It's that time of year again and I'm doing it all in one post this time round.

10yo (Year 5) next year

9yo has been finding his yr5-6 maths book generally easy but some parts are challenging enough that I am going to keep one year ahead and see how he goes. He's been pretty much on track with English, most of his challenge seems to be the tedium of writing full sentence answers and a continued reluctance to practise writing though his writing can be neat when he wants it to be. If he starts finding the 5-6 books too easy I'll bump up to yr7 to see how he goes and back down again if that's too hard.

As he's older he can do a bit more bookwork now and will be doing 2 pages of English, 2 pages of Science and 2 pages of Maths per day (or just 1 if he does the Yr6 books) for $5/week.  Once a week he can count doing quests in School of Dragons as science bookwork and the maths mission in Khan Academy as maths.

9yo displayed that he does have some organisational skills while we were playing Minecraft and he wandered off and said he had found some mines, then told me the coordinates so I could join him.  He had made a book and quill to use as a journal (and would be less likely to misplace seeing as it's in-game) in which he was writing down the coordinates of our bases and any mines he encountered (which would then be deleted once we'd finished exploring and digging them out).

7yo wrote me a poem:

7yo: I'm an acrobat Mummy! I was born to acro!

Recently we were at a nephew's 3rd birthday party.  Seeing as we were in the area we followed JJ's parents back to their place as his dad had said he had a straight razor belonging to his grandfather that JJ might be interested in (seeing as he's recently gotten into shaving with straight razors).

JJ showing 9yo how to examine razor's edges.  Or something.

JJ was intending to take the straight razor and clean it up and return it, but FIL said he could keep it and use it but he would be upset if JJ lost it.  The razor had lived inside a briefcase of JJ's great grandfather's stuff.

[following a discussion about vampires and zombies and what times they're active]

5yo: Mum pretend you're a zombie!
me: I'm too smart to be a zombie.
5yo: Stop blinding me with science!

[not much later]

7yo: I can tell the future! I predict Daddy will be home soon!
me: Will he be wet?
7yo: Maybe a little bit...unless there's an unexpected thunderstorm.
me: If you can tell the future then it shouldn't be unexpected!
7yo: I can't predict thunderstorms!
me: But you can tell the future!
7yo: ...now you're blinding me with science!
me: It's not science it's just logic.
 

9yo: Why is there a giant spiderweb there? It's really bugging me.  Or arachnidding.  Or something.

Head and torso retopologising in Blender 2.71

[overheard from the kitchen]

JJ (to 5yo): Don't squirt that.  Don't squirt that.  STOP GRINNING LIKE THAT YOU'RE GOING TO SQUIRT SOMETHING.

The mosaic thing got some good use while it was rainy, with 9yo and 7yo both copying patterns from the book and inventing their own:

7yo's English workbook:

I told 7yo and 5yo they would have to wait a couple of hours for a box of frozen raspberries to defrost.

5yo: How much is a couple?
me: Two.  Dua.  re.
7yo and 5yo: Doo-wop! Doo-wop! Doo-wop!
me: [laughing too hard to correct them]