We laughed till we cried

We are nearly onto the third term in maths, but as I’ve been so disorganised about getting the book ordered it seems the publisher is out of stock, so it could be a while.
Ia took part in the end of term nursery play. She was a traveller visiting different areas of the world. I laughed so much there were tears! Some children said nothing at all, others yelled out their lines. The mother of the loudest one just covered her face and shook with laughter, which puzzled the child, when she noticed! It is hard to say exactly what was so hilarious, but it just was. The doubtful accuracy of some of the geographical information played its part. The teachers continued with determination, apparently it went much better than in the rehearsal. The highlight for U was that “Auntie holded me”, as she recalled today. Afterwards we bought chocolate cake from the food sale and set off home. Ia is much better at walking now, maashAllah, and can often manage the hours walk without going on the front of the buggy.
Today Ia enjoyed the treat of going to a friend’s house. The boys had a friend here. Things seem to be settling down again and I feel like I could get organised into a better work routine again. InshAllah things will go smoothly.

I am still here!

Tues 13/03/07
Sunday was mild and sunny, so we went out and cleaned the garden, sweeping and pruning. Later we got a couple of planting kits and got them started, insh’Allah. Ia was expecting to see pansies the next morning!
Ploughed through another maths lesson on division. They won’t write any of their workings out down, although I suppose that if they can work it out in their heads it doesn’t matter. Today it is halving and doubling, which they certainly prefer!
R navigated for his father through central London, using a route planner printout.

Sun 25/03/07
House moving stuff is taking up all my time and thoughts. We’ve kept up a reduced timetable just about! Hope to get back on track soon, insh’Allah. The pansies have sprouted, alhamdulillah!

After a week

Sat 03/03/07
This morning we saw a pair of jays in the garden. They stopped on the trees and fences for a while. A blackbird appeared, was challenged by the smaller jay, then retreated to a further branch until the jays had gone.
Sat 10/03/07
This week flew by. MIL is staying with us again, there were viewings almost every day, J was ill with a tummy bug and normal arrangements had to be changed almost every day. Ia had a cultural day at nursery, and seems to be getting on very well with one of the teachers. She also joined in with a new Wednesday activity group, although she couldn’t get to all of it this week. She was learning about parts of the body.
The boys HE got a bit behind schedule with J’s illness, but they have continued to enjoy listening to me reading history books to them and managed to recount one of the incidents of the sahabah in great detail in their exercise books. I was quite impressed with their recall, alhamdulillah.
R has been very well behaved in his Quran lesson. They have been learning some more difficult tajweed rules without tantrums! They are generally getting on with it better now.
Today they got games for their new PSP and have been busy with that. Ia has been busy on the computer, insh’Allah she is learning something! U has been demanding lots of books, especially “Ar ra ruff” (The Billy Goats Gruff).

Friday already!

We’ve had a couple of very spring like days. Yesterday we had some time to go to the park for the first time in ages. U was very excited about the slide. The boys were surprisingly cooperative in their maths with L, and got everything done without complaining. On the days before they had complained a lot about pages of the book on which they had to add four two digit numbers! In science they found out about uses of magnets, and used the internet to find out about this. They drew pictures of Maglev trains to go with it.
Ia is noticing the daffodils and blossom outside. Everyone enjoys watching the gulls in the park tugging worms out of the waterlogged ground!

Signs of Spring

We went out for a walk in the (semi industrial) nature reserve this morning and spotted some signs of spring, trees in blossom, buds, some half unfurled into leaves. Boys got excited and muddy. There were lots of big puddles and soon after we left there was another heavy shower, alhamdulillah.
The boys have realised that they can actually follow hama bead patterns, so they have been producing bead dinosaurs today. Ia wants to make them too but she can’t use the pattern so this takes up a lot of my time. I’ve had to stop her now, feel a bit guilty about that.
R has been working on his Turkey project, he found out some more information from the internet, but the typing is taking a long time so he will need to continue another day. He did finish the temperature graph and now they are doing some maths.
U enjoyed seeing a train and a horse today. She sang “Twinkle twinkle inkle tar” and said “Mimi weed it” for her favourite library book of the moment (Maisy flap book) She also loves Topsy and Tim books. Other recent sentence attempts include “Mal dinkie cup in” (J put a drink in my cup)

Friday

Spent the whole morning cleaning for a 5 minute viewing. Kids had to entertain themselves. Tried to make up for it this afternoon by doing lots of reading with Ia and U, helping them with a bit of workbook and playing games. The boys don’t want to do any work, but they have read, played indoor cricket and football and are now playing with their cars.
Ia wanted lots of attention this afternoon. She ended up doing bits on the computer, doing puzzles and threading buttons with U. U did only unthreading. Later Ia helped me with the baking.
U went to sleep very early, which led to a quiet, relaxed evening. What a difference the demands of one small person make! R read, Ia did drawings and J finished his project on Spain. We’ve put it in a plastic folder and it looks very presentable, with a mixture of word processing, handwriting, print outs and his own illustrations.

Museum Visit

On Monday we went to the Natural History museum. I prepared a quiz sheet based on the fossils from the Marine Fossil Reptiles and Fossils from Britain sections. They answered the questions quickly! R and J were interested to see some of the finds labelled "Mantell", and it was even better to be able to see Mantell's original iguanodon finds in the dinosaur section.
It became very busy after the first hour or so as it was still half term for many schools. Although we went together with the rest of the boys, we split up into pairs to make things easier. After meeting up for lunch we dispersed again at then came back together for a half hour slot in the investigate centre. R took out a tray of fossils to examine, and later he chose some rocks. J ended up weighing some animal skulls, and he memorised the weights of three of them. Insh'Allah we will return to that section on a less busy day, as I did not know about it before.
Tuesday was back to the nursery for Ia. Took the electronics kit back to I's, but unfortunately we couldn't get the experiment to work and as the kit does not offer any explanation of why the different connections do what they do, we can't troubleshoot it, so we may leave it at that for now.
Managed to get to the library again. Boys have been busy reading cricket story books, and another one of the "mad boy scientist" books they find so hilarious. Ia copies them by trying to read her choices of book herself.
Ia has been on the computer lots again. I'm bringing out the rest of the CDs that we have suitable for her age and I have subscribed to iboard for her.
U likes to try on hats and wear different clothes. She puts them on and says "bootibool".
I've not been well, so everywhere is back to messy again. Thats another 5 or six hour job to look forward to then