An anotomy vibe.

Had a mixed day today.I have been under the weather and had spent two days in bed over the weekend with a horrendous migraine.I got up at nine this morning feeling terrible and pottered around. Milly woke at eleven( she was in bed by 10 last night so she was obviously in need of extra sleep) and things didn't really get off to a good start cos she was feeling under the weather too:-(

Any how we plodded on.I was very cranky and finding it really hard to give as much as I would normally.She is so sensitive and picks up on my moodiness as being angry and this then makes her unhappy.Didn't make me feel too good either,I do hate being in that frame of mind. At least she feels able to tell me how it affects her and when she pulled me up about it we had a chat and then a giggle and things were a little better in the late afternoon.

After Alan had gone to his Tai chi class we decided to have a game of Anatomix.It's a board game where you answer multiple choice anatomical questions to get pieces of a jigsaw. We hadn't played it for some time and on the few occasions we had played in the past Emily had always wanted to be a partner to someone so I was pleasantly surprised that she said she would play.I gave her the option of not having to answer questions but she said she would answer questions for her pieces,I did say that we could change the rules any time,if she felt flustered(she usually hates to play games where she is under any pressure to answer questions or with timers or anything like that)She answered all her questions and her sources of anatomical knowledge tickled me,one answer she remembered from a Miss Wizz story,one was from a programme we had seen on TV and another was from another story we had read ,the name of which escapes me at this moment!.On one of the multiple choice questions about what the back of our body is called, she said "oh that is easy because a sharks dorsal fin is on it's back". She also remembered quite a few answers from the previous times we have played.Needless to say she got all her pieces first and beat me.I didn't let her win although there were a few questionable calls as to where the needle pointed on the spinner;-)

The other thing I think worth mentioning was that she read all the questions herself with a little help for some of the medical terminology.She would say that she can't read ,so that may still be a lack of confidence. Knowing the patterns Emily has shown over the years in her development, from crawling,walking,cutting up food,basically any steps she has made,I would be more inclined to believe that it is just not easy enough for her yet,she just does not read as quickly as she would like to. That is probably why she still prefers to be read to or to listen to a tape or CD.Since we took her out of school we have never asked her to read, she has on occasion offered but generally we have read to her and for her when asked.She has had no "practice" at so many of the words she was reading tonight.What she has had is a great exposure to words by being read to "a lot" and listening to story tapes "a lot".Talking ,watching TV all ways in which words in context and in a way that interests her are abundant.I truly believe that when she feels ready to read a book she will just take off and "do" it.

When we had finished the game I reminded her of the website we had been on last night where we got to do virtual Knee surgery.Over the months since she has been off school there have been so many times I would mention doing something I knew would be of interest to her and she would say no.I have found if I leave a screen on the computer open or actually go on it myself while she is in the room with me,she will generaly show interest and get involved so I did that last night and we were on for ages.Tonight she was keen to go back on and she choose to read about dissecting a cows eyeball( I have to say I was quite glad that the video footage wouldn't play on here) and she checked out the pictures of hip surgery but didn't have time to do the operation as she wanted to watch a documentary on channel 4 she had seen advertised the night before,about animals in the womb.