Semester ends

The end of the first semester is close at hand. My throat is sore. Hannah and Kit have both been coughing. I had my uni exams for numeracy - and passed (!!). They had their first parent teacher interview - and we all survived! Both brats are loving school. They are learning both academically and socially. I am very happy that at the moment they are both being well catered for.
I went to the stitches and craft fair on the weekend - a lovely treat. I bought a pattern for a butterfly bargello. I made one years ago which I gave to my BIL (not a butterfly pattern though) and it was quite fun so I thought I'd do a wall one for us theswe holidays. Han's EI is having a sibkids morning in July so Kit has said that he'd like to go to that. I hope it goes well for them - I think that one day it will be important for him to be able to chat with other kids who have a sibling with a disability in their family.
Hannah has been loving gymnastics at school - and although she enjoys her music lessons - learning the keyboard is becoming a larger part of the programme and I don't have the will to supervise the required practice time for her to vaguely master it. Her teacher is lovely and happy for her to continue with once a week practice - but I think it might be time to try her out in dance - or gymnastics if I can find a good school for that. She had her neck xrayed last holidays and although they didn't find that condition (antiolaxial ..) she does have a slightly 'unusual' bone structure along her neck which meant that her paed suggested no rolling, only jumping by herself on the trampoline, no high diving etc. I am still working out just what it all means and will ask him for greater clarity when we see him next term - for example she went to a party on the weekend where there was a jumping castle - and she and all the other kindy kids were just having a ball - I didn't have the heart to stop her - althouh I did end up taking her glasses off - I figured that if she was to fall awkwardly - that would just add another complication we didn't need.

Using readers

Hannah's school seems to have a great early literacy programme. She ahs been doing very well with the first level of books - repeated sentence with approx 1-2 new words on each page eg "we are going to the xxx". Her teacher recently lent me a more difficult reader - Hannah is having some difficulty mastering it - I think the issue is she relies on discrimination to tell what the word is - and this reader is full of rhymes all eventually ending up in the one sentence - so 'rat, mat, sat, cat, fat, bat' are all in there. Does anyone have any ideas on how to help her manage this type of reader? She does fine for the first few pages but once they start using the same sounding words in a single sentence she really starts to struggle.

Treasure

I saw this in my local gift shop today - I couldn't resist - it says: a tulip is a treasure