Productive Doings & Plans for the Home

Friday
Went to see Jackie and her girls for the day; lots of maths, lots of kitten playing, lots of poetry, lots of "socialisation", lots of card game playing, lots of ooohing and aaahing over the various menagerie of cats, fifteen birds, chickens and other assorted creatures. And lots of apples from their orchard, lol.

Saturday and Sunday
Lots of feverish typing and "creative thinking" from me to meet deadlines. Lots and lots of ebaying and de-cluttering from Jon. Lots of arts and crafts from Emily, and PC skills too as she went through our entire collection of digital photos finding shots she wanted of the cats, which she then resized and trimmed into ovals to fit into a multi-photo frame she has.

Monday
Went to the doctors', or rather the nurse, to have my ears syringed as I had gone practically deaf again. Waited for over an hour to be seen, which didn't exactly put me in a sparkling frame of mind. However, got back to find that Emily had been cleaning and clearing out our bedroom and had done an absolutely fantastic job. This was her idea and voluntary, I hasten to add, not child slavery! She wanted to carry on with that all day, so we spent a long time going through the contents of the bottom of wardrobes, old ottomans, piles in the corner, etc. And not one spider. Result.

Tuesday
Maths in the morning, together with physics, for which we studied electrical energy and charge, with the experiment involving making an electroscope. We've tried making one at least twice before at various time and it's never worked. This one worked. Happy child, happy mother. In the afternoon we made a start, finally, on The Story of Ancient China, Chapter 1. Read it all through, discussed it loads and Emily wrote the answers to all the summary questions and looked through the projects to choose two she wanted to do.

Today
Emily chose "make a relief map of ancient China" for one of the chapter one projects. Eeek. Much frantic digging finally unearthed the paper pulp instant papier mache type fluff we had somewhere, which was a big help. Emily drew an outline of China on a big piece of cardboard, and taped egg box bits in place where the Himalayas and other mountains were. Then she mixed up the pulp and started plastering it on, building up layers over the egg boxes and smaller mountainous and hilly parts for the other ranges and river valleys, as well as adding sand for the deserts.

Relief map making was actually a lot less stressful and much more fun for me as a parent/facilitator than I thought it was going to be. When she said this was what she'd chosen, I was inwardly cursing myself for giving her a free choice, thinking it was going to be hard, frustrating and unsuccessful. So. That taught me. Must learn to say "yes" to things more often. Anyway, we like relief maps in this household now :-)) so we'll be doing some more as we study different countries in geography or whatever, including a nice big one of the UK. The China one will look fantastic when it's dried and painted. Emily's going to make little cocktail stick flags to stick in to label the important areas.

This afternoon, we set up a mushroom growing kit, much to Emily's disgust as she hates mushrooms, lol. We also started on a huge Oxford University Crystal Growing Kit that my Mum and Dad bought for Emily a while ago. I can't find it online anywhere, maybe they don't make it any more. It's got absolutely tons of the chemicals in it and lots of great ideas. Last time we tried growing crystals it was a disaster, but this time....drumroll please....it looks like it's actually going to work, so Emily's deeply chuffed about that.

Still to Come
Tomorrow is going to be another whirl of deadlines for me since we won't be around this Sunday when I'd normally see to them. Jon and Emily are back at tai chi after a short break, so they're pleased about that. On Friday we're looking forward to a picnic in the park with Hazel, Romy and Tansy. On Sunday we're off to Scarborough to drop Jon off for his week's course. While he's away next week, to keep our minds off missing him :-( Emily and I are going to make feng shui plans for the whole house. Which hopefully will not only improve our living areas, but also fits very neatly into our study of ancient China. We have a two and a half year plan, ho ho, to finally get to grips with our living environment. Our bedrooom is first on the list, since it's the most neglected area, and we're well on the way to clearing that so it can be completely redecorated and revamped.

Next up, but not until next year some time, we're going to empty out the stock room/junk hole/random place that is the big landing area at the front of the house, and partition it off into a proper, private room for Emily, in addition to her bedroom since her bedroom's so minute. There's quite a lot of space there, it's at least as big as our bedroom, so she's very excited about being able to decorate the room from scratch and turn it into a proper living and playing area. We've got big plans for the garden too; very shortly a horrible hedge is being ripped out and replaced with a line of flowering trees instead, "spider alley" is going to be gravelled over and made into somehwere nice for a Chinese style garden area and one of the most overgrown bits of the garden is destined to become a wildlife pond. All big projects, and a hell of a lot of work, but we're feeling much more positive now we've got definite plans to work towards :-))