typing, Minecraft and exercise

This morning after breakfast Little Clanger and Small Clanger each spent some (ok, a lot of!) time playing on Minecraft Classic. We have been exploring the demo version of the game and the classic version as a precursor to buying some licenses - an opportunity has come up for a discount for a large group of home edders buying together. They are both enjoying playing it, so we think we will probably get them a license each, plus one for Daddy, and maybe one for my brother too.

Meanwhile, Tiny Clanger and I spent some time crafting. I bought a couple of bundles of hama beads off eBay and they arrived on Tuesday so we've been having some fun each day with them. Today she made a multicoloured heart and I stuck our robins and snowflakes that we've made onto the cards that we have in stock. We now have 6 Christmas cards ready for sending out to folk:

Merry Christmas!

The butcher came and delivered our order from earlier in the week. I'm very glad I ordered all the bits and pieces in - I now have all our meat for the month safely tucked away in the freezer, plus all the meat for the cats pseudo-prey meals ready to prepare this evening, and I only had to carry it from the front door! I think this will be the new way forwards.

My back and hips are not as painful today. I have found in the past that if I find the time to do gentle exercise (read, stretches) then they are not as bad as if I don't. Considering that stretches are muscular, there must be an interaction between my hip joints and the muscles that support them - when the muscles are stronger, the activity that makes my hips hurt doesn't have so much of an effect on them. They are still affected by having colds or the flu*, but the effect of spending all day on my feet or going for long walks is less. Which means I need to make this a priority in our evolving weekly routine. The sprogits have time to exercise each week, so it's only fair that I do too.

During lunch I spent a while exploring with the sprogits about why they had decided they didn't like Reading Eggs/Eggspress anymore. After explaining why I was asking (ie, that they both definitely liked it before and that they both agreed that nothing had changed on the games), they both outlined their reasons and we talked about them. Turns out, Small Clanger was upset because my version of java wasn't totally up to date and so it froze a couple of times while he was doing his lessons, and Little Clanger was miffed that she didn't get eggs for reading a book more than once (!!). She had also thought that the Writing Express part of the floating island was going to produce worksheets that could be printed out and she could then fill in by hand; and that she didn't like not being able to type.

So, I updated my Java on my computer, and Small has spent the afternoon playing on the computer, although admittedly not on Reading Eggs - he's made some pictures on Paint, and played on the cbeebies website. Currently he is watching some Alphablocks mini-episodes, and doing the exercises that acompany them. I've noticed that he is finding them a lot easier since doing the Reading Eggs lessons. He is still steadfastly insisting that he can't read, which I think is leftover from school. Yet he is spelling and reading simple words with great ease, so I think it's just a confidence thing.

I also opened up the BBC Bitesize Dance Mat Typing website for Little Clanger, which she is absolutely flying through. She keeps calling me over to look how far she has got, and telling me that it's "well easy". Unfortunately we can't print off any of the certificates that it offers as the printer is still out of service. But otherwise she is making great progress. I realise that she will need to go over them again a few (or many) more times. Not sure if she realises that though. One of the things we find with Little is that she seems to go one of two ways: either she gets very upset about not being able to grasp something first time, and then refuses to do it anymore because she "can't do it"; or she grasps it very well but then won't do any practice on it, professing that she now knows how to do it so doesn't need to. I am not really sure what to do about that... Anyway we have also agreed that I will try to find some worksheets that she can complete, as that is something that she would like to do.

So, now I'm going to do some Callanetics before I start making dinner. Bring on the achey thighs!

* for anyone who is interested, my hips originally went funny after having an out-of-proportion allergic response to some kind of infection, so when my immune system gets going fighting off a cold or the flu my joints hurt, especially my hips.