Tapping Away

Emily came back beaming from ballet yesterday morning: she got the results for the tap exam they did, and she got a distinction :-))) She's very proud, and so are we - not so much for the result, although obviously that's great, but for the fact that she stuck it out and did the exam in the first place, despite having been reduced to tears for several lessons on the trot.

I'm still not thrilled about the two dance teachers and the way these lessons are now conducted, but for the moment they're not working towards an exam - apparently they're doing a show on the 30th June so they're practicing for that instead. Only found out yesterday that there had been no lesson break for half term. In their usual style, nobody had bothered to give out a note to that effect, or even call all the parents in to tell them, or put a notice up on the board...nothing. We thought Emily had missed one lesson by being ill, but it turns out she's actually missed two (the second because we thought it wasn't on due to half term), and of course it had to be during those two that everyone found out about this show. So we haven't a clue what's going on. The mums I'm friendly with also have kids who missed the half term lessons, so they don't know either and I'll be dammned if I'm going to ring the bl**dy teacher up to ask. I'm disgusted with their communication skills, but then that side of it always has been a shambles. I'm sure it must be just a little show for the parents, as if it were the big Plowright Theatre show they'd have been practising for months by now.

We looked after Maisie for most of yesterday as Janette couldn't change her shift at work. Maisie's Dad dropped her off here with me while Emily was at ballet, and she stayed until 8ish when Janette came to pick her up complete with a lovely bouquet of flowers for me, bless her. Needless to say, Emily and Maisie had lots of fun; they spent most of the time on the trampoline, and when they weren't doing we made tree stump fairy houses together out of clay.

This morning Emily's been to karate, and she's spent the rest of the day out in the garden with Jon, boing-ing, gardening and picking a bumper strawberry crop. They're busy making jam at the moment. I've been stuck here working on two deadlines. I love weekends. Not.

During my occasional forays into cyberspace this morning, however (when brain dead and staring at an empty word doc, willing words to appear on it) I did come across a link to this Home Ed Harry Potter Summer School Curriculum posted on the Well Trained Mind Secular newsgroup. Basically, you can sign up to access dozens of lesson plan ideas for things like herbology, divination, charms, arithmancy etc. and there are also letter templates for inviting your child to participate, letters from the various professors, assignement ideas and so on, plus lots of creative ideas for making it all work and turning it into a magical experience for the young Harry Potter fan. What a fab idea! We did something very like this for Emily's 8th birthday back on the 2nd Jan, where we had a whole days of "lessons" and fun tasks based on Harry Potter. She adored that. I don't know that we'll be doing any of the stuff on this site as it's rather similar, but I do think it's great to have the resources in one place and lots of people have obviously worked very hard on the project. So I'm posting here for any fellow home-edders who have Harry Potter obssessed kids. Not that it's such fun for the adults, too, of course. It's purely for the kids. Really ;-))