art software, playing about with the symmetry tools to create kaleidoscope type patterns. That wasn't what we were supposed to be doing with it, but we couldn't actually work out how to do what we wanted to do. Reminds self to try it out beforehand next time before suggesting fabulous idea to enthusiastic child. D'oh.

One good thing about yesterday, mind, was Emily and Jon's second tai chi lesson. They loved it again, and came back buzzing, and spent ages practising what they'd learnt -was quite amusing to watch them correcting each other :-)

Today dawned with a power cut that stretched from before we got up until nearly 2 in the afternoon. On one of the coldest and darkest days of the year. Lovely. It really was so bleak we couldn't really see to read or write, so we resorted to Gas Lamp HE, lol:

Mind you, uncluttered by the distractions of the computer and the TV, we did actually get on with a brilliant experiment Jon suggested to me last night when I was moaning about my lack of organisation. Coin cleaning - which household substance would best clean an old dirty coin, and why? Emily loved doing that. She collected lots of substances (hot water, cold water, shampoo, ketchup, lemon juice, bleach, bicarb and water, bicarb and lemon juice, pomegranite juice, red wine, milk, olive oil, coke, toothpaste, vinegar etc) and then she covered old coins in just enough of it, and we left them for an hour. Then she made a great chart to record her results - whether the coins were any cleaner after an hour, and whether anything changed when she scrubbed them with an old toothbrush. Before we started I asked her how she could make sure the experiment was as fair as possible, and I was impressed when she talked about needing to make sure the coins were all as dirty as each other to begin with, that the same amount of substance was used for each, that they were left for an equal time and so on. Here are the results (good old oil lamp again):

After discovering that the vinegar, lemon juice and ketchup gave the best results, we discussed acids, and looked on the ingredients for the ketchup to discover - lo! - that it has vinegar in it. It was good fun, that one. Must get some litmus paper I think, so we can let her loose with testing for acid and alkalis and mixing the two to see what happens to the ph.

This afternoon we've done a full hour of yoga; Emily's now mastered the fish pose (Matsyasa) and camel pose (Ustrasana) as well as the ones she's learning for level one, so I was rather impressed. Then we all watched our wedding video (rediscovered after about eight years of thinking it was lost....) just in time for our anniversary on Monday. I cried ;-)) and promised to look again for my wedding tiara and veil. Which, at this rate, I'm more likely to find than any of the education stuff I keep looking for....... still, we live in hope.