Busy & Happy

We're having a ball here at the moment. Everything seems to be going very smoothly, which is nice to see. I daresay now I've said that life will turn round and bite me on the bum, but so far, all's well.

Emily went off to her friend K's fancy dress birthday party today. She had a fantastic time and was absolutely exhausted by the time I picked her up. Bit of a turning point, that - previously one of us would have stayed with her or she might not have wanted to go at all, since the only child she knew there was K herself. But this new found confidence is really growing and she wasn't at all bothered at being dropped off and left. Here's the lilac fairy ready to go out this afternoon, complete with purple hair and enough glitter to cover the carpet, rofl.

Yesterday Emily went to the last ballet lesson of term, which she loved. We still haven't been told whether the seven year olds are going to be moved up a class next term - we have to wait to see if we're one of the ones contacted, sigh - but I must confess I'm getting rather fed up with the situation. Children in the ballet school down the road took their primary exams at age 5 - Emily's group will be 8 at this rate when they take the same thing. I don't personally care whether she takes any exams or not, but she badly wants to do them so it seems very silly to have the group three years behind where they could and should be! If we don't get a phone call saying she's moving up I think we'll be looking for a different ballet school come September. Maybe. She does love it and it has done wonders for her confidence, but how much longer can we keep on paying for her to learn the same stuff over and over again with no progress??

Also yesterday Emily had a lovely surprise when Hazel and Romy popped round to deliver a Friendship Day card - it's two years since we met and Romy had made Emily a lovely card to celebrate their two years of friendship. Meanwhile at this end, I'd forgotten to mark Friendship Day on the calendar... BAD MUMMY. So we didn't have a card to give to Romy but Emily sent her an ecard instead.

Education wise we've been really busy recently, especially with the body project. We've finished our work on the brain and moved on to cover senses. Lots of experiments there: visual illusions, identifying foods when blindfolded and holding nose; navigating blindfolded towards a strong smell; identifying mystery objects first with elbow then foot then fingers; identifying sounds; sound vibrations; cotton buds with various solutions on applied to different areas of the tongue...ooh and lots more I've forgotten. Emily also read tons in books and drew and/or labelled anatomy of the eyes, ears and nose.

That done, we also moved on to look at skin, hair and nails. Lots more experiments with testing the strength of hair etc and Emily drew, coloured and labelled a fantastically detailed skin diagram showing the various different layers, glands and nerves. We're looking at the digestive system next and we've made a start on that by making teeth impressions in styrofoam plates - euggh! Emily's life size skeleton on the wall is having bits added to it as we cover them so she now has bones, a huge patch of skin, hair, nails, teeth, tongue, brain, eyes, ears, nose, lungs and a heart. Looks incredibly scary, lol, but it's really motivated Emily and she seems to be loving this project. I'd like to get it finished in the next fortnight though, hence the rush.

Emily has also been reading lots in her spare time and has spent a long time playing on Kidspeak 6 in 1 language software which she adores. It does French, German, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew and Japanese and I'm very impressed with how she's picking up bits and also making very intelligent connections regarding the similarities between the latin languages.

Meanwhile, Jon and I have been working like hell; it's busy, busy, busy workwise. We've all enjoyed a bit of a shopping spree though - the latest educational catalogues have come through from our book wholesaler and under our terms we get a nice fat discount on bulk pre-orders. Bless Emily, she devoured the catalogues ticking tons of stuff she'd like ;-) It's nice to be able to buy the books, have a quick look and see if they're suitable, knowing that if they're not we can sell them on straight away. There aren't many advantages in the rather cut throat world of book retailing, but it's certainly fun when it comes to resources!