"A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education."

We've moved ... come and follow us here

2009-01-11T18:31:00.003Z

http://elliestreasures.blogspot.com/

On my 312th blog entry, I wish you all ...

2008-12-31T16:20:00.002Z

From tonight, I'll be starting a fresh new blog under the name of Ellie's Treasures. I hope you'll be able to join me over there to continue to read about our family life, home education and my hopeful new craft business of the same name.

Have a very happy and healthy 2009.

http://elliestreasures.blogspot.com

My new blog is coming together ...

2008-12-30T21:49:00.003Z

and I'm hoping to get it up and running from New Year's Eve! It's called Ellie's Treasures and you may reach it through this link for a preview peak!

More Poppy and Meg piccies

2008-12-30T20:28:00.002Z

Meg is the lighter colour one, with Poppy behind.

The pair have quite different personalities. Meg is very inquisitive and roams around checking everything out. She's also very clean - stopping for a wash on a regular basis. This pic is of Poppy who always hides inside Katie's clothes, around her neck or in her hair! She's has a slightly smaller frame than Meg and is equally as cute.

Meg, nose to nose with Pepper who would just love to get his paws (and jaws) on her and Poppy! Allie didn't even want to say hello to them - he just didn't care at all!

A merry Christmas day

2008-12-26T21:44:00.003Z

Had a good time. We managed to put off the big "pressie opening" first thing until after our cooked breakfast. Pressie opening started around 9.30 a.m. - I don't think Ben could wait any longer (he was climbing the walls)!

From the lovely happy smiles and surprised expressions, I think Katie and Ben (and hubby too)were very pleased with their goodies. Katie made an adorable felt snowman for Ben and Ben made a variety of paintbrushes using twigs and things from the garden (feathers, straw, etc., etc.) for Katie. I got a fabulously cosy fleece/hand knitted coat/cardi - very hippyish and very me so I'm very pleased (OK so I chose it, but I did put it away for P to wrap for me so it was still a Christmas day surprise).

This squidgy "stress" ball is hard to put down - changes colour as you squeeze it through all the holes.

Katie's main present from us was a couple of rats which she'd been after since the summer. We'd found the cage on Freecycle and then sanded it all down and carefully re-sprayed it ready for Christmas. With a bundle of toys/houses and other such things all placed inside the cage Christmas Eve morning, we headed out to choose a couple of rats. Pets at Home only had one male, one female and three very young Dumbo rats available which was a bit disappointing. She didn't want to split the Dumbo rats and couldn't buy just one of the others (they only house them in pairs so what happens to the odd ones left over?). Luckily there were a couple of female year old rats up for adoption the exact colourings that Katie had hoped for, so we bought them. She (well us all) are over-the-moon - they are so adorable. They had been named Poppy and Meg by the lady in the shop and I think Katie will keep those names, they seem to suit them. Poppy is very forthcoming and was happy to be picked up after her 24 hour settling in time. Meg was much quieter (and abit nippy too), but this afternoon she let Katie, Ben and my sister (who was visiting) have a hold and a play, so hopefully her shyness has gone for good.

Poppy

Yesterday lunchtime we went for a super Christmas meal at my s-i-l and b-i-l with b-i-l doing a professional job of the cooking. We had the full works. Huge slices of turkey, mash and roast potatoes, veggies, roasted carrots and parsnips, pureed parsnips (which were delicious), brussels, leeks in cream, stuffing, gravy and cranberry and port sauce on the side. A very moorish Christmas pud for dessert (not usually a lover but this was by far the best I'd every had) with rum sauce. Champagne and wine (although in tiny quantities for me as I'd picked the short straw (for once) when it came to driving home). Big pat on the back for J - THE Christmas Day cook who used parsnips and leeks from his own garden - you can do it again next year!!

P enjoyed his freedom to drink, but didn't enjoy me having a giggle at him. He is so different when he's had a few. He'll join in a conversation and then complete forget what he, and other, had said just a few moments before, or he'll misunderstand something and go off at a tangent. Katie and I stuffed his boots with Christmas cracker hats and he didn't even notice how uncomfortable they were! Needless to say he slept well - and snored for England!

We all had a lovely time. I got these very pretty mini fairies from P's parents. I'd first seen them on this website about 2 or 3 years ago but each Christmas I'd leave it too late for buy one. Now I've decided I'll add to my small collection every year. The photos are dark and so don't show up the lovely colours (but you can see their beauty on the website, although I think Orla is no more!), but they are truly lovely collectors pieces.

"Baird" - Autumn Fairy

"Mistle" - Winter Berry Fairy

"Orla" - Jewel Fairy

My sister and her family visited today for a large buffet lunch (so large we couldn't even finish off the food at supper time). Lovely to see them all. Katie enjoyed showing off her rats, and Ben loved have a long play with his two young cousins.

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas Day.

From us all to you all ..

2008-12-24T21:16:00.004Z

A VERY MERRY

FESTIVE SEASON

A wonder through Winter Wonderland

2008-12-24T20:51:00.004Z

on Christmas Eve Eve (as my sis and I used to call it).

The photos don't do it justice. The trees, flower beds, statues and pathways were amass with white lights and the fountains were multicoloured. They were so white and bright we all felt very chilly by the time we came out! It was quite magical, and a lovely start to the Christmas festivities.

Sandringham

2008-12-22T22:08:00.003Z

Spent some time at Sandringham park today. Tried to get a peak at the house to see if the flag was flying, but the walls and trees were in the way. We were told that the Queen and Prince P. were in deed at home and had greeted the public that very morning (probably on their way to church). Felt kind of strange being just a stone's throw from them!

Katie and I had a horse and carriage ride with Katie sitting next to the driver for a chat about horses and horse driving etc. He wouldn't let her have a go at driving but at least she could sit with him and get an idea of how it all happens.

Picked up some lovely meats, cheeses and olives from the farmers' market there, then had a nice stroll in the woods with Ben and Katie having a scramble over various log piles etc. A lovely day out in all.

Acts of kindness

2008-12-21T22:05:00.005Z

I was reading a post about an act of kindess on Harmony Art's blog recently and thought how lovely some people can be to do a random kind thing like hand over a free cup of coffee from one of these rather posh outlets. Anyway, yesterday we experienced a random act of kindess too. It seems at the moment one thing is getting broken after another. The flush mechanism on our toilet decided to bust a couple of evenings ago. P and I poked around, proded and scratched out heads, we couldn't work out what bit had disappeared (and where to) to stop the thing from actually flushing.

We headed off to a DIY store yesterday in order to try and find a similar flushing do-dah which P wasn't too confident about fitting. By chance we spotted a similar flush system on one of their toilet set ups and we had a bit of a peak inside the cistern! We quickly saw that the piece missing is a 1cm grey square that must have pinged off and fallen down the flush tube into the toilet. Typical! We were going to have to fork out £15 for a whole new do-dah just to replace this 1cm bit. I decided to mention our predicatment to the sales guy who promptly said he'd see if there were any spare 1cm grey bits that we could have (a kind act in itself). After much searching he couldn't find one, but did find a whole replacement cistern (which he said was £18), and told us he'd open it up and take the part out for us, letting us walk away with our much needed 1cm do-dah free of charge. There are lots of thoughtful people out there - he was one of them.

Enjoy! A bit rude, but very funny!

2008-12-21T22:05:00.004Z

Last night's village social

2008-12-20T19:15:00.003Z

Took the children along to this with some trepidation! Unfortunately P was in London so couldn't join us. As it turned out, the evening was a very big success. During the day, we used all the left over gingerbread dough to make more scrummy biscuits, icing them with royal icing, melted chocolate and that squeezy coloured icing you get in tubes. We took a plateful along with us to sit along a long table crammed with nibbles and bites. Stupidly, we'd all just had a proper evening meal, so didn't really fancy anything else to eat - did managed to drink a piping hot toddy of mulled wine (first of the season). Just love that stuff - warms you from inside and tastes so Christmassy.

This is the first community social evening the village has help (as far as I'm aware). I went along to the first of many community meetings recently, all set up to try and get the locals working together. All sounds good, but I can't really see it ending up like the fabulous and jolly community gatherings we witness on the Hugh Fearnley-whatshisname programmes on the telly! But, you never know.

Anyway, the do started at 6.30 and we arrived about 7ish. It was deadly quiet when we got into the hall as everyone was listening to three children singing a Christmas song to the audience - we felt a little uncomfortable bursting in on them! Things livened up a little after this as big "pub" games were put out like Connect 4 and Jenga, so we had a play on those and then started mingling a little. We knew one other couple and one lady from the village so I certainly needed to circulate and make more friends! The council playrangers were there too with crafts for the children to do; Ben did some of that. All the children had a good old bash at the Pinata precariously hung from a washing line! Everyone seemed to liven up after that - I also think the mulled wine helped alittle.

Katie won a £3 voucher to spend at the local sweet shop and we all won an out of date tin of biccies in the raffle! The tin is lovely though and will be used - it's Winnie-the-Pooh, who is one of my favourite children's characters.

The best bit of the evening though was when the lady (that I already knew), to be known now as "M", asked Katie how old she was and what school she goes to, showed much joy to hear she's HE as she'd taken her 7 year old out of school that very afternoon. How fantasic is that?! Not only have I recently met an HE family just outside the village, I now have another family in the village. It turns out she's HEd her other children in the past, up until secondary school, so she's a dab hand at it. The other funny thing is, her son and Ben met at the park in the summer and both were just a little too shy to hook together. Perhaps now Ben will finally make a much needed mate locally.

"M" is also into garden and is going to ask Katie to help her try and set up a new business selling plants. She's got a heap of veggie mags she's going to lend me too - yay.

All this, just from a couple of hours out socialising!

Gingerbread House recipe

2008-12-17T22:00:00.004Z

This tastes fab, so I'm sharing it. We've made two small houses and loads of extra biccies with this lot and I'll pop the link for a house template on when I get back to my normal PC.

450g runny honey
4 eggs
350g caster sugar
1 kg plain flour
zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
100g ground almonds
100g ground hazlenuts
8 tsp ground mixed spice
Pinch of salt
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Heat the runny honey gently. Beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy, add the honey and then combine the wet mixture with the remaining dry ingredients. Fold them gently with a wooden spoon and knead into a soft dough. Wrap in clingfilm and leave for 24 hours in the fridge (but it will keep in there for up to 4 weeks).

Gently knead to soften and then roll out onto a lightly floured surface until about 5mm thick. Use the template to cut out the different house sections. Place them on greaseproof paper rubbed with a trace of oil/margarine. Bake for about 10 mins at 180 deg. C/Gas 4, until golden brown. Leave to cool on a wire rack. It will cool to a crip biscuit (and taste very good).

We used royal icing to stick the house together. The children enjoyed using a piping bag, but got a bit frustrated when it took time for all the bits to stick together. We found doing it in small stages was best, otherwise walls may collapse and the roof slide! Giving the icing time to dry a little and actually harden before adding the roof made it alot easier, and we also found using small cocktail sticks cut to the right height and covered with foil to prop up the roof as it dried was a good idea.

Once that's all done and completely dry, use royal icing or similar to put snow on the roof and to stick on all the different sweets, hundreds and thousands or chocolate that you can find.

Apparently, the house will keep for months, but surely temptation will win and you'll eat it pretty quickly!

Katie's house is on the left, Ben's on the right.

I've joined Facebook

2008-12-17T21:15:00.002Z

Don't I have enough to do?! Good fun I must admit, but there's so much on there to play with it could take up the whole evening!

Boiler man came today for his (hopefully) final visit. I'm dreading the bill. We've had to replace about 4 or 5 things now but boy, was it worth it. I had this stupid smile on my face and was jumping for joy when he showed me the new pressure on our kitchen hot water tap. It only went down a little when he turned on the bathroom tap at the same time - result! There's a good chance I'll be able to enjoy baths again now, and the shower is positively power-shower in comparison.

Took an hour out from gingerbread house assembling this morning to watch a Chinook doing a long flying and shooting display over the marsh. We even remembered to take the binoculars this time so we had a fabulous close up view, even of the two army guys sitting at the back! Sparked a little learning on the speed of sound and light, as we'd see the smoke from the bullets long before we'd heard the firing.

Delivered cards and small gifts to our two neighbours and had nice long chin-wags with them. Much overdue. Also met a lady who's on a new community committee who came collecting goodies for a raffle at a do on Friday. I gave her a couple of Christmassy bits that I'd made last year when I had good intentions of starting my mini craft website/shop. She was pretty impressed and has asked that I try to do more and perhaps start up some kind of co-operative with other crafters, preserve makers, gardeners etc., in the village. She's trying to start a gardening business and was keen to hear that Katie may be interested in helping her. All sounding very positive.

I feel 2009 is going to be a positive year for us all.

Hansel and Gretel

2008-12-15T21:59:00.011Z

For our Christmas notebook this week we're looking at the fairtale of Hansel & Gretel. Found a lovely version to read to Katie and Ben on this website featuring Grimm's tales, but then found this Rik Mayall vid here - he read it 200% better than me, so much so that Ben wanted to watch it again!

We found some useful worksheets and pictures here; Ben chose to print out the ginger bread house with all it's fiddly bits and bobs so he could decorate it. I've asked the children to produce character boards for Hansel, Gretel, the witch and the house by the end of the week. Katie's made a start on Hansel and Gretel and so far they look very imaginative. We did this a year or so ago about fairies, and I was really pleased with the thought and effort put in to it.

Today we started making a gingerbread house using a recipe from the Daily Mail magazine that had huge amounts of ingredients - 1kg of flour, 450g honey, 350g sugar! Quite amazed to see there's no actual ginger in the recipe, just 8 teaspoons of mixed spice as well as almonds and hazelnuts. Sounds yum though. We've ended up with enough dough to make two houses. It's now sitting in the fridge waiting to be rolled and cut into shape tomorrow.

Bread and cake science!

2008-12-15T21:59:00.008Z

Have decided to take the easy option next year and use the Krampf science emails for the children's science work! This week's one was all about hygroscopics.

Ben baked a yummy cake to enable us to do the experiment! I'm quite impressed by Ben and Katie's abilities to make good food without any (or very little) assistance.

Anyway, we used a piece of fresh sliced bread and a piece of freshly baked and buttercreamed Victoria Sponge and put them out in the airy kitchen for a short while. Both were springy to the touch to start with but after 15 mins, the bread began to go alittle hard around the edges (whereas the cake remained edible). After a good hour or so, the bread was well and truly ready for the ducks outside, but the cake continued to be edible and became too irresitable to remain on its plate!

The cake, containing more sugar than a slice of bread, was absorbing moisture from the air resulting in a softer texture, even after an hour. The bread, with little sugar (or maybe even none), lost it's moisture through evaporation. The same thing happens with salt. I think we'll extend this little experiment a bit further by putting out small bowls of sugar and salt to watch them form clumps when left out to suck up moisture.

Frosty mornings and Christmas pictures

2008-12-14T20:30:00.003Z

We've been having the most beautiful frosty mornings this last week. P nearly slid the car into a lamp post the other morning and we've seen at least 3 cars or vans in the ditches near us.

We all had good fun listening to Christmas songs and putting up the decorations this afternoon. Love the warm, candlelit glow and the fairy lights of course.

The two cats took to the Christmas tree in different fashions. Allie snuggled for a short nap under it and Pepper had a field day throwing himself at the tree, scrambling up it, playing with the decorations (and his tail at one point) and have a good old chew of the branches and fairy lights! To Pepper, Christmas is the next best thing to a decent Whiskers meal!

Positives for Saturday and Sunday

2008-12-14T20:16:00.002Z

I'm already behind with this aren't I!!?

Saturday

Katie was at her stable club Christmas pony day so it meant I had the day with Ben as P was in London taking a 4 hour exam, poor dear.

(1) Had one of those lovely educational/thought provoking conversations with Ben while driving home from the stables, all about space, planets, "little green men", and life out there in the big wide universe. P and I watched the film Contact a few days ago and I know Ben would really enjoy this film - that's how the conversation sparked off. He has very grown up ideas and opinions for a 9 year old.

(2) Ben had to help with the the damned rabbit hutch cover which had blown off again in the wind (how much string wrapped around it does it need?). Anyway, he was busy doing something or other but willing came to help me out, just like yesterday it was cold but also very wet this time, and he didn't grumble at all.

(3) Katie was in a hugely positive mood when she came out of her pony day. Very chatty about all the games and what have you that had gone on.

Saturday was a lovely day - very positive all round. We drove down to the in-laws in the evening to pick up P and stayed for a curry - the best positive all the day!!

Today - Sunday

(1) Put up all the decorations this afternoon. Stuck a Christmas music CD on and stuck in to all four boxes of goodies which we've accumulated over the years. Katie insisted that we all decorate the tree and house, not just her and Ben, to make it a family event. It was lovely

(2) Bath and PJs were done this evening without any of the usual hassles. Not sure why, but I'm not going to grumble!

(3) Went out this morning to get a few DIY bits and bobs for our bedroom (no, it's still not fully completed) and Ben (the usual suspect) didn't keep asking me to buy things for him (well, not as much as usual anyway) - so a sort of positive there.

Daily "positives"

2008-12-12T22:02:00.003Z

Have been feeling a little fed up of late. Perhaps it's the weather (don't we British always blame things on the weather?), perhaps it's the fact there seems to be so many outstanding things in our lives at the moment that we all want to get done and dusted, I don't know, but it feels like the bickering between me and Katie is getting worse and it's pulling me down. I've been assured today that it's probably her age, and that other parents with daughters of similar age seem to be going through a similar problem. She's growing up, she has her own thoughts, wishes and grievances and I understand that. However, I do feel that she's still young and still needs to listen to the advice of those who love her. She needs to remember that people are to be respected, not just grunted at or ignored. Katie and I have always had a brilliant relationship, and still do most of the time. Other times she's a totally different person and we're thrown into finding the best way of coming through it without squashing her opinions and feelings but guiding her the best way we can.

Having had a particuarly bad day on Thursday, it was refreshing to read Dawniy's blog about thinking of three positives for each day. It would have been hard to find even one positive for Thursday, but today I started to pay attention to things Katie and Ben do and found quite a few happy, positive things that I could list. It helped that we had our HE group Christmas party so we were out the house and in company of good friends. Katie was over-the-moon to see her friend who now lives in Wales so she was certainly in a positive mood! So, my three positives for today are:

(1) Being at the party was a good plus for us today. Mixing with the other children and parents, chatting, eating and playing games are always positive things for me and for Katie and Ben.

(2) We got out of the house on time this morning. A huge positive because often we're late due to a sudden last minute toilet run, needing a book to read in the car, losing something "vital" for the journey, forgetting to put coats, gloves etc., in the car. All these things put me on edge and I hate to be late for anything, so leaving on time and intact was perfect.

(3) The blasted rabbit hutch cover had blown off again in the wind that's decided to pick up again here. Putting that back on the hutch, together with the under blanket (to keep Billy extra warm!) is a nightmare at the best of times but in the dark (like tonight), it's ten times worse. Katie offered to help me re-cover and tie it all down, in the cold and very breezy darkness. Very thoughtful.

The idea is to write out 3 positives each day. Can't guarantee I'll do that (not that good at blogging), but I will certainly try and find and acknowledge the positives each day, as they happen.

Making crystals and all about snow crystals

2008-12-12T21:15:00.004Z

So, we're progressing with our Christmas notebook looking this week at snow crystals using this fabulous website. Ben cut snowflakes out of paper and both have used the virtual snowflake maker to produce some very pretty and original designs.

We also made a couple of crystal stars which look beautiful, very sparkly, using a solution of Borax (by far the best substance, in my opinion, for producing excellent crystals every time).

Just chatting really

2008-12-06T19:38:00.004Z

Katie and Ben have started their Christmas notebook starting with polar bear facts and an interesting experiment on the insulating properties of blubber! Even Pepper took an interest in this one! We filled a bowl with water and ice cubes and used a thermometer at room temperature. In turn we wrapped a variety of materials, including a blob of playdough to represent the blubber, around the base of the thermometer before plunging it into the icy bowl of water to see which would be the best form of insulation for our artic furry friends. We tried cotton gauze, cotton wool, tin foil and bubble wrap as well as the playdough. Playdough came out tops - the mercury actually rose alittle before falling, but at a very slow rate compared to most of the others (which fell immediately) Equally as good was the bubble wrap (although I don't think polar bears would survive with this medium instead of their blubber). Good to know if you decide to take a dip in a freezing cold lake in mid-winter!!

We were looking forward to meeting more local(ish) families at a Christmas crafts get-together in our nearby(ish) town (from now on this group will be group 2) on Friday. Unfortunately, our new car continues to have its little problems (more on that in a mo) and so P was car less and needed our one for work. Katie so wanted to meet up with an MSN friend at the do, but hopefully we'll get to meet her sometime in the New Year.

So, "Bond". Still a fab car, but we bought it on the understanding that the garage would fix a rather annoying clunk that keeps happening on the front passenger side. At first they thought it was something loose under the bonnet, then they put in a new role bar (?), then new bushings and still the clunk wouldn't disappear. All along, because I'm just a hero, I kept saying it must be the shock absorber. Anyway, eventually P managed to drag the mechanic out for a run in the car and he immediately confirmed what I'd thought! We took the car in on Thursday morning for a new shock, and they rang at 4ish saying it was still on the ramp and wouldn't be ready until Friday sometime. That's why P needed our car for work. Anyway, they rang on Friday to say the mechanic was off sick and it wouldn't be fixed until the end of Monday earliest. A rather fuming P had a few small words to say about that! They rang again about half an hour later to say it was fixed and ready for picking up! Guess what, it still clunks just like before and from what we can see it doesn't look like any new parts have been fitted at all. All very strange ... the saga continues. Needless to say we're all getting rather p'd off with it all. Each time we take the car in it means leaving home at 7.30 a.m., having to take both cars in order to get home again, and returning again in the evening, therefore bringing two cars home again!

Gripe over!

Other things we are up to. Children are busy making presents for friends and family. I need to get card writing; they are piled up here next to the PC but I keep putting it off. I write notes every Christmas to everyone and that just take so long (as I can never really think of anything mega exciting to say!) Have taped a Morecambe & Wise 2 hour show this evening, so will write cards and watch that tomorrow afternoon! Have tried very hard (as I do every year) to take "the Christmas photo" to pop inside each card, but each time one or other of the children look silly/dreadful/half dead/eyes closed. I've given up! Will try and find a decent one taken some time during the year.

Thinking of starting afresh with a new blog next year. There's some brilliant blogger templates on the net that are very enticing. Katie is about to start a new blog so she can keep in with some of her young blogring pals and it's rekindled my interest! These and these look interesting. I got the fun snowglobe from the first link.

Another doom and gloom thing from last week. Boilerman turned up on Wednesday, 8.30 a.m. on the dot as arranged (wow) and spent the morning updating and fixing ailing boiler. This involved putting in new red drum thing, new tray to stop the top of the boiler from burning, new cut out valve in case of fire (the old one was manual and apparently against regulations) and new filter, put outside where it should have originally been put, rather than inside in a place you couldn't reach and upside down (so all the gunk wasn't being collected properly). During all this he discovered that the oil smell we are now getting since we'd filled the oil tank, was a leak which means a new something or other. He also promised to try and find the source of our poor water pressure - it seems the exchanger is completely limescaled (a limescale preventor had been fitted, but to the wrong pipe (sigh)) and therefore takes water forever to get hot and comes out at a very slow pace. He's coming again next week with these new bits. It's going to be costly ... not looking forward to getting the bill.

Nearly bagged ourselves another hen (or two!). P thought Gina had escaped a few days ago but we discovered a Gina lookalike roaming the roads. Didn't think any more of it until my neighbour popped by (just as I was having a right old go at Katie for not letting me show her how to do something on the PC - typical) saying I should try and entice the hen into my garden as it's right by our gate. I did have a try - it followed my grain trail nicely! Hens are so funny you know, they do have brains I'm sure, but they can take a while to twig something's happening. As this new hen arrived in the garden, the other two where nearby doing as they always do (eating) and didn't bat an eyelid! Within about 5 mins they'd decided something was up and started to really lay into the poor thing. Luckily for the new arrival, it managed to scarper under the gate to freedom. The noise my two were making for some time afterwards was truly amazing - like a couple of old ladies shocked at their lives being turned up-side-down! Anyway, as this one escaped I noticed another brown hen further down the lane. It turns out they belong, together with a beautiful white hen, to a family on the verge of moving out of their home. They apparently have no lock up for them or even a fence and the gate had been left wide open. Goodness knows how long they'll survive as they live on the busiest road in the village.

We were also offered a kitten today; it was very hard to say "no". Pepper is such a joy to watch. He's grown so much since July and has us in fits of laughter. He's started climbing the trees (only about half way up), and likes to wack me around the nose during the night if he's bored (not so good). Today, he sat inside the car as I gave it a much needed wash, trying very hard to catch the water as it ran down the windows. He was all over the place, up the seats, sliding along the dashboard, trying to climb up the back window - hilarious.

Off to watch a movie now and snuggle under a blanket by the fire. Will write cards tomorrow - yes, I will ... I will!

Victorian Christmas

2008-12-02T20:24:00.007Z

Met up with a large group of HE families at Peterborough Museum yesterday for a whole day Victorian Christmas educational session. We needed a full house to afford the event, so the day was opened up to families outside our HE group. It was lovely meeting others from Norfolk, St. Noets and Cambridge. A lot of us travelled a fair distance, but the day was really interesting and good fun so it was certainly worth it.

We started at 10 a.m. and met "Dr. Walker". A wealthy gentleman from Peterborough's past who politely showed us his decorated Victorian parlour. The children learnt about life in a wealthy household, the foods that would have adorned the table at Christmas, and the general goings on - how the household employed servants to care for them and their children and how Mrs. Walker was exhausted with all the Christmas preparations, buying new winter clothes for the children as well as entertaining and purchasing gifts. He was very sad to hear the kinds of presents some of our children were expecting; obviously not as rich as himself! Soup and fruit - not that exciting! After the discussion, the children set to making mini Christmas crackers or decorating and writing inside a copy of the first Christmas card.

Moving from wealthy onto poor, we met Mrs. Kilburn who lived in a tiny terrace house owned by the railways in Peterborough. Her husband had badly hurt his leg and she talked to the children with concern about him possibly losing not only leg, but his job and the house too. She needed to find 6 pennies to pay Dr. Walker for treating him - eventually, having gone through all her household chores the children thought she could do laundry for the wealthy families to raise the money. Being able to have a go at using the different kitchen bits and bobs was brilliant. Striking flint (which would have been used to spark light the range or parlour fire), sitting in the old tin bath, using the mangle (I remember my grandma having one of those), trying out the irons and beating the carpets all kept the children, and the adults, busy.

"Mrs Kilburn's" kitchen

Making sparks by striking flint

Bathtime!

After a short lunch time break with some of us having Christmas crackers to get into the festive mood, we moved on to the afternoon session beginning with a Magic Lantern show (see also this link). We saw some of the museum's collection of hand painted glass slides, some of which had a lever to change the picture, used with a projector to make up a short film. Victorian children thought this idea was magic, which is how it got it's name. As the old projector no longer worked, we watched a few lantern shows from a Powerpoint presentation - traditional nursery rhymes and pictures of pampered cats, dogs and frogs (all with rather posh names).

Hand painted Victorian slides

The group set about either making a cornucopia to hold sweets or chocolates, or start a Christmas tree cross stitch before taking part in some traditional parlour games. The classic drawing game, known today as "consequences" was popular during this time. Other games which the children all enjoyed included throwing playing cards into an upturned hat (and trying to get them in), a thinking game named "earth, air and water" and "find the ring"

Finally, we all sang "O Christmas Tree" around the museum decorated tree.

Some of the children went to a lot of effort to dress in traditional Victorian wear - even down to one chap smearing boot polish on his face!

It was a full day and I must admit I was gasping for a cuppa by the time we came out. I'd intended on doing some Christmas shopping for a couple of hours, but there was no way my tired brain could concentrate on that.

This Victorian Christmas link tells you lots about the traditions and Christmas inventions of the time.

More wooden goodies

2008-12-02T20:24:00.004Z

We've had the lovely slice of wood for a while now and it was crying out for a picture to be drawn on to it. I think Katie's tree suits it perfectly. The little whittled penguin was made by Ben. It's supposed to be a "Club Penguin" penguin; it certainly has some character!

Sculpture class has finished

2008-11-30T19:11:00.003Z

I promised some photos of our finished work:

Here's Ben's bowl. He cut the wood into a square and then drew a circle onto it before chiselling out the centre to form the bowl. He then used (with some help) the woodturner to smooth all the edges and the bowl to form a lovely piece of woodwork. Later he drew a pattern and his name and used the pyrograph to burn the pattern finishing off with water colour pencils to colour it. Ben also made a small wooden penguin, similar to Katie's fish using chisels and a whittling set to get the shape and texture, then the pyrograph to burn the features.

Katie added a base to a ready made box shape. She had to mark and saw the wood to fit the base before glueing in on. After some sanding to smooth edges, she used the pyrograph to burn different horse pictures onto the sides, finishing off with the water colour pencils to add some colour.

Here's my finished gargoyle. I had great fun doing this, and found working with clay very theraputic (plus the time flew by). Carving, pulling, shaping and altering the shape was brilliant - I have visions of becoming a plastic surgeon some time in the future!! I left adding the wings for a good two weeks as I thought it would be really difficult to get them right. However, an evening sitting in front of the "box" and the pair just came together without any hassle. The gargoyle is completely dry now and can't be fired as it hasn't been hollowed out enough inside. Have now started making a dragon for Katie, so more photos to follow.

Snow!

2008-11-23T22:06:00.003Z

I woke up at 6 this morning and my face was really cold. Laid in bed wondering when (and if) the boiler would kick in (the boiler is still not 100% - she'll be well on the mend beginning of December when our "man" starts to get her sorted). Fell asleep until 8.30 (the boiler did kick in) and peeped outside to see snow! Yeeeesss! When will I grow out of the excitement of snow?

Chucking snowballs at me!

I always have to tell people about the snow years ago when I was doing my Art O Level (resit). How exciting the evening had been hearing on the news that we were to get snow and constantly peeking out of my bedroom window wishing the white stuff would fall. I guess I eventually fell asleep and woke up to that strange white glow that always confirms that snow in on the ground. Not just a little covering, but heaps of it. Roads were blocked for days, and milk/bread was delivered to the ends of roads for people to collect. I remember having to walk (a fair way) to school to sit my exam with the heating now working properly (me and one other, plus the teacher were the only people in school that day for the 6 hour exam). Luckily I passed with a B (two previous attempts a D), no doubt they took sympathy on me!

Anyway, moving away from my memories. Snow had fallen on frozen ground, so there were some pretty patterns around, like on the Landrover window.

The string used to tie up Billy the rabbit's waterproof sheeting was completely frozen solid, as was the water trough for the chickens. All very pretty though - lots of snowball throwing and obligatory snowman complete with coal eyes and carrot nose!

We still have some snow left around the place, but it keeps throwing down rain now and again. Unfortunately melting snow on rooftops identified another leak in our conservatory. We had bowls and towels in three places around the house today - not good ah?

Update on the Cubs thing

2008-11-22T18:22:00.005Z

Just realised that I haven't updated on Ben going along to Cubs. We managed to go three times in total (half term was between these) but he's now decided to stop going (just after I'd purchased the uniform, naturally). Actually, I feel a little guilty in that perhaps, with a little more perseverance and persuasion from me he may have stuck it out a little more and perhaps grown to get used to it. Who knows.

He wanted me to stay each time, which was fine and actually I quite enjoyed being with the children.

One of the main problems I had, and noticed that Ben had too, was that the assistant leader had, how can I put it, a voice that was a problem to understand. No offence to him, he was a happy, loud and enthusiastic chap but his voice, perhaps the tone, loudness or whatever, made it difficult for me and Ben to understand. I don't think it was just us as I noticed other children asking him to repeat himself. He'd also occasionally bellow when a child misbehaved which made even me jump at times! He was very good at trying to make Ben welcome, but without communicating properly, well, communication can break down!

The main leader wasn't so bad, although she would at times talk down to the children, something I really cannot tolerate.

Ben, I've come to understand, likes to know exactly what's going to happen and hates to be put on the spot. To be told that "now we'll play a game" but without instructions as the other children all seemed to know the game or "pack together" again not explaining to Ben where to stand, what to do, what to say, etc., etc., made him really nervous, especially as it was assumed he'd know what to do after the first session. Once he'd get into the game etc., he'd be OK, but then they'd throw in "right, this game now" and he'd go into panic mode again. OK, so perhaps he'd get used to this and get to know all the games in the short time he'd be at Cubs before starting all over again at Scouts, but it reminded me of when I was a child and having similar feelings of not fitting in, no-one else new, etc., etc., and just wanting to disappear into the walls.

The final time we went he was nearly in tears. The boys were told to line up and were handed papers with two verses of the National Anthem. Now strangely we'd been listening to national anthems just the week before but hadn't really gone over the words to our one (we were more interested in the beautiful Welsh N/A). They all started singing (!) and after a couple of goes the leader announced that if anyone now knew the words they could form a new line opposite those that didn't to watch them try and sing. Now as they continued to sing more and more boys moved to the other line, most still unsure and mumbling but, I'd expect, they were wise to the fact that they weren't going to be different from the rest. Poor Ben, close to tears, didn't move line because he honestly hadn't learnt the second verse. I had been moved to the kitchen at this stage to make drinks, but Ben's scared face was enough for me to decide that was that (unless he asked to continue going of course). By the time I'd finished in the kitchen he was in the line by himself with everyone else watching him - how uncomfortable is that!?

I must admit he did have one good week when the boys used a pyrograph to decorate Halloween keyrings. Ben was really pleased with himself for not only learning this new skill but also learning to drill the keyring hole by himself. The panic attacks and loud exclamations from the leaders when children accidently burnt themselves was quite interesting. I've heard before that if you ask children to be careful because something could hurt them, they will psycholgically hurt themselves!

So, I'm probably softer than I used to be. I'm sure Ben would have got over his nervousness eventually and maybe had enjoyed himself. The other boys there were friendly enough, although loud at times which Ben can find a problem. Just seeing his face and hearing him say after each Monday night, "well that's over, do I still have to go next week" made me think, what's the point of making him suffer. If he really wanted to do this he'd put up with any difficulties and try and enjoy himself.

At the back of my mind I keep thinking he'll never drag himself away from my side, but I know deep down that's not the case. He managed to do a whole morning of tennis by himself with a whole load of other children he'd never met in the summer, and still he asks to have tennis lessons. He seems such a confident little guy when he's with his friends and freely talks to other adults, I just feel he needs to branch out a little but in what direction I'm not yet sure.

I got a refund for the uniform by the way!!

Quick and fun science

2008-11-18T19:49:00.004Z

Katie and Ben have worked really hard to finish their "our world" lapbooks, and they look brilliant - full of info. Have decided to take a couple of weeks break before December starts, then we'll do our Christmas Notebook plus all the other exciting things relating to the run up to 25th.

I'm going to paint our bedroom during the break (as well as find all the stuff needed for the Notebook) and so far the children have found things to busy themselves. Katie's been making some whittling and woodwork as well as making lots of new headcollars and tack for her model horses (she's just sold a bridle through one of her horse forums). Ben started a magazine called "The Monthly Spark", something he began with his cousin when we were watching fireworks. He's now started a "Monthly Spark" blog which is looking good. He's also been doing lots of lego as well as helping me work out various everyday maths problems associated with painting a room!

We've re-signed up to the Krampf Experiments weekly email - did this when we first started HEing, but it seemed to die out after a while. Anyway, this week was about triboluminescence - sparks caused by electrons jumping from a negative area to a positive area when, in this case, sticky tape it pulled very quickly from the tape roll. We also managed fabulous triboluminescence by sharply breaking sugar cubes in two using plyers - lovely blue/green mini flashes happen each time. The tape experiment was OK, but produced a dull yellow blob of light! Good fun - especially being shut in the understairs cupboard with two other bodies in complete darkness! Spooky!

Remembering those ...

2008-11-11T14:32:00.003Z

Why and when, etc. plus we did some lovely poppie pictures using paint and a variety of materials other than a paintbrush! Wrote some Haiku (much prefer this to other styles of poetry - can get a deep sense of understanding from a Haiku), discovered the 6 verses of the National Anthem (Queen lays the first wreath) and read Lt. Colonel John McCrae's moving "In Flanders' Fields" which can be heard here on You-Tube.

Flaming chemicals

2008-11-11T14:08:00.003Z

Dug out Katie and Ben's first year HE folder of work to hunt down the "firework colours" experiment we did in 2005. We had great fun back then changing the colour of flames to understand how fireworks produce such lovely colours, but we had a gas hob in our old home and now we have an electric hob, which obviously is a problem! Lighting a fire in the snug yesterday it came to my mind that we could use the fire for our experiment, but further reading told me that we needed a blue flame. Lightbulb moment - use the camping gas stove - perfect. We had great fun as this time we not only had kitchen substances to use (salt, boric acid and, if it had been in the cupboard, cream of tartar), but we also had Ben's chemistry set of goodies to use too. Not too sure where I found the original experiment, but I've got it all on my website here (keep scrolling down until you find "Firework Colours") and this site gives you some more info + a list of the colours produced from different chemicals.

Here's some piccies. Best of all was the magnesium which produced a very bright white.

orange from sodium

green from copper

blinding bright white from magnesium - love Ben's goggles!

We also managed lilac (potassium (cream of tartar would make lilac too)) and a sort of red (calcuim).

Here's "Bond"

2008-11-11T14:05:00.002Z

Photo makes "him" look pretty long doesn't it? The car is like a tardis inside; very family friendly and is lovely to drive compared to the older Renault (I guess technology has moved on). Named him "Bond" because they were playing "For your Eyes Only" on the radio when we test drove him!

Nowt much happening ... ill and all that

2008-11-07T20:20:00.002Z

Got my first proper cold in about 4 years - it hit me Monday and was more or less gone by Tuesday evening, but then came back big time Wednesday morning. Feeling heeps better today thankfully, although I thought last night I was going to start one of those awful to shift chesty coughs. Doesn't seem to be the case, touch wood.

So, children have amused themselves nicely this week as I have been having 2 hour afternoon naps (bliss) after a bit of school work. Plodding on nicely with this - Maths, English, Latin, topic work, cooking and a bit of science thrown in now and again etc., etc. Aiming to stop towards the end of November to concentrate and enjoy Advent. We're going to do a Christmas notebook; idea stolen from LaPaz Home Learning and then make some pressies and all that.

Ben's left the "contraptions" game alone now and has moved onto Sid Miers Railroads starting with the free mini download and has now moved onto the full version. Having lots of fun with it and actually it's a really well put together, educational game.

Katie's been madly finding Brownie, Guide, Cub and Scout badges to do to get some extra pocket money (£5 for 5 complete badges). I've changed the rules a little now, as she was getting through them way too quickly! Some of the badges take very little time to complete so I've added a bit of extra thought provoking activities to make her take a little longer on each project. Tonight she cooked a delicious veggie lasagne followed by a fresh fruit salad, although I still had to load the dishwasher afterwards! Once we've got some eggs she's going to make a cake of some sort and then I'll make her do the washing up!

This afternoon, as I was feeling better, I gave the Renault a quick wash on the outside ready for photos for ebay. She looks so lovely when she's clean (which isn't often living in the countryside) and I must admit I felt quite sad that she's given up and will probably go for scrap. We decided not to part x her as the journey to the car garage would be too harrowing and dangerous or us, she didn't even like be parked in her new spot on the drive way - several juddering halts before she was finally in her safe position in front of the under used Land Rover!

That's it for now I think. Time to watch the box and chill for a bit.

Doh, forgot the camera ... again!

2008-11-02T19:40:00.003Z

Had a great Hallowe'en party on Friday evening with HE and local children at the hall where Katie does her art. All the children and most of the adults dressed up and enjoyed nibbles, drinks, spooky games and a disco. P came along too and enjoyed himself - swinging Ben's mate around and around so much that I thought he would pass out through dizziness!

Played "wrap the mummy" (as in Egyptian Mummy) with teams of 4 children wrapping an adult up as neatly as possible in 3 mins. using cheap toilet rolls. We played this a few years ago at home during a Hallowe'en party and I remember saying "you use the bog roll to wrap around your partner" and a few of the children didn't know what bog roll was - so this time I was polite and said "toilet roll"! Great fun anyway, and loads of mess afterwards for snow ball fights and general sliding around on bits of tissue all over the floor.

Katie and Ben carved pumpkins and made pussy cat and pumpkin shaped biscuits for the evening (we sampled quite a few before we reached the venue). Unfortunately completely forgot the camera and haven't taken any pumpkin shots or whatever! Maybe next year I'll be more on the ball.

Car started to play up on the way down, just the occasional judder but by Friday evening it was misbehaving badly and actually quite scary to drive. We had headed off to the grandparents for grub and fireworks but decided to return and pick up our other car instead as the jumping and what have you was more-or-less stalling the car - we drove home slowely and will certainly not be taking it out again - it's time to put this baby to bed. An R reg which has done us proud for about 10 years - shall miss her.

Grub and fireworks was fun but extremely wet. We got home at 11 and sank into bed with a lovely lie in this morning before a day or car hunting! We set out with the idea of buying a smaller car mainly for P to use for all his work driving. We like the Focus and Golf and were looking mainly at these. We couldn't believe how good the prices were, even for 08 cars! We had found a big car showroom yesterday before grub and fireworks, which only allowed us to test drive (with the sales person in the car too - pretty tight squeeze as we had Katie and Ben in the back) on a 30 mile an hour small stretch of road which last about 5 mins tops! Today's car showroom, a little closer to home, let us drive 4 cars in total. Each was an absolute bliss to sample as we are so used to an older car with heavy pedals and gears - it was great fun. Each car seemed nicer than the previous and then we clocked a Picasso which wasn't anywhere on our list for even looking at! The price enticed us into the test drive seat and the "ooohs and arrrrs" just said it all really. The first Picasso was a 2ltr Petrol which would have been silly to buy really as our criteria was for a (small) 1.6 diesel, but upon our return the dealer had brought out a top of the range 1.6 diesel for us which was 6 months old and slightly cheaper still. It had dealer plates attached so we took it for a much longer spin - it was beautiful and we've placed our deposit down!

Coming home with full beams on our faces, I suddenly realised that all of our past cars have lasted us near on 10 years which'll mean Katie may be 21 and Ben 19 and me fast approaching 50 by the time (hopefully) this car will give up the ghost. Shock horror - I wonder what my children will be doing by then - we could even be ferrying around grandchildren!

Photos to follow - I promise.

Finally, a little plug for my friend's album which is available on itunes to purchase - "Out of the Ashes". Can't get the first two songs of the album out of my head - they are very catchy. Some are on the artist's MySpace so you can listen before you buy!

Just to say ...

2008-10-31T13:24:00.002Z

Ways to warm up ...

2008-10-28T22:44:00.002Z

... when the heating's not working (still no call from the boilerman - I'll give him one more day!).

1) wear plenty of layers to keep warm;
2) hoover the house, you'll soon be peeling off those layers;
3) get outside (which was actually warmer than being indoors strangely) and do some gardening. In our case, "trim" the hazelnut trees which haven't had a hair cut for several years it seems. Can now see the neighbours (is that a good thing?) and they're happy because they have more light pouring through their windows!
4) Clamber all over the branches littering the ground now they've all been chopped down. It's amazing how much a few branches suddenly looks once they are lying there ready for further chopping and storing (that'll take a month of Sundays);
5) make this chilli side dish* (as made and recommended by P this evening) and eat alongside a steaming bowl of chilli and rice or spag or pasta or whatever takes your fancy;
6) huddle round the fire and snuggle under fleecy throws preferrably with a cat (or two) on your lap for extra warmth;
7) retire to bed with hot water bottle and plenty of warm blankets, lots of reading material and tissues for your cold nose!

I see it's going to get colder as the week progresses - so perhaps these warming tips will help you out! Katie's friend in Wales was experiencing snow this morning and I see it's forecast for parts of Scotland tomorow where our other friends now live. Brrrr.

* Quick Pickled Chillies with Olive Oil and Garlic (2-4 people) (from Daily Mail mag)

1 garlic clove, 1 tbsp honey, sherry vinegar (about 75ml or to cover), 4 red and 4 green chillies, a little olive oil.

Smash the garlic and remove the skin. Put garlic in a small pan with the honey and half the vinegar. Cut tops off the chillies, slit them lengthways and scrape out the pale pith and the seeds (which you could keep to grow your own next year). Please take care with these little seeds, wash your hands straight after handling them and don't put fingers near your eyes - you'll regret it big time! Cut the chilli into strips. Bring the pan of honey and vinegar to a rolling boil, stirring. Put in the chillies and just cover with the rest of the vinegar. Reduce heat and simmer until the vinegar has just about evaporated and the liquor is shiny and sticky but still liquid, ensure the chillies are only slightly crunchy. Transfer to a small dish and add a little olive oil before serving.

Horse show and trip to Lincoln

2008-10-28T22:29:00.002Z

Katie's friend from Wales came to stay over on Saturday night (a chilly night - we discovered the heating had packed up and our heating guy still hasn't bothered to phone us back with an appointment to fix it - at least we have open fires) and we took them to Collingham near Newark on the Sunday for a model horse show. Left them there for the day while the rest of us went shopping in Lincoln. Had a really lovely time wandering round the shops, popping into small cafes for warming cuppas and doing some Christmas shopping. Managed to get P some everyday walking boots (exactly like my trusty ones that are now ageing but have lasted for years) at half price which was a bonus and update Ben's wardrobe on a budget at Primark. Also wandered round a huge British Home Stores checking out the mirrors and lighting for our soon to be redecorated bedroom and then droolling as we toured Raspberry Village - I just want everything in that shop, especially the chilli fairy lights - something I've always been after.

Katie and her friend seemed to have a good time at the show. They came away with plenty of certificates (lovingly hand made by the looks of it) and winnings from the raffle. Katie naturally spent all her money on more models for her shelves (although now she's run out of space and is having to pack some away).

Everyone was pretty exhausted by the time we reached home.

200 mile round trip day out

2008-10-28T21:44:00.003Z

P's off this week and, ever since Katie's horse riding beach day in the summer, he's be on and on about visiting Holkham Bay in North Norfolk. Headed off there yesterday in the cold autumn sun. It was mild at home but by the sea the wind chilled right through all the warm layers we were wearing. In the summer (as long as the sun shone of course) I can imagine Holkham Bay to be an absolutely brilliant day out. As the tide was out we walked about a 1/2 mile to reach the water's edge - it was worth it. The creeks, mini streams and pretty wind swept patterns in the sand, ending up with a clear unspoilt panoramic view of sea and long stretches of sand were great. Not many horse riders today, but those that were there seemed to be ignoring the cold and having a good time. In fact the place was pretty busy with families bracing themselves against the wind to enjoy a stroll on the beach. Hot cuppa and warm pizza picnic lunch afterwards went down a treat! Want to go back and explore further as there's more to Holkham than it's beach with craft shops, tea rooms and beautiful Holkham Hall to explore too. In the summer, it seems, the Household Cavalry use the beach to exercise all their horses - must be a fabulous site.

Lovely patterns caused by wind and tide.

Drifting sands like in the desert!

Only one without wellies and wearing an ageing pair of boots, P "had" to carry me over the creek in order to keep my feet dry!

... sorry got stuck into reading the Holkham Hall website and dreaming. Check out the Christmas and New Year's Eve packages - wow, what a way to spend the festive season.

So, after Holkham we thought we'd head off to Redwings Horse Sanctuary near Great Yarmouth. Katie visited a Redwings when she stayed with my parents in the summer and really enjoyed it. We didn't realise it would be another 78 miles from Holkham round to the Caldecott Centre, but we managed to see a couple of P's work haunts on the journey and get stuck in traffic for a while due to a car accident and then the sat nav decided to take us "round the houses" as we watched the time tick away. Anyway, we got there at 3.30ish (it closed at 5) and wandered round all the paddocks to see some of the horses. Unfortunately, due to the fact that it was feeding time, most of the horses could only be seen from a distance. A bundle of hay is far more interesting than visitors! Some did venture up to the fence for a quick fuss before returning to their evening meal. Nice place, but I don't think it was worth the 78 miles to be honest!

It was touching on darkness by the time we left and we stopped off for grub enroute to home. It was lovely to be home (always is after a day out), lighting the fire (thanks to the heating not working!) to warm us all up, although the only really warm place was bed with a hot water bottle!

Hard at work

2008-10-28T21:19:00.003Z

Family sculpture class last week saw Katie begin a keepsake box and Ben finishing his wooden bowl.

The teacher found Katie a ready glued pine cube for her to top and bottom. She often needed my help as sawing was hard work, but hey I'm not fab at woodwork and often felt totally inadequate when helping her out. The teacher is fun, friendly and helpful to a point but I do feel he has an awful lot of people to assist with new techniques and although he'll show you how to use various bits and bobs I often need to be shown more than once (or even twice) to get the hang of it! Hence Katie and I often quietly asked the help of one of the dads when using the fabulous saw thing pictured below that looked way to complicated to set up on my own! Anyway, Katie did really well, sawing and planing and sanding but she's left with a bottom about 1cm too long and I think I'm going to cheat and take it along to the local wood yard to ask them to use a super-dooper modern electric saw to slice it off in seconds! Ssh, no one will know!

Ben did more chiselling of this bowl while he waited for the woodturner and then, with the teacher's help, used the turner to smooth out all the edges and bowl itself. Looks great, and will look even more lovely once it's had a coat of oil.

I didn't get a chance to do any more to my clay sculpture, although I'd fiddled around with it alot at home beforehand. Hope to add wings and finish it this week as it is drying out quickly.

2008-10-19T22:08:00.005+01:00

It is cold here today, thanks to the wind. Have been having a waterbottle in bed these last couple of nights! During the day, cold or not, I am loving the autumn colours, clear skies and that sense of "something around the corner" - being the festivities of Halloween, Firework Night and Christmas. Have started Christmas shopping via the "net" already (a first for me) and looking forward to a shopping trip to Lincoln very soon. Have been trying hard to avoid all the Christmassy decorations and glitter in alot of the shops, we find they really do put a damper on the excitement of it all when they appear too early. I remember, about three years ago, browsing round a garden centre choc full of beautiful Christmas glitz at the beginning of September. It was fun at the time, but we suddenly realised that Christmas had started just a little too early and there was still a 4 month wait until the actual day!

P has retired to bed early this evening (and yesterday evening actually). He had a bit of a work get-together and "jolly" on Friday which ended in a late and boozy night so perhaps he's either suffering from that or is coming down with "something". During his "jolly" he and his team had to put on a performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller. P opted to be in the group to make costumes (chicken) while others watched and memorised the dance from the video! In the evening he went along to the team's fancy dress (Halloween) party wearing his cape, mad professor wig and skeleton gloves!

Finally decided on a colour scheme for our rather dreary, cold bedroom. We have a treasured quilt on the bed in shades of burgundy with gold needlework etc., and wanted something warm on the walls to compliment it. We already have a blind and muslin curtains (which we took with us from our first home in P'boro) which would pull the whole scheme together. Decided on a brown (yep, sounds boring and yuk, but actually it's a lovely warm, rust brown - that makes it sound worse doesn't it?!) So, when you read in the mags about cheaply slapping on some paint to change your room I don't expect the "cheap" to be 90 quid (honestly, for 4 cans of paint, gloss, rollers, sandpaper, light switch, lightbulbs (for B) and 2 small cans of spray paint (for K)). I had a couple of vouchers, £5 off a £30 spend or £10 off £50 spend which I hoped to use but to my embarrassment, not only had I shopped at the wrong DIY store, but the voucher wasn't valid until next weekend anyway!

Our two stop-motion HE group sessions that I ran went well. The first session we divided the children into groups and got them working on ideas, putting them down on paper to form a storyboard and then make props and backgrounds. In the second session, which was last Friday, the groups did their stop-motion filming. They all worked so well together and were really keen and dedicated to producing interesting films. My children, probably like a lot of HE children at home, especially in small families, often do projects on their own so to have everyone work in groups pooling their ideas, compromising and generally cooperating with others was one of my main aims of the sessions. Can't wait to see the finished results. Katie and Ben often make short films at home using the stop-motion method. This website, which I found to help those in the HE group, is easy to follow and covers everything from start to finish. For those that remember claymation Morph from the Tony Hart children's art programmes, we came across a Morph clay kit in Hawkins Bazaar. If only I'd seen it before the sessions - it would have gone down well!

Take a moment to check out my few Ebay sales (listed on the side bar). I need dosh! Cheers!

Finished fish

2008-10-18T21:21:00.005+01:00

Thought I'd put a piccie up of Katie's finished wooden fish that she very skillfully made during the first 2 weeks of a 10 week family sculpture class.

She initially wanted to try and chisle the fish out of a block of wood, but the teacher suggested she use a crank saw to "cut" around the fish shape before chiselling the edges and body of the fish to give it some texture. Using the crank saw was quite difficult for her to start with as the blade was very delicate and snapped at one point. However, she quickly she got the hang of following the pencil lines and turning the saw around the bends of the body. The chiselling took up a lot of her time in the second session as the fish has a small split along its length and she didn't want to split the wood any further. Once all this was done she drew on scales, eyes and mouth with a pencil and then used a wood engraver to burn the design onto the wood. For a first piece of woodwork we all think it's brilliant.

Ben is in the middle of making a bowl using a square of pine wood, chiselling out the circular centre. He got on much better this week with the chiselling. It's amazing how the confidence soon comes the more you practise. Next week he'll be using the wood turner (which looked rather scary) to smooth the bowl shape.

I'm making a Victorian gargoyle from clay (using clay-crank which is clay with sand mixed in, seems much sturdier to work with) and have finished the main body, feet, face and tail. I need to tweek the face abit - it looks like an angry hog vs a hippo at the moment but I think just squishing it smaller will make it look more appealing (one hopes). Then I need to add sizeable wings to the body which I think will be quite tricky. Hoping it will be fired in the next couple of weeks. I'm really enjoying working with clay, finding it quite theraputic.

Photos of Ben's bowl and my gargoyle to follow once they're finished.

PS have decided to continue with my gardening blog - the link's at the side ("the plot").

Art, Latin and other bits and bobs

2008-10-15T14:43:00.004+01:00

Children are busy somewhere (Ben's doing Lego and Katie's making a house for her horse riding dolls). We seem to be ticking along nicely at the moment with few arguments (over work anyway) and therefore lots of interesting things have been studied autonomously as well as planned.

We are still all working from the KS3 maths book as well as doing mental arthimetic each week. Still seems easy (probably too easy, as Katie and Ben keep asking more questions than they need to just to triple check they've got it!). Also got a KS3 English book out of the library, again for Ben and Katie to tackle and again amazed how it's just recapping on everything they've (or KS1/2) have learnt. Perhaps we should move on to harder things (gulp).

We designed and wrote, in Latin, either a birthday card or invitation, decorating the work with Roman style mosiacs etc. Then we moved on to reading about the Roman army. Ben printed out and made up this Roman soldier and Katie made the peg doll Centurion before writing about their clothing and weapons. I'm getting more and more impressed with Ben's writing (or typing in this case); very descriptive and informative. How he's come along since he's reached 9.

We emailed our drawings of apples to Sketch Tuesday, although I wasn't able to finish mine. I initially thought that apple drawing would be a doddle, but it took me a long time (between interruptions) to get it finished, all those different colours just on a red apple - it really makes you observe things more closely. For this week we are supposed to sketch our State bird. As England doesn't even have a national bird, we decided to draw birds that we have seen locally (although I don't recall seeing a Kingfisher!). With encouragement, Ben really observed the photo of the Kingfisher he was drawing, and I thought his, and Katie's lovely pheasant, were really very good (pretty pleased with my half finished Barn Owl too actually).

Thought I'd just throw in these up-to-date sketches of horses by Katie. She's drawing lots at the moment and her art is coming along beautifully.

While we drew we listened to some classical music. Using Classics for Kids we chose Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Handel's Water Music.

Not sure how and why it started, but Ben has been going on about the Isle of Man for some time so we finally got around to looking it up (pitifully I didn't know where it was, mainly because it wasn't on our map!). Through Wikipedia we learnt lots about the culture, currency, language and the triskelion and meaning behind the motto "It will stand wherever you throw it". Went on to read about the darling Manx cats and then on to the Bee Gees (who live there) and naturally that lead to You Tube and various Bee Gee greats!

Finally, pic of mini Pepper sandwiched between "big Al" and "medium sized cat" (as we feel Pepper calls them) aka Allie and visiting cat Kan. They are his playmates and are very tolerant of his pouncing on them whenever they come indoors.

and a close up.

He's venturing outside more and more now, darting back indoors whenever next door's dog begins to bark! His pastimes are chasing the chickens (they've stopped laying now, probably because of this), catching flies, bugs, moths and the occasional hardy butterfly, running after thrown sticks and cones, eating leftover food put out for the chickens and pouncing on people as they walk past (usually from behind a big towel that hangs on the radiator if indoors, or from behind the car or logs etc., if outside!).

Pumpkin Festival

2008-10-13T21:34:00.003+01:00

Needed to do a weekly food shop last Friday and hoped we wouldn't need to travel too far but Katie and Ben were itching to go to the car boot again, Ben wanted to spend his hard earned pocket money on some Lego and Katie was looking for a special artist brush, so we ended up in Spalding in the end! We discovered, by chance, that it was the Pumpkin Festival that day and evening too so, having done our various chores (although we weren't able to source the brush) we phoned P and suggested he head out our way for an evening Pumpkin festivities, carnival and fireworks. With an hourish to kill before the main events kicked off, we thought it a perfect opportunity to have a curry at the best ever Indian restaurant (Indian Cottage) around (sorry to offend any other curry lovers with favourite restaurants, but this was recommended to us some time ago and has put all other curry houses (that we've tried) well and truly to the back of the line-up). With filled tums we headed out into the dark to see the Pumpkin parade - a very long line up of families (many of whom) dressed up in their Halloween outfits caring their lit pumpkins following a band through the town centre of Spalding. Fireworks were great, as all fireworks are. A really lovely, spontaneous evening and to think we didn't even get cold sitting around in cardigans in October! This link tell you all about it and also has some pumpkin recipes and carving tips, perfect for the 31st Oct.

PS - have succumbed to putting up a list of my fav music on my blog (right at the bottom of the side bar). P was cringing at my selection of soppy tunes but most have strong memories for me and I'm sure I'll be adding to them as more "old" favourites are remembered.

Some interesting links

2008-10-07T14:27:00.005+01:00

Thought I'd pass these on:

Resources 4 home-education is jammed packed with links and ideas.

HE-Resources is another site with lots of interesting stuff.

Bowland Maths KS3 DVD-Rom came across this link in a recent TES and initally thought I wouldn't have much luck obtaining the free DVD-Rom of KS3 maths games as we aren't a school (in England only, sorry not Wales, N. Ireland or Scotland). Reading the FAQs I thought I'd try my luck (as non LEA schools were able to apply too). The link is for the order form and you can access more information from this page too. I put "0" in all sections asking about LA and then added that I was a home educator teaching a KS3 child etc,. etc., in the "special delivery instructions" section. Got our DVD-Rom this morning and Ben has been testing it out.

Potato Council register to get two varieties of seed potato early next year ready for planting to experience home grown spuds.

National Schools Film Week for free film viewings is next week. You probably have heard about this already. We're hoping to get tickets for the recent Narnia feel at our "local" cinema.

City Creator anything along these lines always goes down well with my two. Designing your own city etc. Good fun.

New experiences yesterday

2008-10-07T13:55:00.003+01:00

Had a good day yesterday. We teamed up with some new HE families that live sort of close to us (no one seems to live that close to us anymore - wonder why?) for a game of ten pin bowling in Kings Lynn. Nice to meet some new people and different set of children for Katie and Ben to get to know. Bowling was good fun as the adults played too (miserably in my case) with Katie and Ben on seperate teams both coming second (by 1 point in Ben's case and 2 points in Katie's!). Tootled off to visit Kings Lynn library afterwards which took far longer than expected due to two things. Firstly I had a "doh" moment and forgot that Kings Lynn is actually Norfolk not Lincolnshire so our library tickets didn't work. Secondly they had just installed a new automated system which unfortunately, just as we were having our "doh" moment, witnessed teams of other people suddenly needing assistance one way or the other in working the new system. The staff of three seemed to go into overdrive running back and forth sorting out problems with us probably being the most awkward needing three new library tickets! All very pleasantly dealt with though but I did feel for them.

So, new families on the HE front and then Ben went to watch Cubs in the evening. Those who have read past blog entries will realise that Ben gets a bit worked up over new situations. Rightly so, I do too, I like to know exactly what's going to happen, etc., etc. Anyway, he was really, really brave staying cheerful until just before going in. Seeing all the other children in their uniforms, knowing they they all know each other and then they start stare at you because you're the "new boy" would turn anyone to jelly! He asked to watch rather than join in. Boy was it noisy (he's not good with noise he's just good at making noise!) - running around and doing games. Then things changed and it started getting interesting and Ben began to loosen up and want to join in (from his chair of course!). They are working towards an aviation badge and went to visit the local airfield last week. This week they were given the NATO phonetic alphabet to learn in about 20 mins. Now, I hardly ever boast about my children in my blog (although perhaps I should a little more), but I was seriously impressed with my son. The other children were constantly checking to see what the letters all stood for but Ben managed to just look through the A-Z and remember it immediately. The leader came over and asked if he could do his first name and he reeled off first and last name without a bat of an eyelid! Proud moment! Proud because at the start of the evening the leader had come up to Ben and asked what school he went to, to which Ben answered that he was taught at home. The leader when into commiseration mode saying to me "is he stuck indoors with you all the time, not getting out and meeting others, is that why he won't join in?" or words very similar. I'm not a violent women, but I did have to resist forming a fist! "Nope, we meet other people and children all the time" (grrr you silly man) "but he gets a little nervous in new surroundings" (grrrr). "These boys have had fun running around at school together all day, you should join them Ben" he says (double grrrrr). Anyway, Ben enjoyed learning all this stuff and started chatting to another cub and seemed quite happy. Next they had to try and guess the airline symbols which he joined in too although the other leader asked "have you ever been abroad Ben?" in a very sympathetic way (or am I just getting paranoid now?!) - "yes, I've been to Portugal" he replied really confidently - that's my boy.

He wants to go back and hopefully he'll take part properly next week. I certainly think it'll do him the world of good having fun with the other boys and they seemed keen for him to join them which was nice.

kilo echo echo papa yankee oscar uniform papa oscar sierra tango echo delta

Check this out!

2008-10-01T19:55:00.005+01:00

Get a Voki now!

Just click the "play" to listen.

We've had lots of fun with these today. Picked up the website from an article in a recent copy of TES (Times Educational Supplement) in which the author suggests trying Voki to brighten up lessons because pupils may get tired of the sound of their teacher's voice!

"Autumn mists and mellow fruitfulness"

2008-09-30T19:57:00.005+01:00

Aren't these just lovely? P photographed them in the front garden just the other morning. It's turned pretty chilly here, although the sun still peaks through during the day.

We finely got around to cleaning the cars on Sunday. Ashamed to say it took us about 3 or 4 hours to get the dirt off and hoover the innerds etc. It was certainly worth it, they looked brilliant afterwards. Not sure if it's just us, but the cars always feel much nicer to drive when they're clean! Weird! Anyway, two days after I see they're well on the way to looking pretty grubby again; it doesn't help that one car is white of course. So, what I was going to say, leading on from the lovely cobwebs, was that my car had a cobweb attached to one of the wing mirrors. I didn't realise just how strong they actually are. Even on it's highest pressure, the hose didn't break a single piece of the web.

On the work front Ben has finished his "Brownie" Craft Badge. He made a dream-catcher and decorated a white t-shirt for two of his projects, and designed his dream bedroom for the third. Katie has done her Pony Rider and Craft badges. She did some brilliant information sheets for her rider badge and wove a small paper basket, made a coaster from materials and this cute sock horse puppet!

I thought the art work they both completed for this week's Sketch Tuesday was particularly good so I'm posting it up. They both used the shading techniques learnt at the recent art session.

Having browsed through the KS3 maths book that I'd picked up from a car boot fair last week, I've decided that Ben can easily cope with it too. It seems to me that this key stage just recaps on the last, with a small few extras slotted in. I've given them new files and we started today on "big numbers" - pretty easy stuff (or so I thought, have a read of this), we got through it in less than 1/2 hour!

Latin's coming along although remembering the pronouncation of certain words is slowing me (not them) down. P did Latin at school, but he isn't much help - he doesn't seem to remember much at all! We've been writing a party invitation today which has been interesting. They needed to look up their Roman birth month and also refresh their memories on Roman numerals.

Cleaning, entertaining and outings

2008-09-27T14:29:00.003+01:00

I've started putting up a rough timetable of the week for us all to try and follow work wise. Into our second week of this now and it seems to be working - it often gets added to during the week and looks a total mess by Friday when I can wipe it clean and start afresh for Monday!

All seems to be ticking along nicely: Maths, handwriting practise, Latin, sign language, science, project work and Sketch Tuesday (art seems to be the most popular subject at the moment). Katie did some lovely art on Thursday with the group, drawing seed pods and Autumn leaves practising blending using coloured pencils. Science has been linked to our project work on the Poles - found some fun and easy experiments here. We tried making a mini iceberg to see if 11% (or thereabouts) did actually protrude above water, but ours seemed to average a lot more than that to start with! Maths has taken on a new spurt with re-discovering a now working (for us anyway) Timez Attack. Free downloadable software to help children (and adults I guess) learn their times tables the fun way! We recommend it. This game, together with the physics one I mentioned in my last post, have been played alot this last week. Katie and Ben were even asking to play Timez Attack at 8.30 on Friday morning so it must be good fun. There's a link on my side panel.

My parents visited over the weekend (they were staying for a holiday close to us) and so I spent most of the previous week cleaning the house from top to bottom (major clean, I even did the windows and trimmed all the hedges out front), luckily the weather was on my side. We had a super Sunday roast and lovely walk up to the marshes with them and then met up at Sandringham for a tour of the house and wander around the fabulous gardens during the week. A very popular place Sandringham, although not as busy as at the weekend when we went apple picking there. Came away with two full bags of apples - one of Bramleys the other of Laxton's Fortune. Most people were going for the Cox's but we found them all tiny and very hard. The Laxton's Fortune were spot on!

My house - no, only kidding!

Gardens were lovely. Ben, as always, was drawn to the water. Very peaceful.

You can imagine the smell of apples, it was wonderful.

Weather was just so beautiful it seemed a sin to go home so early in the afternoon, so we stopped off at Snettisham beach for a couple of hours lapping up the warmth of the sun and gentle breezes while the children played in the mud and made trenches and castles in the little stretch of sand. We'd remembered our binoculars for once, so could see right across to the marshes of where we live plus the wind farms there and out at sea near Skegness. The tide was out and people were digging for lugworms. Lots of beach houses with wafts of evening BBQs in the air. We picked up fish and chips on the way home - bliss.

Back on track - a good day

2008-09-15T23:11:00.003+01:00

I put up a simple timetable for the week which is good for Ben (he likes to know exactly what's going on all the time), although we didn't actually start Latin today as planned, but did get everything done!

Started with maths - no angry words or sour looks. I prepared three worksheets for both of them and they chose one to do. Ben's looking at polygons, including symmetry, so I rediscovered the Show Me website and found the Victorian tile design game and kaleidoscope games for Katie and Ben to have a go at. This one was preferred though.

After a quick snack (it's a habit now, get maths done to enjoy a snack!) we started learning A-D of the deafblind manual alphabet. I was given a sheet with this alphabet on when I was working at the pre-school 3 years ago and knew it would come in handy. Katie and Ben were enthusiastic about it today and quickly picked up the first four letters.

I wanted to continue with some kind of music appreciation this term. The "Music Monday" idea - taken from the Petits Haricots blog kind of died a death, mainly due to the fact that although we listened to classical (or thereabouts) music weekly, I was rubbish at blogging about it. Anyway, have scheduled to listen to decent music at least once a week and read abit about the composer. Found this musical website with lots of classical music to listen to and also information on the orchestra etc. I remember when I was very young owning a Ladybird book about the orchestra which was absolutely brilliant. Had details on all the key instruments etc. Must look out for it. I came across a stack of Ladybird books in two second-hand shops recently - I shall return for a hunt! Today, having read about the orchestra and listened to the different sections playing their piece to the opening of "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" by Benjamin Britten, we realised just how clever the composer is to make compile such a fabulous piece of music when it's all played together. We listened to the full verion on You Tube while the children played around on the above website making their own music etc. Katie dug out the simple piano tune she composed about this time last year. Perhaps she, or Ben, will get back into playing the piano.

Part I and Part II.

To finish off the morning I introduced Katie and Ben to a bit of physics, thanks to the "by other means" blog. Ben was completely hooked! Katie said she wasn't hooked but couldn't seem to be dragged away from it! I think she was quietly chuffed to have completed level 4 way before Ben!

Finally, both children had a browse through the Brownie badges to see which one(s) they'd like to start with. Naturally Katie's chose the horse riding badge as well the friend to animals. Ben's starting with the designer badge and has started designing his ideal bedroom using the free 3D room designer software I recently blogged about.

After lunch Katie and Ben helped me with some gardening. I've got a basket full of veggies - five small cabbages (un-munched by caterpillars), loads of chillies, the remainder of the dwarf beans and a green pepper. Have stacks of dwarf beans ready for seeds next year! We also discoverd our "butter bean" plants had produced some amazining beans which look like mangetout. Now, not sure if butter beans come from big mangetout looking pods, of if these actually are mangetout. Any ideas?

A full day - I'm happy. P's away tonight, hence the reason I'm blogging at nearly midnight!

Have also had a chance to find some new graphics; here's one of them:

Heritage Open Day

2008-09-14T18:30:00.002+01:00

As part of the Heritage Open Days in Lincolnshire we went along for a tour of Sutton Bridge as it can so often hold us up on route to wherever! It is a swing bridge across the River Nene just before it reaches estuary of The Wash and is used for tall mast ships and large tankers which often moor at the docks. The tour, which was really informative, although a little mind boggling with all the ins and outs of it's workings, was interesting and we got to go right up into the main room to witness the fews over the Fens towards Hunstanton, Kings Lynn and Wisbech. The bridge is now powered by oil but used to be powered by water so we were invited to visit the old water pumping station, part of which has now been turned into a domestic house! Being Grade II* listed, the old pumping station has been really well looked after. A lovely afternoon out, and what with the warmth of the sun finally beating down on us, a cardigan and raincoat free afternoon too!

The chaps in charge demonstrated a scaled down working replica of the swing bridge, made completely from Meccano (it took 18 months to build) to give us a close up view of how the bridge operates. At the end of the tour, the traffic was stopped in order for us to view the actually bridge opening, watching the various hydraulic jacks move into postion to support the bridge in opened and then closed positions, and see the cogs and wheels move the bridge round.

This evening, Ben made his own swinging Sutton Bridge from Lego, and later a large floating barge to complete the scene.

Burghley, batik, combines and climbing kitten!

2008-09-10T21:39:00.004+01:00

The highlight of Katie's year - visit to Burghley Horse Trials, Stamford. We are very lucky, for the past few years P has been a steward (usually on Saturday) and so we've had the privilege of free entry to any of the four days (Thurs - Sun). When we lived much closer we'd usually take great advantage of this, much to Ben's annoyance - he certainly used to get his fill of horses! Our usual luck with lovely weather was not so this year. At least it wasn't as wet as forecast, but the mud was unbelievable, especially around the trade tents, it came way past your ankles in places! Kids and P loved it, as did most of the other children there, and most adults didn't seem to mind (I guess perhaps they are used to it, being, maybe from farming/horse backgrounds?!). Katie wore my wellies (hers had a large gash on the foot), and I wore my trusty walking boots which were caked, as were my jeans (as I fell over, to Katie and Ben's delight) in the squelchy stuff. They've polished up well, as they always do; I love those boots. So, very slippy, wet, muddy cross-country course, which naturally got worse as the day went on, so quite a few tumbles from horse and rider (no major ones, thankfully), and we did get to see Zara Phillips, William Fox-Pitt, plus other names that I'm sure Katie could real off.

Trust me, they were muddy!

Have been experimenting with batik, but not with batik wax - that's next on the list! Got a book out from the library (see side panel) and read up all about it. Actually batik doesn't have to be with wax, there are many ways to make the resist - rice starch, clay, flour paste etc. and different countries seem to favour different ways. We used drips of wax from a candle on white cotton (from an old blind) and then dyed it all in a diluted natural dye of turmeric.

We also made a simple flour and water paste to paint a small picture/pattern onto thin card and then, when it was dry, paint over the card. When the paint was completely dry we used a scraper (from a Copperfoil art pack) to scratch off the resist to reveal the picture/pattern. Looked lovely, and the scratching was quite therapeutic. We finished off with some crayon patterns/paint; although probably not really batik, they did look nice.

Oops, just noticed that Ben's fish (at the bottom) are upside down.

Have been watching the big machines collecting the wheat in the field next to the house. The dust!

Pepper is doing fine. Very bold all of a sudden ... in fact my Mum warned me about this ...

he was trying to catch a moth inside the rice paper lantern, and yes, he slid down and tore it.

A reminder for me - what we hope to do this term!!!

2008-09-10T11:58:00.003+01:00

Finish "Our World" lapbook - nearly there, just need to look at continents now.

Music appreciation
Sketch Tuesday + other art
Maths
Handwriting
Latin (including the Romans) ... all on a weekly basis

Cooking ... hopefully weekly!

Work towards "Brownie" badges. There are so many badges out there for the children to develop an interest in so many subjects plus to encourage them to learn a bit more about themselves, their environment, behaviour and understanding of others.

Finally conquer the RSPB Action Awards. Katie and Ben could easily work towards the Bronze and Silver badges, but we've been a bit lazy (first piece of work was dated 2006) so I think we need to start again and really concentrate on it this time!

Katie's art classes - fortnightly

We'll throw in some social too with the HE group sessions!

Stop at the end of November(ish) and really enjoy the run up to Christmas. We have some fun ideas for pressies so will need the month to do all that.

Welcome Pepper puss

2008-09-01T19:49:00.005+01:00

Isn't he just adorable?

Pepper the day we got him, just 9 weeks and 1 day old.

We knew we'd get a new cat at some point to replace darling Jasper and Katie had been pleading for a kitten since we moved here! Our neighbour's cat regularly has kittens and kindly he offered Katie one of them which we were very excited about. Unfortunately, the kittens didn't seem to materialise for one reason or another. By chance I had a look at the local paper's website and saw the RSPCA were over-run with kittens so we decided to give them a call. Again, disappointment as it turned out one of the kittens had died of some rare, contagious disease which didn't look good for the rest of the bunch. The RSPCA passed on details of a friend who had three 9 week old black beauties needing homes and that's when we came across Pepper.

We could have taken all three! They were so lovely, each as cute as the next. One, the female, was very shy, the two males much more dominant. We chose the one that kept crawling under cupboards and chasing bits and pieces around the kitchen! He's settled in extremely easily and is loving all the attention from us and our visitors. He needs to learn some social skills though! Using his new found claws to climb up people's legs, hanging on my hips to watch me wash up, pouncing on Allie's back or swiping at Kan's (the visiting cat) tail and paws when he's catching a nap. Kan is very good actually and just looks at Pepper with distain. Allie takes a "gently" swipe to show Pepper who's boss!

Mad eyed kitten (or is it just determination?) climbing up my leg!

Love him. Just don't want him to get any bigger!

11 weeks and looking bigger already!

Only pets missing in this pic, our Allie and visiting Kan. The animal population has grown quite a bit since our move to the country! Pepper is so tiny and light, even next to Billy the Netherland Dwarf rabbit.

Where has August gone?

2008-09-01T18:24:00.007+01:00

August has been mad. Every weekend full, lots going on etc., etc. and no "me" time to blog fully.

To tell you the truth I still haven't really got my blog hat on. We're all feeling a little down, having lost our good friends to Scotland at the end of last week. I feel particularly sorry for Katie who, due to our house move last year, she doesn't have as much contact with one friend, then another moved West, and now her final good friend (in her group of three) has moved North! Ben has lost two friends from the same families. Ho hum, we need to get out and track down new HE children (preferrable horse mad ones).

Said family moving to Scotland stayed with us for their final week in Lincolnshire! Parents and eldest in our tents and the other two children sleeping in with Katie and Ben. It was a fun, happy, busy time, people coming and going, lots of laughter, lots of playing and it seems very quiet this week without them. You shall be missed!

Anyway, sadness pushed aside. Other things we've been up to:

We've enjoyed summer BBQs, a christening get together and friends visiting.

Katie and Ben finished participating in the free Pets at Home sessions on small pets, fish and wildlife and received their certificates and a host of stickers plus learnt lots of new things, especially about fish (such as they enjoy frozen peas and de-seeded cucumber!).

A proud moment when Ben decided he take part, by himself, in a tennis activity morning run by the local council. He was very confident about the whole thing until the actual morning, but 1/2 hour of tears and tantrums upon waking and then he was fine, staying the whole morning and making friends very quickly. Katie went along with her friends to a rock climbing/lazer archery day run by the same people, and she came away with a certificate for the climbing. All three of us participated in a t-shirt/bag/hat decorating afternoon, again council run, which was enjoyable and we ended up with our photo in the local paper!

Katie completed three tests at the riding stables. One for points of the horse, for which she received a badge, and two ABRS (stages A & B) for which certificates are on their way.

We met up with my sister and her family at IWM Duxford for a brilliant day out. Weather was just right so we were able to picnic for lunch and wander at our own pace between the various hangars. Been lots of times before and it's always a favourite venue for us, but each time it seems just as interesting. This time there were lots of new interactive exhibitions to learn all about flight which kept the children, and adults, amused for quite a while. Saw our favourite planes - Harrier, Vulcan, B52, Lancaster among others and watched a Hurricane do several fly pasts during the day.

What makes a helicopter stay off the ground? Visit Duxford to find out!!

Land Warfare hangar with some excellent real life displays.

My next post is all about our new arrival, another fab thing that happened in August!

Musical Monday

2008-08-19T21:50:00.003+01:00

There's lots going on at the mo and I'll post a catch up when things have settled a little. Just as a teaser ... we have a kitten to add to our fast growing list of pets. That's it now - no more ... except perhaps a new rabbit later in the year to keep Billy company! I haven't completely decided yet so haven't mentioned it to anyone else in the family.

Anyway, I'm always late in posting our Musical Monday. We do listen to the music on the Monday, I just forget to post about it!

Ben received a fab harmonica for his birthday and loves making tunes on it so this week we endeavoured to find some interesting harmonica playing on You Tube. Browsed for a while, but nothing really struck a chord, although we came across a harmonica duo of the "Hovis" advert section of the New World Symphony. Not impressed enough to link to it though! Found some harmonica jazz too, but eventaully settled for one of the movements played by the Dublin Philharmonic of the New World. We're going to listen again over the week so will link to them next Monday.

Art and veggies

2008-08-12T20:54:00.004+01:00

Katie continues to enjoy art at the mo and is learning lots from her new book "How to Draw and Paint the Outdoors" by Moira Butterfield. Here's some horse pics and a lovely sunset:

On the veggies front the garden is looking brill. We've pulled and used all the onions and have now pulled all the shallots too (some were nearly as big as the onions). Tried pickling some, but they don't taste quite like the ones from the shops - perhaps they need to sit for a while to absorb the flavour.

The cabbages have been attacked big time by caterpillars which means we have a constant supply of butterflies for the cats (and chickens) to play with! I couldn't bear to squash the caterpillar eggs as suggested by websites and gardening books in order to save the produce. It's been fascinating watching them grow from tiny slithers to chunky crawlies; we're even watching one turn into a cocoon on the swingball pole! I did result to digging up four white cabbages which were really looking worse for wear in order to get some extra light to the corn and beans.

Obviously a little naive, but the dwarf beans I bought are dwarf in plant size, not in fruit! Having put in 6 foot poles for the plants to grow up, I was rather surprised to see them stop at about 45/50cms tall! The beans themselves are fabulous, real whoppers in size and taste wonderful! So, dwarf beans are great if you only have space for large tubs in your small garden/patio etc.

We still have some potatoes and carrots left in the ground/tub; saving them for a "rainy day" so to speak. Leeks are fattening up very well and certainly survived their thinning out a few weeks ago. Next lot of spring onions are coming along well too. The corn, which I'd only left space for 6 in two rows (needed so they can pollinate each other), are doing well but only the two middle ones are growing a good size. We'll see what happens. The "honesty box" in the village is selling individual corn-on-the-cobs at 30p each, so if mine don't produce, it'll not be the end of the world! Next year I'll dedicate a larger area for them, rather than putting in cabbages with lots of holes in them! Finally, the chillies and peppers. The indoor chillies are growing longer by the day but attract the hover-flies! The outdoors ones still have some flowers but no chillies as yet, probably due to the unpredicatable weather, but the peppers outside are now small chunky balls!

Musical Monday

2008-08-12T20:40:00.003+01:00

This week's piece is the theme tune to Jurassic Park by the very talented John Williams. A pretty powerful piece of music I think and quite moving too. It lead us to start exploring other John Williams' tunes on You Tube and then further afield for other powerful film themes like Pearl Harbor and Gone with the Wind (watching the "I shall never be hungry again!" and "Frankly my dear ..." sections just for good measure). This, strangely, lead us to the good old musicals like Oklahoma! Katie had a laugh at the strange horse riding style (it gets worse as the tune progresses) in "Oh what a beautiful morning!". So, quite a few tunes for our Musical Monday this week. Happy listening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8zlUUrFK-M&feature=related (Jurassic Park theme)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KIJFbFc-AE (Pearl Harbor theme)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikVeY0brtXU (Gone with the Wind theme)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwiFqjyBJ2o ("Oh what a beautiful morning")

Georgina Gallina plus a visiting pigeon

2008-08-08T21:13:00.006+01:00

Our neighbour mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he was expecting a delivery of 150 ex-Tesco free-range chickens that had done their year's work of egg laying and needed retirement homes! As we'd been thinking of getting Georgie a friend it seemed the perfect opportunity to have one of them. He delivered our brown hen on Monday and she promptly escaped over the garden gate so not a good start with the chap and me trying to catch her among the nettles in the pub garden!

Georgie has been going through a rather annoying brooding session this last week and a half where she just wants to stay cooped up in her coop trying to keep invisible eggs warm ready for hatching. Poor love! The websites and books say to turf her out in order to break the broodiness and to stop her from over heating (which, naturally, it dangerous for her health) but my friend suggested I just leave her alone. It can take up to three weeks to return to normal (the time it takes to incubate eggs), and during this time we are not given our daily egg! We left her some of the time and enticed her out at others, but she's been pretty grumpy with puffed up feathers and angry "words". We wondered how the introduction of "brown hen" would go down, but all seemed quiet and peaceful (as we introduced early evening. Apparently resident hens think the new recruit has been there all its life if you do it this way!).

Couple of mornings later, brown hen (now named Georgina Gallina (Latin for hen)) woke me up at 6.30 with the most awful sqwarks and bashing noises. I was kind of hoping it was perhaps feeding time for the other 149 hens at my neighbour's house but closer inspection showed a desperate Georgina pleading to leave the coop as she was being pecked by Georgie. Not too sure how to deal with this. The poor girl has already gone through alot of pecking with Tesco (she's lost feathers on her back and bottom) and I really don't want it to continue.
GG's bare bot!

Having secured the garden of escape routes (hopefully) we let GG out to pootle around on Wednesday and have been watching her and Georgie closely; things have been improving, but Georgie still has the occasional peck and chase. No major noises from the coop this morning although Katie noticed GG's comb had been bleeding. I'm hoping it's just the "pecking order" thing and it'll settle down. Any ideas or tips, please leave your comments. One good thing - Georgie's forgotten all about her broodiness now, I guess she's got bigger fish to fry!

A rather interesting thing happened on Saturday afternoon (apart from the W visit - see below). A lost racing pigeon turned up in our (empty) swimming pool looking rather forlorn. By the evening it had gone, but reappeared in the morning and continued this routine every day. It was a pretty friendly thing and was happy for us to get close enough to read the ID tag on it's foot which revealed that it was very young, having an 08 birthdate. Through some web searching, we found it was registed with the Royal Pigeon Racing Association and they responded very quickly to my "lost pigeon" email. It seemed to enjoy it's food - dried rice, split peas and lentils (had to laugh at this website about the bread, it certainly did turn it's beak up at it!) Lovely gentleman and his wife turned up from North Lincs. earlier today to reunite it with its brothers and sisters and to have a well-deserved rest! Apparently it had been racing from the Yorkshire area on Saturday and must have either got lost or homed in to the fact that Katie wants to look after every animal in the Kingdom!

The W family visited!

2008-08-08T20:55:00.004+01:00

Had a great time last weekend as my cousin came to stay with her hubby and two girls (nearly 5 and 9). They spent most of Saturday travelling up to us from "down South" but arrived mid afternoon which was fine as the weather had perked up by then! We spent most of the time outside in just perfect warmth with a bit of a breeze so everyone stayed reasonably snug, rather than scortching hot like the majority of last week! The children all got on fabulously and us adults were able to spend lots of time catching up (it had been a year since we'd last met). Lots of trampoline play and woollie making!

Original plan was for our visitors to camp outside on Saturday, but the weather from Thursday afternoon onwards had turned much cooler, very windy and pretty wet too so we had to quickly make other sleeping arrangements. Although the weather decided to behave in the end, we still gently moved Ben out of his room for the night and the "W" family moved in with the adults in the bunk beds and the children on blow-ups on the floor.

We were hoping for a quiet Saturday evening in the garden, drinking wine and eating nibbles enjoying more adult time chatter, but we had to laugh as the local pub had one of its local band nights. These are usually quite good, and quite enjoyable to listen too when sitting outside of an evening. However, on this occasion it was by far the worst ever rock tribute band with screeching voices and ultra loud music. To cap it all it didn't stop at 11 as is usual, but went on until midnight with revellers hanging around well into the early hours. Didn't go down too well with our guests who thought our talk of a "very peaceful area" was a little over the top! They also hoped to see perfect clear skies in order to get a fab view of the stars, but the clouds did their job of mucking that up! They did manage to see a number of satallites fly past though and a rather eerie low flying jet that's not the norm after dark for around here!

Thanks for coming to see us D, P, H and L. Hope you have a fab 5th birthday L!

Musical Monday (on Tuesday)!

2008-08-05T14:50:00.003+01:00

Seeing as how we are studying deserts for our "world" project, it seemed fitting to listen, and enjoy, the fabulous "Lawrence of Arabia" theme tune by the composer Maurice Jarre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzFnyN0dP8w&feature=related

In need of HE encouragement?

2008-08-01T14:24:00.002+01:00

You should read this then .... Many thanks to Dawniy for posting it on her blog.

2008-07-29T23:43:00.004+01:00

Myspace Layouts

Family BBQ on the Friday to kick-start Ben's 9th birthday - opening presents from his Grandma, Grandad, Aunt, Uncle and cousins with a very broad grin. Lots of Lego, construction and a new watch. Perfect.

The weekend was filled with much water play outside thanks to the continuous scortching weather. Don't want to moan, but I must say it did swipe us all out by lunch time Sunday! It was way too hot to do anything other than water play. P and Ben enjoyed the sprinkler and we dug out the old "canal" system which we all had a tinker with. Indoors was much cooler (apart from the conservatory) but somehow it seemed like we were wasting the good weather, so ended up lounging outside in the shade drinking cool drinks and watching Georgie, the cats and nature in general. The weekend ended feeling pretty chilled!

Monday, Ben's big day! Pressie opening first thing, naturally (although he managed to wait until about 8 a.m. - nice boy). More construction and some Asterix books to get his teeth into. Ben asked for money from us as he was getting in a tiss over the "best" present for us to get him! He was very excited about the dosh in his card, and kept offering to buy us all gifts! He spent most of the morning patiently waiting for cousin J to turn up (for a sleepover), flicking through the Argos, Woollies and Tesco catalogues for ideas. From lunch time until 11.30 p.m. (with a very short break for a very unhealthy tea), there was continuous play from Ben and J with the Lego. Not too sure what the game was, something to do with rescue missions, but they were happy and didn't need any intervention except to announce "tea's ready"! Needless to say, by lights out they were zonked. J was asleep within minutes and I didn't hear a peep from either of them until 9 this morning!

A little more time to play first thing before dropping J back home and then some much needed birthday(s) and Christening shopping with a bit of a stock up on arty stuff for Katie and more pondering over what to buy with the money fast burning a hole in Ben's pocket! He found an activity book on cars in The Works which I bought for him which he's had his nose in this evening. Seems quite good with pages to design your own cars plus pre-drawn ones to decorate with stickers etc. I haven't had a chance to actually look at it all as Ben's been so occupied! He finally spent his money on another large Lego set (surprise, surprise) and he bought Katie a new Schleich model horse - sweetie.

Much cooler this evening with the forecast looking good for tomorrow but rain for the rest of the week so we'd better make the most of it! Katie's spending the whole day at horse riding tomorrow, so she'll be in her element. I'll probably spend the day playing Lego with Ben!

Cute furry beings at Pets at Home

2008-07-24T23:03:00.004+01:00

Took a trip to our "local" Pets at Home this afternoon to take part in their rabbits and guinea pigs "Get Set for Summer" workshop. I don't think they were expecting anyone to turn up (you didn't need to book) as the session was from 2 p.m. and we enquired at the checkout as to where we should meet and the guy was surprised to see some interest! In fact he telephoned the necessary person in charge and I heard him say, "no seriously, there is a family here for you"! Anyway, a couple of other families turned up too and the session was fun and interesting. We all had a hold of a couple of very young guinea pigs which restored my faith in them (we've had bad luck with guinea pigs in our family) and found out useful information on rabbits to help us with Billy, who continues to be allergic to either his surroundings, us or his hay! The two in charge decided to show us some other furry pets too (this should have happened on the next workshop really). We found out about the Degu (which Katie has her eye on) and that they are related to the Chinchilla (which Ben has his eye on), and Katie had a hold of a darling male rat (which she also has her eye on!). The rat's tail was really strong; used for balance and support apparently. We met a variety of hamsters - dwarf, Chinese, Syrian etc. The dwarf ones were really funny; tiny, tiny and full of beans.

Anyway, I think Katie has been wishing for a pair of Degu for a while, but may be slightly sidetracked for the adorable rats. We shall see! I'm sure something along these lines may appear on her Christmas list. The children had previously picked up work books for these sessions which they'd completed at home, so they finished off the workshop by doing a quizz and received handouts, certificates and stickers.

A fun afternoon and I see they're happy to do free "school" tours if anyone needs ideas for their HE group.

Still scortching hot today! Did our monthly nature study and noticed the outside temperature reached 30.1 deg. C. around 11ish.

Bits and bobs ....

2008-07-23T21:03:00.006+01:00

We discovered, by chance, this interior design software called Sweet Home 3D which Ben has enjoyed using and also this free software to assist in making your own computer games. At first I thought it would be a little too confusing for Ben to pick up; how wrong I was! We started ploughing through the instructions together to start with, and then he carried on without any problems, made the game work and then went ahead and altered it without any further reading. Why are children so good on computers compared to us adults (in most cases)? Also, along the build and design theme, Ben has been creative on the Bekonscot Model Village site too.

Katie had an absolutely fabulous horse riding day at Holkam Bay a couple of weeks ago. Starting at 8 a.m., she helped get the three travelling horses/ponies ready and load them into their horse box, had a drive in the horse box and experienced 1 1/2 hours of fun riding (where she nearly reached a gallop racing another pony) along the beach. Doing this has been on her list of "must dos" for as long as I can remember, so she was thrilled to have the chance to take part. She and the other five children had workbooks to complete too and write a picture story to be entered into the school's competition. On return, she had to help unload the horse box, sort the horses/ponies out for re-stabling and clean out the box before heading home about 5 ish. Lucky girl.

School work hasn't really featured much at the moment. We've been doing bits and pieces whenever we have a spare morning, but with our Wales trip and Katie's visit to my Mum and Dad's and then P taking last week off, things have really slowed down in this department! We did manage to read more from our "Serious Survival" book about the rainforests and take a peek at this nice site giving us an idea of what it would be like at night. Katie and Ben have been updating their lapbooks with bits of interesting info too.

We've done some art, producing scratch paintings using acrylics. We've also started to contribute to Sketch Tuesday (see side panel) which Katie and Ben are enjoying. Last week they had to draw something that "comes out of an egg" and they were really pleased to see their pictures on the web page the week after. This week the brief was to draw a flashlight.

Have been interested in the Petits Haricots blogging of "Music Monday" for some time now and with the view to enlightening my two on the joys of a wider variety of music other than the local radio station (actually, to be fair, Ben enjoys Classic FM in the car when Katie's not there!) have decided to do our own Music Monday. Ben was talking about drums this week so it reminded me of my Music Monday mission and we found different drum recordings on You Tube, all of which went down very well. Here's a couple that were more of a hit then others.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=osHT73lWMD0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MZcStceKGTc

After these Ben went off with P's drum sticks and made suitable drums to perform his own piece of music; luckily he didn't use his head (as in the second You Tube video). We also came across my sister-in-law playing live with the Royal Philharmonic in Leicester Square for some Star Wars tribute which caused quite a stir with them.

Yesterday we met up with friends to visit the Batemans Brewery Visitor's Centre in Wainfleet. Weather was good enough for a picnic and there were loads of outdoor games for children and adults to play. We went round a "Brewery Experience" mini tour which was full of information but the children weren't really that interested! We kind of whizzed through it, but it was well thought out with lots of models, bits and bobs, etc. Because of this we decided to experience the actual Brewery tour which was more of a hit for us all. The witty young lady leading us round was truly brilliant at telling us the ins and outs of making beer from the very start (with tastings of various kinds of Barley) to the actual bottling. We even had samples afterwards to try with free lemonade or coke for the children. Planning to take P sometime soon.

Katie had her riding lesson and a morning of stable management (now it's the summer hols) today so Ben and I enjoyed spending some time together. This afternoon the temperature soared and so we attached a sprinkler (which I found in the corner of our shed earlier in the week) to the hose for some water play. Lots of longing looks at our rather sad looking swimming pool - just not sure if it's worth sorting out - but today, it would have got a lot of use!

2008-07-11T20:35:00.006+01:00

Thought I'd just post abit about some of the things we've been up to lately.

The weekend after our visit to Wales, Katie went along to one of her model horse shows which was close to my parents home in Essex. I think she's getting a bit of a pro at this now; I believe this may well be her third year of showing! Anyway, for those who aren't "up" on the model horse showing world, enthusiasts (most belong to model horse forums and know each other through this virtual world) bring along their model horses and enter them into a huge variety of different classes in the hopes of winning a rosette and 1st or certificate to 6th place and possible entry into an overall winner's class. Katie has always been the youngest enthusiast, but we noticed this year that others seemed to include her more in their conversations and she even asked, and was accepted, to help judge two of the classes. I must admit, it's a bit of a joke among the close family members about how "boring" it all sounds, sitting around watching grown-ups (mainly) preening and presenting model horses, but actually, it's a pretty interesting day (and just becomes a little tiring towards the end when time is ticking on and the judges can't decide the best model of the day). It was a long day too. Katie was up and ready by 5 a.m. and we left home at 7 in order to arrive in time to set up ready for the first class at 10! P and Ben had a fab day at a couple of local parks; the weather, luckily, was gorgeous. So, Katie's models did well. She came away with a few first places and we were especially chuffed that her new and prized resin Fresien took one of these too.

Not one of Katie's horses (she didn't take any photos of her models!), but a lovely example of some beautiful Arabian tack, probably hand-made.

After the show, Katie went to stay with my parents for the week. Again, she's a pro at this as we worked out she'd been having holidays with them since she was 6! Can't believe the time has flown by so quickly.

Weather, as I recall, wasn't bad that week. They got up to lots of horsey things, highlights being the annual visit to her favourite shop "Utterly Horses" and also a trip to the Essex Ada Cole horse sanctuary.

Feeding one of many very friendly squirrels in Belfairs Woods.

Ben and I enjoyed time together and did lots of bits and bobs around the place. He was actually willing to continue with some work without any of the usual hassles that I have to put up with so we did maths, handwriting and some catching up of topic work during the week. Other times we potted around in the garden and have started to reap the rewards of all the veggie sowing earlier in the year. We've now planted our last seeds for the time being - sweetcorn. Just a little space left for them! The cabbages are taking over the whole patch!

Thinning the leeks.

Nothing like fresh veggies!

This week we've continued with norms and topic work learning about the Rainforests using some pretty good websites plus the books that we've borrowed from the library as a brilliant source of information (see side panel). The Serious Survival book is an interesting read as it involves expeditions to various places in the world (polar regions, Amazon etc) by teams of young people and experienced guides. We've been doing some drawing using the fabulous art work of Beatrix Potter as our inspiration; this week we studied and drew moths and butterflies. We've also updated our nature notes for June (a little late, I know). Katie has had another cooking frenzie and made some strawberry oat bars and hummus which we shared with friends today.

Hummus, strawberry bars and home grown tomatoes - yum!

Excuse me, this is a kitchen you know!

2008-07-09T14:34:00.003+01:00

I know this is probably the warmest room in the house at the moment, but please ... it is the kitchen! Talk about taking advantage.

New member of the family

2008-07-09T14:13:00.004+01:00

Welcome ... Georgie.

Our dear friends, who will shortly be on their way to live much further North (or North West to be precise), very kindly have given us this absolutely stunning, funny, full of character, hen - Georgie.

Must admit, the idea of having chickens kind of goes hand in hand with country living, but I was a bit dubious to start with as was P who loves his manicured lawn far too much to have it ruined by a pecking hen. However, in the very short space of time that we've had her, we've all fallen head over heels in love with her and can't wait to get her a mate.

A typical member of our family already, she loves food and will run up to us as soon as we venture out of the kitchen door. Reading up on hens on various websites (this one being my favourite), it seems this is actually the norm and that they can eat virtually anything (although not the onion or garlic that is growing in my veggie patch - it could make her ill. Luckily she hasn't, as yet, gone too close to them). However, she does like destroying the beautiful flowers that Katie enjoys planting in the garden. She doesn't eat them, she does pecks them off and throws them around the place - perhaps she thinks it makes the garden look prettier!

It took her just under a fortnight to start laying eggs for us and has so far produced one a day. Fabulously rich yolks in neat little packages! Yesterday she hadn't laid by the time we'd opened her run, but she certainly let us know that one was imminent with all the noise she was making.

Today, she has settled for an afternoon nap on our kitchen door mat. Must be feeling at home.

Dyeing of the colourful kind!

2008-06-27T19:52:00.004+01:00

Group session was all about dyeing using natural and artificial dyes. Katie, Ben and I had already tried out a few natural dyes as reported here, but families also brought along big vats of paprika/ chilli and elderberry to add to our coffee, tea, nettles/dock leaves and beetroot. We all had a go at painting on paper with these dyes as well as dipping materials and sheep wool into the bowls to see how deep a colour the dye would produce. It looked like the elderberry was going to be the best, but once home the dye turned out to be a rather sad grey which was a bit of a disappointment.

Natural dye

The artificial dyeing produced, not surprisingly, wonderful results. Tie dyeing t-shirts, cloth bags and literally anything in the way of plain materials produced an array of colour.

Deep colours of the artificial dye.

Shall certainly be doing more of this. At 75 pence each for the children's white t-shirts at QDs (and they were lovely quality), or £1 for adults (although these were rather huge) tie-dyed tops make brilliant gifts for the younger members of our family.

Tie-dye t-shirts and natural dyed cloth (at far right), although the colour didn't last unfortunately.

Love this website, all about colour + some projects to have a bash at.

Mablethorpe

2008-06-26T21:50:00.004+01:00

P has had the week off so we made the most of the pretty good weather and set off through the East side of the Lincolnshire Wolds (we even went up a hill!) towards Mablethorpe on the coast. Lovely expanse of soft sand, but I'll get to that in a mo. First we went to look around the Seal Sanctuary there. Not just a rescue centre for stranded seals (and other animals and birds) but a brilliant walk through tunnel of the history of Lincolnshire, how it was once near the Equator before the continents all drifted apart, about the dinosaurs and how they (probably) became extinct. Brilliant. I've gone over history like this with Katie and Ben before but to bored faces. The way this had been presented with short, interesting and easily digested snippets of information with exhibits made it a learning experience for us all. We enjoyed seeing the seals and all the other rescued birds. I particularly liked the Gannets and the owls (as we have barn and tawny owls where we live), and one keeper in particular was very happy to pass on information on all the different species.

Most of the birds and animals were enjoying a mid morning nap.

Gannets

Lunch was on the beach with a gentle wind blowing sand into our sandwiches, crisps, fruit, drinks etc., etc., but then it wouldn't be a beach picnic without it! Apart from a smattering of people and a small school party, we had a large expanse of beach to ourselves. Enjoyed wandering out to the water's edge and investigating where the sand was soft and where it was hard. We also found brittle black rocks everywhere which Ben and I initially thought to be lava, but I'm not so sure now.

Anyway, it didn't take long before the rain came down, so we headed off home through a lovely village called Alford which we are definitely going to go back to and explore. We decided to find a donkey sanctuary that was signposted from Alford as P adores donkeys. We were lead through many a winding road, for a number of miles before finding the placed closed!

Wet, windy, wonderful Wales

2008-06-23T22:47:00.004+01:00

We spent this last weekend camping in Wales near Builth Wells, Powys. P and I last ventured to Wales years back, way before kiddies were in our lives, so it was lovely to be back. This time we ventured futher into Wales and witnessed the fabulous scenery all around us (and the never ending "baaing" of sheep). Anyway, our reason for visiting Wales? Katie went to stay with her friend who moved to the area around Christmas time. The family live in a lovely, peaceful part of the world, back to nature and (more-or-less) away from civilisation as most of us know it.

After dropping Katie off, we headed for the campsite through a never ending stream of twisty turning, high, low roads to the campsite (it was only about 16 miles "down" the road but it felt much further). We're pretty novice at the camping lark and were pretty stunned (as we've been on the last two occasions) by how much stuff we needed to take. The weather was fabulous when we arrived, allowing us to leisurely set up our two small tents (one for P and one for Ben with me) and our newly acquired gazebo to give us some protection when sitting and cooking. I chose Fforest Fields over another local site because it mentioned the lovely walks, streams and views around it for members to wander through and enjoy. Ben is absolutely mad on wading through water so I thought it would be right up his street.

View close to our pitch.

Our first wanderings were not a disappointment. We found streams hidden in the hillsides to explore, mini waterfalls and, a bonus for Ben, remains of an animal skull to explore and ponder over. The views from (almost) the top of the hill were breathtaking. Once back down to earth P and I studied the clouds over a cuppa. Very interesting as we had been learning about clouds and weather this last week. The clouds hanging over us were typical "fair weather clouds that also mean a change in weather within 24 hours". How right they were!

Climbing over fallen trees and following the stream up the hill.

We didn't mind the rain overnight. It has a lovely sound that kind of lulls you to sleep (although at the back of your mind you can't help thinking "this had better clear up by tomorrow"). The rain continued in the morning and as the day moved on the wind began to pick up too. We headed for the Dan-yr-Ogof showcaves and had a brilliant day exploring the three caves and the various other attractions at the site. Reading about the dinosaurs and seeing an Iron Age camp took away the pain of climbing the steep hill to the different caves. Well worth a visit.

It took an age to get back to camp along the roads, but such beautiful scenery made up for it. When we returned we were relieved to see our gazebo was still standing after the strong winds of the day! We were even able to cook on the bbq, under cover of course. Overnight the wind picked up big time. Ben and I were woken about midnight and endured the roar of the wind as it blew through the tree covered hills closer and closer towards us. The huge gusts seems to last an age, with, strangely, a lull of about 15 mins before it would continue. It was pretty creepy; the tent was being battered, but stood its ground! Poor P was on his own in his tent which took the full brunt of each gust near-on collapsing it each time. I knew the gazebo wasn't going to survive and at 2 ish I peeped out during a lull to see the damage. It was still tightly held down but one of the posts had completely buckled. P and I decided to dismantle it before anymore damage was done. It's amazing how quickly one can disassemble something when you really want to get it over and done with and get back to bed!

The wind continued into the Sunday and we moved P's tent so that it didn't get so much abuse! We went for a delicious Sunday lunch at a local pub and then discovered a fabulous waterfall called "Break-its-Neck" fall. We all had lots of fun splashing through the water to the fall, climbing up some of the rocks and having a really great time. Back to camp for another bbq with the wind at a reasonable speed and the weather much improved. We went for our final walk through all the pine trees on the hillside to witness another view point of the campsite.

More water play

"Break-its-neck" waterfall

Pine covered hills

Needless to say, the weather was superb on the Monday. We picked Katie up about lunch time and had a sticky 7 1/2 hour journey home (thanks to two accidents on the M6 and a three hour drive through Birmingham). Katie had a brilliant time with her friend and even managed to go hacking on the Saturday between rain showers.

A big thank you to D, A, Ch, J and A.

Natural Dyes and other things

2008-06-12T14:01:00.003+01:00

We have been experimenting with natural dyes at the beginning of this week in preparation for a group session we are running with two other families later in the month. We found a list of natural dyes from one of Katie's books and we also sourced some from an article written on the new Home Ed Wiki.

As cold dyes we used the juices of mixed summer fruits (making deep purple) and beetroot with vinegar (making pink). The following were all boiled to extract the dye:

Tomato - yellow/orange
Tea - light brown
Coffee - dark brown
Earth - darker brown
Yellow onions - yellow
Turmeric - deep yellow/orange
Dock leaves - very pale green
Dock leaves and nettles - pale green

Katie and Ben use the dyes to paint on paper and materials (cotton and linen were the best) with some lovely results.

Other things

More socialising than ever seems to be occurring at the moment - we're all enjoying it but it makes getting back to our normal learning routine harder and harder. Anyway, Katie and Ben stayed away on Monday night so P and I sneaked out for a delicious curry in the evening. Friends came on Tuesday from lunch time so I had the house to myself Tuesday morning. I missed my kiddies big time and mooched around the house which was such a waste of valuable "me" time! Having breakfast all by myself (as P leaves early) was the worst part; it was just lonely.

My mum has knitted this lovely winter jumper for Ben, he's really chuffed with it. I think she's going to have a go at knitting something for Katie too.

On the (diminishing) work front, we've continued with maths as much as possible doing workbooks and the fractions poster. Katie and Ben were impressing P with their knowledge of mixed, proper and improper fractions as P had forgotten what they were (just shows you much all this is used in the adult world)! In our geography project we're still looking at weather - understanding different cloud formations and what they mean weatherwise. We did an experiment to make a cloud in a bottle which sort of worked but not brilliantly and didn't seem to impress either of them! We've also made a rain gauge and put it outside just as the rain stopped and the sun came out! At least, using our cloud guide, we'd been able to predict this would happen. Just found this cloud guide which is good too.

The doll's houses have been rediscovered and Ben has done a new paint job on some of the walls before putting in the furniture. The visiting cat "Kandar" wanted to try a room out for size, but ended up snuggling on Ben's bed in the end.

On the garden front I've managed to find space for all the chilli and pepper plants in the end; they couldn't have lasted any longer in the conservatory. We have two tiny apples appearing on our baby Granny Smith. We've noticed, by chance, a collared dove nest in one of our trees - visable from one of the benches so we can keep a quiet eye on what's happening. Lots of new ducklings have appeared and seem to be healthy. We've named one "Wanderer" as it likes to go off by itself, running like mad to catch up with the rest of it's family once they've moved on. It got left behind the other day and we found it sitting in the middle of the road, still strong and healthy and such a darling to pick up and stroke and totally weighless. Managed to track down the mum and reintroduced it to the rest of her brood. Mum wasn't happy with me being so close and came running out of the bushes to have a mega nip at my feet to keep me away! Discovered these two acting as a hoover in my kitchen the other day - cheeky pair!

Finally, spotted this tiny baby bee having a suck on a left over grain of cereal.

Mmm, let me think ....

2008-06-06T19:38:00.002+01:00

Falling behind on the old blogging of late. Not sure why, just feeling really tired and finding there's not much time in the day once we've done some HE and then sorted out the house, ironing, gardening (weeds, weeds - they're coming out of my ears!), etc., etc., (you get the picture) and then getting stuck into a couple of brilliant books!

Forgotten half of what we've been up to, naturally.

On the geography lapbook (Our World) side of things we've recapped on the water cycle by making small 3D collages. Pleased to see the children could remember how the cycle worked and most of the "big" names, although Katie initially typed "perspiration" instead of "precipitation"! We also did a simple experiment to show how condensation works as well as transpiration.
Started to look at extreme weather finding some amazing tornado vids on You Tube and we've started to keep a 2 week weather chart turning our findings into bar charts/graphs etc. in due course.

Katie has been drawing lots, Ben has been doing lots of Lego building and I've been doing lots of weed pulling. The combination of warmth and rain has made them sprung up in an uncontrollable manner. We have three exit doors in our house, the side one only really gets used for the postie and Tesco man so I was horrified to see the path completely covered in those horrible sticky weeds (they were fastening themselves to the Tesco man's leg as he delivered my monthly shop!!). Have been pulling and pulling to banish them but I know they shall be back! On the other hand, the warmth and rain has done wonders for the veggies; they are looking mighty good. Just need to sow the sweetcorn and we're done for this year.

At Katie's art lesson this week she studied tone making an object (horse) out of white paper to witness light and dark and then drawing what she saw using white chalk and charcoal. Everyone produced some lovely results. She's really enjoying these sessions and carries on her learning at home in her spare time, drawing, pastelling, inking and now charcoaling in her art book. While Katie was doing all this, Ben and I enjoyed the beautiful surroundings of Kings Cliffe walking through the narrow alleyways, admiring the stonework on the old buildings, looking for dates in the churchyard and, more than anything else, having great fun in the streams that run through the village. Typically I forgot the camera, I could have taken some fabulous shots.

Charoal and chalk - prickly pot plant.

Ben is expressing more and more his desire to do woodwork. This week he decided to use a hacksaw, hammer and nails to make Katie a mini jump for her model horses. He was adament to do the whole thing by himself (only needing a bit of assistance in working out the best way to keep the small sticks for moving during the hammering), even down to working out how to make the jump stand by itself (rather than being pushed into the ground). He was pretty chuffed with himself.

Have been engrossed in this book and this book. "World Without End" is, just like "Pillars of the Earth", fabulous - finding it hard to put down (I try hard not to read novels these days purely because it stops me doing anything else). In between reading this, I've been thumbing through "The Complete Secrets of Happy Children" which is actually a very well written and thought provoking book. Reasons for reading this? I'm finding Katie and Ben push me and push me more and more to do what they want. I find it harder to be as firm as I used to be as I quite often see their side of the argument, but I still feel I (or P) need to be the grown up figure they respect and listen to and they shouldn't expect to get their own way every time. Reading this book has really helped me find a way of getting my kiddies back on track without getting really annoyed. So far it's working and I noticed today that they were playing together and treating each other alittle better too.

Oh and finally, two more ducks have produced a total of 13 ducklings overnight. Fingers crossed this time.

Crafting with Fred Wizard

2008-05-23T13:53:00.001+01:00

Completely forgot to blog about this group session run by Mr. Fred Wizard. Actually, his real name Fred White and he makes inspiring things out of paper, card and junk. He does workshops at some of the Fenland museums which I think we may pop along to in the summer.

He showed our group of very mixed ages some of the things that can be made from bits and pieces that are often just thrown out. 3D cardboard masks of weird and wonderful faces or dragons were very popular, so he showed us how to make 3D masks out of paper just by folding, tearing or cutting in various places. Most of the children (and adults) had a go at this. Others were taken with his beautiful drawings, which he called doodles (although they were very impressive and professional looking doodles) of country scenes. Starting with a simple drawing of a tree and then adding other trees, fields etc. Then you make the picture smaller using a photocopier and continue to add to the drawing, then make it smaller over and over until you've finished with a very interesting piece of art.

Very inspirational.

Ben's masks.

Katie's tree

Not very structured at the mo, but still lots happening.

2008-05-20T21:48:00.003+01:00

It's been a while hasn't it? Sorry.

We don't seem to be very good at the structured work at the mo., lots of other things have cropped up to keep us from our desks and we've been learning lots along the way.

There's been plenty of socialising, with friends coming over, etc. on Monday, plus Katie went to Guides in the evening. They seem a nice bunch of kids and she's settling in well and making some new friends. We decided on a very impromptu visit to the grandparents' home on Monday evening, rushing back home while Katie was at Guides to pack overnight bags, feed the cat, check the rabbit, water all the veg and indoor plants and generally shut up the house in half an hour flat before picking her up at 7.30 p.m.! P had been in London and had decided to stay at his parents home overnight as they were away - we thought it would be a nice surprise for us to turn up, unannounced.

A surprise for us during the day - 8 ducklings belonging to one of our favourite ducks, wandering around the duck enclosure being very carefully watched by mum.

Tuesday we had a really lovely day tracking down Holywell Ponds in Peterborough. Full of history this "park land" has an eerie monks' cave with dipping pool, stream and several ponds all of which which are quite hidden and unknown to many locals. The children had a fabulous time wandering through the stream, watching for fish and enjoying the antics of a cute and fluffy young moorhen. We picked our way through the nettles among the trees and over rickety bridges between the ponds. While we were there we met a man who is single handedly tidying up the area. He was full of information on the history of the place; how the monks used the dipping pool and fresh water stream for medicinal purposes and the ponds for fishing.

We dragged P away from work for a pizza picnic lunch at Ferry Meadows (a much loved and often visited park in Peterborough) choosing our favourite quiet spot which the children named "rabbit creek" a couple of years ago. We sat by the water watching a heron dipping in and out trying to catch it's own lunch, and the many rabbits on the bank. After lunch we walked along the jetty to look for tadpoles, and then Katie and Ben did some tree climbing. After dropping P back at work (poor love), we headed back to the park for a bit of geese and duck watching while enjoying a much needed ice cream and cuppa. We headed home via the Spalding Bulb Museum. Came across this by chance as it's next to a garden centre and tack shop. We were after joddy boots for Katie but got sidetracked! Although small, the museum is full of information on the history of the Fens and bulb growing in the area. A lot of thought has been put into the displays which help to make it interesting for children.

On Wednesday mornings Katie has a 1/2 hour riding lesson at a local school. She's really enjoying it, but boy do they make her think, and work, hard. Although Katie's been riding for 3 years now, the instructor suggested she went right back to basics which she was happy about. We've realised that although all the schools she's been to before have been good in their own ways, this is probably the first place where she's actually receiving some structured tuition. This week she was able to keep good control of her horse during walk, stop, walk and trot. Doesn't sound too hard I know, but usually schooled horses know exactly how the lessons work and don't need much controlling! This school doesn't seem to have any routine in their lessons at all, and so it's up to the rider to tell the horse what to do - something Katie has always wanted to learn. She also going to start 2 1/2 hour stable management classes on Saturdays and hopes to go along to a Beach Ride day very soon (although that'll empty my pocket somewhat).

Today, Thursday, we headed to Kings Cliffe, just outside Peterborough, for a Katie to take part in a group art session. While Katie was busy drawing, I took Ben and his friend to the Nene Valley Railway at Wansford. Nothing much was going on there, but we were able to look at some of the huge steam trains in the sidings and spotted "Thomas" ready for the Bank Holiday Weekend. Wandered along by the water's edge and then the boys had a good run around after a bit of an icy snack (yep, another ice cream). They also played for about an hour in the playground, so a pretty easy morning for me. Back at Kings Cliffe, we met up with the group and had a picnic in one of the most beautiful and relaxing settings you can imagine. Katie and Ben, and several others, enjoyed a dip in the stream and then a short walk to see the three horses that belong to the lady who runs the art sessions - Katie was obviously in her element.

Sad news this morning, 7 of the 8 ducklings didn't survive the night. Can't tell what happened, although it was a cold night so that may have been the cause. The remaining little one seems full of life; let's hope it survives.

In between all this, Ben has been doing lots of DT and science with his Hot Wheel track and cars and Katie has been making photo stories using some of her model horses and riders. Also, making the most of the sun shine (mixed with a nippy Easterly wind at times I should add), the children have helped plant some cabbages and French beans plus loads of French Marigolds. An area has been set aside for the last veg to go in our patch, corn on the cob. Just need to get lots of pots for our pepper plants and numerous chillis and then we can sit back and wait for the goodies to grow!

Just heard the cuckoo + nature competition

2008-05-10T20:21:00.003+01:00

must be summer time then!

Here's some garden shots:

Katie bought these violas from the supermarket some time ago. They were cheap because they'd come to the end of their best, but with sun and water, they're looking a treat.

Veggies are all doing well. Garlic at the front, 2 1/2 rows of onions, leeks and butterbeans.

Baby blackbird no 1. We saw another this afternoon.

The photo doesn't do the colour of this Gerbera justice - it's a fabulous pink.

Ducks are back! These two were ducklings last year! Very tame, they came into the kitchen soon after this shot.

One of the many Rapeseed fields dotted around the countryside near us.

As this is a sort of nature themed post, I thought I'd mention a campaign and competition I stumbled across in the Country Living Magazine. They are running a campaign to "bring back the school nature table" and are asking schools and families to get out and about, encourage children to enjoy nature and either establish a nature table at school or do a nature project at home. All the details are in the link above, and entries need to be in by 1st September, 2008.

Stunning tulips and other things

2008-05-08T15:05:00.003+01:00

Weather is so absolutely fantastic, so we've spent lots of time enjoying it. Please, please, please let it last. I know this time last year we were having brilliant weather too, and it all changed on Friday 9th - which was our moving day!

Last Friday (2nd) we had an HE session at the local Dominos Pizza. The fast-food owner was great with the children and must have been exhausted after the hour and a half non-stop talking and working! He started by chatting about the franchise, health and safety and then how the equipment is used and employees work etc. He then showed the children how to make a pizza and let each child in turn make their own from shaping and "slapping" the dough to covering it with tomato sauce, using the cheese distributor and then picking the topings. The children loved watching the pizza enter and exit (after 8 minutes) the extremely hot oven and of course they were able to take their creation home to munch for lunch.

After our pizza munching, sitting in the sun, we did a few chores around town and then headed home via three churches with flower displays for the "2008 Tulip Trails in South Holland". The first church, in Weston, was beautifully decorated, not just with flowers, but all their kneeling pads were hand-sewn and were a sea of colour. Our second was at Moulton, a village with the tallest windmill in the UK. Although open to the public, it seemed to be closed for our visit, but definitely a place to re-visit later in the year. The church at Moulton had some lovely plants for sale which was right up Katie's street. All their flower displays were of the theme of "Country Living". Our final church was in Fleet. A small baptist church with equally delightful flower arrangements (and more plants for sale). We would love to have travelled around to see more, but time was getting on and I was exhausted! Very sad news when we reached home - our neighbour had not pulled through his very recent cancer operation. Missing him dearly.

Saturday we headed to the Tulip Festival and Carnival at Spalding. We arrived early in order to get a parking space. The number of coaches was amazing! Packed a picnic and enjoyed sitting by the river before watching the floats and bands in the carnival. Most of the floats were decorated with tulip petals and two in particular were really well thought out - one of a variety of large model animals and the other of model horses pulling a stage coach with the "King" and "Queen" inside - all covered in petals. We also looked round the gardens to see the array of tulips and wander through the new childrens section and Zen garden, admire the tiny, tiny ducklings in the ponds and browse more plant stalls!

Festival Tulip which Ben thought looked like "Eggbert", the character he loves.

Bronze jumping fish at the Festival Gardens

Love these tulips with the jagged edges - butterfly adds to the charm!

New Zen garden.

Sunday, P, Katie and I rose from our slumbers at 4.30 to take part in International Dawn Chorus Day. It was a warmish dawn so we were able to sit out in our PJs and dressing gowns and enjoy hearing the birds gradually wake up. We could have done this in our beds of course, as from Monday onwards we've been having the bedroom window open and therefore have been woken by the noisy little feathered friends each morning! Not much else happened Sunday, as I recall, but we did have our first BBQ of the season - yum.

Walking amongst the tulips

Monday we visited a local tulip field before heading off to P's parents for a BBQ to celebrate mine and b-i-l's birthdays. Got a pair of ever so comfy house shoes as one of my pressies. Been after a pair since Christmas. They are so pretty, comfortable and, just different. Made by Fly Flot from felt with rubber sole so they can be worn outside but I don't want to spoil them! Also got a nice Amazon voucher which I can't wait to spend and a large slab of orange chocolate from Liberty's!

Tuesday we did some work. Katie and Ben have started their rock collections and checked out this game all about rocks and where they come from. They also started an experiment to see how much water certain rocks (like lava), or chalk, can hold. Last week Katie explained how the Earth's plates move with the help of (several) custard creams! We went out for a drive and stopped off at a nearby village to nose around the grave yard to witness signs of weathering on the stone work. Came across two delightful horses which kept us busy for a while! In maths, we are looking more closely at fractions as Katie clams up whenever fractions reared their heads and Ben is pretty new to it all anyway. Found BBC Skillswise quite helpful, although perhaps a little too basic for Katie, but it has some good worksheets.

"Let me just explain again, with another one!"

Wednesday was my birthday. As pointed out by my sister, the last one in the 30s (not that it bothers me too much). We headed to London for the day which hot and sticky but we had a fun day with plenty of ice creams. Our main events were visiting the Royal Mews and the House Hold Cavalry museums, although disappointingly we only saw four horse rumps in total from these two places (although we saw whole horse in the parks - mounted police!). A Toy Solidier Centre was recommended to us so we stopped off to admire the many displays of toy battles - Nepoleon, World Wars I and II, American Revolution, Civil War to name a tiny few. All the detailed figures are for sale - they have a website which is very handy as Ben's decided he'd like to collect them all!

Hug a tree in Green Park!

Pelicans in St. James' Park

Today, Thursday, Katie was supposed to go for her first art group session but we had to take Allie to the vet. He seemed unhappy from the end of last week but we couldn't work out what was wrong. I initially thought his teeth needed sorting out (again), but during the weekend we realised he'd hurt one of his front legs and he kept lifting his paw. By Monday he was limping and it seemed to have got worse by the end of the day. Tuesday I rang the vet and they said they had no appointments or emergency space available. Wednesday we were out so I felt we couldn't wait any longer to get him seen to. This morning we could tell he was really in pain. The vet's given him some antipiotics and reckons he'd been in a fight. Although I couldn't feel anything, he said his leg, at the elbow, was hot and swollen and he had a high temperature. Allie, being Allie, has got quite used to me pandering to his every whim. He's been sleeping most of the day (which is quite usual), but hasn't been eating or going to the toilet, so I've had to lift him and take him to his food, or put him outside, to try and ease his discomfort of walking. You can probably tell I'm a bit softie when it comes to cats, and animals in general.

Ben's been into drawing plans for his home of the future. He's often talked about being a builder and building his own home. I need to find something along these lines to develop this I think.

I'd like to share this brilliant link ...

2008-04-29T21:31:00.003+01:00

Found this on the back of a mag in the library!

Ology World - for all those who love the series of books, Pirateology, Dragonology, Wizardology, Mythology etc., etc. Enjoy!

Our week

2008-04-27T21:57:00.004+01:00

Our week started with a social Monday, having friends at our home from 10.30 until 9.30! All got on fabulously, as usual, and with good weather, the children spent alot of time outside on the trampoline, doing horse jump courses or pretend lightsaber fighting. At one point I vexed my muscles to do wheelbarrow rides around the garden - won't do that again in a hurry, not used to the excerise!

Tried to get back to normals from Tuesday onwards but have decided to try a new tactic (which means I need to get away from the fear that they aren't learning unless "doing work"). I've decided that we should do our normal routine unless the children have started their own learning by pursuing their own interests before our "school" morning has begun. In the past I've usually broken up their own spontaneous "play" in the mornings in order to keep to some routine, letting them continue with it in the afternoons. Invariably this doesn't happen, the time has past and so has the enthusiasm. So on Friday, when Ben discovered his paper plane calendar (365 paper planes) and started making them like a man possessed, I left him to it. Katie was busy making horse tack and painting model horses so I left her to that too, and eventually she joined in the paper plane making. We looked up the history of origami and later we also tried some tangrams - so all pretty educational.

Tuesday seemed to be full on with our learning. Having finished these maths sheets, we have moved on to getting to grips with our times tables following this maths website . It seems quite good so far (only up to the 5s which Katie knows already but Ben still has to use his fingers to remember them). Next is the 9s, which neither of them know. After this, we started our new topic, "Our World", using the Horrible Geography book and The Usborne Geography Encyclopedia - both from the library and both shown on my side bar, and various websites like this one which we also used for our myths and legends and found to be very good. We made a cross-section of the Earth using various crafty materials and wrote some info about each section - crust, mantle, outer and inner core. We also made an edible cross-section of the Earth, which didn't look anything like what it was supposed to look like but it tasted fab!

Trust me, this is the Earth!

Wednesday was spent doing our St. George play/film which is in the post below and Thursday Katie had a very comprehensive assessment at a local(ish) riding school that's been recommended to us. We all love the riding school she currently goes to in Peterborough, but our HE group schedule has changed this term and we shall in P'boro on a different day to normal which will be difficult for her riding. Also, this new place, not only being much cheaper, also runs a 2 1/2 hour stable club on a Saturday morning with training and exams, something she's longing to do. A couple of children from the village go too so she'll also get to know them better.

Weather this weekend was mostly brilliant. Lots of outdoor stuff! More trampolining (would love to post up a rather unflattering pic of P, but I'm just too nice), the swing ball has been dusted down and Billy the rabbit has spent longer than a couple of hours outdoors enjoying the warmth. Even managed an hour of reading in the deckchair this morning. Have now planted up the last of the onions, Katie's two butter bean plants and have dug over the rest of the plot ready for corn on the cob and runners. Garlic's looking great - won't be long now! After all this, I decided to start a mini-Spring clean of the house. Amazing what nice weather can do!

Ben did some wood sculpting.

St. George's Day

2008-04-23T20:20:00.004+01:00

We all spent a long time today reading about the history of St. George here, and then writing a short playing following this version of St. George slaying the dragon, making costumes and performing this play. Hope you like it.

Morris Dancing

2008-04-19T14:05:00.002+01:00

We went along to the most fabulous group get together yesterday - Morris Dancing. Liam, the Director of this company, was absolutely fabulous with the children and kept them captivated for two hours, willing to stay with them a little longer to show and help them play a variety of unusual instruments he brought along.

He started the session by teaching the children a dance which they picked up brilliantly (and it wasn't that simple). It needed lots of team effort, and with some teams ranging in age from about 5 to 11 or 12, they worked together really well. After each team displayed their dance, accompanied by Liam on his melodeon to much clapping and foot tapping from mums and dads in the audience, we had a small break before taking a look at some musical instruments. Liam introduced us to the triangle! An instrument often associated with school music sessions and not particularly exciting (sorry, hopefully that won't offend anyone too much), or so we thought. However, he showed us how to hold the triangle, then clench it to make fun sounds and beats. Next came the dulcemar (I can't find a decent web link for this), which is like the insides of a piano and you gently tap the strings with a special wooden "tool" to make the most beautiful and relaxing sound. A set of Lincolnshire bagpipes, which one of the children tried to play and made the most hilarious noise, followed by of the mums, who'd got a pair of pipes at home (but hadn't played them for quite a while), who managed a actual tune. After the group having fun keeping beat to the melodeon using spoons, Liam showed us a herdi gerdi - (again, can't find a pic to show you).

Here's some piccies. Ben made a lovely film of the teams dancing, but there's just too many faces to safely put it up on the blog.

A dance move called "high basket"

A dance move where dancers first go under the sword and then step over it.

Listening and learning about the melodian

I think I can say we all had a really fun time - much recommended.

Finally, it's finished ... how long did that take?!

2008-04-19T13:43:00.001+01:00

Well, we started this in May 2006! Ben and I have finally glued all the pieces together and now, hopefully, we won't wait another two years before putting it up for the birds!

Quirks about me - tag.

2008-04-17T21:58:00.002+01:00

Thank you Hannah for the tag, here goes:

The rules are as follows:
1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Be sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting what you did.Six non-important things/habits/quirks about me:

1) When I'm tired I play with my ears. This is something I've done for as long as I can remember!

2) I had an assignment published in a book about Early Learning after attending a course during my wonderful time working in a pre-school.

3) I sing often, which really annoys the rest of my household. I usually burst into song when someone says any word that reminds me of a song. In fact we often play a game when the children try and catch me out with words that don't produce a song!

4) I make up silly rhymes, which also annoys my children, but not as much as my singing. Unfortunately, most of my rhymes end in the word poo or loo, as they rhyme with so much!

5) I like a hot water bottle in my bed although I usually push it to the bottom as soon as I get into bed!

6) I seem to have a knack of making a computer stop working or go abit strange. Unfortunately it only happens when my hubby is away on business and therefore we're without the internet, which is a very big problem in our house! When he returns, the computer decides to work perfectly without any input from him. Therefore I must have some kind of weird and wonderful way with machines to make this happen.

I'm tagging: Islamic Homeschool, Nikki and Tammy.

Getting back to nature

2008-04-13T21:03:00.002+01:00

Spent a lovely long time in the garden sowing a row of onions, a large container of carrots and another of potatoes and some more spring onions (hoping they'll grow this time).
Our kitchen conservatory, being the warmest place in the house at the moment, has turned into a greenhouse! Having realised I've probably left it a little late to sow the tomato seeds, I bought two cherry tomato plants from a rather gorgeous and well stocked garden centre close to us and have sown them in a large window box style tub indoors. The little tag says they grow up strings, so I'll have to put my thinking cap on as to how I'm going to attach the strings to the roof of the conservatory!! Katie has sown cacti seeds and marigolds, peppers and chilli seeds.

No, they are not dead bodies!!

Outside I've had a good old dig around and weeding session, although it hardly seems like I've done anything. I've planted two sweet pea plants next to our two benches, with tipee canes for them to grow up. I'm also madly digging the earthed area around the pine trees in order to sow a packet or two of butterfly flower seeds. Katie did this last year and they looked stunning, just like a cottage garden.

This little fella was snuggled under a large brick I stumbled over! He's happy nestled among the rotting wood in our nature garden area now.

Also, on the garden front, through the RSPB Homes for Wildlife, we've been doing the April survey to try and get an idea of which birds are breeding and nesting in our garden (or roof in our case). We've missed the first two weeks (of the four week survey), but we sat outside this morning for half and hour to see what was going on. Unfortunately we were rather hindered by the visiting cat we call Kanda whom, still being rather young, insisted on chasing bees, pouncing on bread and sticks on the ground, and generally putting the birds off visiting our patch! We did note three sparrows coming and going from our gutter and three blackbirds, but just yesterday I saw the blackbirds with nesting materials and worms in their beaks so I'm sure they're nesting close by too.

All three of us use the A-Z list of birds on the RSPB site constantly, with it's clear photo/drawing, description and recording of bird song, we've been able to identify many unknown birds we have seen or heard in and around our area. We recently discovered the rather large thrush lookalike visiting us is a Mistle thrush. Katie is tempted to join me for the Dawn Chorus Day on 4th May. I think our HE group is planning a get together with cooked breakfast thrown in, but I reckon we'll stay at home and crawl back to bed afterwards!

Dealing with bullying - been thinking about this.

2008-04-12T21:08:00.003+01:00

Ben had someone over this week for an over night stay. This little chap is at school, and when we all sat down for tea he talked about how lucky Katie and Ben are to be at home "not having to work or put up with horrible bullies". I soon put him right on the "not working" bit and he laughed lots when I told him that home isn't that much different to school - Katie and Ben still give me hassle about learning on some occasions.

On the bullying side though it was interesting to hear his story of a particularly nasty chappy who seems to continue to make other children fear him and his small "gang". It seems that one child was so put out by it all he had to change school. We heard that the playground staff, teachers and head didn't really want to hear the whole story when it came to this bully (we've come across this before). What made the whole thing interesting was the complete shock horror on Ben's face when he heard about the antics this boy was getting up to, and his suggestion for putting this guy in his place! It made me realise that although Ben had experienced upsetting problems with a particular child from playgroup to the day he left school, he was still shocked to hear that bullying went on, and he didn't really have the best ideas for dealing with it (he said he'd give him a good punch, much to the horror of his friend who rightly pointed out that this would get Ben into more trouble than the bully!). Katie, being a little older and having also experienced bullying (more of the verbal kind) at school didn't seem so put out. Perhaps girls react differently to boys, or perhaps, being a little older, she wasn't so fazed about it all and felt she'd be able to deal with it in her own way. I guess I'll never really know, not yet anyway, but it did make me wonder if I am cushioning my children by not exposing them to these sorts of issues. How often do I get told this is good practise for their futures! We seem to mix with others that are decent, welcoming, happy, friendly and eager to get along with everyone. Are Ben and Katie going to have a shock when they hit the real world in a few year's time or do you think by discussing the subject and how to deal with it will be enough to see them through?

Please feel free to leave your comments. This has really made me think.

Break from work, "old" friends and a trip to London

2008-04-05T20:44:00.005+01:00

We're having our Spring work break at the mo and really relaxing (much needed). Well, sort of relaxing - it's still been hectic, but a nice kind of hectic if you know what I mean.

Starting with a lovely family lunch on Easter Monday (just a tiny bit behind with my posts aren't I?) where the children (including the "big" children) had great fun on a Wii playing tennis and bowling most of the time. Ben came away saying he really wants to learn tennis, but only if he has private lessons first to get to grips with it all! It seems he's a bit like this. He's very nervous about joining clubs incase he's not very good or can't understand how to do the activity. He needs to know he can do it before he joins! I'm hopeless at tennis - much better at badminton (as it's a slower pace) so I'm not a good teacher, but luckily we have a group tennis session this Friday, which he's going to try.

On the Wednesday, Katie had a pony day which, I think for the first time, wasn't wet (although they'd forecast that it would be), but cold. As always, she had a brilliant time. However, in the evening she told us that she'd muddled through with blocked ears and a stinking headache. This seemed to last until Sunday evening unfortunately so we had to cancel friends staying on the Saturday night. Poor love was quite down in the dumps but I think it was the first proper under the weather illness she's had since leaving school nearly three years ago - not bad.

Made the most of nicer weather that weekend for gardening with Paul buying a much needed chainsaw. I hate the things, you hear such horrible stories about chains flying off and doing such damage. However, we really needed to get our dead Rowan tree down, plus the plum tree (that's growing out of the septic tank drains - not a good thing, obviously) and with all the other trees in the garden, and log sawing for the fire, we knew we'd get a lot of use out of one. After the initial thinking that the new chainsaw wasn't any good (it wasn't cutting), and having listened to me (aren't women always right?), he realised the chain was on the wrong way round, but once fixed, he was off. Keeping his feet firmly on the ground (there was no way I was letting him up a ladder with that thing), we cut the tree down which landed with a massive thud and left indents in the ground. To say he loved using the chainsaw would be an understatement. I'll have to keep I eye on the other trees now incase he gets ideas! Sadly, our neighbour, just two days later, had a rather nasty accident with his bench saw and it appears he's now lost his right thumb and second finger from the knuckle up and completely sliced through his first finger cutting the tendon. These powerful tools are certainly dangerous things.

Tuesday we had "old" friends for lunch. Not old at all of course, but two families who were good friends with us at school. We hadn't seen each other for a much needed natter and catch up for far too long and it was lovely having them here. All the children (and adults) got on fabulously. Much jumping on the trampoline, footy in the garden and playing in the house. One family are also home edding and live not too far from us so hopefully we'll see more of them.

Thursday and Friday Paul and I spent in London. Can't remember the last time we had a couple of days away together - it was special. Paul used some hotel card points to secure us a free room at the Intercontinental on Park Lane and we were upgraded to a rather nice room on the top floor upon arrival, with a complimentary tray of goodies too. Thursday afternoon we spent at a rather dreary Ideal Homes. I haven't been for about 11 years (gulp) and so was really disappointed at how it had all changed. Much more space (or was it fewer people) and no small stalls full of interesting bits and bobs that me, my sister and mum used to spend all our pennies on. Even the houses on show weren't up to much we didn't think. Never mind, it was a day out and we did find some extremely scrumptious liquorice in various flavours to munch on whilst mooching round.

Curry in the evening and lots of walking to see the sights. Friday morning we headed for Harrods and were one of the first through the doors at 10 a.m. Felt a little intimidated until more people had arrived. Such prices! We were looking at the TVs for £3 or £4,000 and then found one at £800 which seemed a bargain not to be missed (no, we didn't buy it). Children have their own floor in the department store not just for toys, shoes and "ordinary" clothes, but for their own hairdressers and designer clothes room! Looking round the fossil and mineral gallery was my favourite - just like looking round a museum. We bought danish pastries for a late breakfast and later bought baquettes for lunch from the best part of the store - the food halls. Love all the little food bars dotted around - chocolate bar, dim sum bar, coffee bar to name just three. And the spookiest bit - the wax statue of Mr. Al Fayad himself!

Watched the Grand National this afternoon (through my fingers - I hate seeing horses (and riders) fall). I picked the winner - just wish I'd placed some money on him!

Weather's turned very cold again but hopefully the spring onion and leek seeds that we planted last week will survive. Katie's also planted a host of summer flowering bulbs in her patch. We stopped off at a wholesale plant shop for Katie to buy a Gerbera for her collection to see she had to buy a tray of 6 for £2.99. When we went to pay, the lady asked how many trays were left outside (three), and said we could have them all for free! Needless to say her room, and our home look very pretty at the mo!

Another busy week next week with more social activities, sleepovers, group cooking for Katie and tennis for Ben and then our planning meeting on Thursday evening. That comes around too quickly!

Had been busy redecorating Ben's room over Easter too. Here's a pic of the finished room - looking very crisp and clean. Love the two beanbags he chose, they're so comfy to sit on, and a new, warm, rug makes it much nicer for him to play on the floor.

We got the white stuff!

2008-03-23T21:07:00.003Z

After a lot of waiting and watching other parts of the country get their share of snow since the new year, we finally got the white stuff on Sunday!

Baking and making.

2008-03-20T13:32:00.005Z

In between completing projects:

Katie made some yummy cookies and rock cakes (using her special recipe which replaces currants with chopped chocolate) and Ben has made a large batch of leek, potato and carrot soup to see us through most of the week for lunch time.

We also sowed cress seeds inside clean egg shells and toy boots which we found in the craft cupboard.

Following the instructions in Katie's "girls' handbook" for Ukrainian eggs, she and Ben decorated eggs using melted wax followed by a dipping in the dye. Blowing the eggs was a new thing for us and looked extremely funny (at the right angle). Katie tried to melt the wax after but it was awkward and we thought the waxed version looked quite lovely. Ben's yellow egg is "Eggbert" a character he's adored from a PC game for some time. The eggs on the website above look fabulous; I think a little more practise is needed at our end!

We've finished our Pop Art, Myths and Legends and How to Write Stories projects:

We studied the works of Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton and Roy Litchenstein and made our own paintings, collages and computer generated images.

On the writing stories front, I think in the end the book by Celia Warren was ever so good. Katie said she'd thoroughly enjoyed following it, but then she is a bit of a reader and writer anyway. Ben struggled in places. He's not good at writing in length and prefers to use the PC - his ideas seem to flow easier using this method. He has a brilliant imagination when it comes to playing, but he get a serious case of writer's block when it comes to getting things down on paper. He's still reading his Tintin books avidly and we now have an on-going Scrabble game out on the table as a free for all which he's eagerly participating in.

We found some brilliant websites for myths and legends. Particularly liked this one and this one. Reading myths from our local area was interesting and we all enjoyed writing our own using the website's story maker. Drawing a dragon head was fun too.

I'm going to start decorating Ben's room over the next few days. We have some of Katie's cream paint left over and were able to get another tin half price in a closing down sale so hopefully his room won't be as costly as Katie's! He's asked for "splodges" of different paint colours on one wall! Sounds fun. We've come across magnet and blackboard paint in various bright colours which we may use tester pots of to get the splodge effect. Clearing out his room was much easier than when I had to clear Katie's! It's given us a good opportunity to give the fish tank a good clean. Fishes are in the baking bowl at the mo, much to the amusement of the visiting puss! He's learning the word "no" very, very quickly.

Couple of gardening tips.

2008-03-17T15:01:00.003Z

Picked these tips up from a mag recently:

Keep old used tea bags and place them at the bottom of the gardening pot before adding any compost. The bags will absorb the water and keep the moisture in for longer.

I find wearing gardening gloves quite restrictive at times so to keep my finger nails clean I dig them into a bar of soap before I begin.

2008-03-17T14:05:00.002Z

Katie and Ben split for sleepovers on Thursday night with Katie's friend staying with us and Ben going to his buddy for the evening. The next day we all met up to do some tie dyeing. I'm sure most readers know what this is, but I came across this website with a bit of info and the history too which is quite interesting. Good fun, very, very messy (protect every inch of floor, table, clothing and skin if possible, as the dye is lethal when it comes to staining, and it seems to get everywhere) and wonderful results in the end. Rinsing out the t-shirts 24 hours later and then washing them at 30 degrees was probably the hardest part as we all wanted to wear them immediately! Katie and Ben even ironed there ones themselves! Here's the results.

This week we shall endeavour to finish all the outstanding projects we've been working on ready for an Easter break. Today we looked at Longitude and Latitude, the final section on our mapping project, using this website for guidance. The game is quite good fun and helps the whole thing sink in a little better. I'm quite impressed with the whole site actually. We explored a bit and found this solar system game which was fun. Place the planets, comets etc., where you want around the sun to see what disasters may occur! Spurred some chatting about the "big bang" and how conveniently placed Earth is to ensure life can exist.

Gardening

2008-03-09T20:08:00.003Z

Spent Thursday afternoon in the garden enjoying a little Spring weather as we planted a row of shallots (thank you Mr. P. from next door).

Ben decided to make mud pies for the rest of the afternoon and Katie planted out some small shrubs she'd been nurturing indoors.

Katie and I also planted our new Granny Smith apple tree that we'd bought for a bargain £4.99. We had it still in it's packaging indoors for about a month and found two blossom flowers and several buds once we'd unwrapped it. Hopefully it'll take and produce some tasty fruits in the years to come.

Nice to be outside and see some signs of new life.

Drip, drip ...

2008-03-08T21:18:00.002Z

... great. We've just had a downpour and the ceiling is leaking onto the printer. When we moved in we noticed (what we thought was) a stain on the ceiling, but we hadn't had any trouble from it, until now. The rain seems to get into this house in the strangest places and we can't seem to work out how it does it. Ben's window often leaks if the rain is hard against the pane of glass, and the conservatory leaks too at times, but there's nothing obviously wrong when we check outside!

Something else to deal with I guess.

Going to snuggle by the fire now and watch Boston Legal and see how many drips we can collect before bed time!

National Space Centre

2008-03-08T20:52:00.004Z

Met up with a few families from our HE group at Leicester's National Space Centre a couple of Friday's ago. Met at 11 and after a rather lengthy sorting out of correct entry prices we set off round the first part of the museum set on three small floors which travel up the side of this pretty tall space rocket (Thor). We were all booked into a fabulous "Astronaut" film at 12 noon which Ben was a little dubious about to start with. A little daunting I must say for those not happy with the unknown! A bit like a planatarium inside, the comfy seats are designed to enable you to view the screen which covered the sides and ceiling of the theatre giving you a wonderful experience during the performance. The film was about how to be/what it's like to be an astronaut, which was very well put together and I only had to close my eyes once (in fear of going horribly dizzy) when they showed us some anti-gravity machine which we'd seen before on a James May programme on TV. I know for sure that I certainly haven't got the staminar, brains and probably the guts, to be one of the fortunate few to travel into space.

After the film we grabbed our picnic lunch and were lucky enough to have space in the indoor school's picnic area. The lady on the desk said we'd picked a really good day with only a handful of schools there and they are all small numbers. She said the week before and week after they were having very large numbers of children.

We headed for the rest of the exhibition on the ground floor which was just excellent. Lots to read but also lots of fun and easy interactive areas for everyone to try out. So many great sections, but I loved the solar system, Ben enjoyed sitting inside a pod, turning himself into an alien and also this huge world and I think Katie and her friend enjoyed being weather girls!

Took us a while to get there but I think it was well worth it and I must say the staff at the Centre were really friendly, helpful and happy to please. Before the visit, the staff were quick to answer my many emails about pricing, eating areas, etc., etc., and when they'd got the pricing wrong on the day, they were quick to deal with it and refund families who'd been overcharged.

If you're planning a visit, email them first. We were told that HE families receive school discounts for entry (quite a bit cheaper than normal entry prices) if you show some from of ID. I explained that not all H. Edders belong to an organisation and therefore wouldn't have an ID card and she was happy to continue to offer the same discount. We also used our Tesco vouchers with the school's discount, so it wasn't a pricey day out (apart from the petrol of course!).

Their website's educational section has some really good ideas for fun learning too.

Way behind on my posts ...

2008-03-08T20:45:00.004Z

So here's the promised pictures of Katie's room which I remembered to take today:

Love those floor cushions, the photo doesn't do them justice. Also, the fireplace wasn't painted by me! When I get some free time (ha, ha), I'll have a bash at restoring it (or just painting it black probably).

Katie painted this lovely horse some time ago, it looks great on the chimney breast.

Made this memo board using an old Ikea frame, 4 mtrs of ribbon and some beautiful vintage style horse material first seen on "Islamic Homeschool" blog and purchased on e-bay.

Katie asked me to put up a piccie of her growing collection of house plants. This is just a very small number of them!

To all mums everywhere ...

2008-03-02T21:13:00.002Z

Everyone snuggled into bed first thing to watch an old Top Gear (through BBC-i) on the laptop! I received a very sweet homemade gift of flowers in a basket with a heart made out of Fimo from Katie, and a very glittery card from Ben, plus a large bottle of my favourite tipple - Baileys.

Cooked a roast for Ps parents and drank a few glasses of wine, chatting away, as you do! A lovely day from start to finish.

Hope your day was as good.

Yep, we felt it ...

2008-02-27T19:56:00.004Z

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.

Adventures of Tintin - Ben's reading like a man possessed!

2008-02-26T13:35:00.004Z

Yippee, put the flags out, whoo hooo, "smile, smile" - you get the picture. Ben has discovered the "Adventures of Tintin" books at the library and finally (I never thought it would ever happen), he's reading, reading and further reading, finishing books left, right and centre. I know he's reading them because, (a) we hear him laughing as he reads, (b) he tells us about the stories, (c) he talks about the characters, (d) "blistering barnacles" or "thundering typhoons" are expressions added to his everyday exclamations and (e) he keeps asking to buy more books or find more at the library.

So, you've probably worked out

Other things:

Katie has started a poster all about plants and how to care for them, grow them (by taking cuttings etc.) and how to grow an avocado from seed (which we have yet to do). The kitchen is slowly turning into a greenhouse. Actually, it's slowly turning into a dumping ground (sorry, creative room) as inbetween planting cuttings and repotting etc., she's making new model horse displays, rugs, tack etc., so there's also glue (or water and flour which she prefers to use), paint, lengths of silk, material (and all the tools needed to go with these items) on the work surfaces. I probably spend more and more time each day insisting that she clears up something before moving on to something else (and crush her creative skills!). The thing is, her bedroom is now so lovely and fresh I guess she doesn't want to mess it up!

This morning I spent a good two hours clearing up because we had an appointment with a chap from "bmrb" to come and do a "Parents and Children" survey with me and Katie. A little apprehensive when he first appeared on our doorstep a couple of weeks ago and said we'd been chosen (from a list of names/addresses held by the post office - never heard of this before), and that it was for the "department for children, schools and families". We decided to do it because our answers are (or should be) confidential and our details won't be passed on to anyone(!). Oh, we did each get £7 in shopping vouchers which isn't bad. Katie's going to buy another plant - she spyed a nice trailing one in a DIY shop recently. So I had a relatively clean house by 10.30 this morning, ready for this chap. The survey was fine - he said afterwards it was lovely to come across a family which tries to keep to tradition - eating and doing things together, actually knowing a bit about our children, discussing problems with them rather than letting them go off the rails etc., etc. Katie was a little taken aback answering questions on drugs, drink, stealing etc., but it was aimed at 11 - 19 year olds. It's pretty sad if a child her age is drawn into these things (or any age really).

"Work" (as we know it) seems to be off the agenda for the rest of today. Ben's done some piano practise and we've reorganised all his Lego into compartments inside his desk so it's all off the floor. Both are busy building on Lego City on the PC at the moment so that's quite educational.

I've found a way of blocking 11 email addresses that persist on sending messages to me on s*x toys and pills and PC software. I'd love to know how I've suddenly been targetted (I don't actually surf for these things on the net - honestly), and a lot of the messages aren't actually addressed to my email address - some just have part of my email address in it. Let's hope the blocking system works.

Oh, and finally, on the gardening side of things, the row of garlic bulbs that I planted are beginning to show signs of life.

"I'm chuffed" - http://sig.graphicsfactory.com/

Hot, cold, foggy and freezing!

2008-02-21T14:41:00.002Z

Seems a bit weird to be uploading photos of the beautiful frost we've been expierencing at the beginning of the week when we were sitting outside having lunch in the garden just a week before! The weather during half term was glorious. Coats off and outside in February? The pair of goldfinches that nested in our garden last year are now back and we noted the slow to bloom snowdrops are gradually popping up.

Come Monday morning, an extremely heavy fog came down. It was a real "pea souper" so I was quite concerned about P driving to work on Monday morning. In fact it took him 2 hours to reach Peterborough (lucky he leaves so early in the mornings) and when we ventured out to the Post Office around mid-day, it was still so thick we had to drive at a snail's pace! Very pretty though, especially on Tuesday when the air was so cold the frost stayed on the trees all day and made everywhere look very Narniaish. By darkness it had warmed up enough to melt and we could hear the heavy drops of water from the trees as they fell to the ground.

The thin layer of water in the swimming pool turned into a mini ice rink.

It took Ben lots of stamping on the ice to break it!

During half term, I spent most of the week redecorating Katie's room (finished piccies to follow - still need to finish some gloss work). I did do a "before" picture but it has mysteriously disappeared. Anyway, it was pink and peach before and is cream and blue now. Katie and Ben helped with the rollering of the emulsion on the walls and produced very good finishes. P spent most of the following weekend putting up the new blind, 5 shelves for Katie's model horses and various hooks for bits and bobs. There was quite a bit of huffing, puffing, and bad language - but we left him to it and he got it all done. Just the mention of possibly putting up one more hook produced a rather sour look!

We ventured out to Ayscoughfee Hall during the week to look at the gardens and museum. The last time I'd visited here was when Ben was 3 and the museum has improved hugely. Lots of interactive areas for the children (and adults) to get stuck in to - all about Lincolnshire's history. Came across a board showing local Lincolnshire words - loved "Doggerybaw" (meaning nonsense, waffling on, etc., etc). Seriously thinking of changing my blog to this name although I see there's plenty of Doggerybaw blogs out there already!

Continuing with all our projects; myths and legends, Pop Art, maps, writing stories and, of course, maths. In between all this, Ben has been exploring the planets on the DK Atlas of the Solar System CD-Rom and Katie has been adding to and learning more about her plant collection (which'll be as big as her model horse one soon).

I heard a crash at 3.30 a.m. this morning which was perfect timing for getting up to check out the eclipse of the moon last night. Sky was relatively clear but the crimson moon was nowhere to be seen. Having check out the websites today, I see the eclipse is tomorrow morning for us UK folks! Hopefully another crash in the house will wake me in time.

Frosty Mornings

2008-02-17T17:06:00.002Z

We've been having some beautiful frosty mornings this last week. Apparently last night temperatures were to drop to -4 deg. C! Took these piccies in the front garden where the frost stays on the ground all day.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T18:40:00.002Z

Fabulous roses from the other half and I made him a holder for some choccies out of four hand stitched padded hearts. I also made an extremely rich and yummy chocolate cake; in fact it's so rich we haven't yet finished it!!

Managed to have a lovely evening out on Friday at the local Indian. Ben was at his cousin's and Katie at a friend's for sleepovers.

Felting, in pictures.

2008-02-09T20:12:00.000Z

Had a brilliant group session yesterday where the children made their own felt.

A fabulous selection of felting wool - so many brilliant colours and the wool is really really soft.
Start by taking strands of felting wool and lay it horizontally (to make a rectangular shape, or whatever shape you wish) onto a half folded towel covered with a tea towel . Take more strands and lay them over the first lot but now vertically. A third layer of strands are layed on top horizontally. This is the base. It can then be decorated with wool or further strands to form a pattern

Cover the finished layers of felting wool with another tea-towel. Pour warm water over the tea-towel and rub soap over it too. Then begin rubbing the wet and soapy tea-towel all over quite firmly with hands and fingertips (taking care not to rub so hard it moves any design you've created on the felting wool). Continue to do this for about 10 minutes, adding more warm water and soap as needed (wetter the better it seemed). You are looking for a flat and sturdy piece of felt before moving to the next stage. Don't forget the edges!

Carefully unfold the towel and refold over the tea-towel. Roll up the towel, tea-towels and felt into one tight roll (secure with rubber bands at each end) and begin rolling along the table until the felt is further bound together. When it's ready, rinse and lay out to dry.

Katie's felt.

Ben's felt.

Everyone made lovely artistic pieces. I especially loved this heart made by one of the teenagers.

Some of the lovely felt creations by the lady who ran the session and her son. I so want the little grey dog! Making these little animals, butterflies etc. is pretty easy too, apparently. Using felting wool and a special pin to literally stab the wool until it is firm enough to hold it's shape.

Think we'll be doing some more of this.

It got just a little worse before it got better!

2008-02-09T19:55:00.000Z

So, following on from my rather bad Wednesday (blogged here), Thursday ended in tears! Mad hoovering and sprucing up the house for a sleepover on the Friday meant a disaster in Katie's room when I knocked her new and much prized resin model horse onto the floor. As it disaster happened time slowed right down (why is it you are never quick enough to catch the falling object, you just watch in horror?) before the inevitable thud and then smash. Actually, only a tiny section of one of the horse's legs smashed into lots of tiny pieces but immediately, once the gasps and moments of stunned silence stopped, Katie's tears began to flow. There is a silver lining to this rather dark cloud, I have been able to order her another one. It's a limited edition and there were 5 left! Phew! I've suggested, as it is so prized and she really only wants to "show" it, that the new one is kept in it's box and the old one can be repaired ready for display. She's a dab hand with the millput and paint when it comes to model making and mending!

So, apart from a few niggles over a group session on Friday, my bad two days see to have come to an end! The "poo man" turned up this afternoon and put a much needed smile back on my face. Lovely chap, talked for some time about how he came to work with "poo"! Long story, won't bore you, but he made P and me laugh!

Shrove Tuesday

2008-02-06T22:04:00.000Z

Had a freak flash of lightening and roll of thunder this afternoon. Went extremely dark and the clouds were spooky.

Love pancake day. Made three loads of batter this year following Delia Smith's recipe, as always. Also made some rather yummy butterscotch sauce, but I can't break tradition, I always end up with sugar and lemon on mine.

Had a helper to make the first batch of mixture, and she did pretty well at the flipping this year too, although I didn't catch it on camera.

Proud of the kiddies - long post, sorry

2008-02-06T21:24:00.000Z

Of course I'm always proud of my two, but once in a while I'm just that little extra proud of them, enough for me to tell everyone else!

Today was one of those days when annoyingly domestic problems just have to take priority over work. We did manage to get maths and some verbal reasoning done before the postman arrived - then it when downhill from there.

A month after we moved into our home we decided to change electricity supplier and at the time had a bit of a do about final readings and final bill. Basically, we're on economy 7 and the supplier kept mixing up the two readings! Anyway, this was back in July and I thought we'd come to a agreement that the company owed us a very tiny amount and because of this I didn't bother to chase them when I didn't receive their final statement. Today a final statement plopped onto the carpet and I got just a tiny bit hot and bothered! They're taking out of my bank account (direct debit) £160 odd for a month and one week's worth of electricity (the electricity was actually for £181 but I'd already paid one month's direct debit in June so that had been taken off). When I telephoned them, the lady took a while to grasp that according to their statement I'd used no day time electricity at all, but a whopping 8252 kwh at night time only (excuse me, I don't think I'd actually use that amount of electrical juice in one month, would I?). As luck would have it, as I was negotiating and trying to get my point across, I came across the piece of scrap paper with opening and final meter readings - hopefully that'll set the record straight. It'll take around 35 days to sort out another bill (what??) and in the mean time I have to keep checking my bank account to catch the £160 coming out so I can arrange for my bank to send it back again! From the readings I've given her I've worked out they should still owe us - be interesting to see if we hear anymore! So, that little situation kept me on the phone for quite some time and then I had to talk to the bank about returning the money (I'd never heard of this before).

Problem number two started with water from a shower seeping away down the plug hole very slowly about a week ago. As we have a good old fashioned septic tank I was able to get out the ancient chimney sweep sticks and have a good rummage around the drain to move a blockage out of the way (yep, the joys of owning an old house in the sticks). All was fine after that until late this morning when, after using the wash basin, the water in the toilet started to bubble furiously, leaving a rather murky colour in the pan! After the electricity saga, I went out to try and locate the blockage again, but no joy, no blockage, just a backlog of ... bits and bobs, to put it politely! OK, so you're saying "fine, it just needs emptying". Yep, you're right of course, although the previous owners had apparently never needed to empty it, and they didn't think the owners before them had either. With this in mind, the previous owners, when digging out their swimming pool, used the excess earth to raise the garden several inches which buried the covers for the inspection tanks. They'd placed slabs of concrete over the covers, so I knew where they were, but it took me 3 hours to uncover them (one was under a double layer of slabs) and the covers were so rusty I had to hammer and chisel them out! The garden now looks like the resident mole has gone into a frenzy, but at least I have all three chambers uncovered. Interesting looking inside them (yeh OK I'm a bit weird). I won't go into it any further, but yes, they certainly do need emptying. I'm hoping the chap and his tank will come tomorrow, otherwise things will start to get smelly. Talking of smelly, strangely enough the chambers don't smell. Reading up on this it means the bacteria is doing it's job. Only one little niggle, the poo man completely cleans out all the chambers which apparently means the breaking down of solids has to build up again (and this is when it may smell), it's best if he leaves some solids behind, but he won't do this. In the days of old, they used to throw a dead rabbit or chicken into the chamber to kick start the process. Mm, think we'll pass on that one!

So, the reason I'm so proud of the children. As soon as I told them I was going on the phone to the electric company, Katie and Ben headed for the kitchen and started making models following instructions from a model making book we'd got from the library. Katie had used the blender to cut sponge so tiny it resembled, when painted, bushes. She was making some kind of jumping course using this and other bits. Ben has started making a fantasy dungeon scene following the instructions with Katie's help (and she didn't get annoyed with him at all) to cut some of the cardboard into correct shapes. What gems, they worked so quietly in the room next to me and cleared up afterwards and they kept themselves amused during the afternoon too as I dug, hammed and tugged at the drain covers.

Love 'em.