Should be napping.

but I wake up feeling groggy, even though it's sunnah to do so after Dhuhr, maybe need to do regularly to adjust my body clock..
Just had a go at Biryani as she started to pull various papers off my desk, and then she started putting them back on the desk, girls, they’re so different!

I don’t know why, maybe because I’ve not been at my best with ear ache, but forgot to mention M read his first proper book to me (‘Up and Down’ Oxford Learning Tree), without me asking him to! That’s what I like about autonomous learning, it happens without the ‘I don’t want to… later… do I have to?…. I’m not doing it *humph*. I feel so sorry for him that about 60% of English does not follow the phonic rules, so words like ‘he’ are sounded out perfectly ‘h’ ‘e’ heh, and I have to tell him it’s actually ‘hee’, but his personality is such that he doesn’t get too disheartened and we went onto the Ugly Duckling (Ladybird)with great gusto.
Now for those learning in the UK, me getting excited about my boy starting to read when he’s practically 7 must seem a bit mad, but from experience with son no.1, Islam's age-guides for learning, as well as the Swedish school system not staring til 7, I did not really push the literacy stuff around the usual age 5. (Phew that was a drawn-out sentence..)
H is actually picking up on the phonics work M is doing, and he’s starting to segment and blend words. He liked the word ‘cucumber’ beginning with ‘c’


Some questions that have been asked recently by S that need research (may have noted before but still haven’t looked up anything about them):

How they discovered bread?
Cyclones?
Inflation (the money kind)?
How do they make windows and glass? (could do a ‘field’ trip, there are some special glass factories in Swede I think.
Japanese buildings (as regards withstanding earthquakes)
What’s a rifle (as opposed to a standard ‘gun’) ? hmmn?
Is chocolate (cocoa powder) denser than icing sugar (mm I enjoyed that cake that sparked this question, and maybe should do more research in this area!).
Also he’s interested in doing things with Balsa wood (aeroplanes maybe?)

Here’s some closer-up photos of the tomatoes, inspired by Zainab's blog:

And here’s the end-result of some rare time I had alone to tackle the kids room whilst the boys were out at Jummah prayer and Biryani was asleep. I maybe could have done a ‘before’ picture to show the contrast.but forgot, but probably will be back to it’s usual state in a a few days. Just had to document that there is a floor under there. I got motivated to do it as S had been sneezing a lot and I’m worried my lack of cleaning may be causing this.

Luckily the poor exposure of the photo masks how I have used the top bunk as a place to cast the toys. (Need shelves, now take it one step at a time, we do now have blind no. 2 installed)