Daddy's home!

A, aka Daddy, travels quite a lot with work.  Fortunately it's not often that it's for more than a night or two at a time, although getting home late due to meetings in various parts of the country is common.  During the day K & M don't miss him that much, as they don't usually see him during the day in the week, but bedtime is when they struggle, particularly M.
Daddy arrived home from Athens very late last night, after missing 3 bedtimes, so there was much rejoicing this evening, because over the last couple of months bedtime stories have been rejecting in favour of 'going sailing with Daddy'.  Both girls have a mast (very long cardboard tube) attached to their beds, with ribbon attached at the top and half way down for a sail (as they did in the fabulous production of Swallows & Amazons we went to see), and M's even has a hoist-able flag!  So bedtime involves sailing off with a very large crew of toys, with Daddy helping Captain Mr Fox (a puppet) to lead them on their adventures.
My role?  To sit downstairs listening in to the fun and giggles. :-)

Back to the Bard again

You may remember that we had something of a Shakespeare comedy fest one rainy day a while back and I've been promising K & M that we would get a dvd at some point.  After accidentally getting Timon of Athens from lovefilm, today we received Much Ado About Nothing.  Ideal for a rainy pyjama day afternoon.  First we re-read the story, then settled down to the film.  The children's story version we read, had left out a few characters and plot twists, but was comprehensive enough for K to enjoy it enough to want to watch it again.  M found it a bit much and popped in and out of the room and near the end, when she'd come back and was watching again wailed 'It doesn't make any sense!' 
We're going to the RSC in July to watch Twelfth Night, I think we'll need to do a bit more preparation before then in order to aid M's enjoyment of the play and not disturb more experienced theatre-goers!

Nursery Rhymes - but not as you know them! Part 2

Nursery Rhymes - but not as you know them! Part 1.

K & M have been quite keen on 'making up new songs' for a long time.  Until quite recently it generally has involved changing just one or two words.  Reading Lewis Carroll's version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star seems to have changed things up a gear.  Below you can hear their new versions of a few more.

Origami

At the last Fun Club, one of the activities included making an origami box.  Consequently we made some boxes to put some little Easter eggs we made for friends in.  It has since become a favourite activity.  We've been using this site, which has really good clear instructions for a huge variety of things.  K & M have been very busy, here's a selection of their creations: a rabbit, a smiling frog, a mushroom (turned into a fairy house), a table and a dinosaur.

Walking with Beasts as inspiration

After a game of Pairs in Pears, M took inspiration from an episode of Walking with Beasts (the sequel to Walking with Dinosaurs), where Neanderthals risk life and limb to hunt mammoths, using fire to push them backwards down a cliff. With a little bit of help from Mummy and a dictionary, this is the result, which I am allowed to post but not allowed to tell anyone about.

Holiday weekend.

We've had a lovely long weekend with Nana and Little Grandad to stay. The girls have spent plenty of time in the garden with Little Grandad, which is his natural habitat and is also the thing that means the slide into dementia is a gradual one for him at present rather than a steep one. We've previously talked with the girls about how, when you get a lot older, your body starts to wear out, which is why very old people, like their great grandparents for example, can't walk very far or fast any more. After this visit we touched on the idea that for some people their mind gets worn out too, which is why Little Grandad always makes the same jokes and calls everyone 'Your Majesty'.

In other news both K & M have rediscovered Lego. They've got daddy's Lego from when he was little, plus quite a lot of people (daddy didn't have a single one!) and various more interesting bits (monkeys, a parrot, a dragon, coins, a treasure chest and much more) that we were very kindly given when I asked on freecycle a couple of years ago. They've been spending ages making houses (here's K's)

and other things, such as this family of dragons

and, apart from occasional wars over particularly important pieces, it's been rather quiet for ages at times! M also made a character from one of the story cd's they've been listening to whilst playing - King Rat (a baddy).

We're also making the most of the Easter holidays to meet up with our schooly friends, 5 different lots in 10 days and that's with the long weekend in the middle when the grandparents were here and we didn't see anyone!