Baking, baking, more baking and Brum.

On Monday K spent the vast majority of the day in the kitchen.  She was doing a practice run for this evening's 'Great British Decorate Off' at Scouts on the theme of 'the movies'.  So in the morning, she made three different shapes of cake, using the standard recipe provided, then in the afternoon cut them up and assembled and decorated this...

Lord Farquaad's castle with Shrek's swamp and Donkey.

Granny came to stay for a few days and Big Grandad brought her in time for lunch, for which he joined us before heading back home. 

At this point I perhaps should mention that since M spent Saturday night in her own bed (rather than in with me) by necessity, as since we had visitors A couldn't sleep in the spare room (three in a bed hasn't worked for us for a long time), she has continued sleeping there on her own by choice.  Before she moved back in with me when she broke her arm, her habitual sleeping place of choice was in with K, which K was fine with, but just as happy to sleep on her own.  We have on previous occasions had brief bouts of M choosing to sleep alone, but they haven't ever lasted very long, but this time really does feel different.  I'm sure there'll be times when she feels the need to come back in with me, but this may actually be the beginning of the end of co-sleeping!

One thing that seems to be the case with M sleeping in her own room, is that she is tending to get up earlier and on Tuesday she appeared by my bed at 7.30am, asking if she could do some baking.  I told her to go away, have breakfast, get dressed, brush her teeth and make her packed lunch for later and then come back and we'd see.  She was back having done all of the above by shortly after 8 o'clock, so I sent her downstairs to start getting things ready and hauled myself out of bed.  To say I'm not a morning person is playing things down somewhat and she was not only expecting me to help her with the little bits that she couldn't manage alone, she was also expecting conversation!  She didn't get much of that, but did however, make some very nice chocobanana and raisin cookies, most of which she took to Fun Club as this month is was the annual table-top sale.  We also took quite a few things that we'd sorted out as having grown out of or no longer needing in various ways, including the girls' dolls' house, although this was slightly reluctantly in K's case.  She decided it was okay, as long as the baby could still be called Lucy.

As well as the sale, we had an outside provider come in this time, a "Curious objects man" called Stephen (unfortunately I forgot my phone, so don't have any pictures, which is slightly annoying as there were some very interesting ones).  The children were split into 7 and under and 8 and over, and while the younger ones had a look at some curious objects, the older ones (including K & M) went upstairs and tried to identify objects in bags by feel alone.  Then they had a look at some curious objects, which included:

A clockwork roasting jack

A 300 year old knife used for blood letting.

A tonsil guillotine!

A strigil

A beetle-shaped boot jack

With the help of some clues for most of the objects the children guessed, came close or not in different degrees, but they all seemed to enjoy it, and the adults found it interesting too.

After Fun Club we went home and left Granny to have a rest while we went to have a play and tea with friends and then the girls had korfball, so a really rather full day!  While K & M were playing with their friends, I had a good catch up with my friend S and also had a look at First News, which is a weekly newspaper for young people and we've borrowed a copy to have a look at (chosen because it has an interview with a woman who worked at Bletchley Park during the war) and if K & M are interested then I think we'll probably subscribe, as it looks really good.

On Wednesday morning M wasn't up quite so early, but still much easier to get up than she has been recently, for her French horn lesson.  She even had time to play for Granny before leaving for her lesson at 9.15am.  After her lesson we came home and then K, M, Granny and I got the bus into town for some shopping (Granny needed some things and we also got M some new slippers) and lunch.  Then it was back home for K to bake the cakes that she needed for tonight.  She just about managed that before it was time for K & M's swimming lesson.

Today we were up even earlier, as we were supposed to be getting a train to Birmingham at 8.12am.  Unfortunately things didn't go too smoothly to start with, as we missed one bus by about a minute and then the one we did catch, which should have still got us to the station in time, sat at a stop for nigh on five minutes, so we missed the 8.12 and had to get the next one.  In addition to that I also forgot to take the memory sticks that we needed for one of the workshops, so had to buy some en route.  However, we just about managed to get there in time for the first session at 10.30am (although did take a taxi from the station, not something we'd usually do, which the girls found very exciting!) and after that it was all fine.

The reason for our trip to Birmingham was Thinktank's home educator day, this was our second time at one of these and we'd all really enjoyed the last one.  K & M had chosen (and fortunately were in agreement as you need to have an adult for each activity) their three activities, Gassy Explosions, Smarty Plants and So You Think You're Game Enough.

Gassy Explosions was a hands-on lab workshop about acids and alkalis.  After some information about lab safety, and some questions and talking about acids and alkalis in general, the children got to use universal indicator to test various chemicals.  They chose an acid and an alkali to mix and 'caught' the gas that was given off in a balloon.  They got to show what happens if you make a reaction that produces a gas and trap that gas (mixing an acid and alkali in a film canister - it goes pop quite spectacularly).  Next they dropped some mints into bottles of lemonade, which although it seems to be a similar reaction isn't, which was pointed out briefly.  Finally, to end the session with a bang, we all stood well back while the session leader set fire to a hydrogen filled balloon.

In the lab!

There wasn't that much in the session that we couldn't do (and indeed haven't done) at home, but K & M still enjoyed it and got something out of it.

We then had a couple of hours to have our lunch and having met various friends there, we spent some time inside and out.  The outside area is particularly good.

Exploring pulleys.

On the big hamster wheel!

The next session was in the theatre, Smarty Plants.  It was fairly basic, but again still interesting.  First volunteers were asked to decide whether various things came from plants or not and while most of them were straightforward there was a silk tie included along with coffee, chocolate, wool, leather, wood, metal and more.  Then we moved on to how to classify things (very simply), what plants need to grow and reproduction.  There was a nice demonstration of pollination using an inflatable paddling pool with a bucket of 'nectar' (red balls) at the end, but the 'bee' (girl wearing a fleece on her legs) had to wade through the 'pollen' (other coloured balls which had something sticky, double-sided tape or velcro, I'm not sure) before she could collect the nectar.

Finally we went to So You Think You're Smart Enough, which was basically an introduction to coding using Scratch.  The children were talked through how to make the basis of a very simple game of a shark eating a fish, although both K and M decided they didn't like that and had the fish eating the shark.  I think that they will want to follow this up, as they both said that this was the session they enjoyed most.

We didn't hang around for long after our final session, even though we could have stayed another hour.  I did spend some money in the shop on various science kits that will be Christmas presents before we left though.  The trip home was less stressy in terms of timing, but ridiculously crowded on the train for the first few stops.  Unusually A was home before us and had started tea, which was good, because K needed to get ready for Scouts and M had a friend, I, (whose older brother also goes to Scouts) coming so they could bake, as they were both a bit envious of the activity at Scouts.  They had fun making and decorating cupcakes.

The decorating.

The end results.

Rather disappointingly the special guest judge, Jordan, one of the contestants from this year's Great British Bake Off, didn't turn up (not sure why, there was the suggestion that he was stuck in traffic), but K enjoyed herself very much, which is the main thing.