Busy Monday

Everyday I put a message in a bottle and
Put it in the sea
I hope someone will reply
And send one back to me.

®

It’s a nutchase
I need to bury my nut quick for the winter
I need to hide my nuts in my nest
A jay, he stole my nuts, then went up a tree, I go too, ouch, splinter!
I ran like a cheetah up that tree
The squirrel is gaining, what to do, I’ll go to my nest.
He’s gone, he stole my nut, I tried my best
He, the squirrel, is gone, I am like a cheetah to outrun that squirrel!
(J)

Yesterday was generally productive, alhamdulillah. In the history of Salah-Ed-Din we are nearing the end of his life. Clearly he was suffering problems of low morale in his army. The army is described as not trying, having no will to continue. At one point they surround a small encampment containing the English king Richard I, but lack the will to act against it, despite the Sultan visiting the squadrons to give them morale booster speeches. Richard I is reported to have paraded in front of Salah-Ed-Din’s troops, with no one moving to challenge him. Salah-Ed-Din was so angry he actually had to leave the area for a time, to calm down.
Now that we’ve spent a few months introducing French I thought it is time to use and remember some of the vocabulary a little more methodically. Yesterday we revised some colour and clothing words with the DVD, then we made “catalogues”, by cutting up old clothing catalogues, sticking pictures of clothes into folded paper books and labelling them in simple vocab, “un pantalon gris” and so on. InshAllah, I won’t make mistakes with this!
With Arabic letters for Ia I tried using pipe cleaners (from a craft set) to form letter shapes. This seems to work well as you can keep manipulating the pipe cleaner until you get it right, and then it stays like that! We made some and stuck them onto paper. I used tiny bits of pipe cleaner for the dots, this is not as good, but using a different material would be disjointed.
Ia also did an activity on ways of making six. This is now very easy for her, alhamdulillah. I drew three sets of two circles and asked her to stick six stickers into each set, so that each set was different. She made 2/4, 3/3 and 1/5. Then she wrote the numbers underneath.
They are all still into this phase of playing complex imaginary games. Even U got to be included in some of them yesterday.
I am still mostly unable to post photos. When I click "done" a message comes up from windows, and after that it is impossible to get the image onto the post. I allow 5 attempts per picture. Occasionally it could let it through.