All ready for Kentwell Hall.

We're finally all ready for our trip back to Tudor Suffolk on Wednesday now.  The footwear won't be quite so Tudor as the rest of us, but I must say I'm pretty pleased with the final result and so are K & M. 

 

They're really looking forward to stepping back to Tudor times.  And have already made me promise that we will visit Granny and Big Grandad soon, so that they can go back to Mary Arden's Farm in costume as well!

 

I got a lot of satisfaction out of making the costumes (with lots of help admittedly, but there were parts I did all on my own!) and as a result, today I went to John Lewis and bought myself a new sewing machine, using mostly vouchers that A had as part of a Christmas bonus, so it hardly cost anything really!  It's a shame that the one my Grandma gave me hasn't worked out, but I had it serviced and a spare part replaced and that cost not far off what a basic new machine costs and after working briefly it is no longer doing so.

Maths and more.

When I came downstairs this morning (not particularly early) I found K on the sofa reading a Maths Quest book.  She couldn't tear herself away from it, so since M was already having breakfast whilst listening to a Roald Dahl story cd, which meant that K wasn't able to concentrate on the book, I suggested she have her breakfast in the playroom, which she did.  By lunchtime, she still wasn't dressed, but she was on her third Maths Quest book by this time!

I think she read The Mansion of Mazes first, which calls itself 'A mathematical mystery of Shape, Space and Measures'.  Then she moved onto The Planet of Puzzles, which is about 'Data Handling' and is at least half way through The Cavern of Clues, which is on 'Calculations'.  I've since read The Mansion of Mazes, and thought it was rather good.  The variety of topics it covers is quite impressive, including symmetry, angles (acute, obtuse), points of the compass, lines (perpendicular and parallel), polygons and polyhedra (edges, faces and nets), weight, volume, time, area, radius and diameter and coordinates.  As you read through the story, you turn to different pages depending on the answers you choose.  If you get the answer wrong, there is narrow escape from something and you are send back to try again, and there is an explanation of the problem you were trying to solve.  At the end of the book there is a summary of all of the maths encountered.

K told me that she'd got most of the puzzles right first time, although she wasn't sure about the data handling one, as she didn't know what that was.  However, that didn't seem to stop her from reading the book in its entirety!  There is a section on data handling in the Basher Maths book that we've been working through, but we haven't got to that part yet.  I've asked if she'd like to go through the books with me some time and she said she would so we can decide what she is interested in looking at further and I can explain parts that she's not clear about.

While K was doing this, M was busy too.  She made a ferry out of lego.  Her first version was very simple looking, but had a removable roof and she told me that the space below was where the cabins were.  I reminded her about the ferry we'd been on and how the cars had been below and then there were shops and cabins above that with a deck and so she went away and eventually came up with this.

The whole thing.

Cabins and shop (selling toy weapons!)

Car deck.

This afternoon we went to the park, where there was an event including various sports to try out, a very mini fun fair and later on our Prom in the Park for Armed Forces Day and there was also a Craft Fair that comes every few months.  K & M both took some of their money with them and K spent a pound on a little felt ladybird brooch and M £2 on a little mirror.  We went to see the korfballers and both girls had a go there, K and I also had a go on the rowing machines and M had a go at tennis with her friend A.

We have also finished off our Tudor costumes.  There wasn't that much left to do, just a couple of cup strings, and the bodices for K & me.  As I'd used an old duvet cover to make the bodices, and the idea is to lace them up the front, in order to reduce the very real threat of fraying to the point of disaster, I had decided to cheat and glued a little square of felt on the back where I snipped a little cross to allow the lacing.  It seems to have worked quite well!  Both K & M put on the whole of their costumes for a photo and really didn't want to take them off again.  They went to see if A, who childsits occasionally (*not* babysits, because they're not babies!) was in, to show her their costumes, but she wasn't, so they went down the road to show other friends, who were duely impressed.  They also went to the park for a short time, still in costume, while I cooked tea for them.  After tea we went back to the park (changed back into modern dress, in M's case all inside out), to see what was going on at the Prom and saw quite a few people, including friends who we've been trying and failing to get together with for a while.

So the costumes are done, and here they are:

K's.

M's

And mine.

K plaiting her cup string.

I still haven't tried all of mine on in one go, but will do and will post a photo when I'm done.  However, here are my Tudor children (please excuse the crocs and dinosaur socks on the boy - I can't imagine where (s)he got such things!)

My Tudor girl.

And my Tudor boy.

Quite a contrast!

When I came downstairs this morning, I found this.

K in her nearly complete Tudor outfit, on Pottermore on the computer!

She was on the first book, working out which bottles contained poison, nettle wine and the potions to take your onwards and back.  It's a poem in Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone, with which you need to use pure logic to solve, although in the book it's not possible, as I think you need a visual clue which isn't there.  She told me that she had worked it out correctly, although she did remember which were the two potions that Harry and Hermione need to drink anyway.

We also continued our preparations for the Tudor day, making our money pouches and cupstrings.  I also finished off our coifs (girls hats), by adding tape through the bottom part where there's no brim to tie on to keep them more secure.  Other than that, the girls did two hours of gymnastics, including rope climbing and I was surprised and impressed to see M managing to get half way up (in a hall where they do trampolining - so *very* high ceilings), I don't think they were supposed to try to get any higher anyway.  We also had more Charlie Bone and M did a bit of piano practice.

Getting ready to go back in time.

Over the past week or so, it hit me that our trip to Kentwell Hall had crept up and was getting very close.  A trip to our local charity shops provided several pairs of curtain lining and  I made coifs for K & me.

K's coif

And mine.

M & I had another look and M was very pleased to find a brown duvet cover and pillow case set, which provided a hat for her - she wants to go as a boy.  I also found a orange-brown pair of women's long shorts in a linen material, and a size 8 long brown linen skirt, which I thought might be useful to make things for the girls.

M's hat.

However, given that both the girls and I all need to go in costume, I started to get a bit stressed, as although I have a sewing machine (which I had had serviced), which was given to me by my Grandma, I wasn't sure how to use it!  Admittedly sewing everything by hand would have been more authentic, but not really realistic in terms of getting things done.  Fortunately for me, Z, a friend from Fun Club who is handy with a sewing machine had offered to help me out, so on Tuesday we headed to see her and R, her six year old daughter.  Both Z & I had anticipated the our girls wouldn't really be keen on playing together, as they don't get on particularly well at Fun Club, but the three of them got on really well and K & M now consider R a friend and are very pleased that we're going back again on Friday.

Z showed me how to use my Grandma's sewing machine and all was going really well and we made the first smock for M pretty quickly.  Unfortunately the machine got temperamental and stopped working after that, so we used Z's.  We stayed until we needed to dash home for K & M's piano lessons at 3 o'clock, and in that time between us, thanks mostly to Z's know-how (and more old bed linen!), we'd managed to get smocks for all three of us, turn the shorts into breeches for M and make the skirt rather more Tudor-y, as well cutting out more of the duvet cover to make the waistcoat type thing for both girls.  There's still a bit more to do, but Z has very kindly said she'll finish the two waistcoats and the skirt for me and I'll cut out the aprons for K & M and we should manage them and finish off the rest on Friday morning.

K in her costume so far.

Apart from our Tudor preparations we've been pretty busy so far this week.  On Monday, we went over to Asfordby for a session on the Rainforest, both girls enjoyed making up some colourful frogs from kits, before spending most of the rest of the time enjoying the lovely weather outside.  We came home with some Maths Quest books and a model eye to borrow.  Then the girls went for a walk in a local woods with Brownies in the evening.

Tuesday, after piano lessons, K built the model eye, before korfball after tea.  And today, K did some potion brewing on Pottermore and since the potion had to simmer for an hour, and it tells you in percentage how much of the time you have had, we did some maths.  K told me that she'd already waited 32%, so I asked her approximately what fraction of the time that was and when she didn't seem sure, I asked what fraction 50% would be and that made it clear to her what I was asking and she answered correctly and also told me how many minutes that was.  While she waiting she also did half of the worksheet I'd made her with more subtraction practice.  This time she check each answer with the calculator as she went along and told me that she had got them all right first time.  M has nearly finished her birthday thank you cards.  This week was Drowning Prevention Week at swimming, so they wore pyjamas to their swimming lesson and did life-saving skills.

In other news, we've been carrying on with Charlie Bone and quite often both K & M have been doing knitting while I read.  This morning, I woke up to find a bag with a note on it saying 'Please look after me' and I found this inside, made by M, his name is Bob.

Bob.

Walking and talking

K is currently mid-way through making a cardboard cut-out model of an Icelandic glacier with something that we picked up from the British Geological Survery's Open Day.  Today over lunch, A explained glaciers.  Handily he did geography beyond age 13, as I would have had to say let's look it up and we were in the middle of a meal at the time!

This afternoon we went on a walk that some neighbours of ours organise a couple of times a year.  This time last year, although the girls enjoyed the walk they did struggle with the distance (A estimated it was about 5 miles) and A had to take M on a short cut.  This year K & M lead the way, setting a cracking pace and although M had a bit of a moan towards the end, they managed easily.

On the way in the car, we drove past a 'Drive Thru', which prompted K to ask how you spell 'through', as she'd recognised that it wasn't right, but wasn't sure how it should be spelled.  This lead to a conversation about how 'ough' has so many different ways it can be pronounced and is a brilliant example of what makes English such a tricky language!  K & M also reminded us that punctuation is important and can make a big difference to the meaning of a word or phrase, coming up with the examples of she'll  and shell and 'Let's eat, Grandma!' and 'Let's eat Grandma!'.

K leading the way (M hid because she didn't want to be in the photo!)

K up close with the wildlife - a greenfly!

On the way round we saw two different uses for ex-telephone boxes.  The first housed a defibrillator, which was paid for and maintained by the village council.  So we talked about how if someone in a rural area were to have a heart attack, sometimes it can take too long for an ambulance to arrive to save them.  I explained about first responders and how they're trained to use these defibrillator and look after the person until the ambulance arrives.  We also talked about how a heart attack doesn't mean that someone's heart just stops, but that it doesn't beat properly and that the defibrillator gives an electric shock that can help it to get back to beating regularly.

The second alternative telephone box.

B & J the neighbours who arrange the walks always plan it well so that it starts and ends somewhere with tasty treats.  A pub with good food for the New Year's Day walk and a good cafe or tea shop for the summer one.

K enjoying a hot chocolate and scone with cream & jam.

Over our scones K & I talked about how when I was her age there were no mobile phones and so the phone boxes were rather useful then!  We also got back to talking about the first responders and about paramedics, nurses and doctors.  From there we went to the prefix 'para' and what it means, and along with some of the others who'd been on the walk, decided that it meant 'alongside'.

A duck with her rather large brood - we counted 12!

Then once back home, we had time for a few rounds of Pit and a chapter of second Charlie Bone book before it was time for bed.

Learning from mistakes.

Following on from our session together looking at subtraction, K had a go at the questions I'd set for her.  Again, she didn't want me to see what she'd done, but checked her answers herself when she'd finished, using a calculator.  She then happily came and reported to me how she'd got on.  She told me she'd made 'quite a few mistakes' but had found most of them herself before she'd started checking with the calculator, which as far as I can see means that those errors don't count as she'd put them right!  When I asked if she thought she'd like a bit more practice before moving on she said she would, so I have made her another worksheet from here.

We've now finished the first Charlie Bone book, and started on the second one and both K & M have started getting out their cross-stitch or tapestry to work on while I'm reading.  I will be allowed to photograph them when they are finished but not before.

Both girls have also continued to spend quite a lot of time with the Weasleys, aka the various body models, taking them apart and reconstructing them.

Music and movement.

Today, for the first time in as long as I can remember both K & M sat down and practised the piano without any prompting (okay - nagging) from me.  In fact M had two sessions of practice, one this morning and another after tea.

This afternoon was gymnastics, which they always enjoy but for the first time they didn't want to stay for the second session because their friend, C and her brothers were going to the park, and although they did want to carry on with the gymnastics they wanted to spend time with C more.  We went to the local park and apart from a bit of help with conflict resolution regarding choice of games from E and me, they had a really good time.

M, C & K on the basket swing.

Apart from that, both K & M have had their sewing boxes out, making costumes for various toys.  M also did some cross-stitch from a kit that she started months ago and K made this little ball.

Finally, M told me she really didn't like me writing her a note in the little 'homework diary' and could I please go back to doing it how I did to start with.  Fair enough!

Who needs to get dressed to learn stuff?!

It ties in quite nicely with a cartoon I saw on Facebook recently, that K didn't get dressed until about 4pm today, and she may not have done so then if it hadn't been for the fact that we had swimming lessons today!

At the scrapstore we're members of, they have a really good supply of exercise books in a variety of sizes and recently I picked up a few small 'homework diaries'.  I suggested that I could write things that K & M need to or have agreed to do in them, along with things that we've got on for the next day.  K has reacted really well to this idea and told me that if it's in the book, she *has* to do it (her idea not mine!) and this morning disappeared to do some piano practice without me suggesting it, because I had written it in the book.  M has told me she doesn't like it, so instead of bullet points of things, for her I've written a little note tonight, so we'll see if she prefers that.

The third of the body models that I'd bought online arrived a couple of days ago, but we only got round to opening it today.  It was a 'cranial nerve skull', which K has decided is called Fred.  The construction of Fred led to discussions about the brain, we also talked quite a lot about blood.  We looked at magnified images of blood and talked about how blood needs to clot (haemophilia) but not too much (strokes, heart attacks and DVT)!

K feeling how heavy an adult brain is - a nearly full bag of flour (around 1.4kg)

Fred's brain (rather less than 1.4kg!)

M had a go with the models too.  K has named them after members of the Weasley family.

Fred, Ron (the baby is a boy) and George.

After lunch, K & I started on subtraction.  Having done some reading on the subject in Maths for Mums & Dads, I had decided to do things a bit differently this time and got a big piece of paper and we explored the idea together.  K decided that we should set the sum out similarly to how we'd done the addition, and that the bigger number should go at the top.  We used four digit numbers (at K's request) and broke it down into separate sums for the thousands, hundreds, tens and units.  I think this made it much clearer when we looked at the 'borrowing' method and K seemed to grasp the idea easily.

We also talked about how there a number of different ways of phrasing questions that need subtraction to work them out.  For example, the difference between two numbers and how many more one person has of something than another, as well as x take away/minus y.  And finally we talked about how sometimes we can do sums in our head more easily than writing them down, for example: If a child is born in 1998, how old would they be in 2003?  Although this is a subtraction, it's much easier to count on that do the sum like this:
  2003
-1998

After the maths with K, M and I had a few games of Monopoly Millionaire Deal, which is pretty good and involves adding up in multiples of 50 000.

I haven't mentioned what we've been up to regarding books lately.  We're still going with the first Charlie Bone book and are about 3/4 of the way through and I imagine will have finished by the weekend.  As well as this, K found a CD audio book of Pegasus and the Flame, which K & M listened to over the course of a couple of days and enjoyed.  I'm wondering whether they will want to explore Greek myths as a result and will suggest we have a look if they've got anything in the library about them next time we're there.

Getting the hang of it.

K has been continuing with the addition worksheet I made for her.  After the couple of mistakes she made previously, she has obviously learned from them, as she only got one more wrong in the rest of the sheet, and that was a 'silly' mistake, lack of concentration, rather than not getting it.  To finish off I asked her if she'd like a really big sum and she said yes, so I gave her a sum with two 10 digit numbers to add.  She did it, checked it with a calculator and came to tell me that she'd got it right, but had made a mistake when she was doing it, but noticed at the time and put it right straight away.  I'm happy that K has cracked this and more importantly I think that she is too.  Now on to subtraction!

Meanwhile, M has been getting on with her birthday thank you cardlets.  Just a few more and she'll be done with them.  She has also been writing other things, but mostly letters to her best friend J, but they're strictly private, so I haven't been allowed to see them!

K & M had their third piano lesson with their new teacher, who they are both still very positive about.  Today I sat down with M while she practised, as she wanted me there to make sure she started the pieces with her fingers in the right place and I was impressed with how she was doing.  K did a bit of practice too, but she preferred to be on her own for it.

As K & M each have half an hour piano lesson and the weather's good, the one not having the lesson and I have the choice of going to the nearby playground for 20 minutes or going for a walk along the canal.  Last week, M chose the playground and K the canal, this week it was the other way around.  M was hoping to see some cygnets, but unfortunately we didn't this time.  We did however see lots of other water birds with chicks, moorhens and ducks.  We talked about how you can see the young coots change in appearance, as we saw some older chicks and what was obviously a second brood.  We also saw some very cute ducklings.

K & I explored some physics on the playground equipment and stopped to look at some bees on the way back to pick M up.

Something just for me.

Yesterday I had a rare day all for myself and just for fun.  For the first time in about 20 years I played the viola in an ensemble and it's only in the last couple of months that I've played it at all in almost as long.  A friend, J (another HE mum) told me about Blow the Dust Off and I thought it sounded good, so signed up and in anticipation got my viola out of its case for the first time in a very long time.

I really enjoyed the day, finding that, although I played plenty of bum notes, lots of other people did too, but we ended up making a pretty good sound.  We started off with a string and double reed (oboes and bassoons for those not in the know) ensemble, playing a variety of stuff including The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (which I know I have played before at some point).  Then with just the strings, we had a go at this (not this fast and definitely not this well though!) among other things.  After lunch we split up into a quartet and an 'octet plus' (which turned out to be two each of first and second violins, three violas and five cellos, so a little bottom heavy).  Then we got back together for a final practice of the pieces which we were going to perform in the concert (for family and friends) at the end of the day.  Meanwhile there had been plenty going on for the wind instruments (and some percussion), with a swing band, a clarinet group, a flute group and a recorder group, which boasted a great bass recorder as well as a bass one.

I had been expecting K & M to turn up for the concert with Ay, who was going to be childsitting (they're not babies!) and then bringing them on the bus, as A was going to be playing cricket.  So I was quite surprised to see them arrive with him instead.  His cricket had been cancelled before he left the house, so he had let Ay know, although she did still come over and play with the girls for a while, enabling him to get some work done.  They rather enjoyed the concert, which was really rather varied as you might expect with the different combinations of instruments in the various groups.  K did stick her fingers in her ears for the final piece, which was the theme to Hawaii 5O, played very loudly, but not because she didn't like it, just found it too loud.

It was also an opportunity to see and talk about musical instruments that K & M wouldn't have come across before, such as the bassoon among others, as well as them seeing what enjoyment there is to be had from playing music in a group like this.  Playing in an orchestra was a big part of my childhood and it's one of the few things that is not easy to arrange when HEing.  Both K & M enjoy their piano lessons (even if they don't practice very much!), but neither plays any other instrument at the moment.  I'm hoping that this experience will at least get them thinking about whether they might like to at least try out something else alongside the piano.

So while I was out all day, among other things K & M had had a go with M's new card games that she'd received for her birthday; Monopoly Deal, which works really well (A said he thought it was the best of the card game versions of board games that we've got and after one go myself, I'm inclined to agree) and Pit (which A remembers playing as a child when visiting an elderly couple who were friends of his parents).

An arty, chocolatey, sciencey, mathsy sort of a day.

Firstly, K & M were given some modelling clay at D's party and his mum, C, said she wanted to see the results.  So just for you C, here they are. :-)

K's dog & snake.

And a close up of the dog.

And M's tree.

A couple of days ago, K found a box of half a dozen little canvasses, that I'd bought ages (we're probably talking years!) ago in an order from Bakerross.  She's asked at the time if she could have one, so this morning she and M got painting, with the intention of creating something for a birthday present for J.  J's a neighbour, who is having an 80th birthday celebration this weekend (his birthday was in February, but they decided to wait until better weather was at least a possibility for the party).  He has always given the girls Christmas presents, including paintings he's done (an allosaurus for M and a peacock for K, both on silk I think), and Easter eggs.

K at work.

M did a watercolour first.

A swan on a nest.

A garden scene with poppies  - this is the one she's going to give to J.

An elephant on the shoulders of two other elephants; done using a sponge shape.

And she decorated this photo frame with glitter paint, both birthday presents.

K's present for J.  She used our Usborne Spotters Birds book as a reference.

While K & M were busy painting, I was also busy making a present for J, but mine is edible.  They aren't all for him, as some will be for A for Fathers' Day, but I enjoyed putting the skills I learned during my Christmas present from him to use.

Rum truffles!

After lunch, which was a Feed Yourself Friday one.  We haven't been as good as we could about remembering to do this, although K & M quite often get their own sandwich type meals.  Today M had spaghetti worms and toast and K had baked beans and toast.

This afternoon we went out to pop to the library (having found the overdue library book finally - I'd been renewing it every time we went and fortunately children don't pay fines) and get a few bits.  Friday we always pop into M&S because there's a lovely lady who gives out tasters and we like to have a chat with her and see what she's got.  Today we took something for her too, a couple of rum truffles and a couple of chocolate frogs.  While there, K noticed that the meringues had allergy advice that they weren't suitable for nut allergy sufferers, which led to a conversation about how for some people, the tiniest trace of something that they are allergic to can be enough to trigger a very severe reaction.  So while at the till we talked about anaphyllaxis, to the interest of the woman serving us!  K told me that she was 'quite interested' in the subject but not 'very interested', so I suggested we looked in our body books to see if there was anything in them as soon as we got home, which we did.  So we found out about how an allergic reaction is when our body's immune system has a reaction to something that isn't actually a threat to our body, and when that reaction is very severe and affects the whole body, including the heart, it is called anaphyllaxis.  M was listening in too and said that she thought it was interesting too. 

While on the way home K spotted something underneath a tree and when she investigated it turned out to be this, so we brought it home and to have a closer look.

After K had been to ballet and we'd had tea, K eventually got on with the sheet of addition sums that I'd made for her.  She did the first five and initiallly didn't want me to check them, because she wanted me to wait until she'd done them all.  However, when I explained that it might be helpful to know if she'd got them right, so she'd know if she was doing them correctly, she agreed to check the answers herself using a calculator.  She came to find me after she'd done so, to tell me that she'd made two mistakes and explained to me what she'd done wrong and that it had been the same mistake both times.  I commented that I think it's much more helpful to make mistakes and learn from them than get everything right first time, and asked her if she thought she would avoid that mistake when she carried on with the worksheet and she thought she would.  I'm actually really quite happy that she did make a couple of mistakes, as it's not so long ago that she would refuse to attempt things if she wasn't completely confident of getting them completely right and any mistakes would result in refusal to continue and significant distress!

Finally, A continued reading the first Charlie Bone book, while M played with her Lego creator car and K played with the Game of Life card game.

Being 'behind'.

One of the many great things about HE, is that it doesn't really matter if a child hasn't done something that (according to school timetabling) they 'should' have done.  I discovered today, having got to the character 'Add', that although K's mental arithmatic isn't bad given time and quiet, she was very reluctant to write down working in more tricky addition sums.  It turned out that she wasn't really sure what I meant when I asked her to write her working talked about 'carrying', even though she had obviously grasped the concept without realising that was what she was doing when adding numbers in her head. 

So we had a look together and I made up an example, something like:
  1 000 056
+   999 985

I showed her what I meant by carrying, writing a little number one as a reminder, getting the answer 2 000 041.  Then to emphasise the point, I did the same sum, but instead of carrying, I wrote the whole number we'd got from each column down as the answer, ending up with 19 991 311!  K found this very funny and I think helped her understand.  After this we worked through the few questions I'd put on the worksheet I'd made for her and she started to gain confidence.  I suggested that she would probably benefit from a bit more practice and she agreed, so I have used this website to make another worksheet for her.  It may well be that children in school have already covered this some time ago (K is 9.5), but it's only recently that K has been willing to consider doing things any way other than her own, but now that she is, when we do come across something that she doesn't 'get' immediately, she's willing to listen and give it a go and generally, when I find the right way to explain it to her, she cracks it, has a bit of a practice and is ready to move on, at her own pace.

In other maths news, I like playing Words With Friends on my phone and M in particular likes to help with suggestions.  Following a particularly good set of letters today, I was 220 points to 115 with my friend, which M was very impressed with.  I pointed out that I had nearly double and asked how many more I'd need to have exactly double and M answered correctly, barely pausing to think about it.  We seem to have had quite a few of these instances lately.

Look what I've found, Mummy!

Firstly, some maths.  Yesterday, K finished off the worksheet I'd made for her on 'units'.  She matched up the metric and imperial units that went together and then chose suitable equipment and, using metric units, measured:  her handspan, how much a particular mug holds, her weight, how long she could hold her breath, the weight of three apples and the distance from our front door to the bottom of the stairs.  That was the last of the first chapter, about the 'Number Bunch', which also included Zero, Infinity, Minus Numbers, Fraction and Decimal Fraction.  We will now be moving onto the 'Special Sum-things', basically the four operations, plus x (who is, apparently, "a nameless secret agent who haunts maths equations"!).

And now for what it was that was found.  Today was Asfordby, with the topic of recycling.  There was a bring and swap table, a good way of re-homing unwanted items, the remainder of which was taken to a charity shop.  K & M took some books and a few other bits and pieces, not as much as I'd like, but at least they parted with more than they brought home!  We brought back some animal figures, some animal sponges for painting and a top for me!  As well as this, there was paper making, although neither K nor M had a go, and box modelling.  K helped her friend Z make a gerbil cage (they did realise it wasn't exactly appropriate material for the purpose!) as well as a little thing of her own.  M spent most of the time outside playing with some of the boys.  At one point she came in, saying 'Look what I've found, Mummy!' and dumped something on my lap.  She and O are sharing ownership, but it's going to live at O's house, much to his mum's delight I'm sure!

A dead frog, with some of the skeleton showing through the dried out skin!

Mostly about two different trips out.

M's birthday is pretty much over now, but lingers on in a couple of ways.  She is writing her thank yous, on what are actually little present tag cards that we found in the scrap store, but they do the job nicely.  She was happy to write on them because there's small so she doesn't have to write much, I suggested it to encourage her to write a bit smaller and more neatly!  She is also enjoying using or playing with a number of her presents, such as the origami kit and her Lego among others.

Elephant's head and swan, made from one of M's presents.

On Friday it was a glorious day, so after some playing in the garden, when I was allowed to take some photos of a rare occurence, both of my girls in a dress/skirt!  We took a packed lunch and headed into Nottingham on the bus, with some of M's birthday money in my pocket.

 

First we headed for Market Square and joined quite a few other folks to have a bit of splash in the fountain. 

 

M had received one present which we already had (a really good choice, the card game Boggle Slam!), so we headed to Waterstones to see if we could swap it and since it had one of their stickers on they were happy to do so and we came away with Pit instead.  We haven't had a go yet, but have lots of other cards games in this series, so I'm anticipating we'll enjoy it.

The Victoria Centre was next and eventually, after much deliberation, M decided on some more Lego rather than more Playmobil, this Lego Creator Log Cabin.  She's already built and taken it apart a few times and seems very happy with her choice.  We headed back for more splashing about in Market Square, before heading home, via Hotel Chocolat (they usually have tasting and they didn't disappoint).

This morning, M and I went to deliver H's thank you to her at ballet and then to the farmers' market where we stopped for a chat with Barry and bought some chocolates for A for Father's Day next week (any excuse, Barry's chocolates are amazing).  K had decided not to come with us, because she was busy constructing a pregnancy pelvis, from a kit I'd bought at The Works in town yesterday.  A friend, E, had tipped me off that they had some good ones, but sadly they only had the pregnancy one left.  I have also ordered the other two that they had left online though.

K busy assembling body parts.

A 2 or 3 years ago we went to the British Geological Survey's Open Day and really enjoyed it, and when I asked the girls if they'd like to go to this year's, they were both quite happy to do so.  We got there at about 1.30pm and had a go at various activities.

Setting off party poppers by adding weights to the string.

This one is to demonstrate that although geologists know about the stresses and conditions that cause earthquakes and can predict that they are likely to occur soon, they can't know exactly when.  When we took part in this activitiy the results for how many weights it took to set off the party popper varied between 8 and 23.

M walking like a dinosaur.

Discussing the results.

The spaces between the footprints can help determine the height of the hip joint of dinosaurs and how fast they could move.  M was a pretty nippy Deinonychus, apparently.

We did a Treasure Hunt, which led you round some of the site and told us about various things, including the British Geological Survey itself, different types of rock, weathering and fossils and ended with chocolate and a couple of little pieces of polished minerals to take home.  We also looked at different types of rock, sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic and put some drops of vinegar on some of them to see if they would dissolve.

After this we went to the Fossil Fun section, where they had some very impressive specimens.  When I pointed out the different periods, M pointed out that they weren't in the right order, as the Permian and Jurassic sections had the Cretaceous in between them.  The man there agreed, and said that he hadn't thought about putting the tables in order and that perhaps he should have done.

A Permian fossil.

On the Cretaceous table, there were some fossils to handle and use a little eye magnifier to look at more closely.  K said that she thought the first one she looked at looked like a bee or wasp and wasn't far off, since it was a beetle.  When M picked up a different one, the man said that that one was very tricky and only one person so far had correctly identified it.  M had a look and said that it looked like a cricket to her, and he was very impressed, as it was, indeed, a cricket.  At this point, K said that she hadn't heard what M had said and had a look herself and said that she thought it looked like a grasshopper or a cricket.

M identifying a fossil.

And K's turn.

We had a quick look at a few more things and M had a go at panning for (fool's) gold, we've got the result drying out on a window sill, although there's still quite a lot of sand there too.

It shut promptly at 4 o'clock, so we went to see A playing cricket, arriving at tea.  We stopped for a while before heading home, where K did some of a worksheet I'd made for her on Units (continuing to work through the different characters in this Maths book).  So far, with a bit of talking through things, she's been filling in a table of different things we might measure (length, volume, time, temperature & weight), with examples (height, liquid in baking, a race, our temperature when ill, ourselves), examples of units (cm, litres, seconds, degrees centigrade and grams) and tools or equipment we might use to measure these things (ruler, measuring jug, stopwatch, thermometer, scales).  M wrote another thank you, this time to Christopher, her cuddly toy dog, who had given her a bouncy ball, which oddly he had wrapped in three layers before making a gift bag to put it in to give to M for her birthday.