Role playing Is A Serious Business!

The morning period is personally the best time of day for lessons for my girls. They are alert, focused and raring to start lessons, consequently breakfast lessons are an established learning time. I have a captive audience, they are in the kitchen with me anyway learning how to prepare the food, tidy down and set the table. This session can be the best for attention span and concentration out of the entire day, so I have learnt to capitalise on this precious half hour. 

This morning we learnt twenty spellings from two word families. They are storming through their word lists, quickly approaching the 200 mark in only a couple of months. I cannot recommend this learning style enough, the girls are retaining their spelling knowledge and are actively using the words in their artwork in their free time. Today they also requested spelling tests to be their handwriting practice, and did further spelling practice on top for another half an hour through choice. 

The rest of breakfast was filled with a rousing clapping game of mental maths. We counted in multiples of 2, 5, 10, 50s and 100s. We did a ton load of simple addition questions ranging from 1+1 to 90+9, counted in odd and even numbers, and focused on the 3x tables. This portion of learning was successfully completed in twenty minutes. The children love seeing Mummy dance round the table, clapping, whilst plating up food, making them laugh and learn. 

Breakfast now over we headed up to the living room for the next learning session. Due to the rainy, cold autumn day, we skipped garden time today and they did several exercise videos with Ryan's World until they collapsed dramatically on the sofas. They soon bounced back up however as they happily danced along with Jack Hartmann, revisiting action verbs and learning how to structure a story. 

The children wanted an art session following on from formal lessons. Sophia has improved a great deal already in the past few months in this area, her pictures are remaining filled with forethought and executed to a good standard. They always tell a story, and you get treated to a presentation upon their completion. This latest set includes a depiction of how prisms produce a rainbow (she's very proud of the fact she now uses the term refraction in her explanation). There was also mermaids fighting off monsters, pictures of monkeys and birds in trees, with the odd lion and tiger prowling below, a few weather scenes, and one with Mario about to jump on a box to collect a mushroom that once consumed makes him blow up in size. 

Her work process is very deliberate. She carefully selects her drawing materials first and has them lined up, her seat arranged to ensure her eye line is not in direct sunlight, sat at the school room desk. She looks at the blank page while she ponders what she is going to create, the light bulb moment occurs and then she's off as if she's starting a race. I have no idea what she will create in that moment and she does not draw to order or suggestion at the moment. You leave her alone and she will come to you when she's finished and present her work sometimes. Other times you stumble across half a dozen drawings by accident that she's hidden. She is messy once inspired, pen lids and paper fly around the room as if the room was possessed by a whirlwind. Mistakes will not be tolerated by the little perfectionist and the offending picture will be discarded on to the floor (the paper recycled for Xander's use). Consequently the school room is usually her domain to tidy when they're assigned their tidy up rooms every evening. She is a creative genius and is awesome to watch. 

Lately Kira has taken the subject of animals in their habitats to an unexpected level, whereby she chooses an animal to be for the day, and she maintains a strict method acting style. She chooses her colour and patten of clothes as closely as she can to fit the animal of her choice. She decides in private, goes and gets dressed and then emerges and proclaims who she is for the day. She was a slow tortoise today, so she crawled slowly around the house a lot of the day, holding and chewing on a piece of pretend food lettuce, telling me about facts about the animal. She did say that she didn't want to eat meat today as tortoises are herbivores, but I stopped her in her tracks and she agreed to eat prawns at the very least. She did however eat a lot of raw vegetables as well today. In the past she has been a cheetah, puppy, kitten, lion, zebra, rabbit, horse and a snake. She likes to be addressed as Kira the (insert animal name), and I have become accustomed to asking her what animal is she today, just as a matter of course as sometimes you do not get an answer unless she is treated as the animal in question. The other two take it in their stride as if this is perfectly normal behaviour and she is always correct in her facts and portrayal. Let us see how long this phase lasts. 

Dinner time approached and Sophia asked me if she could take over the kitchen and make it her café. I agreed and let her lead from there on. I was tidying round when I heard my six year old demand the attention of the room. 

'Welcome to my café, I am open for business, my name is Sophia. This is a safe café, I keep my customers safe and sound and set the tables and put out the food. I have two cafe businesses. This one is the healthy one with fruit and vegetables and fish, and water in the tap for you to drink. On the menu today is chips, carrot, cucumber, prawns, egg, cheese and ham, I chose this. My centre cooker is mummy who will be cooking for you and writing about your experience today, so I can show this to my friends so they will visit my cafe. My heart is full of love for you if you behave and don't mess around in my cafe. You can have ice-cream and cotton candy if you behave, as a treat from me to you'. 

Kira the tortoise wanted to be the bouncer and protect the the café from troublemakers. Sophia's response was the following, 'Well your hair needs to be brushed for you to belong and be part of my cafe', and she brushed Kira’s curls straight (for a nano second) and tidied her up.

This whole role play was fascinating to watch unfold, I had no influence over how it played out. I was one of Sophia's staff members awaiting my orders. She planned the menu from looking through the fridges and drystore, collected the food items and placed them in the kitchen area. She assigned me as staff and set me to work whilst she set the table. She showed a knowledge and understanding how a café should be run as well as appreciating the expectations of her customers. Whilst we ate dinner she was attentive to her now customers needs, providing first aid in the form of wipes to Kira who got an eyelash in her eye midway through the meal. She organised the dessert, and left the dirty pots for the dishwasher. Kira reviewed the café with 'Good food!' and Sophia wanted her friends to know about the review. She was pretty spot on apart from the fact she forgot to charge us for the meal, but to be fair we were doubling as her bouncer and chef. Today marks six years ago today she was taken into the kitchen by her Daddy for the first time, as a tiny baby in his arms, and was given a tour of his domain. 

I hope you have enjoyed this latest blog post, take care, and I hope you enjoy the following week.