This pigeon also seemingly is making an appearance on the card he was working on for his Grandpa:
Oshin was in a rubbish mood today, which made the activities for the older boys far more hands-off.
But they still has a good time, playing with trains (partly in a vain attempt to stop Oshin crying)...
... but mainly making a Lego factory:
We got to desperate measures by the afternoon, and Oshin was even allowed a Kitchen Splash, in a cm of water in the large tray we got from somewhere:
He enjoyed it, for a bit, then he started shouting again!
Rather nicer than Oshin's crying is this Dream House from Orry:
The boys took the exercise very seriously today, even taking off their shirts for it... though it didn't actually seem to make much difference to Orry's attitude to actually doing the exercise!
After this the boys watch some educational videos on the BBC's YouTube channel as we cooked. Yesterday it was geography (map reading and the like) and today it was music. They had a great time singing along to a show singing songs around the Norse mythology and sagas!
Even Cori and Oshin joined in for a bit!
After dinner came yoga, as ever, and then we went up to bed to finish the final book in a series of books we've been reading for months:
And, when we say 'months', we mean it - this is the second third series of the books, which we've just completed:
Each of the books here is about 40 pages long, and we read an entire series before these (with fewer pages and larger words, as they were for lower reading levels).
They are an excellent series of books which we stumbled across in the library when I asked the librarian for recommendations to match Orry's reading level, as he was beyond all the books for his age but wasn't bothered to read larger books. She pulled these out to test him, and we were both amazed as he read fluently the one she thought he might be good for. So we moved to the second series straight away, and we've been reading them since.
We've followed Ant, Cat, Max and Tiger on their a micro-adventure to save the planet Exon and then to get home at last, avoiding the terrible Badlaw and his army of Krools. The story was excellent and the paced advancing of the reading level was perfect for Orry.
He's now emerged out of it reading them fluently, stumbling only on perhaps a word per book, but mainly because the word isn't in his vocabulary. (In the final book, for instance, it was 'stalled', which he read as you would read it naturally, and so had to be corrected, but other than that he was fluent).
It is amazing stuff, especially when these are books apparently targeted at the 7 to 11 reading age (and they are, indeed, being read by friends we know at the older end of that age), as you can perhaps get a feel of from seeing a page of it (and also the ace stories therein!):
The way we read them was that only Orry was allowed to read them, so he had to do it, so that he could find out the story. As he progressed through the books, his reading improved sufficiently that he stopped procrastinating over them and just read them fluently in order to get to the story.
But, of course, I had to read the opening prelude pages, and Finn had to read the chapter headings.
We would read it in the book nook in their room, with Finn reading the pages quicker silently, and them relaxing before the next page turn.
But now we're at a bit of a loss to be done with it at last - a piece of our life for so long is now over.
It does give me a chance to read them more fairy tales and the like at bed time, but it leaves Orry with undirected reading. His reading level is twice his age, but he enjoys books aimed for his age, so he is not naturally going to stretch himself as a reader, which is a shame... But, regardless, it's a happy-sad momentous occasion for us all!
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