Productivity At Last

No photos today. Sorry. But it has been a better day.

Francesca was super-cooperative this morning: up and dressed and breakfasted in time to watch tv with Elizabeth before it was time to go to playgroup. Elizabeth's (my!) friend collected her and it was time to do violin.

There was a minor hiccup at this point while Francesca reverted to 'flounce and refuse' mode. I promptly asked her to take time out, and, five minutes later, we tried again.

Much better.

She and I did violin for 20 minutes and got through everything she was supposed to. She worked really hard - bar the occasional moan of "I can't!" to which I replied, "You can do it, Francesca, you can do it..." and she 'won' back her story tapes by being focussed enough during the practise. Wow. Later, she even said that she had - and I quote - "Loved it." Well then(!)

English, she progressed her tale. Another 30 minutes' work. Another 3 sentences. She keeps asking me how to spell things, so we've covered quite a bit of ground. I've shown her some patterns, like should, could, would and duck, luck, truck and sigh, high (any more in that list? I could only think of two I mean, there's 'nigh' but it's not exactly part of Francesca's everyday vocabulary, is it?)

Maths, she did some more of her Heinemann book - subtraction, as it happens. We also revised number bonds to ten and the 2x and 5x tables. She is getting better. I even heard her explaining to Elizabeth, at lunch time, that five plus six must be eleven because five plus five is ten so it's just one more. Bingo! And there was me thinking she didn't really 'get it'.

Before lunch Francesca made a new baby card for our neighbours and then had time to listen to some story tapes. It's Alice In Wonderland at the moment.

After lunch we went into town to get a present for said baby, then we went round to visit her. Awwww. Absolutely gorgeous of course. But I'm so glad I'm not starting over with the sleepless nights again.

So, I feel as though we got more done, and, more importantly, I had Francesca's cooperation. Not that I'm counting my chickens but here's hoping...