Emily and Phoebe

Friday, February 27, 2009

Pirate Phoebe


Self-portrait taken last weekend.

Today there was a party at school and she decided to go to dressed as a ninja, instead. At some point during the festivities she lost her mask, though, which I suspect must compromise her ninjaing activites somewhat...

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Her name was Lola...


Lola Luftnagle, to be precise. And if that means nothing to you, then you are probably not a girl tween and remain blissfully unaware of the phenomenon that is Hannah Montana.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Carnival

I'm afraid I've been a bit remiss on the blogging front, mainly due to having heaps of work to get through. This weekend should see things ease off a bit though, and tomorrow we'll take the girls out in their carnival costumes. (Photos to follow assuming we remember to take a camera with...)

Saturday, February 14, 2009

_ a t _ a _

Phoebe and I have taken to playing the occasional game of (Greek) hangman while waiting for Emily to get out of school. The reason is that her spelling is a bit haphazard and I'm hoping that this might be a way of helping her to make sense of it. The basic problem is that Greek has multiple ways of spelling the same sound, including five letters or letter combinations for the elongated "i" sound, two letters for "o" and two ways of spelling "f", for example. Greek words are also, as a rule, stuffed full of syllables, sometimes making English seem like baby-talk by comparison. So whereas we have the ever so simple "car", for example, young Greeks have to struggle with learning how to spell the somewhat more challenging aftokinito, which could theoretically (if you don't know grammar or etymology) be spelt in twenty different ways.

So anyway, that is the plan. It's early days yet and I can't claim that there has been any great progress so far.

On the other hand, I am delighted to report that she is able to spell "Batman" correctly (which may give some indication of where her priorities lie...)

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Roll Over Beethoven

Emily has learned another (third?) tune on the recorder, which seems to bear a passing resemblance to Ode to Joy. By an amazing coincidence, the word "joy" in Old English meant "horryd noyse".

Actually, that's a complete lie. Sometimes I can't beleive how mean I am. (Though you'd be feeling mean too if you had a recorder-wielding child creeping up behind you and subjecting you to a burst of strangulated Beethoven first thing in the morning...)

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Pencils

Emily has laid out all her pencils on the table and appears to be sharpening and (I am not imagining this) polishing them one by one. I raise an inquiring eyebrow.

"Pencil maintenance."

Oh, alright then.