Twenty-Ten

Ms R very often knows what she wants for her birthday or Christmas. For her fifth birthday she wants a fish tank with a goldfish or two and some Baby Annabell stuff. Between us and my parents those boxes have been ticked. She’ll recieve her fish tank on Master Rs birthday because everyone tells me that you mustn’t put fish in the same day that you fill it up. In a way it’ll be like a double present, she’ll get to open it and set it up on his birthday and then get to buy and introduce the fish on her birthday. On her birthday she’ll get the Baby Annabell accessory from my parents, a trip to the pet shop to choose some fish and any other little presents that might come her way.

Master R has yet to think of something that he really wants which has made him a little harder to choose for. I’m confident that we’ve got enough age appropriate rarely touched plastic that he won’t be considered deprived if we don’t add to it so we’ve tried to think of something else. He’s always been extremely soppy about animals, cats in particular, and the recent addition of Lucky to my parents family has highlighted just quite how much he gets from them. Each and everytime he sees the kitten his face lights up and he melts over it. So after much thought and discussion Daddy and I finally ageed that a kitten would be the ideal present for him. It will occupy him far more than any toy we can think of and it won’t take up much space. The fleas and vets bills will by far be outweighed by the look on his face. Unfortunately this time of year kittens aren’t in abundance, or at least kittens that we can afford that are within an hours drive. I’ve spent the last two weeks checking such online places as the Friday Ad, Freeads, Gumtree several times a day and have called in to numerous pet shops and veterinary surgeries. Yes, I’ve also contacted various rescue centers too none of whom have kittens right now (and Daddy is insistent that we get one young). Until this evening. Having just sat the Rs down to their dinner I snuck another quick look on the internet and saw an advert for kittens at a price less than we budgeted for just five minutes down the road. I phoned up and the guy that answered was telling me most surprised that he already had six lots of people on their way and the furthest was coming from two hours away. I told him we were just down the road and would be there in five minutes, grabbed the Rs without even bothering with shoes and sped along to his house. There were only three kittens available and he plonked them on a table in front of us. I asked Ms R which one she liked best and she nodded at the one I’d already chosen so I picked it up and squatted down to show Master R. He went all soppy and stroked it gingerly while saying he wished we could have one. Ms R and I loudly wished too just to keep up the charade while I passed some money back to the guy and he clearly marked the kittens tail to show that it had been reserved. I put the kitten down and quietly discussed collecting it on the morning of Master Rs birthday which he was fine about and when I glanced over the kitten was crouched down next to his Mum eating with Master R crouching down behind it kissing its back. We thanked the guy for letting us see his kittens and left. Master R doesn’t seem to have any inkling of what really went on as he was too busy cooing over fluff. He won’t believe his eyes when it arrives on his birthday.

It’s been ten days since I’ve blogged. We’ve been doing things pretty much as normal with visits to friends, family, home ed groups, shops and library.

A couple of things I really wanted to note were Master Rs drawing and Ms Rs reading:

• A few days ago Master R wanted to draw his face, he drew a circle shape and then drew an ear each side, he put a squiggley dot in the middle for a nose and then got distracted. A few minutes later he went back to it and drew two smaller circles for eyes, admittedly they were below the nose but it was still very clearly a toddler drawn face. He added a smile that went right across the whole paper and a line across the top of the head for hair. It’s a beautiful picture and quite clearly meant to be a face (he says it’s a picture of him). I’m not sure what age other childrens drawing start to be recognisable but I don’t think Ms R started drawing smiley faces until she was four. He is still two.

• The other night as I was reading Ms R a chapter of her book she was muttering away to herself with her nose buried in a Peter and Jane book so I put the book down and asked if she wanted to read her book instead. She seemed quite pleased with that idea, as though it was something I might not normally allow. I asked if she was going to start at the beginning but she turned the first few pages over saying she’d already done those ones, and then she read. The story was along the lines of playing in a boat and she surprised me by knowing words like ‘play’ and ‘boat’. She didn’t know ‘please’ so I told her the first time and then she knew the next time she came across it. Interestingly she only read the first two sentences on each page. Now I could see at a glance that all the words are used once in the first couple of sentences and then repeated in different combinations through the rest of that page, I’m not sure if this is why she only read the first bit or if it was because she was eager to get on to the next page. It’s amazing to think that she can pick up a book and read some of it without having to have painstakingly worked through the whole reading scheme page by page, day by day. It sort of feels like she should have done x amount of lessons and reading practice (out loud to a prompting adult) to be able to do what she can do. It’s not really surprising to me that when she is looking at a book she is recognising words and letter patterns and managing to decipher whole sentences but must sound quite unbelievable to people who think children need to be ‘made to learn’. It’s also enlightening to think that she can do ‘reading practice’ without having to read out loud, already I can see that it means I’ll never have to endure listening to her stumble across words that she’s not interested in reading. I think reading the younger books to Master R first really helps her with recognising and remembering words as the writing is larger and less per page which makes it easier for her to follow. With some of the more repetitive books she reads on through my pause-for-effect moments which infuriate Master R. She is still four.