To find this really depressing?

No clipboard or tick boxes Grandma2213 ? You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. How on earth is your DGD going to learn anything ? Fancy imagining that she could learn about language and numbers at a bowling alley and Pizza Hut of all places. You will be wanting to take her for a walk next to listen for birds. Back to school with her and the quicker the better so that she can learn all about those valuable subordinate clauses.

This last week in China there was a 3 day National holiday. In order to give people more time to visit family etc schools etc were closed for the whole week. To make up for the lost 2 days of schooling DGS has to go to school on Saturday and Sunday this weekend followed by a full week.

tiggypiro Yes I am so ashamed. We spent several months of the summer watching the development of house martin babies in the nest in our eaves. There was a lot of poo on the window ledge below! I'm afraid to say she can recognise magpies, seagulls, blackbirds, starlings and of course robins. I can't imagine how she learned this useless knowledge.

We watched frogspawn turn into frogs in a washing up bowl (cunningly disguised as a pond) in my garden and she planted poppy seeds on the local green to remember the soldiers who died in World War 1 to keep us safe.

Today one of the books we got from the library was called 'Mermaid' by Cerrie Burnell. This is about a little boy called Luka who is taught to swim by Sylvia who has a wheelchair on land. 'Luka saw that her dreams were as wide and as vast as the sea, and that she was brave enough to go after them.' DGD has a friend in her class who has a wheelchair too.

DGD and all my DGC use complex sentences and subordinate clauses in their (very articulate) speech but I have been wicked and never told them. I am 'ticked off' (informal - phrasal verb!)

Role on the day when Grandparents have Ofsted inspections and then you will surely be marked down as 'inadequate' Grandma2213 and it will all be your own fault. Improvements need to be made.

GS2 who was three and a half found an exciting yellow caterpillar. He then treated us to a lecture about how it would soon turn into a pupa and sfter a couple of weeks hatch out as a butterfly and be able to fly! I do apologise, I realise he should have been sitting indoors studying grammar.

Come on girls - let them study 'grandma' (and 'grandpa') not 'grammar'. What goes around comes around and they will remember!

Very depressing - Elrel said it all earlier.

Thank goodness for GS1's teacher who took one look at him on Friday morning and told his mother to take him home again because he'd been all over the place all week. After a long weekend it looks as if he'll make it through to half term. More than six weeks is just too much for him at the moment.