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.