We're back into a routine - phew! As much as I love pottering around the house and letting the children get on with their own lives of PC and playing, we all needed to get back into a happy mixture of work and play. It wasn't very much appreciated by Ben on Monday, who had a mini tantrum when faced with a page of sums to do, but he soon settled down and we've had no further outbursts.

Although I don't generally make resolutions, I really want to be a bit more patient with them. Sometimes I feel like I must be talking (or teaching) jibberish when they seem to pick up something one day and completely forget it the next, but I'm going to try really hard not to let it get to me and for me to get at them!!! I think I'm also going to try Dawniy's simple but brilliant idea of setting an alarm to signify time alone with one or other. Katie is quite happy to spend time by herself and although Ben seems content to do this too, I know he'd prefer to spend some quality time with just me or P sometime during the day. It will be nice to have time alone with Katie for share some of her indepth thoughts - she's pretty grown-up in the way she thinks and I love having discussions with her.

Both wrote fabulous stories yesterday using the RaW material as a guide. Their initial drafts were great, and then we sat down and talked about expanding them with the of more descriptive words, and in Ben's case, more background information so readers could get a better idea of what's happening. The RaW website is brilliant for helping out on this, so many examples, and we also used our trusy Children's Thesaurus by Usborne.

Today we started learning about maps which seemed to go down well. We read the Kingfisher Young Knowledge book first which, although rather simple, covered all aspects of maps, longitude/latitude, mapping oceans and stars. Katie and Ben went off to make maps of their bedrooms drawing them out on graph paper using one square to one footstep. We had to push aside a lot of floor clutter to get decent measurements - I think some serious room tidying is in order. Ben drew a fun treasure map for us to use around the home and Katie has started a nice detailed map of "Woollie Land".

P and Katie's birthdays are fast looming with a mini celebration on Saturday to celebrate both with the family. Katie couldn't decide what to do for her party this year. We finally came up with the idea of having a joint celebration in the Summer with Ben's birthday being in July. Fingers crossed the swimming pool will be up and running by then as that would make for a fabulous get together. I am so looking forward to Katie opening her main present from us this year. Since starting her passion for model horses, she has wanted a custom resin model for her collection and we've bought her one from America. I was stunned how quickly it arrived (compared to the rather poor delivery system from RM during the Christmas season). I just hope she's as thrilled with it as we are. I've also made her a little material booklet with pockets for her most treasured addresses and phone numbers (and letters) from her pals. I've typed them up on seperate pieces of card and slotted them into the pockets. I'm so pleased with it that I'm going to make one for myself and some extras to sell too. Looking for some new inspiration for crafts now Christmas has passed and perhaps this will give me a kick start.


The "pages" have different material, all on the blue theme as this is her favourite colour. One of the materials is a section from her old fleecy PJs!