Irish dancing

Springy has been twice now to an Irish dancing class.  She loves it. I'm so pleased because it's a good cardiac workout, along with being enjoyable and good for her co-ordination and posture.  At the moment she's dancing barefoot and is doing "soft shoe" style reels.  She picked up the 1-2-3 move in a week (practising on the farm tracks).  It also reminded me of how I used to love dancing.  I did ballet and tap until I was about 11 years old and in tap I used to get distinctions.  I've been learning some of the moves so that I can help her practice at home.

Springy gave the guineapigs a bath this morning.  It was new guineapig Martha's first time in a full bath bathtime.  With piggies that means they go swimming.  They look like mini capybaras (who are also South American creatures). Our dog fell asleep on one of my knees earlier.  We played three rounds, as a family, of Bananagrams. We love the game - it's a good way to increase vocabulary and spelling awareness.  I'm surprised how many words Springy knows at times.  She's currently reading a book called Dog Detectives.  I'm reading The Lord of the Rings - I read it every year.  I see it as a holiday (since we don't have a holiday otherwise) to voyage to Middle Earth and read of first Bilbo Baggins' adventures in The Hobbit and then travel with Frodo and Sam.  I liked the films but feel they fell short of the books by a long way.

I've been working on the garden a fair bit the past few days.  It's been quite cold outside but dry enough to dig up some of the borders, pull out some of the old and decaying plants e.g. the angelica.  I've kept back some of the angelica stalk to make a musical instrument with.  We're also hoping to do some willow workshops over the next week as we're moving into our block on Shelters again.  This time we're hoping to have some hands on opportunities.

We finished our Old Testament block.  We've covered since last year Adam and Eve (which is about questioning and disobeying authority and the loss of innocence), Noah and His Ark, Joseph and his Coat and Moses in the Bulrushes.  I dislike the Bible generally speaking because I find that the deity is rather nasty and into smiting.  However, I took the stories that I felt had general wisdom in them and that would meet some of Springy's 9-year change aspects.  It's interesting how prone to melancholy she is recently.  She was always very sanguine in nature - happy, skippy, la-de-da like a butterfly.  However, in the past 6 months we have much more of a huff and a "not fair" and general "I'm not doing that" going on.  It's involved at times lots of psychological ploys including the melancholic empathy thing whereby I've done "Oh I remember that when I was your age..."  Some of it has been peer influence.  There  are a few friends that I'm having to stop her seeing - they're not bad per se but they don't have the same curbs on pop culture that I prefer.  I know that this too shall pass but it can be a little exhausting at times and also a little sad to see some of them go through this change into 'attitude'.  Ho hum as some of my good friends would say. 

Maths games

We've got a whiteboard (not exactly Waldorf but great for quick games etc). Today we did some magic number square games such as you have 1, 2, 3 and 4 and have to arrange them in a 4 by 4 grid but only one can be on each row, column or diagonal and they must add up to 10, no repititions etc.

We also did some maths whereby each number is substituted by fruit or an animal. For example,
1 = banana
2 = cherry
3 = apple
4 = pineapple

So then you put some sums up e.g. banana + cherry = (answer is apple)

We did this for all the numbers up to twenty so I had to be careful the answer was within 1 to 20. Springy thought this was marvellous and keeps asking for more sums.

Feeling better

Springy and I are both over the worst of our colds. Springy had a temperature most of last week and we had to take it very easy. She missed swimming and Beavers and we hardly went outside.

We've been practising The Fork and the Spoon - a song from the Oak Meadow First Book of Recorder. I'd love to do more violin and piano lessons with her but just cannot afford it at the moment.

Today was nice - Springy and I played dominoes (she won...twice) and then The Hedgehog Game with the variation being that we had to add up the dice values in French.

I told her the Shingebiss story again tonight (from the link below):

Shingebiss' Song:
(Am) North Wind, North Wind, (G) fierce of feature,
(Am) You are still my (G) fellow (Am) creature.
(C) Blow your worst, you (G) can't scare me.
(Am) I'm not afraid, and (G) so I'm (Am) free.

Springy has read up to book 21 of the Rainbow Magic series which means that she is on the last book of the entire boxed set (from The Book People).

We've been using our peg loom to make a possible rug (in a synthetic pink wool - lovely and soft but not very natural!). When I say a possible rug I mean that if it turns out big enough then it may end up as a rug but it's about the width of a scarf.

We baked foccacia bread this morning and C made soup (with kidneys - smell terrible but at this time of year we need their nutrients). Today at lunchtime we were out in the garden with the bantams and the guineapigs. I pruned the other butterfly bush and tidied up a few areas in the garden. Part of me dislikes tidying up too much because it is those places where insects tend to settle down and hide for the winter but at the same time I need the garden to look as if it belongs to a home, rather than just a piece of wildlife scrub.

Springy has some nice new front incisors growing and one wobbly tooth (as well as a gap on the bottom 2nd left incisor).

Tap-A-Shape

I'm still not able to afford a wooden toolkit at the moment but we got a tap-a-shape set today. It's bits of wood, tacks, a hammer and a corkboard and it has really met Springy's needs - she was totally absorbed for an hour creating pictures this afternoon (despite the rest of the day not being totally balanced). We did (as in she did it but I suggested) a boat scene, a hot air balloon scene and she created a dog with his bowl of food herself.

It's similar to this one:

http://www.elc.co.uk/toy-34426

but ours was priced at under £5.

Favourite Games

We love playing:

Snap
Lotto (French)
Memory
Max the Cat
The Orchard Game
Ludo