Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Emily's Wednesday - By Daddy

OK, so today I get editorial input into the education blog! Today was the first whole day that I've taken on the responsibility to finally "do it" - the education, that is. We left Mummy in peace to work and headed downstairs bright and early.

The draw for the tasks took place with more excitement than a world cup final draw. Emily draws from the white pot....and first into group one, it's poetry! So, we did a poem. "Obviously", says Emily. "Well, you would do if you drew out poetry." Indeed. "Concrete" style was next in the poetry book Emily's working through - that's shape poems to you and me. Here's Emily's skating/ice poem:
Spelling was next out of the box, so I set Emily a 20 word test predominantly taken from the spelling mistakes that appeared in the poem draft. 16/20 this time round, which was deemed a fair result by us both, especially as some of the words were quite tricky.

Emily pulled out "English Writing Task" (sneaked into the box by Mummy, rather than one of the ones she'd dreamed up herself!) next. We decided on non fiction persuasive writing, and I set Emily the task of designing a book cover with all the blurb to promote the title. We looked at some paperbacks to get the idea and then away she went.
That's Emily's cover for Warriors: Into The Wild - the first book in the Warriors wild cats series - I think Nikki has mentioned elsewhere how much Emily enjoys this series. [Side note by Mum: I took the first one to read while Emily was at yoga yesterday, and even I was hooked!] Note the bar code on Emily's cover - love the attention to detail!

Next out of the lucky dip box came "photography" much to Emily's delight. We opened a new digital camera pack Emily had for Christmas. The camera was very basic but the software was excellent for ease of loading. Here are the results of some basic photo manipulation by Emily, first herself as a witch and then Mummy starring in a poster for the Beautiful Bride...
That was so much fun she had to be dragged away for a quick sandwich at lunch time and went back to play on it some more later too.

Anyway, next out of the fun box was Crafts. Well, really it was story-writing [side note by Mummy, in suspicious tone of voice: still not maths?] but we decided English had been well and truly covered for the day so Emily got a second dip. Hmmm, crafts. What to do? I know! A Get Set: Mastering Mosaics set we picked up from a charity shop a few months ago. Emily set about making a roman plaque with much gusto, although she as a bit cross that the tiles (it was a make your own job) were taking longer to dry than it said in the instructions.
Whilst the tiles were drying, we hot footed it out into the garden to plant some more flowers. We also sketched some daffs and had a go at painting the flowers, but neither of us were happy with our efforts so we didn't bother keeping them. We also found time for a bit of good old "pretend" when we were out there, so that covered drama too, I think. We also found some seven spotted ladybirds - our first, all the ones we've seen so far this year have been 5 or 2 spot, so Emily dashed inside to record it on the BBC Springwatch site.

Back to the mosaic, which Emily didn't want to stop doing and had to be prised away from when tea time arrived. Oh, we also hard boiled some eggs in preparation for making egg shell mosaics in the next couple of days.

Finally (so far) Emily's helped me to cook the pasta for her tea. Am I done yet?

1 comment:

Nikki said...

Hello Alison. I couldn't do it every day....I'm worn out! But I'll have another day soon. I was helped today by the novelty factor for both me and Emily but if it was a regular event I know it would be a battle sometimes just as it can be for Nikki. Emily and I both have this scatterbrain mentality where we have to be doing two or three things at a time - that helped today too!

To leave Reading was a hell of a decision. Strangely though the fact that my last game was the last game @ Elm Park helped, because it did seem to close a chapter. Hopefully will take Emily along to see her first game at Scunthorpe shortly. I'm intrigued to see if she'll become a devoted Irons fan in years to come!

Thanks for passing by.
--Jon--