Freedom and independence within limits

I have been having quite regular conversations lately with M, who's 8 in just over a month, about her need for some independence and freedom.  She is very clear that she feels the needs to be allowed 'out' on her own (or with K), but I have been wary of allowing this, even though I think she is ready for a bit more freedom in this way.  Much of my reluctance stems from the possibility of the girls being confronted as to why they're not at school, and although I do trust that they're sensible and articulate enough to tell people that they are home educated, I don't necessarily trust other people's reactions to that information.  M has got very upset at my point of view, to the point that I have sought other people's thoughts on the subject, as well as discussing it with A of course!  It is true that M is now the same age that K was when she first popped to the Co-op on her own to get a missing ingredient when I was in the middle of cooking, although I am aware that K does look much older as she's really tall for her age. 

We, A & I have come to the conclusion that occasional trips out on their own, for a specific purpose, whether that is a play in the park, a trip to the library or the shops is okay.  We will first have a conversation about responsibilities coming with rights and there will be strictly enforced limits (and watches are going to have to be worn!), but then we'll gradually ease up a bit on allowing some more freedom.  Eeek!

In other news, K & I worked through the second part of my first 'Punctuation!' worksheet, with another short paragraph from The Chamber of Secrets to punctuate.  This time there were some commas missing and I realised that my grasp of when commas should be used is actually pretty poor.  I think I generally write reasonably well and probably use commas correctly most of the time, but my use is mostly instinctive, so I'm finding it really rather interesting to find out the reasons commas belong where I put them.  K has also been reading our punctuation book with great interest, although, since it was during tea, it was rather frustrating to me, as K eats very slowly at the best of times and it was korfball this evening, and M was very annoyed because I don't generally allow reading during mealtimes.  While K & I were going through the worksheet, M had a go on Timez Attack and also wrote a thank you email to the friends who gave K & M Destination Hogwarts.  She has also been writing me more little notes and this afternoon she got her old copies of Puffin Post magazines out to read all the jokes to me.

Little things.

We've been doing quite a bit of arithmetic over the past few days, mostly because Destination Hogwarts involves adding up house points at the end of the game!  They had a game, just the two or them, this morning which ended in a draw, which is a first.  M has also been writing lots of messages, although she would deny this, as the letters I've been receiving, which have been delivered by owl post, have been from her toys.  They've been scrawled on very small pieces of paper and rather difficult to read, but she's been open to me asking her to tell the particular toy who wrote the message how to spell particular words correctly!

We've also spent quite a lot of time in the garden today, including having a game of 'years'.  Years is a game that M has been talking about occasionally for some time now, it's played between giraffes (she has 2 cuddly ones).  The rules seemed to develop as we played, but some of the key points are as follows:

• one team is the bats and the other catches for the whole game
• you decide which by the most inexperienced player from each time drawing something from a hat
• spectators can join in at any time if they want to for as long as they want to
• you don't have to stick to one team
• batters get points by hitting the ball through the door of the playhouse into a hoop
• catchers get points by catching the ball or getting them into various items such as a dustpan or plant pot
• you are allowed to stand or run with the ball, but not walk
• the game starts and finishes when M says 'Boom'
• towards the end of the game M starts humming, increasingly loudly as a warning that she is going to say 'Boom' soon

Finally I thought I would share a couple of pictures the girls have done of 'their' Harry Potter characters.

M's Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody

K's Nymphadora Tonks

More Potter and More Punctuation!

During our meet up with friends at Chatsworth House the weekend before last, we were asked if we had the game Destination Hogwarts.  We didn't and as a result, K & M were given it as a very early (birthdays are October and June respectively!) joint birthday present, so that we could take it with us on holiday next month.  It arrived yesterday, we managed to wait until this morning before having a first play.  We played it 4 times today, three times during the day and once with Daddy this evening, so I think it's fair to say that it's a hit! There was one slight problem though, one of the 'hazard' cards says: You have been caught with a copy of the Quibbler.  You are expelled.  The game ends for you now.  Or words to that effect.  This caused some distress, but K & M decided that there had to be a hearing (as Harry has in The Order of the Phoenix) and M, who'd drawn the card, returned to the game a while later.  The next game I drew the card pretty early on, but after that we decided to remove the card from the deck before playing.

K & M spent most of the afternoon (with a break for a game of Destination Hogwarts), making potions.  They made Felix Felicis, also known as Liquid Luck, M informed me that a four-leaved clover was the most important ingredient, but they hadn't managed to find one, so they'd used a normal clover with an extra leaf.  They also made Polyjuice Potion and an antidote (to what I don't know, but they are important for Aurors). 

While they were in the garden I was preparing another punctuation worksheet for K, as she was quite keen when I offered yesterday evening.  The girls came in while I was preparing it and M was looking over my shoulder at what I was doing.  So I brought up the worksheet that K and I had started on Thursday and I asked her if she knew was punctuation was for and starting with Let's eat Granny/Let's eat, Granny, which she thought was very funny, we worked through the question that K & I did at the library.  We talked about capital letters, full stops and apostrophes as we worked through it and she did a good job of telling me what needed to be changed. 

A trip and a "home" day.

Yesterday we went, along with a number of other families, to The Space Centre.  It's somewhere we've been meaning to go for ages and indeed got as far as going with some schooly friends a while back, but found it shut when we got there, not having thought to check it was open first - don't go on a Monday!

We had a good look around and K & M were unanimous that the best bit was the SIM ride in the Tranquility Base section.  As we were on a education group ticket the SIM cost an extra pound, which I paid for the first time, but K & M both liked it so much that they paid for a second go themselves.  We mostly enjoyed the Planetarium show, although K shut her eyes and blocked her ears for the part about the many different ways going into space can kill you!  One of the interactive screens had multiple choice questions about how things react differently in space, including one which tied in nicely with the video we watched earlier this week about wringing out a wet flannel in zero gravity.

M & Christopher (her dog).

K in a mock up of an early manned space capsule.

We all liked 'Baked Bean Challenge', trying to left a can of baked beans as they would be on different planets (and the sun!) and therefore with different gravitational pull acting on them.

K in particular was very interested in finding out that most of the moons of Uranus are named after Shakespeare characters.  Altogether we spent about 5 hours there, which we all felt was plenty!

Today was rather different, I say it was a "home" day, but we were actually out for most of the morning, although only locally with nothing planned on.  After a trip to the dentist, we went to the library and had just settled down in the children's section when a big school party of 4-5 year olds arrived.  M had settled into a comfy spot with a book, so she stayed there to read, while K & I took our work upstairs where it was quieter.  I had mentioned to K that the writing she'd done for the Harry Potter sale on Monday was very accurate in terms of the spelling, but she hadn't used any punctuation and I'd wondered if we could have a look at some.  She seemed willing, so last night I decided to make a worksheet using something that I knew would engage her interest: Harry Potter!  I picked a straight forward short paragraph from The Chamber of Secrets and took out all of the capital letters and punctuation.  We talked about the point of punctuation and without any prompting she remembered the example, Let's eat Granny! compared to Let's eat, Granny!  Then I read her the paragraph as I was written on the sheet I'd done, with no punctuation.  I let her know that it was three sentences in the book and asked her where she thought each sentence started and ended, which she identified pretty quickly and she added the full stops.  Then we talked about capitals, so she added those to the beginning of the sentences and found the proper nouns.  Next we moved on to apostrophes and used Punctuation - The Write Stuff, which we both found entertaining and it clearly explained the differences between the contraction and possession apostrophes.  She found the missing apostrophe (a possession one) and added that.  Finally we moved on to commas, looking first at The Comma Crew chapter of the book, talking about lists, clauses and more.  K identified some places to add them to the paragraph and finished it off.  When we got home I checked it against the original and apart from one extra comma that we had added it matched perfectly.  There is another paragraph to do on the sheet, but that one was plenty for one sitting.

It's a very recent development that K has consented to do this sort of thing with me.  Any previous attempts, particularly if I have pushed her to do 'sit down learny stuff' as we call it, have resulted in upset all round.  Now she seems ready for it, she's grasping things really quickly and is willing to have a go, probably because she sees the point!

After the library we went to the park for a while and bumped into friends that we'd seen yesterday at the Space Centre.  Then we had a relaxed afternoon, unusually for a Thursday, as gymnastics wasn't on as L, the teacher, is on holiday.  So K & M watched the Just William dvd one last time before we posted it back to lovefilm.  Swimming was on, so they had half an hour of that to go with the running, jumping, swinging and climbing at the park as their exercise for the day.  They finished off with some 'foxing' (a particularly type of bedtime activity they have with Daddy involving Mr Fox, a puppet who takes on many different roles in their playing including Dr Fox and Captain Fox among many others).  Today he has started yet another job, French Teacher Fox and set them some homework, A informed me, of finding out the French for fox.  As I was a modern language teacher BC (before children), they have a very easy option, but I'll present them with a French/English dictionary and see if they go for that first.  K has been using a dictionary quite a lot lately, today it was to look up 'brig' as Captain Fox had used it to mean a prison on a boat and I had expressed doubts that this was the right word and she wanted to check.

Bits and bobs.

There were a few extra bits that happened over the past couple of days that I forgot to mention in my mammoth post yesterday.  The first was a piece of writing that K did, with a bit of help from M as I understand it, for the stall with regard to the chocolate frog cards, I only saw it when it was already completed and printed out.

I found the dictionary on the computer desk and asked what they'd been looking up and was told that they were looking for 'whole' but couldn't find it, so rather than misspell the word they found a different way of saying what they wanted to (M's idea, as K told me this morning).  When I said that 'whole' was a tricky word to look for in a dictionary, K exclaimed that she'd just remembered that it started with a 'w'.

Yesterday after Asfordby, K & M had a schooly friend, I, round for play and tea before Brownies.  They had a great time together all playing Harry Potter, with a bit of Romeo and Juliet thrown in for good measure.  On their way out into the garden, where they spent most of the time making the most of the good weather, K informed me about how they'd been playing the balcony scene and that she knew which page it was on in our copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.  I certainly haven't ever found it for her, so she must have done so herself at some point!

Following on from the fractions work K has been doing, I had another look in Maths for Mums & Dads and found an exercise that I thought both K & M would have no problem with, but decided to check.  I showed them this list of numbers in the book and asked them to put them into order from the largest to the smallest.

901     1,001    910    99    109    190    999

Both girls were confident in their answers, so we looked at the example of an answer given by a child who hadn't yet grasped place value and talked about what she might have been thinking.

Today M and I played another game from this book; Race to 100.  You need a die, paper and pen.  The aim is to score exactly 100 before your opponent.  You take it in turns to roll the die and you can either take the score shown or ten times that value, you keep a running total of your score and the first person to reach 100 exactly is the winner, but over 100 is bust.  We had half a dozen or so games of this, although she did get extremely cross with me for peeking at her piece of paper.  As is often the case in games of chance like this it ended up with me winning most of the time (and the only time I didn't we both went bust!), it is something of a curse when you want to play this sort of thing with children. 

It often seems to be the case that we talk about something and decide to 'find out more about it later', but then later doesn't quite happen because we forget or the interest has gone by the time we're in a position to do so.  However today we did actually find out some more about how glow sticks work.  I read this link to them while they were having their tea and I'm happy to say that my answer to K's original question was pretty much right (if very basic).  Still on a scientific theme, but rather different we watched this rather fascinating video that someone posted on Facebook, about what happens when you wring out a very wet flannel in space.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd put the dried peas to soak to make peas pottage for lunch today.  It was a mash up of following the instructions on the box of dried peas and adding what they'd talked about at Mary Arden's Farm, onion, garlic, bacon and some herbs (I went for mint and parsley).  In the end neither K nor M were particularly interested in helping, but they had a look and in K's case a stir.  It was fairly clear that M was not going to like it from her complaining about the smell!  To be fair she doesn't like peas, so it was always a long shot, but she did try it, as did K.  I thought it was rather good, but K & M had a ham sandwich each instead.

Finally, we went out to the shops this afternoon and while out the girls took the charity cut of their takings from yesterday and put it all in the box on the counter in the Oxfam bookshop and we had a bit of a chat to the man there about what they'd done to raise the money. 





The big reveal of the plotting and planning.

Today was the day that the thing that K & M have been preparing and planning for over a month finally happened.  They had wanted to hold it at home, but I suggested that the Asfordby group would be a better place, since they do a lot of Harry Potter-ing with friends there and they agreed after a bit of persuasion.

A month or so ago, K & M started making lots and lots of pink and purple quick and easy pompoms (they do it round a piece of card and cut first, but the same idea).  Then I kept finding smallish squares of paper all over the house and told K & M I'd throw them away if I found any more, they kept them tidier after that!  As you may know, if you've been following my blog for a while, we've made quite a lot of wands.  A couple of weeks ago, K & M pooled some of their money and bought some chocolate that you can mould from our local toy shop, like this.  They also made some paper plate owls.  The result was a Harry Potter sale!

They added stickers for eyes to make Pygmy Puffs.

With the chocolate, they made chocolate frogs and I bought a mould and made some more to go with them.  The squares of paper I'd found lying all over the place were chocolate frog cards that they'd been making to go with the chocolate frogs.

The wands and the price list K made.

With the merchandise prepared, there was quite a lot of debate about the prices and eventually they agreed with spare chocolate frog card at 3 knuts up to 1 galleon, 2 sickles and 10 knuts for a wand.  We decided on an exchange rate of £1 to a galleon, 20p to a sickle and 1p to a knut.  M wrote out a list of everything we had and I wrote on the prices, then K typed it up to make a poster.

Finally they decided that they wanted some sort of decoration, so they decided on a scene from The Chamber of Secrets. 

K did the writing and M & I added some 'drips'.

We set this up with some help from K's Tabby Kitten, who played the part of the petrified Mrs Norris.

M went along with her magical eye and added some scars to her face (red felt tip) to be Mad-Eye Moody and their friend, C, went dressed up as her usual character Bellatrix Lestrange.

All of this has been planned by K & M and it went really well.  I had talked to K & M about the idea of a float for change and they dealt with most of the money by themselves.  I'd warned folks to bring their wizard money and some had even made some to use!  Before taking into account what K & M spent (the biggest thing was the moulding chocolate - everything else was crafty things we have in the house except the wand making materials which I don't mind having paid for), they have made over £15, which they are planning on splitting three ways and giving the third share to charity.

Although the theme for Asfordby was originally James & the Giant Peach, as quite a number of those who go had also been to see it at the theatre, E, who runs it was quite happy for it to be Harry Potter too.  As she put it 'you might as well go with the flow', since most of the children over about 6 and some younger all play Harry Potter for much of the time we're there anyway!  And C had prepared a Harry Potter quiz, which K & M brought home to do.  There were also various James and the Giant Peach themed activities, including a bug sudoku, which K did when she saw me sitting down having a go, making glow worms (mini glow sticks in balloons - we're planning on finding out how glow sticks work tomorrow), a ladybird life cycle activity and making 'hot noodles made with poodles' (quote from the Centipede's song) pictures on paper plates using cooked spaghetti covered in paint!

In other news, this afternoon we talked about prime numbers and with just a little bit of prompting K worked out what a prime is and we also talked about how it's very easy to rule lots of numbers out of being prime (even numbers, when the digits add up to a multiple of three).  We also related this back to fractions and how it can be useful when simplifying them, for example if there are prime number top and bottom you definitely can't simplify.

Yesterday, quite randomly when M wanted to watch even more Tom & Jerry, I suggested we do something else and when she couldn't think of anything I suggested I could give her some dictation, like in Anne of Green Gables and was quite surprised when she agreed.  I dictated a simple story about Mr Fox, a favourite puppet toy who the girls play with with Daddy and was pretty impressed how well she did, spelling 'friend' correctly for example.  None of the mistakes were such that you would not have been able to understand the word and when we went through it she was able to correct the majority of them herself.

Finally, we've got some dried peas soaking overnight in readiness for making Peas Pottage like we saw at Mary Arden's Farm recently.

Potter preparations and confidence issues.

Over the past few days K, M & I have been working on something that K & M thought up a while back and did quite a lot of work on somewhat secretively, for several weeks now.  I'm not allowed to say any more yet, or post photos, but it's Harry Potter related and all will be revealed after Monday.

Friday was 'one of those days' that come around every so often.  I've been struggling to get the balance right in terms tidying to make sure there's space to allow things to happen.  Grumpiness abounded, arguing occurred, tears were shed and then hugs and making up happened.  In among that, K did a little bit more of the fractions sheet that I'd made her.  She asked whether you can simplify fractions on a calculator, so we had a look and discovered that you can't on a simple one, but on the scientific calculator you can, so she used that to check her answers.  It was when I asked her to make sure she wrote her working down for the final part (adding fractions with different denominators and then simplifying the answer) that she said something that really concerned me.  When she asked me why I wanted her to write her working, I explained that it makes it much easier to find out where you've gone wrong if you've made a mistake and also that if she decides to do any qualifications in the future, GCSE for example, you get as many if not more marks for the working as you do for getting the right answer.  She then told me that she wasn't going to do any exams because she's 'rubbish' at everything!  I'd previously overheard a conversation between K & M when they talked about being 'rubbish' at spelling.  Any attempt I made to demonstrate and persuade K that she's most definitely not 'rubbish' were rebuffed and she told me she would 'take it as an insult' if I said she wasn't!  I really don't know where this idea has come from, nor just how serious she is when she says it and I did tell her that it worried me a bit that she feels like this.  K has conceded that some things take practice to get good at and we've agreed to go back to a little bit more structure and trying to do a bit more 'sitty-downy writing, spelling and numbers' regularly, something that happens periodically (often as much for my benefit as theirs, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing).  I'm not sure, but I think some of this is connnected to not wanting to grow up - K's ideal would have been to stay 8 forever.  

Since then she's finished the worksheet, quite ingeniously using counters to work out if a fraction could be simplified.  I mentioned prime numbers to her, as they would be helpful for this, and have given her a list of all primes up to 100 and suggested that she might like to use the counters to see if she can work out what a prime number is.  I'll leave the idea with her for a few days and see if she has a go and if not then I'll suggest we have a look together.

In other news, K & M have been waiting for A to get home from a work trip, so that they could watch Just William with him, since he's been the one reading them the stories mostly.  They did so this evening, although on several occasions I heard them admonishing him for falling asleep and him claiming that he wasn't, he had just closed his eyes for a moment.  Given that he got back at gone midnight last night, from a three day trip encompassing meetings in London, Brussels and Madrid, I think we should cut him some slack!  While they were watching, having previously identified actors from stage and screen, they spotted another.  Last seen on stage in Matilda the Musical, looking like this:

They identified Bertie Carvel as William's uncle, looking more like this:

And K & I went out to do a bit of shopping this morning and on the way saw butterflies for the first time this year.  Including this one, which we looked up when we got home.

It's a comma.

More Anne.

This morning M spent quite a lot of time in the garden and K chatted to her from the attic dormer window and they decided that they could do the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, a scene that we've watched on several occasions at Shakespeare's birthplace.  For the first time ever, K & M considered letting me read one of the tragedies from their Shakespeare stories collection, we got as far as me getting the book down, but K changed her mind at the last minute, for today at least. 

K asked about the Elaine that is referenced in Anne of Green Gables, so I found Tennyson's The Lady of Shalot online and read her that, although I'm not entirely convinced that we had it right as there weren't the specific quotes that Anne mentions in the book.

We watched Anne of Green Gables today, which we all enjoyed, but all agreed that we prefered the book.  M decided that she'd like to live with Marilla, because she definitely wouldn't want to have puffed sleeves, although she wouldn't want to wear a dress at all.  After watching M went outside again, to 'cook' - she likes cooking in the garden, which generally involves mixtures of soil, sand, water, grass, stones and anything else she can find, served up on little plastic plates.  At the moment she's got 'peas' soaking overnight to make pease pottage tomorrow.  While she was outside K & I had a look for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (where Anne of Green Gables is set) in our atlas and then read a bit about it online.

This evening we got the girls' bikes out for the first time this year and after pumping tyres and raising M's handbars (she could do with a new bike as the seat is at its highest, but it'll last a bit longer) took them to the park.  They had a good ride around and both of them, although M more than K I think, practised taking one hand off the handlebars to signal a turn. 

I had anticipated that I would only read the first of the Anne books, but at the girls' insistence this evening I read the first chapter of Anne of Avonlea.

Kites, stories, a poem and more.

We started the day with a trip to the dentist for our six monthly check up.  Then we popped in to the library for a while, M read herself a Dr Seuss book and K did part of the fractions worksheet that I made for her a while back.  Then we went to the park and flew our kites.

K flying a kite she made at a group

M flying our bought kite

 We only came home because I had forgotten to take a hat and my ears got too cold and starting hurting!  Once home I read some more Anne of Green Gables before lunch.  While I was reading M presented me with something she'd been doing while listening.

It's Anne (with-an-e) Shirley!

After lunch we watched a dvd of Just William, which A has been reading to them at bedtime over the last few months (he reads much more slowly than me and less at a time anyway!).  We all really enjoyed it and K spotted that the actor who plays William's teacher, Bruce Mackinnon, was in Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors that we saw at the RSC last year. 

I read most of the rest of Anne of Green Gables afterwards, getting extremely choked up towards the end of the book, not surprising as I'm in floods of tears every time I read it.  I didn't quite manage to finish the last chapter before korfball, but quickly finished it off before I went out to my choir this evening.

In other news, towards the end of last year, M wrote a poem for a Puffin Post competition.  I wasn't allowed to post it at the time in case 'somebody stole her idea', but enough time has passed that I have now been given permission to do so.  It's about Christopher, pictured below.

I have a dog 

He is a toy

But he is real to me

He likes to sit on a log

And when I see him doing it

It gives me joy

He surely cannot be a toy

Getting outside.

On Sunday we met up with friends at Chatsworth.  There were three families, with six children (three boys, O, N & A and three girls, K, M & E) ranging from K, at 9.5 to nearly 5 year old A.  We started off in the very good adventure playground, where the children got reacquainted and, in the case of E in particular and M to a lesser extent, rather muddy.  After lunch, the occasional light showery flurries were threatening to get worse, so we went into the house, where the children looked for the Easter eggs, which were hidden around the place.  We didn't exactly linger in the house and pretty soon we had headed out into the very extensive garden.  More boisterous fun was had and the mums and kids all eventually (it really did take rather a long time!) found our way to the middle of the maze, which the dads lounged in deck chairs and chatted (and in A's case fell asleep!).

This morning, as well as some tidying, so I could do some hoovering, I continued reading Anne of Green Gables.  It's not going to be long before we will be watching my dvd as we're probably about 2/3 of the way through already!  K & M both also wrote a couple of thank you's for Easter eggs to send to their Great Auntie A and Nana and Little Grandad, along with one for our neighbours across the road, an elderly couple who always give them something at Easter and Christmas.  We stopped and had a chat when we delivered them on our way out.

This afternoon we finally did what M's been asking to do and complaining that we haven't done for ages, that is go to the park!  They took their skipping ropes, as well as playing in the playground and around the park.  I had a nice chat with a mum who used to come regularly to LLL meetings, who lives just down the road.  K & M ended up playing football with her two boys, who are a bit younger than them. 

We popped to the library before coming home for a rather rushed tea to make it to Brownies.  As it was the first meeting of a new term, which means a reshuffle of sixes as the older girls have moved on, K has now become a sixer. 

From one orphan to another.

It was not a good start to the day, a disagreement over a marble run escalated somewhat, the most obvious result of which was a black eye for K, having been hit in the face by something that M threw at her. 

The bruise has spread more under her eye since this photo!

After some time to calm down, during which I gave K her first lesson in cribbage, which she took to well, harmony was restored.  K & M decided that there was a good thing about having had a fight, as now they look much more like they've been in a battle for when they are being Tonks and Mad-Eye Moody when playing Harry Potter!

Harry Potter will be an on-going obsession for some time, that much is clear, and since I refused to start reading the whole series from the beginning, both K & M have started reading the books to themselves.  They were keen for me to read to them anyway, even if it wasn't Harry Potter, so today I started on a book that does have one very evident similarity, the eponymous hero/heroine being a orphan, but in pretty much every other aspect is very different.  It's one of my all time favourite books, that I have been looking forward to sharing with K & M.  It's Anne of Green Gables and I'm happy to say that so far they are loving it.  It's already provided some interesting topics for discussion, gender roles about a century ago for example, and it's great to see that both girls have already picked up on a couple of literary allusions (Shakespeare and Alice in Wonderland).  I'm not sure if we'll carry on with the whole of the series this time, as I think the subsequent books are better suited to an older audience than a 9 and nearly 8 year old, but we'll see.

Not just Potter - a bit of Dahl too!

This afternoon, was a bit of a rush at times.  We managed to squeeze in an hour of gymnastics, at which K & M both completed everything they need for Level 6 Proficiency Core Gymnastics (it goes from 8 to 1).  Then we dashed home with friends, who left their car here, before all heading off to the bus stop to go to town to see James and the Giant Peach.  There was much wand waving and spell casting en route, but everyone settled down nicely for the performance, which was excellent.  I think all of the eight cast played at least one instrument, often while dancing, the songs were great, as were the puppets.  The costumes were fantastic and there was just the right amount of audience participation.  All in all a great show.

The centipede.

Finally, I forgot to mention that while we were in Stratford, inspired by L (a HEing FB friend who is also in the throes of Harry Potter), I asked my girls about their patronuses (see under Expecto patronum).  K didn't know what her happy thought would be, but told me that her patronus takes the form of a pygmy marmoset.  M's happy thought was about hugging me and her patronus takes the form of a nit!!

Together again.

Well all went well with K's visit to Granny and Big Grandad, I'm happy to say, she had a lovely time.  Granny took her swimming one day and she did some colouring in the club house while Granny played bowls another.

M and I joined them on Sunday and in the afternoon we went into Stratford and went to Shakespeare's Birthplace again (our tickets to the 5 Shakespeare Trust properties last until early July and we have certainly been getting our money's worth!).  We also found somewhere else that both K & M want to return to, just a couple of doors away from the birthplace.

On Monday K, M & I went and had a mooch in the local charity shops, where K bought a furry monkey back pack for 75p.  Then M spent some money in the old fashioned sweet shop that is in the back of the card shop.  In the afternoon K, M & Granny swam while I sat and read my book.

Tuesday we got even more out of our Shakespeare properties ticket, first with a return visit (our 3rd I think) to Mary Arden's Farm.  We got there almost as soon as it opened at 10am and when we arrived at the farmhouse kitchen they were still lighting the fire, as they would have in Tudor times, which wasn't particularly easy!  The women were using a flint and charcloth (old worn out aprons, that have been sealed up in a tin and heated in the fire), but having problems, probably because the hearth fairies weren't happy with them.  We learned that the Tudors not only believed in fairies, but in the case of hearth fairies, tried to keep them happy, leaving food (a 'fairy cake'), ale and water for them to wash and linen to dry themselves every night.  Sometimes the offerings would have disappeared in the morning other times not and if the fairies were pleased then it would be easy to light and keep the fire going.  They were making lunch, which was pease pottage and griddle cakes.  I asked the girls if they fancied having a go at making and trying these and they said yes, so we'll have to see if they are still up for it when it comes to getting the ingredients.

Preparing the dinner.

Griddle cakes ready for cooking, plus some fairy cakes on the left.

Frying bacon for the pottage and cooking griddle cakes

Previously both K & M have always liked going round and looking at the animals, including watching the falconry display.  This time they did join in with the Easter Egg hunt (looking for hens' eggs for the kitchen), but apart from that they mostly wanted to stay in the kitchen, watching them cook and talking to them.  We had a quick lunch in the cafe there and then went to watch the Tudor dinner and learned about some of the rules of the time and there were many, as well as the origins of some of our expressions.  Pretty much anything with the word 'board' in it, such as bed and board and boardmeeting, date from Tudor times before the word table came along.

Serving dinner in strict order of importance.

After this we headed into to Stratford and went back to the Birthplace to say a quick hello to some of our old friends in the garden.  Then we went to the Creaky Cauldron, which is the place that K & M really wanted to go back to.  We had a hot chocolate and cake in the cafe behind the shop part (they serve butterbeer, but K & M decided not to go for that once we'd found out that it was fizzy).  Then paid to go upstairs in the 'attraction' part.  K & M liked most of it, but K found some of it far too scary.  It's obviously cashing in on the whole Harry Potter, magic thing, but was mostly pretty well done.  It lead to a discussion about trademarks, when the girls couldn't find Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans but something similarly named.  After a walk around town, we had one last visit to the Birthplace and, since it was not far off closing time and pretty quiet by now, we had a nice chat with some of the actors again.

K & M were invited to tea at Great Grandma's, which was, to quote K 'the treatiest tea they've ever had'!  They started off with tinned peaches and ice-cream, then had double chocolate cookies (which Grandma had won in a raffle!), Swiss roll, jaffa cakes and then some bread and honey!

This morning we managed to get packed up and away in time to get home for ice skating.  Then this afternoon, we watched a fairly dire adaptation of A Little Princess and we talked about how it was a bit like in Dumbledore's notes on The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which mention a highly sanitised version written by a witch for small children, which takes out anything that could be considered unpleasant and thereby loses the whole point in most ways.

Missing her big sister.

M has said on several occasions (particularly at bedtime) that she's lonely without K here and that she misses her.  I don't play right apparently, because I'm not good at imagination games.  When I asked M about her going to stay at Granny & Big Grandad's on her own, she said that she's not sure about going on her own, but that she'd really like to go with K.  I'm not sure if Granny's up for that though!

She did enjoy the Faraway Tree workshop at the library this morning though and came home with a some things she'd made, in the various lands they'd 'visited'.

A sweet tree from the Land of Sweets

A little toy train magnet from the Land of Toys

We also had a game of The Game of Life card game, which is something we haven't played for ages. (M won).

It's finally warmed up a bit, so A had some time in the garden and M went out there too.  There wasn't any really obvious place in the garden for the bee hotels, but M picked one of A's suggestions and he and I put it up for her.

A adding the second screw.

Ready for the bees to move in!

This evening M made me a present...

A little broomstick, Hufflepuff quidditch player and quidditch cup!

One down!

It's been a few days since my last post and we seem to have done rather a lot in that time!  A took a few days off work and on Wednesday, his last one before going back, he, K & M took me on my first go at geocaching.  We just went looking for a couple of very local ones, one successfully, one not (although I hadn't quite figured out the app on my phone, so hopefully we'll manage a bit better next time!).

On Wednesday evening K & I went to the ballet with friends, R & A.

A & K dressed up for the ballet!

It was Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty.  It departed somewhat from the traditional story and at one point K, who was sitting 4 seats away from me, next to A, got really rather worried and several times whispered rather loudly "Is it going to be okay?!"  Fortunately it was, since as K says, she's okay with sad, scary things when she's prepared for them, but not if they're unexpected.  We all really enjoyed the evening, the production was fantastic and the costumes gorgeous.  I'd be happy to take K to the ballet again if she was keen to go, but it did confirm to me that ballet isn't really my thing.

Most of the activities that K & M do stop during school holidays, but the two that don't, gymnastics and swimming are both on Thursday, so we had a fairly busy afternoon.  One of the books that I'd ordered arrived - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, so we had a bit of a look at that.

Today, K was up at 6.30am - I realise this may be the norm for some folks, but it really isn't normal here.  She was very excited about going to stay with Granny and Big Grandad for a couple of nights on her own for the first time and got up to pack.  Granny, Big Grandad and Uncle M all came for lunch and took K away with them shortly afterwards.

M and I had made plans, to soften the disappointment of being left behind (even though she knows that Granny and Big Grandad will be inviting her to stay on her own too).  We had a lovely afternoon with L & E, who have recently started HEing and who we met up with a month ago at a soft play place.  We'd been planning to meet up again before now, but unfortunately illness had got in the way.  We went together to Ferry Farm for the afternoon and had a lovely time.  M & E and a great time on the trampoline, the various obstacle courses (L & I had a go on some of these too) and in the soft play area.

We fed goats...

...and a llama (plus some donkeys).

We saw a *very* newborn lamb, so new that it was still wet.

And some slightly older triplets.

This mum had a bigger brood, but only one ventured out from under her.

Shortly before we came home (pretty much when they were about to close), there was a rather strange incident when a small boy came and asked me to help his mum, who was holding the tiny newborn lamb and which had slipped between the bars of the pen, but she was reluctant to put it back in the pen with the mother as she was stamping her feet rather a lot.  I took the lamb and quickly and quietly put it back in the pen with them mother, assuming (correctly as it turned out) that the mother was stamping at the woman rather than the lamb!

In other news, the seeds/beans that we planted at Asfordby a few weeks back are doing pretty well!  Unfortunately K's sunflower didn't make it, but M had lots and gave K one of hers.

M and K's sunflowers.

K's bean.

M's bean.

Busy bees!

Today was Fun Club and it was a cracker.  The theme was loosely based around the garden and there was plenty to do.  Something that had been agreed previously was that it would be good to have name badges, M did hers (with a picture of Mad Eye Moody, which is who she 'is' from Harry Potter and a speech bubble saying "Constant vigilance!"), K didn't actually do a name badge, but she did make this.

It says Hufflepuff and that's a badger.

At the moment anybody, adult or child, who the girls talk to, who has a reasonable knowledge of Harry Potter and is amenable is expected to 'be' a character from the series (people do get to choose as long as the character is not already taken), as I said M is Mad Eye, K is Tonks, I'm Professor McGonagall, various friends are Bellatrix Lestrange, Kingsley Shacklebolt and many more.  Today they recruited another friend, who has chosen to be Hagrid, not that she bears any relation to him physically!

Both girls had a go at pyrography.  As you might expect the results were Harry Potter based!

Mad Eye Moody by M

Tonks by K - she added the pink hair at home later

The girls each also made a miniature garden.

K's garden

And M's

 We also had a guest come in to do an activity, which was great!  The children all made their own bee hotel.  He explained that not all bees are social creatures like honey bees and that there are some which are solitary bees, such as leafcutter bees (he showed us some pressed leaves with almost perfect circles cut out of them), which live alone, as their name suggests.  These hotels provide an ideal place for these types of bees to nest.

I'm not sure how much had already been done for the older children, but for the 7-9 year olds, he had made the basic shell, but with only half the screws put in.  With a bit of help, the children used cordless power drills to add the remaining screws.  Then they filled the box with bamboo (I think!) pieces, biggest pieces first then smaller ones, finally hammering the thinnest ones into the gaps, to wedge them all firmly in place.

Next the back was covered with clay and a back nailed on.

Next some roofing felt nailed to the top ensured that it will be pretty weather-proof.

They were finished off with a bracket to hang it in a sunny spot at least 90cm from the ground.

 After lunch the older children (from about 7 up) played some team games, including a sort of human ludo, which was quite interesting!  Unfortunately the last game ended in tears for K & M, who were on different teams and accidentally collided resulting in a split lip for K and a bump on the head for M.

In other news, we've had a few lovely games of Happy Families recently, using a really lovely, if rather battered, set of cards I remember playing with when I was little, that my Mum brought for us last time she visited.

M got out the Banangrams tiles again and came up with this.  The only thing there that isn't as she did herself is reconciliation, which was a very good stab at a very long word!