Pastels & Pyramids

It's been a productive day and a half. On Monday, Jon went for a chat with the doctor following his recent blood test. They had noticed a very low white blood cell count, which is apparently the result of an unidentified (as yet) virus - this is actually good news, as it helps to explain why he's been feeling so tired and pooey recently, and also why his blood sugar levels have been unusually high. He has to go back for another blood test in two weeks to see if it's resolved itself; if it hasn't, they'll do further tests to find out what's going on. Meanwhile, his Metformin dose has been upped temporarily to balance his blood sugar whilst the virus works itself out.

While he was out, Emily and I cracked on with some work. First of all we did some literacy work, looking at examples of two "settings" passages, one from the Mousehole Cat and one from something or other I can't recall the name of by Dick King Smith. Emily answered questions about the way each passage described the settings, and searched for similes and metaphors. She then looked through the first Warrior Cats book (did I mention how much we love those? Audience, have you read them yet? If not, why not?) finding real examples of similes and metaphors in the settings in the book.

Next we moved onto maths. Despite having a horror of being timed at anything, Emily bizarrely decided to try some of the time tests in the back of a KS1 book. Expecting the worst, I dug out the stopwatch and agreed. ROFL. She must have done half a dozen of the little tests, each expected to take something-in-minutes according to the space where you had to write how many minutes it took. All of them took her under one minute, with her record being 18 seconds!!!! They're only simple little ten question arithmetic sums test, but since technically she wouldn't yet be at the end of KS1 until July, I think that's pretty good going! So that now just leaves me wondering why, when I don't have a stopwatch out, a page of maths takes anything up to a flippin' hour depending on her mood. Hmmmm. Food for thought.

After lunch we started on our Human Body project, with a big chat about growing up and periods. Given that this is a little girl who has hysterics about a tooth falling out, you can probably imagine that the idea of periods didn't exactly go down a bundle to begin with. However, after LOTS of reassurance and hugs and reading and talking, I think we've now passed that hurdle, and she wants to do some diagrams and things to go in her project. Seven is a hell of a lot younger than I was when when this subject was broached but it fitted well with what we're going to be doing regarding the body and with puberty seemingly striking ever earlier, well, we felt it was a good time.

Next Emily did some yoga and we discussed the loads and loads of things we want to do in this body project; I think it's going to be a biggie.

Then it was time to go off to art class. Emily and Jon chose to do pastels this week, having a rest from acrylics, and came back with absolutely stunning scenes of pyramids at sunset. I LOVE these! Jon's is first, followed by Emily's:


Oh, and here's Emily's monet-esque harbour from last week:

This morning Emily put the finishing touches to her pyramid picture, and then did some more work on chakras. She discovered that the throat chakra can affect confidence in speaking up and approaching people, and that if it's not balanced it can lead to shyness and reluctance to be heard. She felt that hers needed some work, then, and discovered a yoga breath called Humming Bee Breath which apparently helps, so she practised that and then wrote all about it in her yoga journal.

More maths followed (more timed tests - should have discovered those ages ago!) and then some more English work on settings. That left just enough time to unpack the Tescos delivery and have lunch; Emily has now gone out with Jon to have her hair cut, and by the time she gets back it'll be time to get ready to go out to yoga and get her test results!