I’m expressing mild irritation (all day, on and off, to anyone who’ll listen) at SOTW4 referring to conscription in WW1 as “the draft” – i’ve never heard it referred to as that in any sort of colloquial sense although this, rather tiny print webpage, seems to be clear enough that there were ‘draft’ papers here. Most of the article seems to refer to New York though. I could be wrong anyway, perhaps it was, at a political level, known as “the draft” but in general i do object to the tendency to Americanise history. Whilke i like SOTW, i’m not sure i approve overall of an ability to gloss over most of WW1 in 1/2 a chapter with the last page entirely given over to the American entry into the war. Though, to be fair, i did learn something new, as i hadn’t previously known specifically why the USA entered the war (which was something to do with Mexico, the subject of the first half of the chapter.)

Still, that aside we had an interesting time colouring maps and unpicking the chain reaction that brought 1914 European tensions to such a head; en route we discussed Cyanide and suicide bombings and ethnic unity across political boundaries. Good and interesting stuff.

Fran did another chapter of War Horse and we tried to work out what £40 would be in current money; i guessed at £5000 on the basis of it being the cost of a horse but according to this website (huge thanks to Kirsty!) it would be around £2500. Apparently £1 in 1900 is worth £54 today; all of that did at least convince Fran you can ask Google a question!

Everyone did maths, everyone did some reading, Fran and i sweated over punctuation (i’ve bought her some S&S workbooks now, i can’t stand it any more!) and Maddy did a series of very good funny drawings about the stuff she learned yesterday and developed her own system for the 9 times table. Amelie spent a LOT of time on the Karaoke, but i’m telling myself it counts as literacy and not worrying about it.

There was also a good bit of garden time, cartwheeling time and then Brownies, Rainbows, a run in the soon-to-be-built-on playing fields at Max’s work and dinner. Then everyone got bizarrely engrossed in colouring-in and all 4 of them are lying on the floor in a circle doing that

And don’t ask me why Josie was dressed like this, i have no idea. She’s gone from permanently naked to insanely modest in one fell swoop.