Max, his dad and his brother have gone to watch some rugby somewhere, so i’ve had a day at home with the kids. All of the big girls have got a musical theatre exams coming up, so we’ve practised that. They each have to do a poem with actions and then they have to sing a song with some dance moves to it too. Fran does the actions to her poem beautifully (i love watching her dance now, she is so graceful and starting to have a very different body shape, there is just no “little girl left” and the effect is stunning) but needs to really work on the speaking, Maddy sings her song beautifully but has an idea of the dance in her head, can’t quite do it and won’t accept any help from us, which is frustrating. Fran choreographed some steps for her which are just fab, but Maddy got upset. Oh well.

Anyway, we worked on it all for ages; Fran wants to sing “Colours of the Wind”, which is challenging to say the least, but Maddy and Amelie are both doing “If i only had a Brain.” I helped Amelie do her dance and she does look rather fab doing it; being able to drop into the splits is a definite advantage. She has a little poem about the sea, Maddy is doing the first verse of The Jumblies and Fran is doing a Flower Fairy poem about a Primrose. All that took up a couple of hours.

This morning we bummed about and then spent ages working on writing out names and addresses until they were neat (and in some cases until they knew them!) I’m fed up of seeing names scrawled on things that come home from groups It was time well spent anyway, they seemed to quite like having a set task to achieve.

This afternoon i read endless poems, mainly Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, then Fran read some out and then i read an Usborne shortened version of Macbeth to them. As Fran had finished The Goblet of Fire this morning (and shot into my bed before daylight with fright at Cedric’s demise!), we quite like the parallel between Voldemort’s rebirth and the figures rising out of the witches cauldron. I’m quite impressed with her reading it in a week; see what a tv ban can do!!!! The Macbeth reading came about from me using the “Double, double…” speech as an example of clear speaking or changing your voice to make something funny or scary. I think the story lost Maddy, but Fran seemed to enjoy it.

Now i have to cook tea; apparently i told Amelie that i  would turn into a pumpkin if i cooked twice in one day. We’re about to find out if it is true….