Strops and Splashes
Today was a day of two distinct parts. This morning M was in a strop generally and about lots of things specifically and I was losing my temper pretty rapidly. He didn’t want to do anything I asked and was falling apart about the simplest things.
In and among he did have a few calmer patches such as playing a game he and L made up while I cleaned the bathroom. He sat part way down the stairs and L sat at the top behind the stair gate and posted through figures from M’s wild west town. I love to see them playing together.
We did some more about Ancient Greece today following on from starting it yesterday. We began by getting out the air hardening clay to make a knuckle bones game but M sulked about how it was impossible to mould the clay how he wanted it and then deliberately wiped his clay-y hands down me. So he got to peg out 2 loads of washing and load the washing machine in return. It didn’t get a whole lot better as M can drag things out for ages when he thinks he has too many “hard” things to do. I think he did enjoy the British Museum’s Ancient Greece website stuff though. He also did a page of maths with number line sums.
Towards lunchtime L went for a nap and then M and I had lunch and worked through some of the above. Once L woke back up and had come round a bit we had a complete change of pace and all went out into the garden to do some water play. M was doing science and one of the BA First Investigator activities about boats. I dug out the BA folder and sorted it out and have suggested M finishes off some stuff he started ages ago and then I’ll send off for his silver award. We really ought to do it more often as it usually works well if I hit the right level of helping vs encouraging him to think for himself.
M made a couple of boats from foil, trying one with a keel and another with a wide flat bottom. The flat one held alot more marbles as cargo, possibly helped by it having higher sides too. This is the first boat attempt, with a keel (we’re reading Swallows and Amazons aloud for bedtimes at the moment).
L was eager to be involved and started off with various items to play with in his own side of the water. He played at filling a jar with water and trying to drink it and then watered the grass from the apple juice container. After that he decided sitting in the water would be much more fun and got soaked through, then came out cold and dripping for a cuddle (no, get away from me!) So when he wanted to go back in I put his sun top on and off he went to disrupt M’s experimentation. We tried a paper boat which went soggy and disintegrated and then L and M played at dreging bits of paper off the bottom of the pit.
A came home early while we were still outside and we tidied up and went into town to get a few bits, calling for fish and chips on the way home.
