Hansel and Gretel

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.

Making crystals and all about snow crystals

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

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

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

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

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.

Remembering those ...

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.

Hard at work

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.

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

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

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!).

"Autumn mists and mellow fruitfulness"

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

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

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:

Burghley, batik, combines and climbing kitten!

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.