It's Christmas!

Yesterday we went delivering presents to our friend C, who is also the girls' piano teacher.  But first we went out to the shops to get some dairy-free chocolate to make some just for her and we also made some origami boxes to put them in and decorated them.  As you can see I kept it simple and the girls went with a Christmas potato theme (it's a running joke that we have, since C's diet is rather restricted, but fortunately can eat potatoes that she likes - we gave her a home grown one for her birthday!).

Today we finally got round to tidying up the front room enough to put the Christmas tree up.  I put the lights on and started with the tinsel and then K & M took over.

Sophisticated it aint, but we love it. :-)

There was a plan though, so just in case it's not obvious, the top too arrows are pointing to the eyes, that red bell is the nose and that big blog of tinsel is the mouth.  The inspiration for this came from the fact that right at the top there, we don't have a star, fairy or angel, but a little Father Christmas' hat.

Christmas party!

Today was the Christmas party, with many thanks to the two lovely Michelles for organising.  There was lots of food, plenty of games and craft activities that my girls really enjoyed.  There's also a good outside space that was well utilised even when it began to get dark!

Each family brought along some food, both sweet and savoury, an activity of some sort (either a game or craft) and something to put in the party bags.  We all chipped in to cover the hall costs and the Michelles pulled it all together.

My girls each enjoyed it in their own way.  K made several Christmas cards and had a discussion with Michelle A about the craft activity that she'd brought along, sticking to her own way of doing things and holding her own when Michelle (knowing K well) gently teased her about not following the example.  Meanwhile M joined in the group activities with gusto.  I was particularly impressed with her and her team mate Z in the quiz, which they did really well on.  M was the scribe and here's their answer sheet:

Question 1 was name two of Father Christmas' reindeer!

Question 8 was name two ingredients in Christmas pudding.  That's brandy which was the one M immediately came up with having seen me make ours earlier this month!

And finally I just wanted to share something that M has been talking about lately.  She hasn't been happy with the amount of time I've been spending Christmas shopping, particularly at the weekend, when I went out on my own both Saturday and Sunday and told me she'd rather have no presents and me around, when I pointed out that if I didn't do the shopping there wouldn't be presents.  This evening she was looking at the, admittedly rather large, pile of presents in our front room and said that there were an awful lot.  I teased her that I could always save some for birthdays next year and she said that they were wrapped in Christmas paper, so that wouldn't work.  Later though she repeated her concern and said very seriously she thought we should save some for next year.  Then she asked Daddy to have a serious word with me on the topic, which he duely did.  I later had a cuddle in bed with her and we talked about it and she told me she was worried that it was a bit of a waste of money!  I have reassured her that we don't spend what we can't afford and that actually some of the presents are things that they need anyway, but I'm not sure that she's completely convinced that we shouldn't save some for next year!  Of course I can't know that it's being home educated that has led to this sort of conversation, but I'm sure that the culture of having 'stuff' that is so prevalent in our society generally is probably more unavoidable in schools.

Tasty Christmas fun!

Today we have mostly been making Christmas chocolates!  I regularly buy a very large bag of cooks chocolate drops from Barry Colenso, who comes to our local Farmers' Market (although admittedly I might not use *all* of it in cooking).  This year, I also bought some Christmas chocolate moulds so clearly we needed to put the two together!

K's work in progress

And M's finished product

With some origami boxes (watch this space) that's some really lovely presents sorted for various friends or family, either as a little extra or just a little something for folks we don't necessarily exchange presents with as a matter of course.

A good question!

Last Friday M was feeling rather under the weather, not a good day to be needing to go out to get various jobs sorted, as it was pouring with rain all day.  Still we put on our wellies (well M and I did, K apparently didn't want to splash in the puddles) and off we went.  As we were walking along getting rather wet, M asked 'Why is the sea salty and rain isn't?'  So when we got home, we started off an experiment to answer the second half of the question.

First, we dissolved some salt in some water.

Then we left it on the window sill, just above a radiator

So that in just a couple of days we had this.

So we had evidence that when you have salty water, it is only the water evaporates and the salt is left behind, which is why rain isn't salty.  We've also talked about why the sea is, but will probably come back to this as so far we've only had A's theories on the matter.

In other news, M is reading the Faraway Tree books at the moment.  Today she showed her playmobil Saucepan Man!

And finally, I mentioned a couple of posts back that we have what turned out to be two rather large bones in our fridge, courtesy of one of the stalls at our local farmers' market.  While it was a good idea to have some bones to look at to back up what we've been looking at in theory, as it turns out in practice neither K nor M wanted to look closely in reality.  Still, our next door neighbours' dogs (one each side) have done well out of it!

Puffin Post: Good and bad.

When we got back from visiting Nana and Little Grandad among the post waiting for us was a rather lumpy envelope addressed to M.  After some discussion about whether she should open it, as it might have contained a Christmas present and we don't open them until Christmas, she did and found this...

and this!

She had entered a competition to win a Lego Harry Potter figure (it's not clear on the photo, but there is a scar on his head!), because she wanted to give it to Daddy for his birthday.  Well it was about a month late, but we knew it would be so that didn't really matter, but she did indeed do so.  As I mentioned here, to enter the competition you had to make a model out of Lego and send in a photo, I wasn't allowed to post the photo on blog at the time in case people stole her idea, but have now been given permission.

It's a giraffe on rollerskates!

The very bad news about Puffin Post is that it is no more.  We are all very sad about this, although from that link it's not entirely clear whether it will continue in some form from a different source.  I really do hope so, because the delight of K & M at the arrival of the magazine and the decision about which book to choose has been lovely to see.

In other news, I went to bed at about quarter to midnight last night to find K still awake and playing Trivial Pursuit with herself on her bedroom floor!  Unsurprisingly she woke rather late this morning and has looked rather tired all day, although given the 2 hours of gymnastics and half an hour of swimming, she's held up remarkably well.  Her bedroom light was off when I had a look at just gone half nine tonight, which is when she's 'supposed' to turn her light off, although in practice it's rarely before ten as she's usually engrossed in a book.  Fortunately we don't have to worry about getting up for the school run really!

Back from a long weekend away.

Early December is a time of year we always go and spend a long weekend with Nana and Little Grandad, as rather than seeing them over Christmas we go up for Little Grandad's birthday.

On the way to pick M up from ballet (we were going straight on from there) we had an interesting physics conversation with K about aerodynamics, when A noticed a lorry that had the front part of the trailer that sticks up above the cab missing.  After talking about air resistance and the effect of it on moving objects and how it increases with speed, K worked about that an important reason for using aerodynamic shapes on vehicles was because it means that they will need to use less fuel (and A added, in order to go the same speed).

Also on the way, when we had rather a long wait when we stopped for lunch, K got out her 50 Brain Game cards and had a go at various puzzles and riddles.  One of them, about a 'magic number' led to some algebra.  I can't remember the exact numbers but it was something like:
Think of a number and double it
Add 6
Take away 3
Add 11
Divide by two
Take away the number you first thought of.
What's the answer?
Now try it with a different number.
Apart from the mistake she made on her first attempt when K took away double the number she'd first thought of, all was well.  I suggested trying it with 0 as the starting point and of course the answer was still 7 and K realised that it always would be.  So I suggested doing it again, but with 'n' as the starting point, so we had (there was a space to write you answer after each step):
n   (x2)
2n   (+6)
2n+6   (-3)
2n+3   (+11)
2n+14  (/2)
n+7  (-n)
= 7
I think this helped K see clearly how the 'trick' works.

While we were there, M enjoyed having a go with the Mirror experiment kit that I mentioned previously.  Mostly she was just having fun making her own patterns, but she did also have a go at one of the pattern cards that come with it (with added bits for good measure).

A also went digging about under the roof and came out with Monopoly, which the girls are keen to have a go at (once we've found and printed out the rules as they've gone missing and neither A nor I are familiar enough with them to be completely confident of getting them spot on with help) and a real brain puzzler.

For quite sometime we had a Mini Mastermind, borrowed from a friend, which the girls really liked although mostly they liked setting the code rather than trying to break it!  The game that A found though was Grand Mastermind, which is similar but instead of choosing a code with 4 pegs from a choice of 6 colours, you set a code of 4 colours and 4 shapes from a choice of 5 of each.  Both girls liked setting the codes and actually marking each attempt can be quite tricky (you give a black peg for a correct colour/shape pair in the correct place, white for a correct pair in the wrong place and blue for a correct single colour or shape in the correct place) particularly if you have a repeated colour or shape.  K also had a couple of goes at breaking the code (we simplified slightly by saying no repeated colours or shapes) and was successful on both attempts.  It's really does make you think, and is particularly difficult if you have not only repeated colours and/or shapes but identical pairs.

While we were there an occupational therapist came to talk about Little Grandad's needs and sadly we're having to have conversations about how not only do people's bodies get worn out and not work so well, but also that it can happen to people's brains, as he is suffering from Alzheimers.  It's very sad to see but fortunately the disease is not so far advanced that he doesn't know us all, but it is very hard work for Nana, who is his sole carer.

In other news, we have the most enormous bone in our fridge, since A asked one of the stall holders at the farmers' market if they might have one we could look at for a human body project and they happily obliged and on Saturday, shortly before we left for our visit, came home with a cow's femur!!

Just a quick post.

Over the past few days K has decided that she wants to re-learn how to knit.  She has also been having a go with a Mirror experiment box, that I got from the scrap store (for a small donation).  M has also been doing some more knitting, at the moment she is working on a (second) scarf for her toy dog.  She's also submitted an entry to a Puffin Post competition, which asks for a photo plus a poem about the photo.  I think her poem is really lovely and will post the whole things later if she agrees, but it starts: I have a dog, he is a toy, but he is real to me. 
A arrived home from Hong Kong this afternoon, the 3rd and final big trip in the last four weeks, which is definitely a good thing, as M in particular has struggled with this.  He's now home pretty much until Christmas (apart from a short trip to Brussels).  Tomorrow Granny is off home and we're off to see Nana and Little Grandad, for his birthday, so there has been (and I'm anticipating there may be more) making of cards and presents for him before we go.

Keeping on keeping on.

I haven't blogged for a few days for a number of reasons.  Granny has arrived for the week, while A has departed for the third and final big trip in 4 weeks, to Hong Kong this time by far the furthest he's been for work.  I dread to think how exhausted he'll be flying half way round the world and back in the space of 4.5 days!

So what have we been up to?  Well K & M are still very pleased with their video purchases and have watched them several times over the past week.  We're also still having fun with Christmas preparations, with both K & M finding, planning and making presents for folks.

The body is still featuring quite strongly.  Each of the girls had a go at adding the names of the bones from to our skeleton print out, using the labels that came with the felt one we borrowed from friends, plus some extra ones that I added. 

Granny also brought a folder with a few more bits and pieces about the body, including a couple of posters that we looked at and managed to identify most bones and most of the major internal organs or viscera as the poster called them!

Today was the final Fun Club of the year, which is always a Christmas concert.  This involves turns by anybody or wants to perform something, from singing, playing, acting, poetry reading.  As usual there were some lovely performances.  M played three Christmas songs on the piano, I was particularly proud of the fact that when she went quite badly wrong on one of them, she didn't panic, get upset or bothered, but calmly stopped, started again and played it perfectly on her second attempt.