First Things First

The firsts are Benedict attending Beaver camp on Saturday.  A whole six hours of running, climbing, fire building (under supervision, naturally!), orienteering, friendship making and eating.  Dave went along to monitor diabetic control and act as blog photographer!

Getting ready to play

Collecting wood for the fire

Toasted Treats

Eating the evidence!

Burning off the calories with a stint on the climbing wall

For tea the Beaver leader Tess had made beef and vegetable pie with cake for dessert.  Since Benedict is gluten intolerant aswell as diabetic, he ate the casserole mix and Dave took along an alternative sweet.  He benefited enormously from the day and came home very tired and happy.

Pip was also experiencing a "first" that day, not only was it the longest she had ever been apart from her daddy and big brother but she also refused to nap that day, ack!  Despite having been on the go since 7am, she was quite happy to help with household activities aswell as play time with mummy.  It was a rare treat for me too as so often I'm either caught up with "teaching" Benedict or playing catch up with the never ending chores.

Our other first has been an attempt at putting God first at the start of our day and throughout the day as it unfolds.  Yeah, I know it's a no brainer!  Sometimes spiritual common sense fails to prevail in this household, sorry Lord.  So today after breakfast and chores we headed off to Mass, both Benedict and Pip were really good at sitting still and reading/listening to the Mass.  Once home I prepped part of our lunch and put it in the Remoska to cook, then it was down to work for Benedict and I.  He completed three pages of cursive handwriting practise, two pages of sticker Maths and then using the cheery maths gnomes, looked at how many ways plus gnome could write out twelve.  We used standard math format aswell as pictorial representation to reinforce the learning.

After our lunch break Benedict wrote out plus gnomes evaluation in his Main Lesson Book, whizzed through his spelling sheet using Rummikub tiles as a concrete tool and lastly we shared the reading of the next chapter in " Five go down to the sea".  As a reward for all the hard work we stuck flowers on our picture of Our Lady and baby Jesus and both him and Pip  Hermie.

Pip is also learning too, her latest batch of words are as follows: off, car, cat, down, dink,hat,hair,chair,tractor,book and boots.  New words seem to be appearing nearly every day and her understanding of complex set of instructions is wonderful to see.  She certainly is a very loving and happy little girl.  Hard to believe that she will be two in a matter of months.  Now where did the time go?

All in all a peaceful and productive day.