Scottish Number Monster

Up early to finish off my masterful plan for teaching numbers. Meet the Scottish Number Monster. He's very hungry and he likes to eat, you've guessed it, children who can't say their numbers. So, once we'd had some initial parroting of numbers - with the expected difficulties over three ("tree") and some unexpected difficulties with a New Zealand style pronunciation of seven ("siv'n") - each child had to stick the appropriate number of arms on the monster.

You will be delighted to know that all the children saved themselves and the monster instead had a traditional Scottish breakfast (though I suspect most of the kids thought I was fibbing about the sausages). You will also see that some of the pens at the bottom of the board are 'permanent markers' - which explains the state of the board.

With that surprisingly nerve-wracking experience out of the way, off home to recover (briefly) and then clean the house in anticipation of a busy friend-filled weekend. Happily the kids had no homework and were unusually keen to help - so I set them to scrubbing the stairs (which are still pretty grubby having previously had a river running down them). Katherine even cleaned the banister posts with a toothbrush, which I think is some sort of cruel and unusual punishment I remember seeing from army movies. Ah well, she seemed happy enough and they each earned a couple of Euro.

Meanwhile, I was interminably on the phone to the bank's customer obstruction department. Obviously that's not what they call it.