Firing Questions

Seven-year-olds can fire questions faster than semi-automatic assault rifles... 

But this time, my oh-god-it's-not even six-thirty-no-coffee response hit pay-dirt..

Eventually.

The interrogation started like this:
"Mummy, what is your favourite food in the whole world?"
No brainer: 
 'Lobster."
'What's your second favourite food?'
Fortunately for my caffeine deprived state, another no brainer; 
'Your grand-mère's Pastillia'
'What's THAT!?
I'm on auto pilot - my stomach is doing the talking; 
'Its a traditional Moroccan pigeon pie except grand-mère makes it with chicken - it's delicious  and amazing.'
She shrugs. 
''Ok. What's your third favourite food?'
My stomach riffs on the theme, thinking of Bordeaux and the other lovely food we enjoy at my mother-in-law's table. Dropping a capsule in the Nespresso machine I say, 'Saucisson.'
'What's your fourth favourite food?'
My stomach still dreaming of Bordeaux takes another pass from my brain; 'pâté'
I'm beginning to wonder how long this line of questioning can possibly go on, but my brain leans in towards the coffee aroma in anticipation.

But by the time I take my first grateful sip of coffee, she's wandered over to her homework book on the dining table and is distracted by some math equations.
'Mummy How do you spell multipleoccasions'
Caffeine now skipping gaily through my scull is shouting time to get up everybody and jabbing it's delicious fingers at my synapses.
'Do you mean multiplication?'
She looks at me, slaps the top of her head and giggling, pulls a face.

Random questions. Lots of them. All of the time

The most enjoyable and entertaining questions are the random ones. They can take off in the oddest directions often winding up on another map entirely. One minute you're noticing a table someone's thrown out onto the curb and within moment's you've covered topics like recycling, poverty and social services, even the government's stance on deforestation and it's impact on the environment.
We got into another discussion on the latter when I asked her not to use sooo much toilet paper (we also touched on plumbing with that too). She told me that she wanted to be an environmentalist when she grew up after that. Not a plumber - no way! I think there's more money in plumbing, but not having bills or credit card statements she can afford to be totally altruistic.

Mummy, how do you spell ---?

Now that she wants to be an author, she wears my nerves thread-bare with 'how do you spell--?' questions.
She'll be writing another book and the how-do-you-spells will go on and on, through cooking dinner, while I'm vacuuming, feeding the pets, hanging the washing on the line. She's relentless - she'll keep it up for hours.

Well I hope she does become an author, rather than a vet, or an environmentalist, or a zoologist, a director, a superhero or a pop-star because I intend relating these stories to the media at her first big book launch.

But this weekend I hit pay-dirt indeed with her favourite food cross-examination: she railroaded her father into taking her to the Sunday fishmarket!
for Sunday lunch we had fresh lobster, prawns, muscles...they even found saussison and pâté!

sharing the linky love

Dolch & Kabana revisited

This is a revisit of my previous ‘so not a fashion post’. As with the previous post it is still doesn’t have much to do with Dolce or Gabbana but is a little more on the designer side none the less..

If your child started Kindergarten this year you probably know that Dolch is a word list, compiled by Edward William Dolch, PhD.  Kabana is all I have in the fridge to sustain me while I add limbs to our original Sight Words posting box.

Yes limbs; Mister P as we now call him has slowly become a funny little person.
Sight Words are high frequently words and the foundation of Dolch's "whole-word" method of beginning reading instruction. There are 100 of them (!) just to begin with, so you’d better be prepared to get creative with what might be your first experience of ‘homework’.

During our first 'big school' year, I volunteered to assist with reading groups in the classroom (longest 30 minutes of my life each week) and let me tell you, you need to be creative or the natives get truly restless – many kids find learning these words particularly un-fun.

There are a lot of elaborate games online but She Who Worships Pink came up with the idea of posting her word-cards into a letter box. Her own class ended up with three of our custom-made post boxes and they were a huge hit in the classroom.

Making the boxes is the easy part and you can download a PDF file of the words in envelope format here. I've also included postal service stickers to print and glue on for the US, UK and Australia. 
So our own Post Box has become a little character; from the addition of googly eyes, the accessories just kept coming.

My Art Director, Miss Pink, decided he should have hair, then she talked about a nose, then teeth, glasses… When she began spending more time discussing what Mr P needed next than learning her words, I decided to make it a bit of a rewards system. Every two levels of sight words she completed she got more body parts and the makeover became more extreme.

From her successful completion of Purple and Aqua words she has earned her little red friend some ears (carved from two slices of champagne cork).  She finaly got through Lime and Lemon so I needed to come good on my promise of arms too.
I was about to sew some arms until I found my old Knitting Nancy in the attic with my old toys.

I’d forgotten how to use this so I went online and found this wonderful tutorial.

I’ve cheated a bit and pinched some of Mr Potato-Head’s hands I’m afraid. But you know how it is when you’re time poor and there’s a spare pair of hands on offer..

So here he is: Mr P with his extreme makeover and this week's project finished.

Or not...

I’m fresh out of ideas but I know how someone else's  little brain works.

If anyone has any ideas how best to make him some feet, I’m all ears..