We have a great Usborne grammar book. I got so ticked off at the abysmal standard of English displayed in DD's English textbooks (and the spelling mistake from which a spelling test was taken!) that I sent her in wit it to school one day. The teacher had her bring it to school every day till the end of term!! There may yet be hope for the Singapore school system if they adopt that one book. Or at least teach the teachers from it, instead of locally created materials! Blech!

I had the kids do creative writing on pirates the other day because they were obsessively playing pirates after playing a computer game based on pirates. Also brought up a website aout Sir Francis Drake, Blackbeard and some others that they read while I was 'busy' elsewhere! I'm having DD help me make some Chinese flashcards of common words in themes (eg. animals or colours) for DS to practice from. Once we've established that he can read the words he can practice copying them!

Also dug some time telling flashcards back out of suitcase and threw them at the kids earlier so they could invent a fun game while I got on with cooking dinner.

Really, anything educational has been largely accidental round here recently, but it still happens, so I refuse to fuss over it. I'm limited anyway since I can't print anything, have a few square centimetres of desk, no books, very few toys and no family games except Boggle - DD has taken to practising her Boggle skills on her own when she can't get anyone to play with her! The problem at the moment is that I can easily manage to beat DD, DS and DH playing as a combined team against me on my own, so nobody really likes to play with me unless they can be in a team with me and that's even less fair. I have to think of some kind of handicap that isn't insulting to DH! Or maybe I can just cheat... subtly!

and then there's the whole mind-broadening experience of their move across the world, crossing continents and cultures in a single flight!! Details, details...

researching my kidneys at the moment, instead of sleeping or clearing the clutter off my bed... I blame Vonnie!

Kerri.