Karate, Clouds & Busy Days

Emily went to her first karate lesson on Sunday and absolutely adored it. This despite having previously said she definitely didn't want to learn a martial art, lol. I think it has a lot to do with the teacher; last time she went to a martial arts thing she hated it but this time round because she knows, likes and trusts George she really took to it. Held her own among the classful of boys too, and made a new friend into the bargain. She'll be getting her uniform next week, so she's very excited about that.

Sunday afternoon Jon and Emily went out to the little village stream to do some sketching; the last part of the perspective section on Emily's art course required her to sketch a landscape view showing perspective. Boy are we glad to get that section of the course over and done with! It's been a bit of a struggle, not nearly as much fun as the observation drawing section was, so we'll be glad to get these four pieces of work sent off. The next section is close up & patterns which sounds much more to Emily's liking.

I had a call from Emily's ballet teacher over the weekend. She had moved Emily up a class - which is good - but that does mean she will now have two ballet lessons a week instead of just the one; she now has to go on Thursday afternoons as well as Saturdays, which means she'll have to drop drama. That's a great shame, she was really enjoying the drama, but I guess it's only sheer luck so far that none of her activity choices have clashed with one another, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Anyway, it was up to Emily to make the decision about whether to keep drama or keep ballet, and she chose ballet. The drama teacher doesn't have any other classes local enough to us at the moment, but she's going to get back in touch with us when she does have. Emily now has ballet exams in November, then, so that'll be....interesting.

Meanwhile, Emily's friend K from ballet cannot now make it to the Thursday afternoon classes and is therefore probably going to give up :-(( Had a long chat with her Mum and we're hoping to still keep the girls' friendship going, but as K doesn't live very nearby and is at school all week, and they're away most weekends, and nearly every night "after school" as it were, Emily has an activity on.....it's not going to be all that easy. :-(( Poor Emily, I do feel for her. All too often she makes a lovely friend and then circumstances intervene and things end up fizzling out.

Yesterday Emily and I took Merlin back to the vets for another blood test, to replace the one they lost. In the afternoon, Emily went for a lovely play at Romy's, while I tried to catch up with deadlines that are spinning before my eyes. This morning I've taken Grandad to the doctors, and Jon's now at the docs getting results about his painful foot and his white blood cell count. Tomorrow we're off to the vets again in the morning with the kittens, then I'm taking Grandad to the hospital in the afternoon. We seem to be spending very little time at home at the moment but none of it for particularly pleasant reasons :-//

Emily has managed a fair bit of work today though, in between Daddy and I bustling in and out again. This morning she did a lot of fractions, still getting to grips with equivalent fractions, simplifying and adding. This afternoon she's been working on her weather project, focusing on clouds. She's made a cloud in a jar, done various water condensing experiments, made it rain in a jar (I liked that one!) and printed out and used a cloud wheel to identify the clouds outside just now. She's read a lot about the various cloud types and what kind of weather they indicate, learnt how clouds form and what makes it rain and drawn great diagrams/explanations of the above experiments, as well as doing her normal daily weather recording stuff.

What is with garden spiders at the moment? Our garden is just a MASS of giant webs with equally giant spiders sat in the middle of them. They seem to be attached to just about everything; it's very creepy walking out there even just trying to get from the backdoor to the middle of the garden. Guess it must be the mating season or something? It's only been like this since the weekend. Eeeeeeuuuugggggh.

It's back to school day for the village kids today; Emily's classmates will now officially be juniors, starting year 3. Their teacher this year is a man whose main claim to fame, so we gather from talking to other parents, is being frequently observed (even by the children) getting rather too up close and personal with his young teaching assistant. Somehow I don't think Emily's going to miss out much by not having his "guidance" for a year. Strange to think though that we've now been outside the system for two full years. It's been quite a journey.