Everyone has an opinion!

 One of my favourite scenes of the musical 'Meet me in St Louis' is the kitchen scene, when every family member marches past the cooking pot, tastes it and tweaks it to personal taste, much to the horror of the cook. 

I have an reactment of this scene whenever I am making pizza sauce. Everyone's a critic, they'll sneak a taste when my back is turned and I'll see a generous sprinkle of salt or sugar being flung in the bowl before I can reach the child in question. 

Thankfully we managed to reach an agreement between little Miss 'it's too sour', and little Missy 'it's too sweet' at last, much to my relief as I was batch cooking. 

I did a taster pizza for us all to share, with the freshly made pizza base and sauce, we all loved it, so a months worth is now packed in the freezer.

I also managed a months worth of mash potato and roast potatoes before I ran out of steam. I didn't move from the kitchen from morning until tea time. 

The children moved into the kitchen for the day to be with me and set up a lair, building it together with sofa cushions, duvets, chairs and pillows, with thrones set up for the King and Queen of wolves. 

The girls were yipping at each other and howling at the moon, showing off their incisors off to each other. When night fell they went off hunting through the house and slept in the day. 

Xander refused to behave as their cub and  set up an ice cream, bbq and pizza shop in a different corner instead, helping me to mix and form the real dough. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning From Your Environment

Image
There is so much potential for learning on car journeys. This time Sophia's attention was caught by seeing electricity pylons and wind turbines and she was avidly asking questions about these. I briefly introduced them to her and offered to set up some follow up science educational YouTube videos at a later date. Good old 'Dr Binocs' came through and the children have been eagerly learning about fossil fuels, renewable energy and electricity. Sophia has started writing down her thoughts and knowledge on electricity in her new science book. It is a great sidestep from their current topic of light, which is being learnt enthusiastically. They have loved their light experiments, as simple as they were, including going into a dark room and shining a torch, seeing how a pencil seems to change when placed in a glass of water, just with a light shining on it. Observing what materials allow light to pass through and which cast shadows, and performing shadow puppet plays on the wall...
Read more

Role playing Is A Serious Business!

Image
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 ...
Read more

Always be thankful

Image
 It was December 2021 when Miss Jo, The Children's Coach contacted me and offered the girls free places in her January zoom class. This was the tutor who had organised and ran the summer fun project which the girls had been nominated and awarded for bravery. The girls absolutely loved her as a teacher and had immediately bonded with her. They wrote her letters and talked about her every day during this project.  I took her up on this very kind and generous offer and the girls had a regular half an hour zoom class every Thursday on the theme of gratitude. The girls were the youngest ones in the class and they handled it really well.  Sophia wrote the classes on the calender, scheduling in the lessons, for the month. Kira took a postcard written to her by Miss Jo, which she had received the previous year, to bed with her every night until the classes took place. She read it to me as her bedtime story.  The first thing Kira said to Miss Jo on class, was to thank her for...
Read more