JA Class

Honestly, she's not loving digital ballet. Getting her to engage with Zoom classes is proving increasingly hard. Getting her to be enthused about pre-recorded classes is increasingly hard. She wasn't entirely enthusiastic about doing her first online Royal JA class today. But she did do it, and did sort of concede that it was better than no Royal class. Royal is one of the things that strikes me about lockdown/COVID for Katie. She worked so incredibly hard to earn her place and now half of her first year has been taken from her. We know they won't go back until at least September. She worked so hard to earn her summer school place at White Lodge, and its looking increasingly unlikely she'll have that opportunity this year. When I saw her in her JA uniform today, clearly wanting to be able to dance her heart out but not being able to, I had to leave the room with a few tears in my eyes. 

That said, the absolute solidness and routine of her daily conditioning is quite fundamental to Katie's day. I dont have remind her to stretch, she's done it before she even comes and wakes me these days. It's how she starts the day and I think she really benefits from that familiarity. 

She's enjoying her school "Inside Out" project that they're doing at the moment. They had to design an island inside their mind - she chose Music Island and yesterday did the drawing/script for a video she's going to make. Today, she started preparing images to go on the backdrop of her video she's going to make. 

She did a workshop with the Benedetti Foundation after an early lunch. She was a little resistant to it at first - it was billed as a "silly songs class" and she started it sat on her bed. Before long, she was stood in the middle of her room, throwing herself at it completely and giggling away. She did her ballet class before we got ourselves out for the daily walk. 

B rang not long after we'd gone - they enjoy weekly games time together. Katie was very bubbly and was really keen to show B that she's working hard to try impress her new piano teacher next week before skipipng off to play their daft games.