Sunday morning we had planned to go along to a Cycling For All event as a family. However, given that I'm not exactly very mobile after my korfball injury, A took the girls and I hobbled about getting a few jobs done very slowly. Unfortunately they didn't take the camera, so no pics, but they did have fun trying out different sorts of bikes, including a (scaled down) Penny-Farthing (K), a tandem (A & M) and a 'bumpy' bike (K & M), which had the axle on the back wheel off-centre and both girls compared to riding a horse.
While there, they had the girls' bikes checked over by Dr Bike and also confirmed our suspiscions that K really had grown out of her bike, as had M. As a result, M has now been given K's old one and K will be getting a bigger one for her birthday. There was some discussion about the 'fairness' of this, as M doesn't usually get new things, but hand-me-downs from K, but K while getting new things, tends to be given them for her birthday or Christmas, whereas M gets them when K grows out of them and thus has other things for presents. K was very cheerful with her lot, having already told me when we talked about it last week and the bike idea hadn't cropped up, there isn't really much she would like for her birthday, so she didn't want anything really, but now she'll be getting the bike a bit early. M wasn't so happy and moaned that she doesn't get to choose what she would like. When looking at the two colour options for the bike we had decided on, K said she preferred the blue, but when I suggested that she let M have a look and see if she preferred the red or blue so she could possibly have a bit of a say (I did think she would also go for the blue), she not only did so, but when M said she liked the red better, decided that she would go for that colour.
In the afternoon we did some more sorting, tidying and clearing out of drawers from the playroom, although there's still lots of do. I also read eight chapters of the final Charlie Bone book. Only eight more chapters and we'll have to decide what to go for next. Front runners are The Railway Children (as I found a dvd of the film in a charity shop) and Roald Dahl's Boy.
As far as telly is concerned, K & M are both very into Tom & Jerry at the moment, which means that they are bombarded with adverts in between the cartoons. We've been looking at the adverts lately, mostly for toys, given that it's a children's channel, and noticing how the vast majority of them are very obviously aimed at either boys or girls and most of the few that are trying to sell something that's just for children, rather than girls or boys, such as scooters, have pink ones with girls on and bright primary colours with boys on. We also talked about the gender stereotyping in the occasional advert aimed at adults, particularly the one for cleaning products that was obviously suggesting that 'mum' would be needing them.
K & M had been looking forward to today for quite a while. They had been very keen on the idea of having their friend A & J for a sleepover, who, after initial enthusiasm, had decided that they weren't ready for one after all, so instead they came here for the whole day, much longer than the usual after school term time meet ups we have. Their dad dropped them off before 10 o'clock, S, their mum joined us after work and appointment about 4pm and they left at gone half past seven. In that time the four of them played The Game of Life Adventures Edition, played a game in which three of them were cats and the fourth was human, and set up a cafe in the garden with food made from soil, sand and mud etc and served S & me. We also measured A & J and talked a bit about statistics and bell curves, played Pit and K, A, S & I played The Game of Life Adventures card game while M & J played hide and seek.
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