A circus performance, a concert and more.

Yesterday I had an 'afternoon off' to go to the pre-concert singing workshop with our visiting Norwegian choir and their fantastic choir master, which was really good fun.  While I was there K, M & A were busy being circus performers.  This is something that has been planned, practised and prepared for over the last few days and by all accounts it went very well.

Ted & Alice, the clowns.

Ted, bare-back riding.

Alice, bare-back riding.

K as a human canonball.

M as a human canonball.

Christopher, the trapeze artist.

A as a mime artist.

And my favourite, Jolly the tightrope walker.

 In the evening I was performing in the concert, which I think went really well and K & M came along somewhat reluctantly with A to watch.  All three of them really enjoyed it though fortunately!

Today we had a look through the album of A and my honeymoon, including some photos and postcards of Newgrange that we'd read about in the Prehistoric Britain book.  K in particular as said she'd like to go at dawn on the winter solstice, although I'm not sure we'll manage the timing, we'd be happy to revisit some of the places we went.

And finally this afternoon we went for a family bike ride along the Trent.  M was somewhat reluctant to put it mildly, partly because she wanted to go to the BMX track at the local country park (we'd have to load up the bikes into/onto the car, so it takes quite a lot more time and planning and A had jobs to do in the garden, so it wasn't an option today) and partly because she says she is scared that one of us will fall into the river.  I tried to reassure her that the path is plenty wide enough and actually not right next to the river and it is *highly* unlikely that any of us will do so.  Once we got going it was fine, with just a bit of grumping, although she still says she doesn't like riding by the river.  Ho hum.  We will try to find some alternatives, but most would involve at least some busier roads or a trip in the car, so it's tricky as far as spontaneous cycle rides are concerned.

Making lists.

Yesterday the only thing we had on the calendar was the piano tuner.  So in the morning I asked the girls what they'd like to do and between the three of us we came up with a list of things we'd like to get done during the day.  We do sometimes make plans like this but don't usually write them down. 

Our list looked like this:
Bake chelsea buns (we watched The Great British Bake Off the day before and had decided it would be a good idea)
Go to the library and the shops (I had a book to take back and we needed milk)
Read Heidi (well, a few chapters anyway)
Read the first book of our Usborne History of Britain set (I had suggested reading the one about the Second World War, given what we've been reading lately, but K wanted to start at the beginning with Prehistoric Britain)
Watch the dvd of As You Like It (from lovefilm)
Do some tidying of bedrooms

By lunchtime we'd made a start on the chelsea buns (not entirely in the spirit of the Bake Off, we were using the breadmaker to make the dough) and I'd read a couple of chapters of Heidi and K & M had really got into an imaginative Playmobil game, that has been on-going for several hours over the past couple of days since and they'd also had a go on next-door's trampoline.  After lunch though, with a little bit of encouragement K & M joined me in the trip to the shops and the library and when we got home K & I (and M for some of the time) watched the first half of As You Like It, while eating one of the chelsea buns.  K & M claimed to have done a bit of tidying of their bedrooms, although having taken clean clothes into their rooms, I'm not entirely convinced of that!  Taking them at their word though, that means we managed 3 and two halves of the six things on the list.

This morning I suggested we continue with the list and read the first half of Prehistoric Britain with the girls.  K was a little bit put out that it started pretty much with the dinosaurs, but was placated when I showed her the timeline at the end of the book that does start at the beginning.  We got as far as the end of the Stone Age and came across a couple of places of particular interest.  The first was Newgrange in Ireland, a Stone Age passage tomb that is built such that at dawn on the winter solstice the sun shines directly down the passage, lighting up the chamber in the middle of the the mound.  A & I visited it on our honeymoon, so we need to dig our photos to show the girls.  The second place mentioned is much more local to us, Creswell Crags, somewhere none of us has visited yet, but we will certainly be looking at sorting out a trip now.

In other news, this afternoon we headed into town, the main reason for which was for me to take part in a flashmob with the choir I sing with and a visiting Norwegian choir.  It was really good fun!  Tomorrow afternoon the two choirs are having a workshop together with a joint concert in the evening, which will be my first proper concert since I lost my voice about 15 months ago with whooping cough.  I'm really looking forward to it.

A fox!

The day continued to be focused on the fox, and following the request to make a top of some sort M went and got out my sewing machine (I had agreed).  Using M's waistcoat from our Tudor outfits as a pattern, I managed to come up with something acceptable.  The costume still isn't entirely finished apparently, but M will be making any more bits she needs I think.

M the fox with Mr Fox.

In other news, we have talked about the girls helping a bit more around the house.  At the moment they are expected to keep the playroom tidy and since we have pointed out that if they can't keep it tidy then getting rats will not be an option, because they wouldn't be able to get them out of their cage and that wouldn't be fair on the rats, they have been doing a much better job.  They also have to tidy and clean (hoover and wipe surfaces) their own bedrooms once a month.  Other than that they are pretty good at clearing up spills they may have and tidying their things away after meals and helping out when asked, but apart from their rooms they don't have any particular chores.  Today I suggested they might like to help out a bit more and asked if they'd like to choose a job to do.  K immediately said she'd do the hoovering, and M is going to keep the kitchen table clear and clean.  I pointed out that K's job is much bigger, but she only needs to do it once a week generally, but M will need to do hers daily.  So anyway, we'll see how it goes. 

A busy day, followed by a very late breakfast.

Tuesday was, as usual, rather busy, with piano lessons, gymnastics class and korfball for the girls and choir for me in the evening.  K & M are supposed to be in bed, snuggled down with the light off when I get in at gone 10 o'clock, but when I went upstairs to check on them last night, they were still busy doing 'something very secret'.  They clearly didn't manage to finish it last night, as this morning they didn't get downstairs for breakfast until about half past ten, despite obviously being awake for at least an hour and a half already, as K had been down to ask for some 'orange and white material'.  In addition, we were having the burglar alarm serviced, which involves it going off numerous times, so it would have been tricky to sleep that long, despite the late night!

When they finally came downstairs, all became clear.  They had been very industrious and creative!  The base of the mask was from a crafty kit of M's, with the muzzle added by K.  The ears were added onto a hairband and the tail was sewn and stuffed by both girls working as a team.

M the fox!

From behind.

Having breakfast.

Now they've requested that I make a waistcoat or top out of the rest of the orangey material to complete the outfit (she's got her Tudor trousers for her bottom half).

Books and puzzles and games.

We seem to have rather a lot of books on the go between us all at the moment.  I'm reading Heidi to the girls, and A has just started My Family and Other Animals with them.  M has been working her way through various Daisy and the Trouble With... books, mostly reading them while she has her breakfast and she tells me that she's also reading the last Charlie Bone book.  K usually has several books on the go at any one time, among which is David Walliams' Billionaire Boy.

Today was the first Asfordby meet up after the summer, with a theme of board games and a post summer catch up.  We took a couple of games and also for a bit of variety I printed out some logic puzzles from here.  K, M & I had a go at one of them together first, just to make sure we knew how they worked and the girls were quite keen on it.  K has done at least one more since, although after we'd got home again rather than at the group as she and M were too busy playing and catching up with friends.

DragonBox is still going strong.  M is working her way steadily through it a few problems at a time and K has gone through the whole thing (all 200 levels) again and is still waiting impatiently for when the 12+ version for PC is ready!  I was very pleased to learn that C, a rather maths averse friend of K & M, not only likes the game and has also worked her way through it pretty quickly, but hasn't been put off by the fact that it is a maths game.  E, her mum, was very happy about this and also told me that she had had some problems downloading the app, but that the producers of the game were extremely helpful and sorted out the problem for her.

Still on the topic of maths games, E had brought along a game invented and produced by a HE mum to help with learning times tables called Vapoosh which I had a go at with her and Z, a 9 year old who really enjoyed it.  I thought it was very well done and have ordered one for us, so I hope that K & M agree!

In other news, the postcard we sent to Belarus 25 days ago has finally arrived, although the one to Russia still hasn't got there.  And finally, M has been busy getting crafty and making things.

Tooth pouches for leaving for the Tooth Fairy

A little bit of serendipity

I love it when this sort of thing happens.  Today we received our fourth postcrossing postcard, which came from Germany.  The sender had written in German (I had said in our profile that 'we' speak English, French & German) and told us about the area she lives which is near the 'Bodensee'.  We had come across this particular lake very recently, in The Silver Sword when the children arrive there after there long journey from Warsaw, to Berlin, then down through Germany to Lake Constance, which is their final obstacle before reaching Switzerland and their parents.

In other news, K & M spent hours this afternoon making clothes out of playdough for plastic dinosaurs.  I pointed out to A that, although it may not be an activity that he values, it certainly does show that they can concentrate on something for extended periods of time!

Bats!

This evening we went for a bat walk with Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.  It's something that I have been really keen to do and it's only this year really that we've been able to consider doing it in terms of the time of evening that it has to happen.  We spotted a few bat walks in the leaflet of events that we received with our news letter and were disappointed that the one closest to us was already booked up when I phoned, but one a bit further away still had spaces.  We met at Sellers Wood at 7.15pm (well a few minutes late because the traffic was bad, but not too late fortunately!) and we given one of the bat detectors that the walk leaders had brought with them.  It picks up the bats' calls, which are at too high a frequency for us to hear (fortunately as we learned that some species calls reach up to 120 decibels, which is much higher than would be allowed in a nightclub!).  The detectors, as well as letting us know that there were bats about, also give information about which species or family of bat were around as the frequency of different bat calls varies.  We only heard and saw one species, the most common bat in the UK, the common pipistrelle bat but as one of the leaders of the walk said, we did get some really good sightings and sometimes they may pick up the calls of various species but not really see any of them well. 

As well as getting so hear and see bats, we also learned rather a lot.  For example, it's now mating season for bats, but although they mate in autumn, the females don't ovulate until spring, but store the sperm until then in order to get an early start on raising their young!  If they come out of hibernation and get pregnant but then if it gets colder and they go back into hibernation the pregnancy comes to a stop and only progresses once they come out of hibernation again.  Fascinating!  We're planning on looking up some more about bats tomorrow, one of the leaders was the chairman of the Nottinghamshire Bat Group and suggested we look at their website.

In other news, having finished The Silver Sword, it was time to choose another book to move onto, so today we started Heidi.  K & M (mostly M because K was doing a sudoku on the tablet) built dens in the front room and listened from in there.

The dens

K & M have also both been playing Thingdom today and we've talked a little bit about dominant and recessive genes.

Finally, A, who lives across the road and occasionally childsits for us, and her mum popped over for a chat.  A's history teacher and tutor has suggested that she run for the UK Youth Parliament and she wanted to talk to someone with an 'alternative' view of the education system, which was interesting.

Modern history, politics and a bit of theoretical physics!

Following our conversations yesterday about post-war Germany, someone on Facebook very helpfully posted a link which fitted perfectly.  It significantly exceeded the time we had been talking about, but we were able to pause at appropriate moments and see how far Germany reached during the war (having talked previously about Vichy France for example).  It shows how Europe has changed over the last thousand years.  Since we'd talked about the division of Berlin at the same time, the conversation quite naturally led on to the Berlin Wall and I told them about how its fall happened when I was a teenager.  We found some links about that and read and watched them.  We also talked, simply and briefly, about democracy, communism and the Cold War as a result.

Another link that was posted on Facebook, was one about The Scale of the Universe.  It's one we've seen and explored before, but K spent quite a while exploring it and reading about some of the things on there and we touched on theoretical physics when she asked me about the smallest things on there which is 'string', however String theory is rather beyond me, so that was a rather short conversation!  We did talk about physics generally though and how there are things that you can do experiments about to find out, but there are some things that you can't and that's where theoretical physics comes in, but the theories have to fit in with what is known as well as trying to come up with a valid explanation for what isn't.

Apart from all that the girls both had piano lessons, a gymnastics class, in which it looked like they were having a great time doing balances in pairs, and korfball this evening.

A bitty sort of day.

We had a lovely weekend, during which K & M were mostly huskies.  We had friends to stay and all three girls were keen to continue the game that had started when we last saw them.  M in particular was bemoaning the fact that I don't play imagination games as much as C & M.  On Saturday we all went a local scarecrow festival and had a lovely time.  The theme was All Creatures Great and Small and there were some great displays.

Wallace & Gromit

The Hare & the Tortoise

Sunday was rather wet for most of the afternoon, so we played Cluedo, which was the first time I've played when all six of the characters have been in play.  It was fun and very close in the end.  When our friends left two teddies belonging to the girls went with them for a holiday and will be sending a postcard.  K even offered to pay for the stamp, although she was told it wasn't necessary.  She also wrote an email asking for regular updates from Patch Teddy before our friends would even have arrived home!  I was allowed to see it (unusually so) and was happy to see that it was very well written, she had asked for help with spelling a couple of words (would and while), including the correct use of apostrophes.

Today we had a rather late start, but with the only thing planned being Brownies this evening, that didn't really matter.  This morning I got out some things that we'd borrowed from friends for our body project, which we haven't really done any of for a while.

Borrowed goodies!

M put the skeleton on and K later added the internal organs and we looked up a couple of bits that we weren't sure what they were.  They turned out to be the pancreas and the gall bladder. 

I also finished reading The Silver Sword to the girls, the last couple of chapters in a rather 'wobbly' voice.  It lead to talking about what happened in Germany at the end of the Second World War, as the children in the story travel through the Russian and American zones of occupation.  It struck me that unless it's specifically mentioned that children are unlikely to know that Germany was two separate countries for decades after the war and were only reunified within their parents' lifetimes, so now K & M are aware of this!  I had a look in a couple of children's non-fiction books that we have about the Second World War, but neither of them addresses the situation in post-war Germany.  I did however find a map of Europe that included the zones of occupation and another one of Berlin, in our Complete History of the World while the girls were at Brownies, which I showed them when they got home.

Other than that, M in particular has been playing the piano a lot lately, including pieces from earlier books, including one piece that involves moving her right hand, which I think she was playing by a mixture of sight reading and by ear.  She wasn't getting it quite right, but did listen when I talked to her about tucking her thumb under to move up and was doing a really good job a short while later.

Finally K's eye is still looking quite impressive and the colours are changing noticeably now.  The colours really have been incredibly beautiful as you can see!

Day 1

Day2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

When Mummy's not well.

I woke up this morning with a horrible cricked neck that incapacitated me rather a lot.  It was rather annoying, because after a rather busy start to the week, I had planned to have a quick whizz round getting various chores done as we've got friends coming to stay for the weekend.  Had all been well, it would only have taken me an hour or so and then I could have got on with things with K & M, but it wasn't to be.

Fortunately I had already decided that today was the day that our new slow cooker was going to be put into use for the first time, so M & I went to the shops to get a few bits that I needed.  We also popped to the library and I bought a couple of books in their clear out sale.  When we got back, M started work on the cake that we had previously agreed that she would bake today and I peeled and chopped and threw all the ingredients into the slow cooker, turned it on and that was tea sorted.  I needed to help M a bit at times, but she did most of it by herself.  She had been planning the decoration for some time, with the friends in mind who are coming to visit, based on a game that from last time we saw them, when the three girls were all huskies.  After a 'feed yourself Friday' lunch, she did the decoration and was pleased with the result.

The figures are made out of marzipan.

While M was busy in the kitchen, K had found the books that I had bought from the library and had been looking at one in particular; What Makes Me Me.  She had had a flick through and came into the kitchen, where I was helping M, to tell me that she had done the verbal and spatial intelligence tests in there and had got all but one or two right in each case.

K & M have been very sympathetic to my plight today and I have had at various times a giraffe and a polar bear on my neck to try to ease it (the girls have microwaveable animals as hot water bottle substitutes).  When I said that we really needed to get some jobs done before our friends came to stay, K volunteered to hoover and M picked things up so that she could.

In other news both girls have been playing the piano quite a lot, K had her first ballet lesson back after the summer and K's black eye is looking really incredibly beautiful!

Sticking with the Second World War

Last night I started reading another book set during the Second World War with my girls.  It's a book I remember reading as a child (although I can't remember how old I was); The Silver Sword.  It's the story of a Polish family that is torn apart and the journey the children make across Europe to be reunited years, and hundreds of miles, later with with their parents.  After just a few chapters at bedtime yesterday, today I read rather a lot and we're now half way through the book, which has provoked more discussion about war in general as well as the Second World War in particular.  We have also had a look on our world map of how far the children had to travel to get from Warsaw to Switzerland.  So far they have made it as far as Berlin.  I'm going to suggest that we have a look as a couple of our non-fiction books about World War Two, to get some context about the books we've been reading.  So we'll see how that goes.

Yesterday we had rather an active day, with ice-skating and then the girls' swimming lesson.  K's black eye is looking rather dramatic now and she seems quite happy with it.  We got a bit of maths from the incident as it's her fourth black eye and she's coming up to 10 years old, so that means she's had a black eye on average around every 2 1/2 years! 

A nice problem to have.

After a lovely day with friends at Belton House yesterday, K came out with the following words of wisdom:  The problem with having a day with lots of good things that happen, is that it can be difficult to remember them all.  As problems go I think I'd cope alright with that one!  I suggested that if she doesn't want to forget about good things that have happened, she might like to start keeping a diary or journal, and she seemed to think this was quite a good idea.  Having established that a journal could be for keeping a record of important events, whether good or bad, K decided that somebody would have to do the final entry in it, because her death would be important, so should go in the journal and she wouldn't be able to write about it.

This time, I managed to get us to Belton House without going wrong and E, C, L & J arrived shortly after us.  We started in the adventure playground again, where C discovered a little mouse, that sadly really didn't seem very well.  After putting it in a quiet corner with plenty of ground cover and a bit of food, when we looked later it was still alive, but not looking too good.  The children all thought it was sad, but fortunately weren't distressed by it.

The poor little mouse.

After a good long play in the almost deserted adventure playground, we moved on to the indoor play and also had a look in the second hand bookshop.  Then we spent the rest of the time around the Mirror Pool, E & I had a good chat, while the five children got into varying states of grubbiness while fishing pond weed out of the pool with sticks, 'making potions' and 'cooking'.  They also explored and were particularly keen on the 'witches den' a bit shrubby area with lots of rabbit holes.

In the 'witches den'.

The best rabbit hole according to M.

K & M had their first Brownie meeting of the term.  It's going to be K's last term before moving up to Guides, although most of her peers seem to be moving up already, I'm not sure why.  She's happy to stay though and would rather do so, as she's definitely in no rush to grow up unlike so many children it seems, so it's not a problem.

Today was our first Fun Club back after the summer break.  The theme was world cultures, but first we had a talk from a lady about the Mission Aviation Fellowship followed by making paper aeroplanes.  There were various activities to chose from after this, but K & M spent all their time making Australian aboriginal art.

A paper boomerang and painted stones.

They really enjoyed doing this and are keen to do some more, so we need to keep a lookout for some good stones to use.

From Fun Club, we just had time to pop home to change for gymnastics, where they were doing beam work today.  This involved working on benches, lines on the floor and a proper beam on the floor.  They did bunny hops, caterpillar walks (where they walk their hands forward in tiny steps, then do tiny steps with their feet up towards their hands), handstands and forward rolls.  Unfortunately K had a bit of an accident and over balanced in a handstand, kneed herself in the eye and now has a lump and a black eye to show for it.  She's fine though.

Finally today was also the first korfball session back after the summer, which they both enjoyed, particularly because another friend has started playing too.

Perseverence and concentration.

Something that has at times in the past been something that A has occasionally expressed concern about (although admittedly not for a while), is that the girls don't seem to concentrate on something for any length of time.  I haven't really been too worried by this, as sometimes games can be very involved and go on for ages.  Just lately though, K has shown that she really can concentrate when she's interested.

As I mentioned previously, she spent nearly 3 hours this week doing DragonBox, a game that teaches algebra, then returned to it and worked her way through all of the problems that she hadn't got all three stars until she'd got 100% completely correct. 

K has occasionally had a go at the sudokus that you sometimes find that are aimed at children.  Last night, however, she took the Saturday paper upstairs and managed to do one by herself, which I'm pretty sure took her over an hour to complete.

Over the last couple of days, she's been having a go at the balloon making kit that she was given for her birthday, I think it was last year.  It took quite a lot of burst balloons before she got the hang of it.

A bit of history and geography today

K & I were having a snuggle in bed this morning and we continued our talk about Irena Sendler, the woman who saved around 2500 babies and children from the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw during the Second World War (as I'd done a bit of research after the girls had gone to bed).

Today we received our first Postcrossing postcards!  They came from the US (North Carolina) and Finland (Turku).  I think I was a bit more excited than the girls, but we put them up on the wall with our world map and found where they from.  K & I also had a quick look at a photo of the Turku archipelago online.  Our next two postcards will be heading off to China and Belgium soon.

World map with our first two postcards

This morning K, M & I went to see our friend C, taking her very late birthday cards and presents and doing a bit of shopping for her on the way as she's not very well.  Once home, we continued our earlier conversation about the Second World War over lunch and then moved on to the death penalty.

This afternoon K and A put together her early birthday present, which arrived a couple of days ago, a new bike.  She put the pedals on and helped put the front wheel on.  K & M both went from a ride around the block and then to the library, although as usual I forgot that it shuts at 4pm on a Saturday (I always think it's 5 o'clock), so we didn't have much time there!

Painting and some problems.

This morning was a bit of a struggle to get up, as K & M had had rather a late night, but we had a lovely morning at an LLL Toddler meeting.  K decided, as she was still tired, to take a 'bed' with her, so took a fleece blanket, a cushion, her dressing gown, a cuddly toy and a book and snuggled down on the landing for most of the time!

Yesterday M had made a card for Granny, as it's her birthday soon, so this afternoon K made one too.  She decided that she was going to paint one.  M asked if we had any other birthdays coming up and painted two more cards, one that's very late and one for next month.

K's card for Granny

M's card for Granny

M's card for Nana - the space at the bottom is for the writing

M's card for C

We have a long-standing running joke that C really likes potatoes, and it is now a tradition (it's the second year) that we give her a home-grown potato for part of her birthday present.  M's card is a painting of a potato going for a walk in a wood.  She has also made her a potato ornament.

M's potato ornament for C

M has continued to do some more of DragonBox and K & I have put the algebra she learned on the app onto paper.  We worked through a simple equation together and then plotted it onto a graph.

Finally after a whoops at tea time which involved a broken bowl and tea all over the floor, we continued with Going Solo.  We came to the chapter when Dahl finally joined his squadron and engaged with Luftwaffe planes.  There are some quite graphic descriptions of the results of the bombing of an oil tanker among other things, which K in particular found really quite upsetting, but she did want me to continue reading.  We talked about how it's important to learn about our history even though it's upsetting and I told her about how in wartime there are some incredibly brave people working to save people admit the horrors, such as the woman who smuggled thousands of babies out of a Jewish ghetto.  K has always been adamant that she doesn't want to learn about anything to do with death or dying in history, so war has obviously been a no-no, but I think she might be open to finding out a bit more now, we'll see.

Cake and cuddles.

Today K finally got round to making the cake that she's been planning to make since the weekend.  She asked for a recipe and to be left to it, so I told her to weigh 3 eggs and add the same amount of flour, sugar and butter, then add a teaspoon of baking powder and a tablespoon of cocoa (because she wanted to make a chocolate one).  She hasn't made a big cake before rather than fairy cakes, so I showed her how to line one of the tins and she did the other.  I helped a bit with putting the mixture into the tins, but K did it pretty much all by herself. 

Baking

She also put the cakes in and took them out of the oven, which she hasn't been comfortable doing before.  Having decided that she wanted cream in the middle she went to the shop to get some and then returned because she'd forgotten that I had told her to check if we had enough icing sugar and to get some if we needed more.

For the decoration she took inspiration from a cake on The Great British Bake Off, which I'm sure you'll recognise if you watch it.  So here it is, her chocolate cake, with whipped cream and strawberry jam in the middle and chocolate icing on top.

It was very good!

We also had piano lessons today (they're usually on a Tuesday, but the lovely flexible teacher is fine with changing the day with notice).  K & M are both still getting on well and it's still lovely to have a little bit of one to one time with each of them, even if it is only half an hour.  M & I went to the park but on the way spotted some rather strange looking things on the leaves of a tree.  We stopped to talk to a lady who was just going into the house by the tree, who said it was a lime tree but that she didn't know what they were either.

Galls apparently.

When we got home, Facebook provided the answer, that they are galls (which makes me think of Asterix and Obelix, but it's not that sort).  A bit of googling found out that these particular ones are caused by a tiny mite that it about 0.2mm long, so we had a look on a ruler at just how small that is.

M and I had a bit of a chat too, as she seems to have been a bit 'down' lately, sometimes for obvious reasons, such as having a negative reply about the Blue Peter badge she'd applied for, but also just generally.  She told me she didn't really know why, but later she came back to the conversation and said she'd been missing Daddy.  It's a really tricky one, as he does work long hours and often travels, although rarely for longer than a night or two, but he's often late home from meetings in other parts of the country, but it's thanks to his job that we are in the very fortunate position of not having to make the big sacrifices that the vast majority of HEers do in order to have the option of this way of life.  We've been having lots of cuddles and happily A was home in order for us all to eat together tonight, which doesn't happen very often.  Now that K & M are getting more flexible with mealtimes, we'll be able to do that more frequently I hope.

K had decided to take a card game to play while M had her lesson and chose Phase 10.  It started off extremely one-sided with her winning all the hands, but by the time M had finished her lesson it had turned around completely and I was ahead.  We finished at home this evening, after I'd read another chapter of Going Solo, during which Roald Dahl had been given wrong directions for finding where to join his RAF squadron and consequently crashed when landing his plane, fractured his skull, (temporarily) lost his sight, taken 6 months to recover and returned to flying.

Despite the disappointment that M's poem has not been enough to win her a Blue Peter badge, she hasn't been put off thankfully and the girls watched another episode online.  Among other things on the programme there were ideas that children had to challenge themselves over the summer.  M was quite taken by one suggestion of playing the piano blindfold, so we did have a go at doing a video of her doing just that, rather successfully I might say.  We weren't completely happy with the result, but may well have another go in the next few days and try sending that in, in another attempt to get a badge.  K is also still keen, but has yet to come up with anything that she could make or do.

In other news, M has decided to give DragonBox another go and has worked through the first chapter, which is 20 problems.  She told me that she hasn't got three stars for all of them, but she's planning on doing what K did and go back once she's finished and do any that she didn't get all the stars for again until she does.

And finally, (arachnophobes you'd probably best stop reading now and there will be photos) K & M are really rather keen on spiders at the moment, specifically three particular spiders who live in our garden.  They have been named Simon, Sam and Oliver and K & M like to track there whereabouts.  One of them, I'm ashamed to say I don't know which, really endeared himself to me today though, when I saw him lunching on a wasp!

Lunchtime!

Not back to school!

Today felt a bit like our official start of the new 'not-school year', with our Not Back to School Picnic (thank you C for organising).  We all had a lovely time, me catching up with some folks I hadn't seen for a while, or in some cases a long time, and K & M playing with various friends.  We were very lucky with the weather, although we were disappointed that the rowing boats which are for hire to go on the lake during the summer had already finished for the season.  K & M played with a variety of friends from the age of about 3 to adult, including a rather strange game involving the commissioning of sock stealing by a criminal mastermind and ended with my arresting of the culprit! 

We had to dash off and cut the picnic shorter than we would have liked unfortunately because it was the first gymnastics lesson back after the summer break.  I think K & M were a little bit bored not to do a bit more challenging things, but it was understandable and necessary as they have a new coach now and she needs to get to know the ability of the children before she can do an appropriate level of work with them and I do think that the girls appreciate that.

When we got home K went back on the computer and worked her way through DragonBox, going through all the levels where she didn't get all three stars first time round.  She has now completed all 200 levels with three stars and while she was doing that I talked a bit about what she was doing meant in terms of the algebra.  Tomorrow we need to stay in for a delivery, so I'm planning on trying to translate some of what she did to paper and going through it a bit more.

M and I read the last of the four Maths Quest books, The Museum of Mysteries, whic was about 'numbers'.  It covered prime numbers, square numbers, factors, multiples and more and, again, she did very well.

We finished the day by watching last week's episode of The Great British Bake-Off, which we all enjoy.  It's on a bit late, so I record it but wait to watch it with them.

Mostly maths

I have been hearing various folks talking about DragonBox in a very positive away for quite some time now, but it was only yesterday evening that I finally got around to having a closer look.  I decided to take the plunge and bought the DragonBox algebra 5+.  I installed it this morning and M had a look, solving the first few problems easily, but it didn't really grab her.  I gave a little mental sigh, thinking that I had just wasted some (admittedly not much, as it's only $5.99, which was £4) money.  Then K sat down and had a go and she didn't stop until she had completed all 200 problems a few hours later!  I sat with her for the first few dozen, but then left her to it.  She is very keen for me to buy the 12+ version, but it isn't available for PC yet, so I've suggested she go back over the problems where she didn't get all three stars and we transfer what she's learned to paper problems while we're waiting and she seems really keen.  For each problem, you have to solve it to move on and get one star for doing so, but you also get a star for doing so without using any extra 'cards' (which you can add/multiply/divide to each side of the equation to get there) or extra moves.  It's very clever in the way that it moves from using pictures, gradually through to numbers and letters to become a recognisable algebraic equation.

While K was busy with that, M & I read another of the Maths Quest books, The Planet of Puzzles, which problems about data handling to solve, including reading various types of graph and diagram among other things.  She did really well, making only one mistake, although I got the feeling that most of the time she saw it as common sense and really quite obvious what the answers were, rather than having to work things out.

Apart from that, M has been out on her (newly handed down from K) bike today.  She rode round the block a couple of times and then came out with me when I popped to the Co-op and stayed riding in the park while I did the shopping. 

We continued with Going Solo, after a few days break, which dealt with the beginning of World War Two and Dahl's journey from Dar es Salaam, to Nairobi to enlist with the RAF and then on to Cairo and then Iraq for training and we kept jumping up to follow his progress on our world map.  And speaking of our world map, we had a message to say that our first postcrossing postcard had a arrived, so hopefully it won't be long before we've got a postcard of our own to put up there!

Well I wasn't expecting that!

Yesterday my flabber was well and truely gasted.  At the beginning of last year we started something new regarding pocket money and instead of us paying for treats, giving spending money on holiday and giving money for birthday and Christmas presents for our 'little' family (i.e. the four of us), we decided to give the girls £5 per month but no longer pay for any of the above.  In order to get this they have to properly tidy and clean (wipe surfaces & hoover) their bedrooms by the end of the month.  To start with for K in particular the money seemed to burn a hole in their pockets and we did wonder whether it had a been a good idea, but now they save up most of their money, rather than frittering it away.  It has generally been something of a struggle to get M in particular to tidy her room, which manages to get to the point that you can barely see the floor after a few days each time.  I have been encouraging both girls to do a bit at a time over the last few days to make it a bit of a more manageable job on the last day of the month, which K had been doing, but M hadn't promising me that she wasn't going to moan and strop when it came to doing it.  I was rather sceptical to say the least!  However, yesterday afternoon K & M disappeared upstairs, only popping downstairs occasionally to put things in the recycling or the bin and to tell me that they'd found a way to make tidying fun!  Apparently they'd turned an arrow into a fairy wand and one of their toy dogs was using it to make them tidy things, they took it in turns to work together in each of their bedrooms and did a really pretty decent job without any help and without any moaning.  Long may it continue!

While the girls were busy tidying their rooms, I baked a cake for A's cricket club's President's day bake off, and this morning almost the first thing M said was to ask if she could bake one as well.  I wasn't sure we'd have time, as we had already planned to go to have a look at the archery at Wollaton Hall but heading to A's cricket club, but she clearly really, really wanted to, so we managed to squeeze in baking it before we went and she quickly decorated it between Wollaton and the cricket club.

The archery was really interesting, we were all surprised and impressed at how small the target are that they are shooting at and for the little bit that we watched nobody scored lower than an 8 and it was mostly 9s and 10s. 

The archers...

...and how they got on.

K, M & I all had a go ourselves, which we enjoyed, the targets were about four times the size and we were about 20 times closer though! 

Having a go

K's and my targets

K & M did like it, but they are very clear that they prefer 'Tudor archery'.  I also chatted to a man there who was telling me about different types of archery, including one I hadn't heard of, field archery, which is basically a walk in the country with your bow and arrow and targets to shoot at as you go along. 

It was a nice relaxed atmosphere at the cricket club, there were several short games, from their junior teams and one from the seniors which A was playing in.  M has decided that she'd like to try cricket and she had a bit of a go with a couple of boys, including a bit of help how to bowl.  A asked what would be the best thing to do for her to have a proper go and so we're going to look into that for her and living pretty close to Trent Bridge there should be something!

As for the bake off, it seemed to be rather a last minute idea and consequently there were only three entries, two of which came from our family!

My 1st place chocolate cake

M's 2nd place Hogwart's crest decorated sponge cake

The girls and I spent some time at the cricket club, but the girls' babysitter had popped over before we left, to ask if they could help with her school art project this afternoon, which they were keen to do.  So we came home and they went to see her and eat things so she could take photos of them doing so to use in her project.  Then we went back so we could buy some of our cake back to eat!