Keeping up the momentum.

It often seems that just as it looks as though we might get into the swing of doing a bit more regular structure something happens that gets in the way (illness, a trip for example).  Today, having had a very constructively busy day yesterday, Granny arrived for a few days, so I had anticipated that we wouldn't get much done today, particularly since we were having our haircut this morning too.
K & M both went on Pottermore while the other was getting their hair cut and Granny and Big Grandad arrived just as we were finished.  After lunch Big Grandad went home, and K, M, G & I all had a game of Mystery at Hogwarts.  I showed both K & M about the short story competition that I'd told them about yesterday.  Although M is not keen on the idea of other people reading her story, and therefore not yet sure if she will enter, she has made a start by doing a mind map for her main character.  She also came out with me when I needed to pop the shops and we went to the library and the park for a while before rain threatened.  She and I also had another go at Cribbage, this time most of the time we played without showing each other our cards, although I did help for a couple of tricky hands.  While we were doing this K did some baking, having chosen a recipe from one of our numerous books, chocolate chunk cookies.  She had very little help from me and ended up with a dough that was far too dry, although we weren't sure why this happened, but we added an extra egg and the final result was pretty good!

Finding the balance and a busy day.

You will find almost as many different ways of home educating as you do home educating families from very structured, strictly following a curriculum school-at-home at one end of the spectrum to completely autonomous child-led learning at the other.  I believe that if it's working for your family and your children, then it's right for you and anyone else's opinion is irrelevant.  What can be tricky though is finding out what works for everyone in a family, both children and parents, when different members of that family have different needs and opinions, and this is something that has been an issue for us lately.  A, while fully in agreement that trying to force structure and learning is counterproductive, has been feeling that K in particular would benefit from some more structure.  When we disagree about approaches to HE, it tends to be that A would like things to be a little more structured, while I usually feel that it would end in conflict and not work unless the girls were up for it.  Occasionally my suggestions of a bit more regular overtly 'learny' stuff are welcomed and then it all goes well until something crops up which gets us out of the routine of doing so and then it always takes us a while (longer than A would prefer) before we get back to the point of being ready to do so again.  Following the discussion that K & I had, she is up for a bit more structure, but wants to do things on her own with me, which is sometimes very tricky as M frequently still feels the need to be with me.

This morning while M was ensconced on Pottermore, K and I took ourselves off and did some maths.  At the weekend, she had found a grid on a whiteboard and had started filling it in with numbers, but had then gone off geocaching and it was abandoned.  I suggested she might like to carry on with what she'd been doing.  So she filled in the grid with a times table square with just a couple of mistakes which she corrected herself when I pointed them out, while I had a look in Maths for Mums and Dads at the section about simple multiplication and tables.  She had put 0-9 along the top and down the side first, so ended with 81 in the bottom right corner rather than 100, which she mentioned herself, so I pointed out that she could just put 1-10 along the top and bottom and use them for the 1x table.  Then we looked at the grid and I put a dotted line along the square numbers and we talked about those, she identified them and then when I asked if she noticed anything about the grid either side of the line discovered that it's symmetrical.  We then talked about times tables generally and why they're useful to know.  I asked K which she was confident in and what order she thought would be good to learn them in, then we compared her order to the order suggested in the above mentioned book.  K is confident with 10x and 2x, which I wasn't surprised by, but I wasn't expecting her to say 9x next.  She's comfortable reciting the 9x, but needs a bit more practice to know it out of order, so we agreed she'd have a go at improving with this one and with 5x, before moving on to the others.  K really doesn't like the idea of being 'tested' but is happy for me to help her practice the tables by asking her questions every so often (but only around the house).

M left us to it for quite a while, but did want to come in towards the end of my session with K, but somewhat reluctantly agreed to leave us for a little bit longer.  Then it was her turn for 'Mummy time' (while K had a go on Pottermore) and she wanted to play games, we agreed on Guess Who (although we've got the original version - a charity shop find) and had five very close games, the final one of which M finally one.  Then we had a game of Strip Jack Naked, which after getting down to my final three cards I won, which M got rather upset about, since she feels that I 'always' win, and to be fair based on experience I do tend to most of the time in games of chance, which is rather unfortunate at present!  Finally I suggested I teach her a new card game and taught her the basics of Cribbage.  We just played a couple of hands, showing each other our cards and me showing her how it works and I explained that some card games are completely based on chance, but others are a combination of chance and skill.  She picked up the idea of crib pretty quickly, but by the time we'd had a couple of hands it was time for lunch, I think I might be able to persuade her to have another go sometime though.

After lunch we had another couple of goes at the Mystery at Hogwarts game, which M won once and I won once.  I'm always a bit relieved when M does win, as it gives me an opportunity to point out that I don't *always* win!  Fortunately K doesn't mind in the slightest whether she wins or not.

Later, after popping to the shops, I did some cooking in preparation for Granny and Big Grandad coming for lunch tomorrow (my Dad is bringing my Mum and she's stopping for a few days before he picks her up again at the weekend), as we're having our hair cut in the morning, so it would all be a bit rushed to get it done then.  The idea was that K & M would do some tidying while I did this and to be fair they did do a bit, but M appeared saying that she thought she would rather get her (long-neglected) workbooks out and do some work in them, so she did, doing a page of a maths workbook, sorting out words for the four basic arithmetic functions and then wrote an acrostic poem in another one.

At Brownies at the moment they are working on their 'healthy heart' badge and one of the tasks they've been set for this is keeping a food diary for a week, so both K & M started to write down everything they've eaten today after tea and then finished this off when we got home after korfball.

All in all a rather busy day!  And M also asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to start doing five minutes writing each day again, something we did for a month a while a go, when I was getting stressed that K & M were doing little or no writing.  We made an agreement that we all (me included) would sit down and write for five minutes a day and do so for a month, which worked quite well but we didn't continue it regularly after the agreed month was up.  I said I thought it would if she was interested in doing so and told her I'd recently read about a short story competition that she or K might be interested in entering and both girls said they thought they might be.   

The Arctic and Antarctica at Asfordby.

The theme at Asfordby today was The Arctic and the Antarctica, so this morning we had a look at some video clips. 

When we got there, there were various activities on offer, including paper snowflake making, soap carving (admittedly the Inuit use soapstone, but that would be a bit tricky) and sugar cube igloo making.  K enjoyed the soap carving while M and I built an igloo.  And as usual both K & M make good use of the outside space and playground.

M and my igloo.

When we got home we returned to Harry Potter and had a go at the Mystery at Hogwarts Game, kindly lent to us by J.  It's based on Cluedo, but with some extra twists, and is really rather good.  We've also been back to Pottermore, where M decided to deregister and then sign up again in an attempt to be sorted into Hufflepuff, but she really must be a true Gryffindor as that's where she's ended up again.  I think it's helped that she saw her friend C at Asfordby who, along with E, is also in Gryffindor, as she seems to have accepted it now, after some upset about it at the weekend.

More chocolate!

Today I made truffles with the left over fillings from yesterday and I took some pics.

A lesson in Chocolate!

Today was the day that I had my Christmas present from my lovely (and good at presents!) husband, a lesson from Barry, a master chocolatier who also happens to come to our local farmers' market.  My friend S came along too to share my present (and make it more fun) and our girls went off with the Daddies to do some geocaching (first time for K & M, A & J their friends had done it a couple of times before).

So we learned how to temper chocolate - temperature being key.  Barry doesn't use a thermometer, but then he can tell the temperature by using his bottom lip - the one occasion we tested it he said it was between 27 & 28 degrees C and it was 27.6 - pretty impressive!  So we tempered chocolate, both dark and milk, and made two different ganaches, brandy with the dark and amaretto with the milk chocolate, and made some rather delicious chocolates, as well as filling a variety of moulds that I already have to make some things for the girls to have!  We ended up with a rather chocolatey kitchen, but apparently it was pretty clean and tidy compared to some other times Barry has done this.  I've also got quite a lot of ganache left in the fridge, which I will be using to make truffles tomorrow.  All in all a fantastic Christmas present!

More Potter and Pottermore!

A friend who was telling us about her trip to the Harry Potter Studio tour mentioned that she was in Hufflepuff House, having been sorted on Pottermore.  So K, M & I have all registered and are really enjoying it.  M was sorted first and was very pleased to be put in Gryffindor, but was a bit disappointed that K and I didn't join her.  Both K & I joined our friend C in Hufflepuff. 

I'm finding it really interesting to read lots of the background that JK Rowling had in her head or notes but didn't make it into the books, such as Professor McGonagall's parents and past love life.  There are also various things to collect, potions to make, spells to cast and more. 

We have also now watched the film of The Prisoner of Azkaban, which so far is the one that has diverged the furthest from the books.  We now need to decide whether we're ready to move on.  M isn't so keen on scary, more so with the films rather than the books.  K doesn't mind the scary but doesn't like sad, although thinks that she'll be okay if she can be prepared for the sadness.  The trouble is I'm not sure where the balance is between preparing her and spoiling the story.  But particularly now she is in Hufflepuff, the next story is very sad.  Tricky, very tricky!

It's not all sweetness and light.

Today we have had an exceedingly shouty day.  The provocation for me was that, although it was them that choose to do far more thank you's than necessary, K has been dragging her feet hugely, not in a moany way but today she spent over 4 hours sitting at the table, supposedly writing a couple of thank you cards but in reality listening to a story cd and getting distracted by apparently nothing and staring into space.  Occasional reminders to me of what she was supposed to be doing provoked little response, and asking her to turn off the cd so she could concentrate didn't work either and eventually I lost my temper and shouted.  A lot.  There were tears on both our parts, followed by some more shouting, but eventually we calmed down had a huge hug and then some thank you's were done.  I hope that something good has come out of this though, because we had a chat and a snuggle and I shared my concerns with K about what I thought she needed to get out of her home education, mostly about English (and we talked about different reasons for writing and why it's important to be able to do so well) and Maths but also how everyone sometimes needs to just get on with things that they're not particular keen on doing sometimes, like the thank you's.  I also suggested and she agreed at least in theory, that perhaps the time has come for a bit more structure, so we'll see how we go with that.  I've got various workbooks and text books that we can dip into and see how we go anyway, as well as plenty of people I can turn to 'in real life' and online for ideas.

In other news, yesterday I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  We started off snuggled in my bed before getting up and found that it was a 'scary bit' every time we got to the end of a chapter, so ended up having porridge and brioche for brunch at about quarter to twelve, before finishing off the last couple of chapters.  K & M then immediately put the cd on of Stephen Fry reading the book and have been listening to it pretty much constantly ever since.  It's really quite entertaining listening to them reacting to events in a very different way from the first time round, now that they know what is going to happen and the twist about one character in particular!

An unexpected advantage of reading aloud.

As I believe I may have mentioned once or twice, I'm currently reading the Harry Potter books to my girls at the moment, which they are greatly enjoying so far.  Something that I didn't anticipate though, is just how much I'm enjoying it too.  The thing that is making it so special, is that it's like reading the books for the first time by proxy.  Having read the series more than once myself already, I know what plot twists are coming and obviously I can't forget that, but seeing the girls reactions to events before the big reveal is just fantastic and really does bring back how I felt when I first read it myself.

In other news, K & M have had out a cardboard theatre given them ages ago, along with various finger puppets that they have tied pieces of string on to and are planning a performance of The Lonely Goatherd from the Sound of Music.

We have been enjoying the snow, M most actively, with building snow people and making snowballs, sometimes to throw, but today she made a large one, carried it around the shops (leaving it outside if we were going to be a while) and told me and various other people how it was Father Christmas' pet who'd come to visit while it's snowing here and it will return to the North Pole when the snow here melts.

M's Snow family

 I've been enjoying the aesthetics (and the occasional snowball fight with M).  On our road there was one thing in particular that was so beautiful that I went back with the camera to capture it...

And finally, I mentioned M wearing a moustache when we went out on a group walk on New Year's Day organised by a neighbour, here she is at it again.

Rowling, Shakespeare, Blyton, a bit more Rowling and a touch of Crompton..

That was who on the menu today!  We started off with a couple of chapters of The Prisoner of Azkaban, then K & I watched a dvd of A Midsummer Night's Dream while M started on a painting by numbers she'd received for Christmas.  K enjoyed the film but did comment that there was 'too much kissing'! 

We then watched another dvd, which I found really funny.  It was this 1957 black & white series of Five on a Treasure Island.  What I found particularly funny was the beginning and end of each episode, it was so dated, it was like a modern parody, with a question written across the screen and a stereotypical RP accent asking 'Will the Five escape from the island?  Tune in next week to find out!' (or words to that effect), then at the beginning of the next episode there was a brief resume of what had happened previously, but it was done by the actors, who first told you who they were and then what they'd done last week 'I'm Julian, George's cousin, and last week she told us about the wreck near her island!' type thing.  It lead to a nice discussion about what the expression 'dated' means anyway!

Then there was a couple more chapters of Harry Potter, including Dementors and therefore chocolate before it was time to brush teeth before bed, and finally a bit more William with A as he finished off William the Match-Maker.

The necessity of chocolate.

Today was the day that K & M encountered Dementors, since we finished watching The Chamber of Secrets and started reading The Prisoner of Azkaban.  Since I had warned them about Dementors, both the effect they have on people of sucking all happiness out of them and the remedy of chocolate, they were well prepared.  Not only had they saved some of the chocolate that they'd been given for Christmas, but they also each bought a bar when we went out, just in case they didn't have enough as we're not sure how many times we are going to come across them.  I am pleased to say that both girls coped well with the encounter, obviously the chocolate helped, I'm not entirely sure how much effect the fact that they were both knitting while listening had on the situation, it may or may not be an alternative you may wish to consider if you ever come across Dementors yourself.

More Harry Potter

As I have mentioned previously, Thursday is our busy day with both two hours of gymnastics and a half hour swimming lesson in the afternoon.  We did manage, however, to finish reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I was reading the last couple of pages while K & M were getting their bottles of water and putting shoes on ready to go to gymnastics!  Then between sports we started watching the dvd, which we'll finish off tomorrow.  Then I have no doubt that we'll be moving on with The Prisoner of Azkaban, I have warned K & M about the dementors and they've both saved some of their Christmas chocoate hoard for when we get to them.

Birthday!

Today is my birthday and not only was I allowed a long lie in (although to be fair both of my girls are really rather marvellous at letting me 'sleep out' as the Germans put it) but M brought me breakfast in bed.  She only woke me to bring me the phone when my Mum phoned at about 9.30am to wish me Happy Birthday, and I was just waking by this point anyway.  After this K & M came and snuggled in bed for another chapter of Harry Potter before we all got up and had some more Harry Potter!  K & M made birthday for Great Grandma to post in time for Friday, but didn't get round to Great Grandad's for Saturday, so that's something that needs doing tomorrow.  I decided I would like to try out a new cafe that a friend had recommended, so we went for hot chocolate and cake, which was lovely, hot chocolate in jugs with proper cups and saucers and absolutely enormous slices of cake (we brought some home in a doggie bag!).  Then there was more Harry Potter - it's getting a bit too scary to stop at times, so my voice is getting a bit worn out!  Only two more chapters to go with book two.  Tomorrow is, as Thursdays generally are, is busy, but I think we'll probably manage to finish it off.

Snow!

It had already started snowing when I went to bed last night and it was (still?) snowing when I got up this morning.  I wasn't surprised that M was keen to get outside (I was much more surprised that she wrote a Christmas thank you email first!).  K joined her for a while, but M was busy using pretty much all the available snow in the garden (it had settled well on the lawn which is very small, but not on the path or patio) to make not one, but two snowmen.

M's Snowmen: Bob and Bobina

I was very much in two minds whether to attempt the drive over to Asfordby for the first group of the year, but in the end went for it and it wasn't too bad on the way and was completely fine on the way back.  While there K & M both enjoyed the box modelling, which was the planned activity, but M in particular preferred the snowball fights with the dads who were there.  K joined in a bit I think, but it's not really her thing and she struggled with other children not taking her seriously when she said she wasn't playing.

Then it was back home for hot chocolate and some more Harry Potter.  While at Asfordby K & M discovered the perils of reading popular books later than a lot of their friends, as they now know that a particular character dies, which they didn't before.  It's a tricky tightrope to walk, giving them enough reassurance that most of the main goodies will be alright, without giving away too much.  Ho hum!

It's now very quiet here, as it's also the first Brownies back after Christmas too.  I spent quite a long time sewing badges on to sashes yesterday evening, as K had two new badges and M made her promise just before Christmas, so had the three badges (county, pack & six) plus one that she'd worked towards before she made her promise.  So of course having done that neither K nor M wore their sash!

Harry Potter...

...is becoming something of an obsession.  We've now finished the first book and watched the film on dvd, which they only found a little bit scary in a couple of places.  We're now a few chapters into the second book, with both K & M very keen on my reading it constantly.  I think we'll be okay for this one and possibly the next one (for book three, I have warned them about the dementors and both of them are saving some of their Christmas chocolate for when we get that far), but it's going to be tricky persuading them to wait until they're a bit older for the books that I'm convinced will be too dark and scary for them at the moment.  I'll have to try to come up with a good alternative that we can get into in the meantime.

M in particular would very much like to take up Quidditch, but when I commiserated that it's a shame that only witches and wizards can play (I know that there is Muggle Quidditch, but I don't think it would cut it), she pointed out to me that she still might be a witch as she's too young to have received her letter from Hogwarts!

Busy, busy, busy day!

Well, busy afternoon/evening really.  M & I had a quite slow start, but K got up before us, turned the computer on and had found pictures of various owls in order to make thank you cards for the Brownie Owls that she'd received a pencil case for Christmas (as all the Brownies did).  Despite the fact that the present was from all of them, she felt the need to do them each an individual card with a picture of the appropriate owl (where possible) on the front, so there was a Brown Owl (not sure what she went for there), an Eagle Owl, a Snowy Owl, a Baby Owl (the youngest owl, she chose a pygmy owl) and a Sunny Owl (some owl in flight, possible a barn owl).  I got a glimpse of a couple of the pictures and they looked really good, but unfortunately some of the others had already gone into their envelopes.

The busy afternoon consisted of:
1-3pm Gymnastics
then straight to see our friend C, who's also their piano teacher and will hopefully soon be recovered enough from her shoulder operation to start up lessons again, but today was just a social visit
then home with enough time to read a bit more Harry Potter (I read a chapter or two this morning too)
5-5.30pm Swimming lesson
then home for a quick tea and out again for the annual Brownie Pantomime trip.

I'm rather glad that tomorrow is a quiet day with just a trip to the library and K's first ballet lessson of the term that we need to do!

Some conversations.

First ice-skating of the year and more Harry Potter were the order of the day today.  We also went into town and both girls spent the refunded money from Puffin Post (which we got back as a result of it stopping), which since the subscriptions were a present I gave to K & M to spend on books.  M bought a couple of Daisy and the trouble with... books and K bought a book of Secret Seven short stories and a couple of Jeremy Strong books.

As a result of reading one of her new books while waiting for me to top up my travel card (long queue), K came out with the question 'What's a school secretary, Mummy?', one of the easier questions she's come up with!

Recently I've been saying to the now rather predictable extremely literal responses to almost any song lyrics, particularly when they involve questions 'Don't take it so literally!'.  This afternoon on the way home from ice-skating I said something, I can't remember what, and M told me 'Don't be so literate!', which led to a discussion about the difference between literal, literate and literature.

M and I also had a conversation about Mrs, Miss & Ms and she told me she thought she'd be a Ms and asked why I was a Mrs.  So having agreed that everyone should be able to choose what they are called, she changed her mind and has decided that she won't be a Ms, she'll be a Moo, because she likes animals.  And why not!

First groups of the new year.

Today was Fun Club and K & M both really enjoyed the main activity, which was basically box modelling, but as J, who organised it commented that she'd heard said that this is something that it's rather wasted on the younger age group who are often presented with it as an activity.  This was for the 7-9 (ish) year olds and after looking at some photos of city skylines, the idea was that they made their models individually or in twos or threes and then the models were arranged in front of a several large pieces of card tapes onto tables on their sides.  They all really enjoyed it and the end result was really rather effective!

Other than that, M finished her Where's Wally puzzle and has taken it apart in order to do it again, we've read another chapter and a half of Harry Potter and they had the first korfball session of the new year.

Getting back in the swing.

Today felt a bit like the first proper day back to normal (whatever that may be!) after the Christmas break.

The annual post-Christmas thank you writing is now well underway.  Thank yous are something that we do ask the girls to do, which they respond to with varying degrees of willingness.  Rather bizarrely both K & M, however much they protest at 'having' to do them, insist on writing thank yous to absolutely everyone they receive presents from, including each other and me and A!  I'll add photos later, but yesterday both girls made their wooden vehicles that they received for Christmas, they both managed with very little help and although M's was a bit squiffy, the results look really good.  Today M started the 250 piece Where's Wally puzzle she was given and is making good progress with that.

This morning a doctor's appointment got us up and going rather earlier than we otherwise would, and once we got home, I got out the electronics kit that we borrowed, for K & M to have a last go, as the plan is to return it tomorrow.  Both girls were reminded how much that they'd enjoyed playing about with it and are hoping that we'll be able to keep it for longer.

I have also started reading to K & M again, after a long break because of losing my voice back in the summer (I had my third session of speech therapy this evening).  It's something we've been talking about for a while, M (who's 7.5 now) has been keen for a while, but K (9), who is very aware that she often finds things frightening, has been very wary, but today we starting reading the first Harry Potter books.  One of the reasons that K has been reluctant is that she's worried she might really get into them and not manage to resist moving onto the more scary subsequent books.

M has taken to wanting to watch a lot of telly lately, but has been watching various children's programme repeatedly, even when she's already seen them.  We had a conversation about this, I pointed out that it's fine to watch things, but that we've got some really interested things recorded on the telly if she wants to watch and she's already seen the episodes of the programmes she likes that are on, such as various David Attenborough series, who both girls really like.  I'm not planning on pushing it, but I'm hoping that the 'Jake and the Neverland Pirates' obsession will fade soon.  This afternoon we watched the first one of David Attenborough's Africa series, that we recorded on BBC1 and both girls are looking forward to the next episode.  Then we also watched 101 Dalmations, (the film version with Glenn Close) and talked about adapting books for the screen.  K is of the opinion that you should stick closely to the book, although she did concede that there are things you can do with cartoons that wouldn't be possible with actors, M said she thought that it doesn't matter if so much, as long as it's still a good story.

Great games!

We seem to have been playing quite a lot of board (and other) games over the past month or so and this afternoon we went to friends' and have two more to add.

So games we've been playing recently (that's in the last week) include Monopoly, The Game of Life Adventures Edition (the girls played yesterday with friends who came round), and Phase 10.

One of them was Catchphrase, which was okay, but we (the Mummies) found that quite frequently the 'phrases' were things that the children had no chance of getting, because they were songs or tv programmes that they wouldn't have heard of, such as Purple Rain or Twin Peaks. 

The second one was much better and a real blast from the past for me.  I played the French version on numerous occasions when I was an assistante in La Rochelle as part of my degree, with the German assistante and her (also German) boyfriend and a French couple we'd met there.  The game is Taboo, where you have a card with a word or phrase at the top that you have to convey to others without using it or any of the five other words (or their derivatives) on the card.  It's actually easier than you might think to play in a foreign language if you're reasonably proficient, because you're used to talking round a word that you don't know in that language, although fun and challenging and from my recollection best attempted accompanied by a glass or two of wine!  This afternoon we didn't play competitively, but each just picked a card (decided if we'd manage/the children would know the word or phrase) and had a go.  It was really good fun, the young ones did better than I'd anticipated (they're much less constrained than us grown ups!) and I'm seriously considering investing in it for us.  As with some other games we have we'll just use the cards for fun rather than to play competitively at least for now.

Happy New Year!

Hello again after a festive blogging break!  We had a mostly lovely Christmas and K & M were very happy with their presents.  We bought K & M one thing each that they had specifically asked for (a wolf hat-scarf for K and a bow and arrows for M) and one surprise (a new scooter for M, as she's grown out of her old one and a Lego set for K), some things (mostly clothing) that they needed anyway and a few joint presents (mostly books).

M's favourite was the bow & arrows, which she has been practising with regularly, both against the front door and onto the whiteboard side of our easel.  K was really pleased with the Lego (which I was really glad about, as I really wasn't sure what to get her for the surprise).  She has now built and taken apart all three designs in the instructions at least once, and that's with us having been away for most of the time between Christmas and New Year at my parents'!

Design #1

Design #2

Design #3

After a quiet (well as quiet as you can have with two excitable young children in the house!) Christmas, we went down to stay with Granny and Big Grandad for a few days on the day after Boxing Day.  K, M & I went swimming with Granny one day, we visited Great Grandma and also Great Grandad.  We saw Uncle M again (he'd spent Christmas with us) and then Uncle S & Aunty P came and stayed overnight too, bringing their lovely dog (the girls' only 'first cousin') Megan with them.  A, K & M went for a long walk through the woods with Big Grandad, the Uncles, Megan and another dog.  I'd been a bit unsure whether it was a good idea for M in particular to go, as she's been a bit under the weather and not sleeping particularly well, but she was fine and kept up very well indeed.  Dogs, especially Megan, are a big help in keeping K & M going on walks I find.

Cousin Megan

I mentioned previously that A had found some things at Nana and Little Grandad's from his youth, I don't think that I mentioned that one of those things is their Monopoly set.  We've played a couple of times now and both girls have really enjoyed it (and we've found a real-life reason for knowing your 4 times table with the water and electricity properties!), with only a little bit of upset from M when she went bankrupt (not something that K has had to worry about yet, as she won on both occasions we've played!).

Today we went on our regular New Year's Day walk, organised by one of our neighbours.  M had been adamant that she didn't want to go and wasn't going to go.  We didn't push it, but reminded her that she has enjoyed previous walks and eventually sighed, apropos of nothing, 'Okaay, I'll go' and then decided to wear a false moustache from a set that she and K had been given them by a teenage neighbour who has babysat them a couple of times (sorry no photo unfortunately).  She ended up storming off ahead for most of the way with E, the granddaughter of the organisers, who she got on with like a house on fire and who is a day younger than her.  It was rather muddy and the weather did threaten for a while, but good fun.  We quite often find that if the four of us go for a walk, it can sometimes end in rather a lot of moaning (not always to be fair), but add in some other people especially other children or a dog and they seem to be able to walk much further without flagging with ease.