Lots going on this week - we celebrated Chinese New Year, with the children wearing the outfits kindly provided by Our Lady In Malaysia. Lots of Chinese food - Emma ate a plateful of dumplings and had to be hoisted upstairs to bed afterwards. Jess was also delighted with the contents of her red envelope, which she has put towards the Lego pirate ship that she is saving up for.

After the relative disruption of everyday swimming last week, it was nice to get back into something of a routine. Jess is still very keen to learn, and the first thing she tells people when she meets them is "I have school at home now!" which I think is a good sign. I've got into the habit of getting work prepared the evening before so that we're ready to hit the ground running when she asks me what we can learn today. Lots of maths was done early on in the week, in fact Jess covered in three days what I had planned for us to go over in two weeks. It all seems to have gone in though, as she was busy telling me how many 10s and 1s were in various numbers when she was looking at the prices for the snacks at school. It also means that she can write any number between 1 and 100 for you now. Previously there were some numbers where the place values would get muddled. She seems very happy with the Singapore maths, not least because she's able to work through most of it unassisted.

Education City is still a big hit - I've mentioned to her about changing her up to the next level but she says she wants to get all the gold stars for Reception level first. No big deal as I can't imagine it will take her much longer at the current rate, and I'm sure there's no harm in reinforcing some of the phonic blends. We're going to have to label the wireless mice though - very confusing when we pick up each others, especially if she's sat next to me while we're working.

Lots of reading going on - Magic Tree House, Little House books, Peter and Jane 11a and b, and, err, lots of other stuff that she just wanders off and reads. She still reads to me every bedtime, before I read to her, and I think that's something that we'll keep going for some time, as we both enjoy it. Can't believe we've nearly finished P&J - we started reading them over Thanksgiving in 2007, so it's been a little over a year.

Afternoons have been spent either making the most of the gorgeous weather at the park, or constructing a replica of Tutankhamun's mask. Hopefully we'll be able to finish that this week, it's looking very good so far.

Emma is LOVING having her big sister around, and the two of them seem to be up to mischief of one kind or another most of the time. Emma is starting to talk a lot more, though I think it's only really us that understand her, and not all of the time either. She's certainly very chatty, and seems to understand everything we say to her. Conversations are gradually becoming more of a two way affair.

A couple of people have asked whether we'll be sending Emma to nursery school, but I really don't see any need to. She's very sociable and outgoing (though mostly with older children) but would also be very distressed to be separated from us at the moment. I don't see any reason to force the issue when we are all more than happy at home together for now. I may look into her attending the village playgroup for one or two mornings a week after we move back to England, but only if I think she'll actually enjoy it, rather than sob for three hours until I go back to collect her.

This weekend has been a bit of a mishmash - Geoff is working on a big presentation so I've been fully occupied with the girls, sending them in to him with food from time to time. While Emma was dozing yesterday I took Jess to the park with her bike (minus pedals and stabilisers) so that she could practice balancing on it while riding down a slight hill. Still got a bit of a right hand lean to overcome but the ratio of controlled stops to crashes is definitely improving. At least now that she has a nice light bike, rather than the old one that seemed to be made out of imploded planet, the crashes are considerably less painful.

Today the two of us ventured out to the cinema to see Inkheart, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I think we shall be reading the book at bedtime, especially as Jess is desperate to know what happens next.



There was one incident that rather marred the whole week, and left Jess very upset. I won't go into details, but suffice to say it left me very, very angry. Fortunately Jess seems to have recovered now, and is showing a real maturity in dealing with it. More power to her elbow.