A long weekend away (yes - there was Shakespeare!)

It was our 10th wedding anniversary this weekend, so we went down to stay with my parents and A & I had a night in the hotel in Stratford-on-Avon where we had our wedding reception, while K & M stayed with Granny and Big Grandad.  It would have been better if we'd both felt less grotty from nasty coughs, but it was lovely all the same.
Of course, since we were in that part of the country, we also did some Shakespeare-ing.  After a swim first thing, we spent the rest of the day at Mary Arden's Farm. 

K swimming

Of all of the Shakespeare Trust properties, it's the most extensive, with the most variety and with the most to do and also in my opinion the most interesting!  So we watched a falconry display and talk.

European Eagle Owl

K, M & I had a go at writing with a quill pen - tricky!  We also had a go at archery.  Rather different from the bows that you can see this week being used at the Olympics!

The girls loved the petting corner, particularly a little rabbit called Alice.

M with Velvet (not Alice)

K & Velvet (not Alice)

We had a go at dressing up as Tudors too.

M as a Tudor girl

K as a Tudor girl

And listened and talked to some Tudor characters and heard about lots of expressions that come from Tudor times, such as 'giving the cold shoulder', 'bed and board' and 'turning the tables', as well as specifically Shakespearean words and phrases 'assasination' and 'bedroom' for example.

A Tudor Woodsman

There were plenty of animals to see too, from cows and pigs and rabbits to guinea pigs.  We also had a good walk around the fields and through wooded areas with willow tunnels, which were greatly appreciated.  Another place we will be returning to and getting our money's worth from the 12 month tickets.

Speaking of a place we will returning to, we also went back to Shakespeare's Birthplace and again spent plenty of time watching the fantastic Shakespeare Aloud and chatting to them (although sadly Jen, who we spent so much time with last time wasn't there to give our thank you card to - it was to all of them but she was the only one we knew the name of so it was addressed to her and her 'fellow players').  As with our previous visit we went twice in one day and will no doubt be back again!

 The final visit of the trip was the only one of the five Shakespeare properties that we had yet to visit:  Anne Hathaway's Cottage.  Much has changed in the 15 plus years since I last visited and all for the better.  If I recall correctly there was little or no furniture inside when I was last there, but it's now

The cottage

There is also a new woodland walk, complete with Fairies, tiny trolls and clues to find a secret password for the Mid-Summer Night's Ball, on an activity sheet for children, which K & M both really enjoyed doing.

The end of the fairy Mid-Summer Night's Dream treasure trail, complete with Bottom!

A couple(t) more sonnets!

I had a bit of time while my girls were doing gymnastics and while banished from a birthday party for a while (so I retreated to nearby Dunelm Mill, where I wanted to look at curtains anyway, and sat in the café for a while).  Here are the results of my labours (which didn't come as easily as the first two).

The Merchant of Venice

Antonio our hero’s purse is slim

To Shylock for a loan, he goes one day
As surety the man demands from him
A pound of flesh if he cannot repay
The money’s for his friend Bassanio
To woo fair Portia, but his chance is poor
The lady is as wise as him, and so
They pledge to be together evermore
Oh no!  Our Tony’s ships do not return
At trial bad Shylock he no mercy gives
But flesh sans blood cannot be done we learn
Thank Portia, dressed as lawyer.  Tony lives!
It’s now revealed the usurer’s plot so black
Was criminal, he flees and won’t come back

The Taming of the Shrew

Baptista had two daughters, both were fair

The younger called Bianca, soft and mild
Had many suitors try to win her stare
But none like jealous Kate with temper wild
The father he refused to give B’s hand
Before the older daughter first was took
From wooing B the lovers all were banned
So dressed as tutors went with lute and book
Petruchio came “I’ll take Kate on” he said
But she met him with curse and jeer and frown
Wrong-footed Kate so well she ended wed
Persistent cruelty wore poor Kate right down.
So if your girl’s not tame and mild and meek
Be mean and cruel, you’ll sort her in a week!

Something by me!

A while back, when were immersed in our Roald Dahl phase, before I started blogging, I spontaneously came up with a limerick, I think it was for The Twits.  Following this K & M begged and begged for more and more until I had done one for most of the books we'd read.

After a trip down to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre I wrote to them to share them as I thought they might like them.  Soon after I heard back from them and as well as thanking me they asked if they could put them up on the wall of Miss Honey's Classroom, which of course I said was fine, so if you ever go there have a look and see if they're still there.  Here they are:

Roald Dahl was a wonderful writer

His hero Matilda was brighter

Than all of the crooks

You will find in his books

‘Gainst Miss Trunchbull she was a great fighter

There’s also George Cranky of course

Who gave to his Grandma and horse

To sheep and to hen

His great medicine and then

They all grew with remarkable force

Don’t forget good BFG

Who was gentle and kind as can be

Though he lived in a cave

He and Sophie were brave

And defeated bad giants – whoopee!

The Pelican, Monkey, Giraffe

Cleaned windows so well, not by half

They left them so clean

For the Duke (not the Queen)

And a burglar they caught – what a laugh!

Those three nasty farmers to trick

Fantastic Fox had to be quick

He dug underground

What a feast that he found

From Boggis, Bunce, Bean, who were thick.

James Trotter was terribly sad

His aunt Sponge and aunt Spiker were bad

So he sailed out of reach

With huge bugs in a peach

What a wonderful journey they had

The Twits were a horrible pair

Mean, ugly and covered in hair

They didn’t care tuppence

But got their comeuppance

Heads glued down their feet in the air

There was a young man, a new vicar

Whose speech really could have been slicker

With his words wrong way round

So that ‘God’ was a hound

That unfortunate Nibbleswick vicar

In a caravan Danny and dad

Live together, they’re poor but not sad

One dark night in the wood

Poached all pheasants they could

Got one over on Hazel, he’s mad!

Roald Dahl also wrote rhyme

At fairy tales he was sublime

Though he still kept the gist

He would give things a twist

Hilarious results every time

Young Charlie was hungry and thin
But then a gold ticket did win
Our hero was needy
The other kids greedy
The overall winner was him

So Charlie was now now Wonka's heir
'Bout chocolate so much to learn there
Then a lift into space
Vermicious knids there to face
He and Wonka, they made quite a pair

A girl who had magical powers
Had neighbours who hunted for hours
Into ducks they were turned
Until hunting they spurned
Then they dug graves and planted some flowers

In Boy we learn of Roald's life
Of holiday fun and school strife
Cruel teachers at school
But the chocolate was cool!
But we don't get as far as his wife

The Witches all evil and vice
Planned to turn all the kids into mice
Their plan it was spoiled
By a boy-slash-mouse foiled
Who turned them into mice in a trice

Now our Dahl-ian obsession has faded, it occurred to me that I could challenge myself to do something similar with our current author of the moment, Shakespeare.  Of course limericks would be entirely inappropriate, so here are my first two attempts and summing up plots in sonnet form.

Twelfth Night

 By tempest boy/girl twins in strange land wrecked

 Sebastien, to Viola, he seemed drowned
 For local Duke she worked as boy bedecked
 And gave up hope her brother would be found
 Now Duke Orsino loved Olivia fair
 Used 'boy' Cesario to push his suit
 Olivia for 'boy', not Duke, did care
 But 'boy' was girl and girl loved Duke - a hoot!
 And more, the kill-joy Steward loved in vain
 Sir Toby, Andy and the maid were sly
 They tricked Malvolio, had him deemed insane
 And locked away in prison by and by
 But all ends well as twins once more join hands
 And both find love and end with wedding bands.

Much Ado About Nothing

Beatrice and Hero, cousins, both are fair
With war Don Pedro and his men are done
One Claudio for Hero he does care
By Pedro now for him the girl is won
But Benedick and Bea have tongues that cut
To friends together they seem to belong
With tricks united, they go well – ah but
For other lovers evil John plots wrong
Fair Hero, she is seen to be untrue
By Claudio in public she is spurned
But thinking Hero dead the man is blue
When of her pure-white innocence he learned
But fortunately all turns out quite well
And twice we hear the chimes of wedding bell

Rather predictably I've been getting requests for more from K & M, so watch this space!

A summer's evening walk by the canal and bedtime reading.

After not blogging for over a week, you get two in one day!  While it's great that summer has finally arrived, after months of seemingly endless rain, it's actually rather too hot for me and my equally pale and interesting girls!  But come about 7 o'clock, it's just perfect for an evening stroll.  So we took Uncle M on a very similar one to the one we went on with Granny nearly 2 months ago.  Unlike last time we did see the swans with their cygnets, which are getting rather big now.

We also saw some young coots, which may well be those that we saw as little chicks last time.

There were a few little chicks too, which we thought were probably a second brood and we also spotted a coot on a nest.

And we saw some young birds in a nest calling for mum!

Other than birds we saw plenty more wildlife.  I was fairly confident that this is a tiger moth caterpillar, but on doing a search to check, there are dozens of 'woolly bear' caterpillars and not until page 4 was there one that looked like this one.

Some lilac with lots of bumble bees on.

And a particularly fascinating ants' nest!  K & M said that it was being 'attacked by flies' but on closer inspection it turned out that the 'flies' were in fact flying ants.  Something to follow up, I feel.

Finally in terms of fauna, we found a dead rat on the footpath by the canal.  K quickly walked on with Uncle M, but M and I had a bit of a closer look and talked about how you could see the teeth poking out were similar to other rodents' teeth that she'd found when dissecting owl pellets.

We also had a bit of a look at the flora and found this pretty flower, which I will be attempting to identify (any help gratefully received!).

When we got home and K & M went to bed.  M decided that she wanted to read The Secret Garden, having recently re-watched the TV series on dvd.  She read about a chapter and a half before deciding that she was too tired to continue.  I was quite surprised at her choice, because she generally choses books with bigger text, shorter chapters and at least a few pictures.  She did really well though and just asked what a few words said: Memsahib, desolation, cholera and crêpe (the material).  Not bad for a just turned 7 year old!

A busy weekend and a visit with a visitor!

We had a very busy weekend, with M taking part in 4 performances of a ballet show, called 'London's Calling', with an olympic theme.  She was a Londoner with the rest of her class and also presented the ballet school principal with the chocolates at the end of the final performance!  It was a weekend of ups and downs, I think she enjoyed it for the most part, but got rather teary when I picked her up after the 2nd performance when she told me she'd made a mistake.  She was pleased to find out next day that she wasn't the only one, as one of her friends had made on in the same performance.  It was really rather exhausting with two late nights as well as all the excitement.
K could have taken part, but had the self-knowledge to be aware that she doesn't like being looked at and the self confidence to say she didn't want to join in.  She loved watching it though and has decided that next time (there's generally one every 5 years) she thinks she would like to take part.  K and I went to the first performance, as M really wanted me there because she was nervous.  Then we all, K, A and I along with Uncle M who's come to stay for a few days, went to the final performance.  It was really very good, with pupils from M's age (just turned 7) right up to teenagers and even beyond, as a former pupil who now helps with classes did a solo and took part with classes she helps with.

As Uncle M is visiting we decided to go on an outing, and since we'd never been either, we took him to Nottingham's City of Caves.  There are hundreds of caves under Nottingham, all of them man-made, as the town is built on sandstone.  I liked that you are encouraged to touch the walls and feel the difference between the sandstone and the occasional deposits of clay.

Clay deposit in the sandstone

They've been in use for over a thousand years, as dwellings, cellars, tanneries and bomb-shelters among other things. 

Part of the caves used as a tannery.

Holes where barrels used to sit for soaking hides in quicklime.

In Victorian times slums developed and the caves were used as dwellings again when the population outstripped the housing supply, Drury Hill was one of the main streets in the slum area and some of the basement walls can still be seen.

Victorian slum dwelling.

During the Second World War the caves were cleared for use as air-raid shelters.  They were effective and nobody who sheltered in a cave air-raid shelter during bombing died during the war and none of the caves collapsed.

We had also planned to take Uncle M to Brewhouse Yard museum too, somewhere we've been on a number of occasions both as part of organised groups and just us.  Unfortunately it's opening arrangements have changed (I didn't think to check!) and it's only accessible to groups by arrangement, which is a real shame as it's a lovely little museum.

Finally we've been playing with a late birthday present that M was given; a card game of The Game of Life Adventures edition.  It's quite good, although I think the instructions are less than clear in places, and we've had a few goes.  A nice thing about it, is that you have to tell your life story as you put your cards down (cards are worth different points and you add up the points of the cards in your 'life story' at the end).  M decided that it would be a good idea to turn this life story into a book, so she did!

Yep - still Shakespeare!

Having been so entranced by Twelfth Night, K has decided that for her birthday treat (we give the choice of a party or a treat) she would like to go back to the RSC to see The Comedy of Errors.  So consequently (since we don't have a children's version and the library don't in their catalogue either) we looked at the synopsis on Wikipedia).  M lost interest half way through, but K thought it sounded very funny and confirmed her decision regarding her birthday.  A phone call to Granny later and it's all sorted, tickets booked (just for two this time, M & Daddy will go off and do something else while K & I are at the theatre).

This afternoon I re-read the story of The Taming of the Shrew  and then we watched the dvd that arrived from lovefilm this morning. 

The children's versions (above and the Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits cd) that we have are, so far, the furthest remove from the orginal, with the main characters (or stars as K prefers to call them) being made much more sympathetic.  I'm not sure whether it was enough to make K change her mind about it being her favourite (the reason for I suspect being almost entirely because of the name of the main character, rather than the story - it has however brought the word 'misogynist' into her vocabulary!)

We've borrowed  William Shakespeare and his Dramatic Acts from the resource library at Fun Club.  K seems to be enjoying it and interested, but has told me there are too many pictures (specifically of gory things).

Finally on the Shakespeare front (for now anyway, I'm sure there will be more!), M asked a rather, I think, perceptive question this evening.  She asked whether Five on a Secret Trail by Enid Blyton is based on Twelfth Night, as that too has misunderstandings as a result of not realising that characters were twins (there's also a storm in both!).  I told her I didn't think that the plot was entirely based on the Shakespeare play, but that she may well have got some ideas from him.

Sports Day #2 and adventures

Despite threatening to rain all day yesterday it held off and we managed to stay dry for the Fun Club Sports Day.  The ages groupings was slightly different, which meant that both M & K (who actually took part in one of the events!) were in the 7-9 years category.  Both girls took part in the sprint (of about 50m), they were in different heats (M came 1st, K 2nd) and in the final they were 2nd & 3rd respectively.  M also did the sack race and struggled a bit with the heaviness and size of the sack, but came a creditable 3rd.  She also wanged a welly, although how far, I don't know!

Later we met up with friends, A is 12 months younger than K and were they in school would be in the same year as M as one of the oldest in the year with M as one of the youngest and her mum R.  Rain was still threatening but again held off and we spent a lovely couple of hours after A had finished school at Rushcliffe Country Park.  We spent most of it in the area called 'Gibby's Wood', where there are some lovely very large wooden sculptures of small animals (fortunately K is no longer terrified of the snake, needing to be led by with her eyes closed and even walked along it like a balance beam).  R & I say on a bench and chatted while the girls all disappeared into wooded parts looking for adventures.  I don't think they found any, but they had great fun looking for them!  Then after a quick play in the playground, it was time to head home before hungry and tired meltdowns occurred.

Sports day #1 & Maths before bedtime

This morning we headed over to Derby for a Sports Day (our first of two in two days).  It started raining pretty much as we arrived and didn't stop all day.  Enthusiasm was dampened somewhat, but we did have several races before we admitted defeat.  K doesn't generally like to join in these things and true to form she didn't today, instead she started building a den in a nicely sheltered group of trees and bushes.  M joined in selectively, and was very pleased with herself when she won the 5-7 year old running race and one of the two three-legged races she took part in (with different partners neither of whom she'd met before the day).
The planned picnic lunch in the park wasn't going to happen, but happily we retreated to the house of friends along with another family who we'd met a couple of times at birthday parties but didn't really know.  All six children (4 girls, 2 boys aged between nearly 9 and about 3) played beautifully together with barely any intervention from the grown ups at all.  So the mummies got to have cups of tea and chat - a lovely unplanned afternoon of the best sort!

When I'd finally torn my girls away (It was tricky.  There was much grumping and arguing with each other and me), we got home at about 5.30pm and it was still raining, having not stopped all day!  Having realised that since our Sports Day #2 is the Fun Club one (rearranged due to rain from a couple of weeks ago - but this time we have a plan B as we can get in the hall if necessary) and I was taking the Box of Rocks to go in the resource library there.  Thinking that it's not out of the question that K &/or M would be fairly likely to suddenly show an interest as soon as the sizeable box is no longer taking up room in our house, I decided to photograph all of the specimens as a reminder.   Here's a few examples:

Granitic igneous rock

Chalk (sedimentary)

Metamorphic Schist

Rather beautiful Malachite

I also remembered (after reading a few chapters of Titus Rules OK! to K & M for bedtime - my impression of the Queen is particularly popular) that we'd borrowed something from the resource library, which K had taken a fancy to several months ago.  I couldn't remember how much we'd talked about it, so asked K if she remembered about it and we had a look together.

It's a flip thingy that shows 4 different ways to express the same thing.

Most 1/x when it comes to the fractions, but a few weren't, so we talked about simplifying fractions.  Clearly 2/4 = 1/2, so it's not to big a step to see that 6/10 = 3/5.

But far and away the favourite was the 1/3. 

The concept of 0.3 recurring was greeted with utter delight!

Insects and their larvae.

Specifically ladybirds and butterflies/caterpillars.  The caterpillars first, here they are:

M's caterpillars.

M was given a Butterfly Garden with a voucher for caterpillars for her birthday.  We've done this before, probably 4-5 years ago, and enjoyed it and it's good revisit things in the hope that we can cover topics in more depth if interest is sparked.  Anyway, we ordered the caterpillars and if they fit the likely timetable, they will hopefully have metamorphosed and been released shortly before we go away for a few days later in the summer.  Watch this space to see how quickly they grow!

Now for the ladybirds.  We bumped into a friend on the way home from church this morning and she told us she'd just been looking at a clump of nettles with her toddler because it was covered in ladybirds.  We had a quick look, but needed to get home for lunch, so didn't stop long.  We did however come back later and had a closer look. 

Ladybirds and larva

There were lots of different looking ladybirds, some which appeared to be mating with different species!  There were also lots of larvae and shed skins. 

Far left - shed skin, ladybirds, top right - larva

We had a look at the book we'd taken with us and found out that some can look very different and still be the same species (it only had pictures of adults though which was rather frustrating).  We compared butterflies and ladybirds and I discovered afterwards they're quite different!  When we got home I found this page with the ladybirds and this one with the larvae, which also explains that the larva sheds it's skin 4 times as it grows (each of these stages is called an instar) before becoming and adult ladybird, so was able to correct my misinformation to K & M.  Mummy, it would appear, is not infallible!

A Shakespeare-packed day out.

We're home from a few days away staying with Granny and Big Grandad near Stratford-on-Avon.  On Wednesday, while A went to watch cricket at Worcester with Uncle S, we (K, M & I) visited great-grandparents (and I had a lesson in crochet from my Grandma), went swimming with Granny and K & M balanced animals a lot.

One of M's efforts

And one of K's

On Thursday we were extremely fortunate in having this year's allocated summer's day (we had sunshine until about 4pm anyway when the rain started and hasn't really stopped since).  We went into Stratford and bought what seems to have been a good investment, given the enthusiasm of both K & M to return to Shakespeare's Birthplace.  We've bought tickets for all 5 properties (using a bogof voucher on a leaflet we picked up at the park & ride, buying 2 adults and getting 2 children free worked out cheaper than a family ticket), which lasts for 12 months.

We started off with the Birthplace, which K & M though was okay (some technical problems with their audio-visual dispalys didn't help), until we discovered the Shakespeare Aloud! actors in the garden.  They were happy to take requests and did some Taming of the Shrew for K (it's her favourite play!). 

After going into the Birthplace house we went back to watch them some more before heading off with the idea of getting an ice-cream and walking to Anne Hathaway's cottage, we did get the ice-cream but tired legs ruled out the long walk, so we stuck to the properties in town.  First we went to Hall's Croft, home of Shakespeare's daughter and her doctor husband.  K & M enjoyed doing the medicine trail, finding out about the various bizarre remedies that were administered for different ailments.  Crushed emeralds and other gemstones sprinkled on food or into drink as a rather expensive cure for poison was a particular favourite!  We then moved on to Nash's House and New Place where you can see archeology in progress at the dig of the house that Shakespeare bought and owned at his death.  By this time K & M were very keen to go back to the Birthplace to see more acting, so we went back, had another go at watching the audio-visual display (still not perfect but more successful this time).  It was rather quieter now and there were just 2 actors there, both men.  One of them gave us some Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing and very gamely they did the same scene from The Taming of The Shrew that K requested again, with one of the men playing Kate, and the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.  Historically more accurate than having actresses playing the roles, although the actors taking the female parts in Shakespeare's time probably won't have had a beard!  A little while later one of the actresses returned and replaced one of the men, and gave us some Midsummer Night's Dream.  By this time it had started to rain, so at times it was just for us.  After a break in the café the place had pretty much emptied and we had a couple of hours to kill before we needed to be at the theatre, so we went back into the house and found Jen, the lone remaining actress there and ended up chatting to her for nearly an hour.  We talked about all sorts of things from the girls' hobbies to sonnets (they're like limericks in that they have a particular structure but don't tend to be funny!).  In the end finding something to eat and getting to the theatre in time was rather a rush.

We went to see Twelfth Night. 

Viola and Sebestian reunited

Both girls really like the Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits version and we'd read the story a couple of times.  M wasn't particularly interested but K & I had enjoyed watching the BBC film with Felicity Kendall a few weeks ago.  M enjoyed parts of it, more in the second half than the first she said, she was interested enough to ask me who people were occasionally when she got a bit lost, but really it was all a bit much and a bit too late for her, particularly since she hasn't been sleeping particularly well lately.  K, on the other hand, who is a night owl anyway and much more interested, was transfixed throughout.  She had no problem following the story and giggled madly in places.  A kind lady we were sitting next to lent her her programme to have a look at and the gentleman commented how unusual and lovely it was to see children their age enjoying Shakespeare.  In conclusion, we will definitely be looking out for productions coming to Nottingham on tour, and possibly staying with Granny and Big Grandad again to see something else, but next time we'll try to go to a matinee if M wants to come or I'll just take K to an evening performance if she isn't bothered.

What are vowels for Mummy?

That was the question that was aimed at me over tea this afternoon.  So we talked about how we make the consonant sounds (dredging up memories from my module of linguistics and phonetics of bilabial plosives and dental fricatives) and how they're what we call the sounds when we block the air/sound coming out of our mouths in some way, with our tongues, teeth or lips or a combination, and how it would be very tricky to string those together without some open mouth sounds in between.  So we made lots of different consonant sounds and felt what our tongues and lips did and then vowel sounds and found that we don't block them in the way we do for consonants.  I then mentioned that some languages are so different from ours that we don't even have the same sounds, for example some have different clicking sorts of noises and we could look for something on the computer if K & M were interested.  They were, so a little while later I found a video (I'm sure there are better ones around, but K & M were moving on to playing something different by then, so it was a question of seizing the moment and this was the first one that came up).

Crafty morning.

I came downstairs this morning to find K busy working on a little craft project.  She'd got out Fairytale things to make and do, a book which we've had for years and in which little interest has been shown really, and got cracking.

A couple of hours later and she was done...

A Frog Prince!

Meanwhile M had joined in and made various things, including an elephant (which I really shouldn't have tried to help with as I broke a leg and caused much upset), a giraffe neck and head which is going to be a puppet and....

A Grumpy Old Troll (with club) and his pet viper!

In other news we have a visitor to our garden.  There when we got up this morning and still there, sleeping under the girls' playhouse, showing no sign of going....

Getting it right and a funny carrot.

Firstly the funny carrot.  I was instructed to blog about this by my husband, because K & M loved this carrot so much!

A secondly, K noticed the new dictionary that I'd bought on the table and was afronted because it was just plain wrong!  So we put it right on the front as you can see, but also on the spine and inside front page.

Rain, rain...

We were singing in the rain today.  And splashing in the puddles that were deep enough to go over the top of M's wellies!  K & M loved it and although told various people that we were splashed by 'ignorant drivers' went on to say that they like it.  Then this afternoon after singing Singing in the Rain in the rain, we watched Singing in the Rain in the dry.  We also had an eye test each, having gone in to the opticians to make an appointment and ended up stopping.  They were really thorough and happy to explain what they were doing.  The lady who did the eye pressure test let M go round her side and see what was happening, as well as the optician showing us a photo of inside her eye which she'd had taken at uni and explaining what we could see.
This morning though the three of us all had our first go at making a Mind Map, of our likes as suggested in the book, which was an interesting activity.  I'm hoping that K & M will be up for having another go at them.

I'm not a morning person...

...so it's really fortunate that neither K nor M is particularly either, although it's not uncommon for M in particular to be up well before me in the morning.  This morning was just such a one, and I was woken at frequent intervals before my eyes were willing and able to stay open, to be asked to spell various words.  M had managed to make a little book out of a sheet of A4 paper by herself for the first time and was writing the book that she had planned last night, which she has since given as a present to C, her piano teacher.  She's also been refining her puffin outfit designs for the competition I mentioned recently.
K seems to have got over her at least some of her squeamishness about the inside of our bodies.  On a trip to Snibston Discovery Park a while back, I had to guide her past the skeleton on a bicycle, holding her hand while she shut her eyes tightly.  Since my recent Book People delivery, she has happily picked up and perused Usborne See Inside Your Body and That's Life, not something she would have contemplated in the not so distant past.

Introducing Charlie Cat.

Charlie Cat is now finished and I have K's permission to show him.  I do have more to say about today, but thought that Charlie deserved a post of his own.

Work in progress

Concentrating hard

Making good progress

The finished Charlie Cat

Charlie with clothes and snacks!

And from behind.

Charlie Cat all kitted out

And from behind.

All this was done with no input from me (or anyone else for that matter) whatsoever.  There are a few things that K has done in a way other than that suggested in the book but it's worked out to her satisfaction, which is the most important thing.  I'm sure that the other patterns that come with the book will be put to use once we've got some more material in.