it says –

• Read books
• go to the library
• play
• do the garden
• Happy Fish printing

Today I said we really should finish up stuff however Helena wanted me to read to her so I said “put it on a list” and went and got dressed… then I came out to find this and weirdly it is the very list I was going to write and it’s what we did, well we didn’t get to the Happy Fish printing which was the thing I said should be on there. The Reading books, TICK, had to be done first so that we could return the books to the library, TICK – which then of course led to getting more books out. Getting home from the library we were meaning to make Mama Panya’s pancakes for lunch but didn’t – I had to find the recipe and that took time but later when I found the recipe we made this together and it was actually fun, collaborative even..

It’s an old board book covered with some paper from the collection of stuff we have been given at some point by who knows… Helena called this “play” and made a collage “I love collage”. TICKy tick tick. She didn’t notice the conversations about writing fractions, spelling, sounding out (I was on the whole dictating the spelling except for the bits I felt she knew where she was contributing) little letters and where they sit on the line, allowing space for words and the apostrophe. Notice there is a little L plate in the bottom right corner for “Learner” making all the mistakes she made totally reasonable, woo hoo jump for joy, I’m so glad to see that concept is in there. The pancakes by the way are good.

Do the garden – well this required finishing yet another unfinished task. Helena had started making her own planter box to counter my apparently scurrilous comments on a particular plant being a weed and in the process discovered she liked sawing. We had old pallets lying around from making her a “Wendy House” there was even some measuring and drawing lines involved – to know where to saw. Lots of pauses mid task to do other stuff but all it needed was nailing together today – which I hope she noticed came easily and she even noticed the change in sound when the nail starts bending. Now the planter is finally full of soil, her weeds and our seedlings are in the garden and each one got it’s own worm….. TICK

This homeschooling lark was easy and obvious today.

My list of stuff I need to do is er long and tickless.