Proud Mummy Day

We had a very successful Reading Eggs(press) morning today. Eldest just storms through his allocated time - he tends to go through a couple of books at a time, plus further games/ exercises; Middle had no problems today - yesterday I printed out a little chart with the definitions and examples of the parts of speech that he seemed most likely to come up against to start with (noun, verb, adjective, pronoun).  Given that he has never learned about the parts of speech, he seemed to grasp the concept really quickly - very proud Mummy moment.  Once he'd worked his way through his online book, he couldn't wait to get onto the Quote Quest and other games.  And Youngest - well, he finished another world today!  He is now on world five, and doing brilliantly.  I've already mentioned how much he benefitted from a few months off to assimilate everything he had learned before he got stuck... and today he experienced that again in a smaller way.  He had done a few exercises and reached the test at the end of the 'world' or level.  I was in another room with one of his brothers, and he had a go by himself but gave up, saying it was too hard.  Once I was available about an hour later, I asked him if he would show me the tricky test.  We sat down together and again - having just had an hour away from the computer he was able to focus, and just whizzed through it, getting them all right with ease.  Definite Reading Eggs(press) fans here!

After that, Eldest and Middle both did some more work on their lapbooks.  Again Middle ended up doing some really quite advanced work, writing about and illustrating the different types of muscles.  Bless him, I hadn't realised that some of the downloaded flap templates were harder than others until we started on this one, but as he had started it I just waited to see if he would give up - and he didn't.  The little star!  Eldest has almost finished his too - he had a couple of days off when he ran out of steam, but is almost finished now - he wants it finished by the weekend, so hopefuly we'll have photos to share on Friday.

All of this while Youngest and I baked some Smartie cookies for lunch...

This afternoon  was very lazy.  Hubby has started a new job this week which is further away than the previous one, so he needs to get up earlier in the morning, and so far the boys have been waking up with him, and consequently getting tired earlier.  So this afternoon after all their hard work they just wanted to flop on the sofa, watching TV for a while before disappearing upstairs to build battlefields out of lego and recreate the island of Madagascar in duplo.  It was a bit odd watching about the hottest place on earth (Death Valley) with snow still on the ground outside our window, courtesy of CBBC's Fierce Planet. We had a lovely moment when Eldest and I were excited to spot a songthrush that briefly visited our garden... I love that we're so often at home during the day and can call each other if we see something out of the ordinary, to have a little shared moment together.

Finally it was time for tea: lentil bolognese, cooked almost entirely by Eldest...

Happy sigh - this really has been a proud Mummy Day.  I don't like giving the impression that all of our days are glowing and perfect (they really aren't), but a little bragging comes with the maternal territory, doesn't it?  And hopefully my boys' progress as recorded today might be encouraging to those needing reassurance that HE really can and does work!