Alexis' homework and cat

Alexis is in CM1 (year 5), and he's loving every minute of it. He has the head of the school as his teacher 3 days a week and Mme D once a week and it's working out great.  His teachers are motivators, and boy they get a lot of work done and even manage to do sport everyday (this was never the case in the south of France, nor in the Uk for that matter. 

 Alexis will get his school report at Christmas, one with averages out of 20, his first like this. The other day he got all of his tests out and calculated his average, bearing in mind his worst mark this year was an 17 in dictation.  So he's doing just great with a 19.68 of average overall. He's one happy chap and we're proud of him.

He gets lots of homework,  it seems that he has more than his brother who is in terminal S (last year of high school or sixth form), but Oliver is lazy.  At least once a week he has a good hour of homework, but most days in 20 to 30 minutes.

 It's a dream year, Alexis loves sport, he likes to work and he's very competitive. What else do they find time to fit into 4 days of school per week? Well lots of art and sculpture with a real sculptor from the village, and don't know about you, but I just love the cat he brought home.

Soon as you enter our house, it's the first thing that greets you.
I yes I nearly forgot, Alexis' class are learning to play the harmonica and the recorder, too, hats off to Mr B and Mme D, they are just amazing.

Procrastinating less

our problem, wires, concrete and grey

We kind of finished our kitchen in the spring, but were left with a problem of flooring. Mr H had tiled the kitchen in the 70's and only tiled up until his cupboards and under the these there was (is) some concrete screed. Now I don't let the tiles, but we'll have to put up with them for now, besides we don't know if we want some cork flooring in the kitchen or something else.

I had originally wanted to hang some kitchen wall cabinets off the ground in the sitting room, like over on Door 16, then I thought about doing it in the kitchen, however this wasn't possible if we wanted to hide the horrible floor, so we opted for this option, Ikea kitchen cabinets placed on a wooden base. You can still see a little bit of the grey, but it's better, beside we couldn't place it better because none of the walls in this house are straight.

I really wanted to have a space downstairs to regroup the children's school books, for two reasons, firstly so they work downstairs, instead of pretending to work at their desks upstairs and secondly, because our children are lazy and if they forget a text book upstairs, the last thing they want to do, is climb over 40 steps to go and fetch it.

So five cupboards for five children, each with a colour different apart from the end two doors.

This area is working out so well. Alexis and Marie-Kate work happily at the kitchen table, Oliver likes the square table in the other room like Charlotte, and as for Gaby she still prefers the sofa but at least I can see what she's doing. For now we're using post-its to remind me and them what tests (or assignments) they have coming up, this is great for me as I know I have to allow time to check. For example Gaby, has a Latin test today, music tomorrow and Civic Education on Friday. Marie-Kate just a poem left to recite one more time, Alexis has finished everything and lets not even start Oliver's and Charlotte's list.

We bought everything Friday, and finished everything apart from the wooden top for 5pm, just giving us time to get showered and off to see Salomé at the Opera de Paris(Bastille).

What a night...more later

12 pages of art homework in 8 hours

Gabrielle is lazy, she always does her homework at the last minute, sometimes the morning it's due. Over the holiday's she had French homework and art. The French was finished the night before, however she only wrote it out neatly just before catching the school bus.

As for Art, she had to make a notebook on her favourite colour, which is blue.

She finished it this morning (well I did, she was to scared to bind the pages together).

She really worked hard and didn't finish till way after bedtime, but she did it all on her own, which won't be the case for everyone in her class, some parents will do anything to make sure their children have the best mark.

In Gaby's class there are 28 children and 8 of them are excellent pupils and very competitive too.

Gaby is a year or more younger than all but two of class (3 pupils including Gaby who skipped a class to go in to a higher grade) and she is the youngest for all, she's only 10...for another week