Rhinestones 'n' Stuff

We had a lovely Easter weekend. Emily went out to karate first thing on Easter Sunday, and was one of only three children there, so that was a very individual lesson! When she got back we had an Easter treasure hunt - we don't really do much chocolate wise, but Emily normally gets some little Easter presents to make up for it being such a long time from a 2nd Jan birthday all the way to the following Christmas. This year she had some Harry Potter bits and bobs and various pagan-y items for her altar, which she loved. Nana and Gramps made us all a big Easter dinner, which was much enjoyed too.

Emily's Easter present from my Mum and Dad was a Gem Magic stud setting gadget, which was a huge hit. Lucky girl! She's spent hours this week decorating a t-shirt, shorts and a pair of shoes with it so far, with plans to do lots more shortly.

Yesterday we went to Asda opticians to (finally) collect Emily's new glasses, but alas it seems my confidence in them was totally misplaced. We were asked to take a seat and wait by one woman - about 25 minutes later, with still nobody attending to us despite there being nobody else in the shop, another woman came and asked if we were waiting for something, at which point the woman who'd taken our name said she hadn't seen us before and that we shouldn't just have sat down without telling someone we were there. Sigh. Emily's glasses finally materialised.....and next week, we'll have to take them back, as there's clearly something not right with them. Emily's seeing rainbows all around the edges of her vision and at tai chi this morning the effect was so bad it made her feel sick. She's wearing her "old" glasses again now, until we can get back to Asda. I'm not best pleased with the whole episode.

Yesterday lunchtime Hazel, Romy and new baby Tansy popped in for a quick hello, which was lovely. Needless to say, Tansy is absolutely gorgeous :-)) It's such a long time since Emily was a baby, you forget how tiny newborns are.

Also yesterday (and today, as well), Emily's been out at garden centres with my Mum and Dad, looking for pampas grass, with which, for some reason, she's developed a fascination. They found some in the end.

The rest of the week we've been playing a lot, along side bits and pieces of work. Lots more latin. We also did the first biology and the first physics lessons from the Real Science 4 Kids curriculum, and Emily loved both of those. Biology was learning about taxonomy and classifications, with a fun activity where Emily had to work out how to classify twenty household objects. Physics was learning about the scientific method and "discovering" Newton's First Law of Motion via lots of ball throwing, ball throwing with string attached to it, and marble rolling. We also had lots of fun playing with my Dad's Ancient Brunsviga Mechanical Adding Machine - that was extremely educational in terms of place value and understanding long division!!