It’s a thing extending the children… that idea that they need to be moved forward never staying where they are, and the horror of them slipping back!! I am not totally adverse to this idea as I like getting better at stuff, but I also like being OK at lots of stuff, like cleaning! I do not get enough out of immaculate clothes to learn not to be a messy cook and eater, or how to get my whites white.. Kids are people and like this too.

I have limited me extending my child’s learning because she is ever so capable of doing so herself. Mostly all I do is get books out of the library… At the Library Helena runs round getting more and more and even more of those short readers she likes, eg. Geronimo Stilton, and I get out the books that she would never get out, even having expressed an interest! Then these books sit in our pile of library books in the lounge… sometimes she looks at them, sometimes she doesn’t. She certainly has the idea you can use books to learn new things.

I also buy her stuff – coloured pencils, a journal.. I think of these as providing opportunity. Or I make her go to things like art exhibitions!

The latest of her interests is some 5 a day pamphlets I left lying around after a somewhat heated discussion over healthy eating… I left them to show it wasn’t something I made up. H has decided that as she is 10 she should cook twice a week and bake on a Wednesday to keep the biscuit tin (dragged out of the back of the cupboard) full and to take to gardening group.

Helena is currently making us food journals with activities to encourage us to eat 5 a day.

see she doesn’t need me to extend her…