Hair trimmed

For the first time in over a year, Abigail's hair was trimmed. While Gung Gung took photos (to the amusement of the hairdresser) Abigail sat very still, mesmerised by the cartoon on the salon's portable DVD player.

Her brownish ends of hair were snipped off, and Priscilla instructed to add moisturiser to her hair as it was dry and brittle. The hairdresser James then did up Abigail's hair to show how it might be, to not hurt Abigail.

Reading groups: parent helper

Today Priscilla became a parent helper in KC. She was asked to help a group of children to identify a sight word from some written on cards, and then to write a sentence on the small A3 whiteboards using that word. Two other mothers helped with worksheets and reading from poster, 2 teachers aides were there as well as Miss Clarke.

Happily Abigail was in the first group (Lions) that Priscilla helped (probably 3 of the "best" readers). The others were Connor McMaster and Xavier. Xavier was very flamboyant and confident, getting ideas and writing quickly tho' spelling is not always correct but he fit all 3 sentences onto his whiteboard. (I have a woolly coat. Come to my woolly coat shop. Something something are scary.) He wants to draw as soon as he has finished his sentences.

Connor is slow, silent and almost only observing not really concentrating on writing but wanting to draw. His ideas come gradually. Abigail likes a lot of space on her page, and is at the bottom of the board when 2 of the 3 words have been presented. She is between the boys in speed of forming her ideas. She is involved with writing and doesn't want to draw.

Then the reading groups were rotated and now Priscilla had 6 of almost the "worst" readers. They managed to recognise the sight words but had trouble thinking of a sentence that contained that word. Once Priscilla suggested a sentence they started writing but all had problems making the letter shapes even when told what to spell. Luckily there were alphabets laminated onto the table tops that they could copy off, once they found which one it was! Gradually the children gained confidence to change Priscilla's sentence with words they wanted to use. (My cat is fat/black/skinny). Marcus didn't even want to write, altho the word was "car" which he smiled at (Big car/cat/fairy).

Then Miss Clarke rang her hand bell to signal the end of the writing. The children were told to stand behind their chairs ready for morning tea, and to thank the parents for helping. Priscilla hugged Abigail before departing and handing in her visitors' badge to Connie in the office. 45 minutes had elapsed.

Shapes

The kindergarten class has been learning about shapes. Abigail mentioned that a sphere is in "3D", and other shapes are too: cone, cylinder, cube. Priscilla tried to explain what "D" stands for, using examples of a line, rectangle, box. Every now and then Abigail will talk about 3D and spheres eg. "what is a star? a far away sun. Stars and suns are spheres."

Volcanoes

Lately Abigail has been asking interesting questions about earthquakes and volcanoes. She even had 2 nightmares about earthquakes and asked if Australia gets them. Priscilla had borrowed a library book on this subject showed Abigail the diagrams and photos. Abigail was interested in the tectonic plates, PP described them as being like jigsaw pieces for the world sphere. Then Chris suggested watching YouTube videos of volcanoes, firstly Mount St Helens which was quite spectacular. Both she and Pascale were eerily fascinated by the story of a photographer who was outrun by the as cloud but they found his camera and footage.

Abigail spent nearly an hour watching the various quality videos, fascinated by lava flows, billowing smoke, spitting lava fireworks of Mt St Helens, Etna and Kilauea. Then she agreed with Chris' suggestion to do a project on Volcanoes, to put the whole thing into a poster format. She started by drawing/interpreting a photo of the remnant cone of some volcano in Brazil using glitter glue for the lava spits.

Clique

Abigail mentioned that Noah from KC wanted to be part of the girls' group as they played in the playground at FJT, but Mia Otter said that he couldn't. Priscilla asked if Mia was the boss of the group? "Mia is the queen, I am the boss" said Abigail.

She also said that she tells people in the playground "no hat no play", and she and Mia used to play at being police, telling people off for doing the wrong things.

Mia and Paige, whenever they see each other, hug and sing "Mamma mia!". Abigail does not like this, and steers clear of those two whenever it happens.

Baking

After coming home from school today, Abigail and Pascale agreed to the suggestion of doing ome cooking ie. baking cookies / cakes with Priscilla. We made one batch of anzac biscuits, then as we had had a late snack Priscilla asked if they wanted to do more cooking or have dinner (it was 5pm dinner time) while the biscuits were baking. The girls shouted "More cooking!" and typically couldn't agree on what to cook. Abigail chose the banana muffin option, Pascale chose the lemon poppy seed muffin option.

Stupidly/Bravely the mother let each child work on their own muffin mix, simultaneously. For a while there was butter chopping and flour measuring and milk measuring and mixing happening all at once. During a time when her mother had to do some mixing for her, instead of her usual comment "I'm bored" Abigail remarked that she was very interested in what was happening.

Pascale finished mixing her muffins and was asked to put the anzac biscuits onto the cooling rack. She asked to sample one and also distributed biscuits to the people still mixing (Abi and Priscilla). Then she quickly sampled another 2 - filled her tummy as it was nearing 6pm.

After the muffins came out of the oven with their puffy tops, Abigail commented that they were "adorable - what does that mean?"

Class dynamics

Term 2 sees the smaller tables combined to make large tables of children working together. Abigail is on the same table as Mia Otter, Paige and the infamous Andrew.

Sport is now on Tuesdays (athletics), but for 3 weeks KC also have a rugby league clinic run with the Tigers club on Fridays. There is dancing on Thursdays. Sports uniform is to be worn on all these days, resulting in extra sports polo shirt and shorts to be bought. FJT school is tardy in giving parents notice of these occurences, with playground chat/rumour preceding any official notification. This week Abigail has had to wear sports uniform 4 days in a row after the Anzac public holiday on monday. Crazy.

Sports: Abigail learnt to throw the discuss in week 1, but was sad to learn she missed out on learning about high jump on the day she went to the doctor for an allergic eye condition. She liked dancing today, but didn't say what sort of dancing they did.

Rough and tumble play

On Tuesday night Priscilla attended an information evening held at the excellent childcare centre Blackfriars. The topic was children's friendships, emotions etc. An interesting observation was that exclusions to friendships are typical of this age group (3-5y) and that any criteria can be used eg. gender, clothing.. One of the mothers commented that her child grouped older rougher boys as "The Boys" and included younger gentler boys in her clique as "The Girls". Exclusions, inclusions are all questioned by the carers to make the kids think about whether it is fair to use these.

Also the carers mentioned that rough and tumble (R&T) play is essential at this stage of life. We have been concerned over the change in Abigail's behaviour towards a rougher robust play since starting kindergarten. Her initial weeks of bruised shins has not abated, but they are smaller and less frequent. She is learning the dynamics of how to participate in R&T play, how to keep from being hurt? Blackfriars commented that as long as all participants are smiling the adults job is to moderate and ensure no dangerous situations are created eg. types of holds, intensity of patting/tagging, removing any nearby obstructions ...

Abigail sometimes says things like: "we are running from X now (in our play)", "we are friends with Y now", "it is Z's turn to chase us". This is part of the R&T game. That explains the popularity of "What's the time Mr Wolf?" as we see children playing this every morning before the school assembly time.

Cutouts of love hearts

One of Abigail's favourite discoveries is cutting shapes out of folded piece of paper to make a snowflake. She sometimes just has one shape she cuts repeatedly, or experiments with different cuts on the one piece of paper. The paper is sometimes a circle, sometimes a rectangle. She has bee fascinated by some of Avril Burn's hand made cards where shapes are stuck over each other in a 3d effect.

Yesterday her class craft project came home: A4 paper with 4 snowflakes around a central one in crucifix formation. 2 of the circles had love hearts cut out of it, the central one had a butterfly cutout with paper love heart (cut-out) on top and a crunched up piece of red cellophane stuck onto that.

Abigail told Priscilla that some of the girls in her class were impressed by the loveheart cut outs and asked Abigail to make one for them. I think that she was happy to do so. However Abigail mentioned that one girl changed her mind once the snowflake was completed for her.

Swimming in the big pool

Since the start of Term 2, Abigail has been having her swim lesson in the olympic sized pool. It is a real step up for her, a challenge. The water is much colder and she cannot touch the bottom. The children rest on stands placed by the instructors, but the distance between them is further than the width of the old lesson pool. Abigail doesn't have an instructor following her each time she does a torpedo etc, instead she must make the distance between stands on her own. As she has just started to swim this way, she doesn't have the stamina to make it all the way. Today Priscilla observed that Abigail swims close to the lane ropes and uses them for reassurance/resting during her swimming. Not that she stops, rather it's a small rest and check for her direction of travel esp during back torpedoes. She is also learning to breathe while doing freestyle, hands resting on the instructor's shoulders. Takes about 2 seconds for each breath.

Her instructor Jonathan is a young man late teens-early 20s, pimply, and gentle. Unfortunately he has been gripped by the curse of fashion and has a brushover hairdo whereby the fringe comes over like a combover. How can one maintain one's style during swim class? This man makes a quick adjustment to his hair each time he emerges from under the water, rather like a toupee adjustment, to give his hair the required touseled (?) look. Quite funny to watch.

Piano lesson

We have had our digital piano since Christmas, but no real playing has ever happened except for some carols and scales by Priscilla. The auto-play function has filled our house with delicious music, countering the improvised sounds from the children. Yesterday Priscilla started to teach Abigail from "Teaching Little Fingers to Play" (1932). Oldie but still good. We leafed through the book and Abigail was interested in the inclusion of a carol that she knew "Good King Wenceslas". Also the duets and playing 2 notes in one hand.

Abigail learnt eagerly, using her first 3 fingers on both hands. She discovered the Cs and the names of the white notes. We talked about beats and different shapes of notes for different numbers of beats. She was a bit confused over the fingering numbers and the counting of the beats. Abigail was keen to keep going with the lessons in the book but Priscilla decided that the first 2 lessons in a day was enough.

Today in the morning Abigail played on the toy keyboard the notes and tunes she had learnt yesterday - all with the correct locations and fingering. Later she tried to teach Por Por the tunes and opened the music book and piano for practising. (Of course Pascale copied while playing her own stuff.)

G&T class

Abigail has been going to the gifted and talented group run by a teacher at FJT for a few weeks at the end of term 1. She was placed with a mixed aged group containing up to year 6 children, learning about the 6 thinking hats of de Bono (playing with the coloured hats). The teacher reported that everytime she appeared at the classroom door Abigail would start to cry. Abigail later told her parents that she didn't want to miss out on the crafts/play that her fellow kinder friends were doing each time Miss J approached. Also she thought the class with Miss J was hard and she wished another child would be chosen to play with Miss J instead of herself.

Miss Johnson revised her approach to Abigail in Term 2 and instead put her with a group containing only K-2 children. After the first lesson of term 2 Abigail appeared much happier, reporting that she had played a nice game with Miss J involving animals and moving fences around for the farmer. Later when Chris spoke with Miss J she admitted that she had put Abigail in at the deep end at first, but had reassessed her given her observations from Term 1.

Today as Abigail was being picked up late from the school playground, another late child remarked to his mother that "That girl is the only one from kindergarten in the Creative Thinkers' Club" (Miss Johnson's classes). Priscilla was surprised that no others have been marked yet, but the teachers did say that it would happen towards the end of the year. Glad that we had Abigail tested early on.

Re: fences game, Abigail reported that she was working with another girl and they didn't solve the problem at first. After Miss J told them the answer, they re-did the exercise (probably to prove that it worked).

Eye checkup

Last year Abigail had the 4 year old's eye test given by the government: she had normal vision. After we discovered that she could read independently Abigail has been reading intensely. A few times she said that things looked a bit blurry - warning bells indeed!

Today Abigail's vision was examined by an optometrist. She has slight astigmatism and slight short-sightedness (1 or 2 increments) -0.25. But the optometrist also said that up until age 7 Abigail's vision can change and maybe even become far-sighted. It was important for the environmental factors to be right to encourage her eyes to rest between sessions of reading, and to focus on long distance after say 20 minutes of close up work. Will we be able to get Abigail to do this when she is doing classwork? Follow up exam in 18 months' time.

Pascale enjoyed looking at all the optometrist equipment and sitting on the special chair. She played with the model of the eye and various lenses for a little bit.

Word puzzles

Last week Priscilla found an old board game in Por Por's storeroom: Upwords. She introduced this to Abigail as a crossword game and since then Abigail has been making mini cross words using the magnetic letters on the fridge. Today she spied the SMH crosswords and puzzles page that Priscilla had been working on, and was very interested in understanding each game and helping to spell some words on the magic word puzzle. Sudoku was beyond Priscilla's ability to do/explain but attempte the anagram and crosswords.

Nap

After an exciting extended weekend at Por Por's house during the school holidays, and a 2 hour movie in a cinema, Abigail returned home via the parental car.  She was in the car for about 10 minutes when she started snoring (note: need to get adenoids checked by ENT again, some apnoea even in seated position):  she slept right through the stop at Blackfriars Childcare to pick up Pascale and continued for another half an hour after the car arrived in front of the house where Pascale turned on the radio really loudly and also cried in protest at her mother leaving her in the car with her father and sister.  Abigail remained asleep as Pascale and the luggage were brought into the house. Finally Abigail awoke and being still tired was carried inside by her father.

Abigail was surprised to see Pascale in the house.  She wondered aloud: how did Pascale get home by herself?  Abigail expressed disbelief when told that she had slept through the childcare pickup episode.

Movie at a cinema

Today was the first time that Abigail went to the movies.  Her aunt Yee Ma took her and Owen to see "Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang ".  She was excited by the movie as her heart beat very quickly during some parts.  The screen size and volume of the soundtrack struck her as amazing.  She enjoyed the magic in the movie, telling about when Nanny struck the ground with her walking stick to produce sparkles.  The dancing pigs (animatronics) were amusing.  Owen (13 years old) fell asleep in this 'G' rated movie.

Holiday Art Workshop

Abigail enjoyed her first whole day (10-4) art class despite the unexpected absence of Amelie Aitkin her best friend from preschool last year. She did sewing (hand running stitch along the edge, pressed pedal of sewing machine while teacher guided fabric, stitched and stuffed a small owl) as well as drawing on the outside of the sketch book. Unfortunately the actual book was stitched in upside down by one of the adults. There was also a shoebox painted to be Mrs Owl's roost.

The next day, Amelie was there and Abigail happily helped her friend to get settled in to the place. By the end of the day the children had made: a "fossil" based on their own sketch and formed in clay mould which was then filled with plaster; a painting on unstretched canvas with a dinosaur outline; a paper painting of something abstract. The children were running around with exhaustion by 4pm.

Abigail's Dream

One recent morning, Abigail woke up and came out to the breakfast table where Pascale and Priscilla were already eating. She had an enthusiastic look on her face as she declared that she just had an amazing dream:

She was in a show / getting ready for a show (at FJT I think) with 6 boys (no one she could name). She was to wear pink, they were to wear blue. Suddenly the school building caught fire, flames shot up from the infants campus building, and spread to the primary campus across Jane St. The flames were huge. But the kindergarten children were still inside their classroom, and the teachers were somehow unable to bring them out to the playground. Abigail went inside and led the whole kinder year and teachers to safety.

Then the fire engines came. Somehow the firefighters couldn't put out the flames, and needed Abigail to help with the hoses to get it done.

Afterwards the whole of kindergarten came to Abigail's house in Lilyfield (a bit crowded but okay). Everyone slept in the living room except for Abigail and the six boys who slept in her bedroom. 2 boys and her were in her bed, the other boys were on the sofa. All very innocent intentions on her behalf.

Friends and Easter Eggs

For the last day of Term 1 Abigail wrapped some Easter eggs for her special friends at FJT school. She chose: Mia Otter, Paige, Ella, Mia Azzi (has invited Abigail to her birthday party during the holidays), Ben Southwell (KP), Connor McMaster, and the infamous Sabrina. When asked if she was sure she wanted to give to S, Abigail replied that Sabrina was now her friend, since she didn't have many friends. Has Abigail forgiven her for the rough rude behaviour? Accepted S for what she is? Keen to make a friend and have no-one NOT be her friend?

Connor McMaster is a favourite, sometimes in conversation she will say "Connor McMaster does this", "Friday is Connor McMaster's dinner day (going out)", "I'll make an award for Connor, his favourite colour is red". He wore a tree stuck to a hat for crazy hat day, and huge paper clovers stapled to his shirt for St Patrick's day.

Anyway to give out the eggs Priscilla brought them to the playground pickup, and Abigail gave them to her friends (PP wasn't sure who was whose mum, as we're supposed to be discreet about gifts/invitations to avoid hurting feelings). Connor and Ben had been ushered into the aftercare classroom when Abi got to their eggs, so we hovered outside the door waiting for them to emerge as Mrs Partington (KP) suggested. However Connie Fiorini the school secretary / receptionist took pity on us waiting there and went into the classroom, loudly asking for the boys to come to the door. Abigail gave them the eggs in front of everyone. Was Abigail's smile one of embarrassment or pleasure?

Sabrina received her egg with no reaction. Just took it from Pascale the egg assistant then went on her way.

Flying fox

Abigail was initially hesistant about getting on this contraption at Dean Reserve Enfield. The previous time she was sitting with her father. However once she tried it with an adult spotting her she gained in confidence. Soon Abigail was standing up on the flying fox as it zipped along the cable. Unfortunately close to the end of the day she was hit in the left cheek by the weight as one of her uncles dismounted - the platform was crowded with people. Just a reddening which had ice put onto it straightaway, and was checked out by Dr Mark for cheekbone and eye socket damage.