School started again today. The girls had a good first day back, enjoyed getting back to their gym lesson, and came home really happy.

Robyn acually spent part of the morning at a Child Assessment Centre in Durban. We want to get an external professional opinion on her abilities. There are a couple of mismatches. She seems very bright to us and capable of pretty advanced thought for her age. At school her work varies between outstanding, painstaking and slapdash. Personally I think she's bored by some of the activities. She's never liked super-structured or rule-based activities. As a toddler she used to embellish colouring books with pictures within pictures. Then again, she seems to have an aversion to reading, so I have no delusions of intellectual grandeur! Not that they really teach much reading yet, but based on her early development I expected her to pick it up easily on her own. On a less tangible or easy-to-describe level, she seems to march to a different drum to other kids. I watch her in small groups when friends come to play, and its like she inhabits a different world.

Overall I am pleased with her school, only her teacher is perhaps slightly old-school. She loves the kids to bits, and the local school praises to the heavens the level of school-readiness of her kids, but she "doesn't believe in children being bored". (This when I tactfully suggested it as a possible reason for Robyn's lack of consistency in class - that she might battle with some activities because they don't capture her interest sufficiently. Then again, maybe she's just short of sleep and has periodic bad days as a result. Sometimes she can't get to sleep for all the thoughts and plans going around in her head.)

SO, to cut a long story medium-sized, she's having an IQ test (that was today) and a psychological development assessment (scheduled for next week). She seemed to enjoy today's test - among other things she had to complete a 'very tricky shape puzzle', and she had to draw a picture of someone of her own choice. And she chose her godfather for this honour. I'm glad she's enjoying the process. She's been to a couple of school evaluations this year - so it just seemed to her to be in the same vein - naturally it's not presented as a test but rather as an activity. I'm not sure how reliable these sorts of tests are, but I'm glad she's not old enough to understand the entire process.