Great Week

At last, we've had a really good week. We were overdue one, I think! We started off really well on Friday when we went to our friends for the day. Emily got on fantastically well with Jasmine and Mae-Lin, who are actually 12 and 10, so older than I thought they were. Jackie and I got on tremendously well too, so that set us up in a positive frame of mind for the week to come. Thanks for the tag, Elle, will have to have a hard think about that one!!

On Sunday Emily went to a birthday party for twins of friends of ours. She had a great time there, but it served as yet another lesson about the myth of the benefits of school "social skills". Most of the kids there (not Trish's own kids, I hasten to add) spent much of their time calling the entertainer (who Emily adored) a "fat pig", trying to spoil his act and generally hassling him to death. OK. Who's bringing these kids up (and teaching them these oh so important school induced social skills) that they'd call **anyone** a fat pig, let alone in someone else's house, to the face of someone trying to be nice to them, who'd been paid for by someone else to try to give them some fun for an hour??? Once they'd finished that, they then trashed the beautiful garden they were allowed to play in, delighted in deliberately popping the treasured balloons of the littlies, and generally ran amok for a couple of hours. I was shocked, I have to say. Yeah, my daughter's REALLY missing out on those social skills. How can she possibly turn into a well rounded adult if she's not subjected to that kind of crap day in, day out? How will she possibly turn out to be a worthwhile human being if she hasn't learnt to be a such a rude, obnoxious, revolting little sh*te? Let's just say we're willing to take the risk. Sheesh.

Anyway. On Monday - fanfare, please - Grandad came out of hospital!! That's it now, touch wood. He'll have some follow up outpatient appointments, but he hasn't had any actual pain for a long while now, so we're hopeful. Also on Monday, Jon had a very successful night at his psychic cirle. He did a psychometry reading for a lady who had wanted one done at their open evening, but didn't get time, so came back especially to see him on Monday. He took the pendant she gave him and sat in the corner for a while building up impressions from him. Apparently, she was practically in tears watching him from a distance because the gestures and movements he was unconsciously making were so significant to her and the person who had given her the pendant. When Jon called her back over to tell her what impressions he'd formed, Jackie's daughter Kerry took a photo of him doing the reading. Right over the whole side of Jon's face is an enormous orb :-))

With Grandad finally home, we've had time to do a ton of work this week. Emily's done maths and spelling until it's coming our of her ears. In biology she has been studying the parts of plants, plant lifecycles and plant nutrition, with that old favourite experiment involving white carnations and jars of food colouring/water. In chemistry she's been working on the properties of acids and bases, and has made her own indicator paper from boiled up red cabbage and blotting paper. She had a lot of fun with that, testing vinegar and ammonia as control acid and base, plus dozens of other items inbetween. We're still loving the Real Science for Kids series. Next week we're onto the next pyshics lesson which will involve making batteries from pennies, lol.

In history we're catching up, having not done much of the History Odyssey series during May. We're still on Eygptians. I'm kind of torn between on the one hand knowing Emily's done all this before, and wanting to hurry her along to reach the bits we haven't looked at before....but on the other hand, she's having a ball and really seems to be benefiting from going back over Ancient Egypt and learning a lot more than she did two years ago, so.... she's got the rest of her life, after all, let's linger! At various points this week Emily's made a step pyramid from sand blocks (play sand mixed with glue and cut into blocks) and she's also done several real payprus paintings using payprus from Egyptian Dreams and artist's ink.

We've also done lots of latin, some art and some Italian - or at least, we meant to do some Italian, but I've lost the Rosetta Stone CD that Jon bought for me. Sigh. It'll turn up. If I haven't accidentally thrown it away. During the week Emily's also been to ballet, yoga and tai chi.

Today we went to Jackie's again for the day, which we've got plans to turn into a regular weekly thing. Emily, Mae-Lin and Jasmine had a wonderful play (with much borrowing and lending of dolls clothes between the three of them, lol). Jackie taught them all a very impressive maths lesson for an hour, and I taught them to use personification in poetry, which went down well; all three worked hard on producing some great poems with lots of thoughful imagery in them. All three girls also made scones together, which were rather yummy. Emily made heart shaped ones because it's Daddy's birthday today :-))) He was very chuffed when we finally got home with them - we thought we'd be home about 2 but it was gone 4 by the time we got back. Next Friday they're coming to us; I'll teach them about air resistance (yay! parachute experiments!), Jackie will do some more maths and we'll all do a craft project together too.

Our later than planned return meant that Jon's birthday tea was a bit of a rush to prepare, but we've all had a nice family dinner this evening with all Jon's favourite things. Emily, me and my Mum and Dad bought him various spiritual pressies, including a wooden laughing buddha statue (one of his spirit guides) and various meditation CDs, crystal and DVDs by the teachers on the psychic development course he went on recently. Jon's Dad bought him a hypnotherapy course, which is actually more for me than for Jon, but he'll share it with me too.

Tomorrow Emily's off to ballet again and then a friend is coming to play for the rest of the day, so it's busy again, but at least we're finally feeling that we're getting stuff done, which has to be a plus!

Oh, and both Juliet and Romeo had great fun at midnight one night playing with this bug. I haven't had a chance yet to try to identify it, but it was huuuge. Jon heard a commotion outside the door and went to look - guess they thought it was a new toy, although I'm pleased to say it lived to tell the tale!