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.