I’m blogging today as a typical home-edding day for us (well Monday to Wednesday anyway, Thursday & Friday are completely random), don’t expect it to be interesting

Claudia is under strict instructions not to come into our room until Simon leaves for work at 7am (Jasper wakes for a feed at 5, but if he’s not disturbed he’ll sleep for another couple of hours - C coming in before 7 sets us up for disaster), this morning Simon found her wide awake sitting in bed with a pile of books at 6:30. She came in with me & J when he left and we lay in bed chatting until about 8 o’clock by which time Claudie was starving. I pottered around sorting Jasper out, getting some washing on, tidying the kitchen & trying to figure out wtf is going on with my computer while C ate breakfast. She continued a cartoon strip she’s been doing of her & Jasper - she’s really interested in punctuation marks & speech/thought bubbles - having adventures, J played grab the cats (very dangerous as Teeny will attest, they don’t require any provocation to attack), until he got tired & hungry. He was fed, slung & asleep by 9:15 and C picked some stuff to do.

First maths - Singapore/MPAH - subtraction & addition within 20 and fractions (we also read Mathstart Give me Half & Divide & Ride). She really enjoys maths, we tend to be doing a couple of things at once filling in gaps in her knowledge & practice while also doing more complicated stuff. I read a Maple Hill Farm book (an old favourite) and then she did some Getty-Dubay which is preceded by the ritual Sharpening of Pencils. We’ve been reading When We Were Very Young for a while but C wanted something new today, she picked Flower Fairies of the Summer. I read her a couple of poems then she picked The Song of the Poppy Fairy for her copywork - after she’d drawn her picture she wanted the rest of the book read so I obliged. She is incredibly proud of her copybook - I was pretty sure she’d like the idea when I suggested it to her (she loves writing) but didn’t expect her to want to do it everyday. We’ve got a lot of the plants in the book in the garden I showed her where they all were & she wants to take picture if them when they are flowering. Reading was pretty low key, just a couple of Bob Books, I read her a couple of Usborne Beginners (Tadpoles & Frogs and Spiders). That took us up to lunch time & Jasper was awake by now - he & Claudie watched half a Baby Einstein while I did more washing

C had lunch and played in the garden for an hour or so, then both had a bath. She wanted to do some (incredibly easy) science workbook about magnets so we did that then I explained about the iron that attracts magnets - she went around looking for ferrous metals, then read How Plants Grow & a bit of Linnea’s Windowsill Garden. She really wants to do a lapbook about plants of flowers so we’ve been getting stuff together (I got some seeds to plant tomorrow & a couple of avocado stones), she’s planning to put her flower pictures in and wants to learn how to use photoshop. I suppose that took about another 45 minutes. C did a load of puzzles then we went for a walk to the park (& Claudia spent some of her bribe money on chocolate), Jasper had his first go in the swing & Claudia played with another little girl there. We got back just in time to hang out another load of washing & get changed for swimming.

We met Simon at the pool - Jasper & I watched them swim for a little while then walked around to Lidl for a few bits and pieces. He fell asleep on the way there and I managed to get some knitting done when we went back to the pool. C hasn’t gone up, which she doesn’t seem bothered about at all (no extrinsic motivation for that girl, she is so uncompetitive it’s painful) - I’ve booked her into the same class as it’s the only time we can manage) but we’re trying to sort out a few private coaching sessions (so middle class ) to see if they can get her breathing sorted out. I’m completely out of my depth with it - how do you know when its been too long without any progress?

Simon drove her & the shopping home and I made dinner (pasta & pesto for C) when I got back, C was knackered & in bed asleep by 7:30 (bedtime story was Rosie to the Rescue I think).It was a pretty standard day, but C & I are making a real effort to be nice to each other - we had no shouting and that made it lovely (Jasper has learnt a new funny face so we spent a lot of the day coaxing grins out of him & taking pictures as well ). My computer is still playing up so I’m planning an early night.