Flash cards

Orla has homework every night except Friday. She has a maths workbook, key words and a "wordless" reading book (the school follows Oxford Reading Tree). They are learning letters phonetically and have so far done a, t and s. Once we've done the official homework we go through a set of flash cards with Orla to see how many words she recognises. The first time she did it she got 17 right, then 20 and today she smashed her record with 32! She does have a very good memory.

Orla has an obsession with earthquakes at the moment. On our walks to and from school she asks me loads of questions - why does the Earth crack? Why do buildings fall down? Do we get earthquakes in this country? This evening we did some experiments using Mars Bars to explain the principles of plate tectonics. I think Orla's favourite bit was eating them afterwards! Then we watched some videos on YouTube, including the BBC's Volcano Live programme from last year about Iceland. Tomorrow I'm anticipating lots of questions about what happens when ash gets into jet engines.