London trip.

We're just back from a lovely but rather tiring few days away, firstly down in London and then to see friends in Kent before heading back this afternoon.

We got the train down on Tuesday and after leaving our things at the hotel, we spent a couple of hours at the Natural History Museum.  This is more or less compulsory on any trip to London, so that M in particular can see her friends the dinosaurs there.

That evening we went to the theatre to see something that friends had recommended: The 39 Steps.  It was brilliant, although K & M had a bit of a wobble near the beginning when there was a murder.  The cast of four played over two dozen parts between them and that was with one of them just playing Richard Hannay and the woman only playing three parts.

On Wednesday we spent the day at Kew Gardens and had a lovely day.  Little Grandad (A's dad) worked there for a while before going to horticultural college although we don't know if he got a job there because he was already interested or if working there was what made him find his vocation.

A & Mr Fox on the Treetop Walkway

Mr Fox & M too.

We liked the sculpture in the tunnel by the treetop walk and read about mycorrhiza - the symbiotic relationship between plants and fungi.

We all really liked the log trail that was made using Kew trees that had fallen victim to storms in 2012 and 2013.

M & K on the log trail.

M practised her gymnastics quite a lot too, particularly cartwheels and handstand into bridge.

She's getting rather good!  The girls and A also had a go at a bit of practical physics, balancing the big seesaw in the playground.

We all went into Kew Palace, where K got very frustrated when people kept talking while we were watching a video that was narrated 'by' Queen Charlotte, George III's wife, about their very large family.  After some misunderstandings about what she was doing while waiting and what I was going to do, we managed to watch it without interruption eventually and things settled back down.
There were, of course, also some really cool plants, like this orchid.

One thing that I found fascinating was another orchid, known as Darwin's Orchid with a particularly long nectar containing spur.  Darwin theorised that the flower had evolved to be pollinated by an insect with a particularly long proboscis and indeed a just such a moth was discovered 20 years after Darwin's death.

On Thursday in the morning we went to The Museum of London, it was rather interesting to compare with the equivalent museum that we went to in Berlin last November.

After lunch we headed south of the river to go to The Globe. 

The Globe from the Millenium Bridge.

We had been planning on doing the tour as well as visiting the exhibition, but as it was the opening night of the season, the tours weren't running.  The exhibition was really interesting though and there were also various demonstrations.

The first demonstration we saw was of a printing press, which was fascinating.  Something which we all learned, was that 'upper' and 'lower case' letters came from the fact that all the tiny blocks with the letters for setting the type were kept in two cases and the capital ones were literally in the upper case.

M and I watched a costume demonstration, when a female volunteer was dressed up in a costume from The Globe's wardrobe and then later there was another similar demonstration.  This time, because M and I were there again, they dressed up a man - Daddy! 

K meanwhile, although she came to watch the printing demonstration, didn't want to watch the costume ones.  She went round the exhibition on her own, happily working her way through all of the different things you can listen to on the handset that you are given.

One of about half a dozen Shaun the Sheep we saw.  This one was just outside The Globe and was called To Sheep Perchance to Dream

After having something to eat, we returned, this time to the theatre for the opening performance of their season to see The Merchant of Venice with Jonathon Pryce as Shylock.  K & M are familiar with the basic story, as it's one of the ones that they have listened to many times on a cd of Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits, so apart from asking who some of the characters were, they were able to follow the play pretty well.  The production didn't shy away from the antisemitism in the play, so we talked about that quite a bit during the interval and afterwards on the way home.  It was also very funny in places and there was even audience participation in Launcelot Gobbo's monologue, when he got two of the groundlings up on stage to be the fiend and the angel on his shoulders.

On Friday we had a fairly leisurely morning, after a very late night for the girls, with a late breakfast and packing up before getting the train to visit our friends G, S, R (6) & L (4) in Kent.  G had a music class that she teaches on the Friday afternoon, so we joined them as they were watching a video of Ten Pieces, which is aims to introduce children to classical music.  They all really enjoyed it (as did the adults) and M was particularly pleased that one of the ten pieces is Mozart's Horn Concerto, which was definitely her favourite.

L & K on our walk.

We had a lovely walk through their local country park to the playground this morning, where after a play we flew the kites that we'd taken with us.  This inadvertently caused some excitement when the string of one of the kites broke and landed in the mud of the Medway estuary and A got a bit muddy (although it could have been an awful lot worse!) fishing it out.  While doing so, he moved a rock to put it to stand on to reach the kite and uncovered a large number of crabs.

Just a few of the rather well camoflaged many crabs.

After lunch it was time to head back to the station and we were home in time for tea, rather tired after an interesting, educational and fun few days away.

Easter Treasure Hunts

As I had suspected, and indeed had confirmed, M's secret project was indeed a treasure hunt.  What I hadn't anticipated was quite how much had gone into it!  I knew that she'd written some clues and frankly was quite happy that she been doing some writing, but not only had she written clues, she had written them in verse, and then folded them into origami animals!

The clues.

M's writing is really small and neat compared to usual and not only that she's much more consistent in her (correct!) use of lower case and capitals.  Here are the clues:

Come to my room at 9 oclok

Get your hand ready ready to nock

After three nocks there you will find

Another thing similar in kind

Go to the highest room of the house

There you will find a friend of your mouse

Your mouses freind will have something for you

That thing will lead you to something for each of you

This one is the final clue

To lead you to the things for you

Go to the room were we eat

Near to the thing that gives of heat

It is in a kind of box

Gaurded by Felix Fox

The friend of my mouse (a little soft toy that I used to use to teach prepositions) was Bagpuss, who had some chocolates for us as well as the final clue, which led us to the bread bin, where there were two more things that she had made.  There was a little egg for each of A & me, sewn, stuffed and embroidered with an M for Mummy for me and a D for Daddy for him.

The eggs and two of the chocolates.

We were very impressed!

M & K, although M in particular, was most insistent that we needed to do a treasure hunt for them too, as it's a tradition.  Although for K & M doing something once can mean it's a tradition as far as their concerned, in this case though we have done it for several years now.  A & I weren't as organised as M was, so we had to come up with something this afternoon.  Their clues involved decoding a slightly cryptic message that was in braille, following directions to the next clue, a little bit of scientific knowledge to realise that since hot air rises the next clue was in the top room of the house where they found a phone number.  I had phoned my Mum to ask her to help, so she gave them the final clue, which was that the Easter Bunny had had some help from the Tooth Fairy in finding a good hiding place, so they found their chocolate under their pillows.

This afternoon we had a go with a charity shop bargain find I made this week; Taboo for £3.  

It involves trying to get across a particular word or phrase on a card without using the forbidden words that are also given.  Usually it's a team game, but we played it non-competitively and it worked really well.  I have happy memories of playing this when I lived in La Rochelle, with French and German friends.

Finally we watched a film together, which caused my hilarity not entirely intended by the makers.  It was The Swiss Family Robinson and it was the portrayal of the two female characters as generally pathetic and helpless that initially made us rather annoyed, but it was so exaggerated that it really was quite funny.  At the end when the young couple got together and the girl made a supposedly touching speech about when two people love each other all they needed was each other, M wasn't having any of it and said 'That's ridiculous.  They need food and water and air...........and Lego.'

A week of two halves - the second half

The rest of the week has been mostly spent at home or out and about locally, including at the park, shops, library and swimming with friends. 

We started a new book, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.  They are beautifully written, but since they were first published in 1902 some of the language in them is completely unacceptable now.  The use of the n- word (as an adjective, not an insult) has led to our talking about the power of language, how it can be used to oppress and dehumanise people.  We also talked about how some words have been reclaimed by those who were oppressed by them.

M has started on the second of the Maths Murder Mystery puzzles and she has started on a project which has involved some writing and quite a lot of secrecy.  She has told me that it's some sort of Easter treasure hunt, so we'll have to wait until Sunday to find out any more.  M has also been playing the piano a lot, going over lots of her old pieces as well as practising the newer ones.  The French horn has also come out a few times.

M has also been baking again.

K has, rather reluctantly, started writing something about her thoughts on the FutureLearn course, Much Ado About Nothing: the staging of, that she and I completed this week.  She's also been filling in her My Hootiful Life scrapbook, so she tells me, although I'm not allowed to see it.  She might show me some of it when she's finished apparently, but only one or two pages.

Both girls have also been reading a lot lately.  K is currently reading Icefire which she ordered from the library and she lent her copy of The Fire Within to M, who's just finished it.  M has also been re-reading the Harry Potter books along with various other shorter books in between times for some light relief.

A week of two halves - the first half.

We started off this week with two days when we weren't home much, first with a visit to Creswell Crags on Monday and then Fun Club on Tuesday.

Creswell Crags is somewhere that's been on my radar for quite a while and then cropped up when we were working our way through the Usborne History of Britain books as it's mentioned in the first one, Prehistoric Britain.  We had never got around to visiting though, so when J organised a trip, including the Ice Age tour, I decided that we should cease the opportunity.  We got there in plenty of time and met up with the others for the tour at 11 o'clock.  The tour was of Robin Hood Cave, the largest at Creswell Crags, in which lots of evidence of seasonal habitation has been found.  Although the cave is really quite deep with a couple of chambers, it was only the entrance that was lived in since the dwellers would have been smoked out of the deeper parts. 

View from the entrance area towards the back.

M discovered that enclosed spaces are really not her thing when we moved further into the cave and so waited outside while the rest of us looked at and handled some of the things (although I'm presuming at least some of the were replicas) that had been found.

A bone needle with its case.

Various artifacts of stone, bone, antler and gut.

While it was clear what many of the things were there was one that the guide told us nobody had come up with any good answer to what it might have been for.

The mystery object.

After the tour we headed back to the visitor centre for lunch and then, since the girls and I had walked on with the guide while most of others dawdled, we had finished our lunch before everyone else.  K was in a bit of a funny mood and not feeling particularly sociable, which actually worked out rather well, since it meant that as we were ready to carry on before everyone else we had the exhibition to ourselves.  It wasn't particularly extensive, but what there was was interesting.  Both girls particularly enjoyed finding the cave art in one of the interactive parts.

Can you see the horse's head?

There it is!

And the explanation.

I often find that going places in a group very definitely has its cons as well as its pros, one of which is that the children, certainly mine, but I would imagine many others too, don't spend as much time looking at the things we've come to look at because they're too busy having fun and catching up with friends.  We had the best of both worlds on this occasion, since after looking at the exhibition and having a treat in the cafe, we joined the others in the playground for a while before heading home.

Tuesday was Fun Club and as usual at this time of year it was the Easter session.  There were various Easter and spring crafts to do and both K & M really enjoyed a variety of them.

Bookmarks using off-cuts from the Easter themed window colouring and a scratch art cross.

M's button tree and sewn and decorated egg on the left and K's on the right.

K's Easter garden.

And M's Easter garden.

Tuesday finished off with the last korfball session of the term, which they are both still enjoying very much.