21st April 2010 (Wednesday)

Wow many thanks to the Pie for the once again lovely pics on the My Family site…. As ever, gorgeous, all of them. I’m noticing that Leo is missing out on photo exposure… whether this is due to not standing still, or unwillingness, or novelty value, or his younger sibling’s developments in adorable pouts and whisps of long traily hair, but can I just say they’re every bit as gorgeous as each other and I demand a higher input of Leo pics. Hasten to add, this is not to cut back on Nea pics. Now, I know there are very few of the adults but I know the problems of that all too well – in the meantime, the latest was absolutely lovely. Thank you!


Today, Australia. What happened. Hm – went in for my Wednesday session helping out with the Phonics classes – noted the numbers of parents were down by 50% but happily the kids seemed to be coping perfectly well. I managed two tables instead of one and it seemed adequate supervision, as with the other two. Noticed Non is still a bit slow in some places but improving nicely. Instance – they had to cut out a green-coloured frog and a fly from one sheet, accordion-fold a long strip of a pink tongue and glue it onto the frog, attach the fly. Teacher explained how to do it, Non not happy and expressed volubly that she didn’t know how to do it. Nevertheless went to the table and got going, and I briefly told her to cut out the frog and the fly first – which she did. Then did the first fold of her accordion tongue with her, after which she pushed me away and told me she’d do it herself – which she did, no problems. Now, this is better than before on so many levels: Firstly, exclaiming about not knowing how to do it. In fact that’s probably the most impressive improvement. Next, listening to instructions to both cut the figures out, and the folding. Third, the will to do it on her own, once she reckoned she would be able to. And she was pretty pleased with the finished frog, too, and didn’t take too long in making him.

I also noted with quite a lot of amazement that some of the kids there are REALLY quite clever. Now, I know for a fact that both Lillian and Lucy don’t know how to read properly yet. There’s a sort of word-puzzle they seem keen on here, which is kind of letter-shape-count-recognition practice – you have to match (say) ‘fairy’ to an empty block of letter-spaces that are spaced ‘tall, short short short long’ (as per what the letters look like). Now, the Non can read very well and I’ve been doing these exercises with her for a considerable time, and she still finds them pretty difficult without prompting. Those girls can probably barely remember what the letters are, haven’t been tutored at home (as I know), and they were racing ahead to go and solve the puzzles, and succeeded without any real help at all. Now frankly, that’s impressive. I think Logic muscles are the next ones to come under focus, now that the Maths ones are pretty much up to par for her age. The eternal cycle, eh? If it’s not one thing, it’s the next.

… Mind you, have to confess, I think it was probably because I was quite impressed by the kids’ obvious intelligence that I wasted a good half-hour at home later finding some IQ tests online and taking a couple. Some you find are simply ridiculous – sort of questions you find on ‘who wants to be a millionaire’ almost and just laughable -found another one that seemed a bit more rigorous and indeed, found that I was hopeless on both the number-sequencing and pattern recognition – same sort of thing, really. Other stuff was quite simple. I think by the sounds of things the Non is not far off the same path… hoping she might have picked up a bit of pattern recognition and logic from her father but perhaps not, eh. Well, she’s certainly better at spatial cognition than I am – she knows her way round places all right. At least that’s one thing. Small mercies.

Bored now. Lots of love, V xxx