Yep, we felt it ...

It woke 3 out of 4 of us (although Ben said he'd felt rocking in his sleep (before he'd heard us talking about the quake)). Remember hearing the rumbling in my sleep and then the shaking but thought or dreamt that it was Allie (the cat) jumping onto the bedside table not very steadily and shaking it rather violently as he tried to steady himself (yep, weird, I know). At that point P and I woke up with a "what the h..l" and immediately realised it was an earth tremor of some description. Katie came in, we chatted about it, then we went back to bed as none of the neighbours seemed to come out for a 1 a.m. get together! Guess folks around here are used to rumbles with all the RAF activity in the area. Did make me go cold for a bit - not something that happens every day is it?

Good opportunity to go over earthquakes and why they happen. Thought it would also be a good opportunity to read a few news reviews to get an idea of how different papers/sites relate their stories. I think by the time we'd heard all about it over and over on the radio, read about it on the BBC site and local paper, they'd had their fill. They didn't need to recap on earthquakes - although we looked at it on the BBC site - they knew exactly why and how these rumbles happen.

Made sandstone figures this afternoon as an experiment for our forthcoming Spring Festivals group session that I'm running. Worked really well and far better than clay, which always seems to break, but pretty messy as it is wall plaster filler, water and sand mixed together!

Lovely weather today - lots of bouncing on the trampoline and playing with one of the visiting cats in the garden who seems to think she's a dog when chasing after thrown sticks! We also did some "drawing to scale" to finish off our map reading lessons. Found the lesson plan in a Alpha Mathematics 2 book (like the one's I'd used in the juniors during the 70s!). Must say, although this book is out of date (it uses 1/2 pence in the money section), it's certainly a very comprehensive maths book and I was impressed that Ben was able to do the whole lesson with very little input from me.

Read about dragons from different parts of the world for our myths and legends project and also had a go at drawing a dragon head using this site.