Ballet Girl made 2 message bracelets.

Monkey Girl also made some fantastic paint pictures with her paint swirling machine :) ...

...and some cards for her 'thank you' notes.

On Saturday Ballet Girl and Monkey Girl had a Caribbean Party for their 5th and 6th Birthdays :)

Sunday, 22 June 2008

My wonderful Monkey Girl is 5!!! She struggled so much last year after her sudden operation and the threat of further surgery but she is back on top form again . I love you so much Darling!

France window display

(a mini, week long project for my half-French children )

We got some great French books from the library. This songbook is our own and the children were able to sing quite a few with me as they have a large collection of French nursery rhyme cds they often listen to in the car:









Savez vous planter les choux, a la mode, al la mode. Savez vous planter les choux, a la mode de chez nous.

We had a fun discussion about French cheeses and which part of France they originate and which animal they come from. They all have a particular awareness of this as Monkey Girl has a mild intolerance to cow's milk and so drinks goats' milk.

Ballet Girl's croissant.

Croissants and chocolate milkshake for breakfast - very French :) 

I have changed the layout of the girls' desks and have had a very positive response. The girls have been working very hard. Ballet Girl has done some great writing work this week.

All 3 girls made their own Croque Monsieur for lunch. Panda Girl was proud of her cheese tower.

What better way to start our French project than have a mini French pic-nic? We had a fun time in the supermarket first thing looking for all things French. I got some funny looks in the alcohol aisle when the girls started yelling "Mummy is this French wine?"
I am sensing a croissant breakfast later in the week...

The Tricolour flag :)

We discussed how the names of countries always have capital letters. They each drew a capital F and then pieced together the letters.

We looked at a map of Issigeac, the village where Papa's parents live in the South of France. We found Nanny Flo's house and figured out the best way from there to the village church.

...and then Mummy and Ballet Girl made La Tour Eiffel!

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY!!

My Beautiful Elodie Marie is 6 today! She is my sensitive, deep-thinking, sweet sweet sweet baby :) I love you Didi! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dinosaur Window Display.

Monkey Girl put her toy dinosaurs into size order.
Ballet Girl read and illustrated her dinosaur book and did some more work for her T.rex project (learning that the name means 'tyrant lizard king')
Later I weighed the girls and we did comparisons between them and the dinosaurs. It would take 383 Elodies to weight the same as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, 95 Lucias to make a Stegosaurus but only 2 Dominiques to make a Coelophysis!

My Panda Girl sorting colours.

Today Panda Girl went to her first ever gymnastics lesson. She loved it so much that she grinned for an hour. :)

Making a sponge cake for...

'Bella' the Stegosaurus cake :) It was yum!

This morning we used our Dinosaur Fact File to work out the lengths of different dinosaurs. The girls loved this activity and we all got a little blown-away with the size of a T-rex!

Ballet Girl working out where the legs would be on a Triceratops.

Our dinosaur memory/concentration game.

Today's worksheets: we used pentagons to make stegosaurus plates; Monkey Girl did some great addition on her own and Ballet Girl started a mini-project on her favourite T-rex.

Dinosaur books we have been reading.

This morning the girls had 3 piles of dinosaur worksheets to choose from: reading and writing, maths or fact-file. They worked really hard and Ballet Girl surprised herself with how well her maths is progressing - hooray!

Monkey Girl did some good subtraction work.

The girls spent all afternoon in the paddling pool and chasing bubbles from the bubble machine. It's a hard life...

Panda Girl spent all afternoon in happy raptures :)

Monkey Girl had some fun today with her dinosaur sticker book...

...and Ballet Girl excavated some dinosaur bones (to be continued).

Bank Holiday Monday we took the girls to Tring Natural History Museum - where we checked out some prehistoric bones!

My Darling Panda Girl playing with the dinosaurs.
Today I took the girls out to buy one more dinosaur each to add to their collection. Ballet Girl was delighted to find a pink T.Rex.

I ordered a dinosaur egg for the girls. We put it in water and waited...

When the girls came down for breakfast the next day it had begun to hatch - they were so excited.
Referring to our books we have decided that it is a baby brontosaurus.

Ballet Girl's new vocabulary which she is using to make sentences and dinosaur stories. Monkey Girl is learning them too.

I told the children that we were palaeontologists on a dinosaur dig in South America. I hid some cotton wool buds in some sand and gave the girls a pot and paintbrush each, telling them to be extra careful not to damage the bones.

We took the 'bones' back to the museum and reconstructed the dinosaurs we had unearthed :)