So busy!

Yesterday was Fun Club, with the theme being 'Giant Games and Co-operative games'.  K & M both had a lovely time, although I saw very little as when we arrived, I realised that I had left M's carefully decorated birthday cake at home!  So they stayed and had fun, while I drove 25 minutes each way to fetch it - whoops!

M (as a dog) and her tiger cake.

Then after lunch Fun Club decamped to the park.  I stayed behind to help with washing up and tidying as my girls are fine going with other people, so there weren't smaller children waiting impatiently for their mummy to be ready to go.  So I didn't seem much of my girls at Fun Club at all!

After Fun Club, we dashed back across town for K & M to meet what looks like being their new piano teacher.  Our lovely friend C, is no longer taking private pupils, although she carried on with K & M a long time after she had finished with most of them, and due to her surgery last autumn K & M hadn't had lessons for quite some time now.  Both girls took to E, who already teaches two of their friends, so we're going to give it half a term and see how they get on.  Their half an hour lesson also gave me a bit of uninterrupted one to one time with each of my girls, which is quite rare, and really lovely.  K and I talked mostly about rats, the pet sort.  We visited a colleague of A's last autumn, who had two rats and the girls were really taken with them.  At the time I said that if they were still really keen on the idea of getting a couple next Christmas (so that's this year now), then we would seriously consider it.  K is still, indeed, very keen on the idea, so I have suggested she look into it and so some research, so she can know what it would involve and I would see that she is serious about it.  She thought that was a good idea and has already found some information on the internet and is planning on seeing what they have in the library.

M made a snake for C, who we met up with on her birthday.

Today is M's birthday (it's finally arrived, having started it seems rather a long time ago!).  She was up very early and after having breakfast with K & A, brought up some of her presents to open before A went to work, on the bed with me rather bleary eyed!

We met up with friends, E, C, L & J at Belton House for most of the day.  It's somewhere that various friends have recommended and we hadn't ever got around to going, but will certainly be going back.  It's got a fantastic adventure playground, really lovely grounds and an indoor play area in the cafe and we didn't even get as far as the house!  We did do plenty of tree climbing and nature spotting though, including baby rabbits, ducklings, goslings and tadpoles.

A tiny fraction of the tadpoles.  There were thousands!

Quite amazingly nobody fell in!

All the small people

C & M

K

M

Everyone but me!

We finished off with an ice-cream for the small people and hot chocolate and chocolate brownies for E & me in the cafe and indoor play area, and agreed that we would definitely return soon.  If it hadn't been for swimming lessons for all the children, I think we would have stayed rather longer.

We got home from swimming to have chicken curry for tea with A, who'd got home in time to cook for us to eat soon after we'd got in.  Sadly, while we were having tea, we received news from A's cousin that his aunty, who at 85 has had many on-going health problems, some quite debilitating, for some time now, has just died.

That notwithstanding, M has had a lovely birthday and told me just before she went to bed that she'd had 'some brilliant presents', these include a Lego creator car, a number of photo frames and notebooks (she is very into both of these at the moment).  She also got a Harry Potter mug, although since it came direct from the seller with no clue as to the sender, it's going to be tricky sending a thank you for that!

More cake!

We haven't been in much today!  This morning we headed to an LLL Toddler meeting, hosted by some HE friends, who have a trampoline in the garden which is always a good thing as far as K & M are concerned and they really like L, who they also see at gymnastics and Fun Club too.  They spent most of the time in the garden, again making the most of the lovely weather.

We popped to the Co-op on the way home, and saw C, who also goes to gymnastics.  That reminded me that there was a HE meet up at our local park.  It was a group that meets up regularly on a Monday, but that we don't generally go to as we go to Asfordby every other Monday, but since it was a park meet up on our doorstep when the weather is so glorious, it seemed daft not to go along.  So after lunch we headed down there, K & M on there bikes and had a (mostly) lovely time.  K is struggling to cope in larger groups at times, particularly with situations that are in her view unfair, or if someone is spoiling a game for example.  One of the younger children kicked her and she kicked back, which I saw, so we had words about that.  When calm she understands what is and isn't acceptable, but finds staying calm enough to remember that very difficult at times. 

Then we came home and I made a quick and easy cake to take to share at Fun Club tomorrow, which M decorated.  I must admit I found it very difficult to let go and let M help with the Snake cake (in the end she did a very little bit of icing, one eye and the tongue!), but I have no trouble letting her do her own thing entirely.  She stuck with the wild animal theme of yesterdays party...

At lunch time M asked if she could read the prologue of the first of a set of books she'd been given for her birthday to me.  I was very surprised by this as neither of my girls has read to me for an awfully long time.  She quickly changed her mind when K returned to the room, as she didn't want K around when she did it, but when I asked her later, when it was just the two of us, she was happy to do so and did very well.  The book was Midnight for Charlie Bone; the series has been recommended by a few different friends and from the little I've heard and seen so far, I think it will go down very well.

The Party!

Finally, it was party day.  The party people consisted of K & M and 6 friends (all girls this time).  We were very lucky that the weather was gorgeous, so plan A of a trip to the park for some of the time went ahead.  The theme of Wild Animals seemed popular and firstly, we played the game that M had come up with.  Everyone (including A & I) were given a little plastic animal to study, then they were all put in a cloth bag and we took it in turns to try to find our own by feel alone - not as easy as you might think!  This was followed by Pin-the-Joey-in-the-pouch, made yesterday by M.

It was won by K, who had the cunning idea of seeing how where the pouch was compared to her face (it was level with her nose) before her go!  Next was pass-the-parcel, with various Wild Animal related forfeits in the layers, such as 20 questions to find an animal, finding 10 words from the letters of hippopotamus, Chinese whispers with an animal related phrase, imitating an animal for the others to guess.  After this we went to the park and while there, in the wooded part, played an 'ambush predator' game.  It took a few goes for it to work properly (as some folks got a bit confused with hide & seek!), but then it went pretty well.  The 'prey' sat on a convenient log and the predators spread out.  The aim was for the predators to sneak up on and touch the prey without being spotted.  The prey didn't look up unless she heard someone moving, then she was allowed to look up and if she saw someone they were out.  Then it was home for tea and, of course, the cake!

M was given some lovely presents, including her very own Mad-Eye Moody magical eye, made by C!  We didn't have time to do the Wild Animals Quiz I'd prepared at M's request, because the weather was good (that was plan B), but I've emailed it to everyone so they can have a go and it may well come in handy for a HE group sometime.

More birthdays! Mostly about the cake though.

We've had a few days of more birthdays, both celebrating someone else's and preparing for M's party tomorrow.  Yesterday, we joined lots of other folks for a lovely gathering to celebrate D's birthday at Wollaton Hall, and M gave D the new wand we'd made for him (my having lost the one she's original planned on giving him).

Today has been all about the cake.  Usually I'm given a very specific brief on what K or M would like for their birthday party cake, although I do occasionally have to put restrictions to keep things within my capabilities.  This time to start with M asked for 'a wild animal' cake but left everything else up to me.  I had more or less decided on a lion's head, but then changed my mind and thought I'd do a snake.  When I suggested this to M, she was very keen on the idea and asked for an adder, since we'd seen one on Monday.  Here's how it went.  Firstly I did a search for some photos of adders to use as inspiration.

Then I made a fairly randomly chosen selection of sponge cakes.

Cut them up and arranged them in a snakey way.

Covered it all in buttercream.

Piped on the V on the head and the pattern down the back.

Added the eyes and tongue (by M) and the message.

Turned the left overs into Victoria sandwiches with whipped cream and jam!

No time for learning

We've had a busy couple of days.  Yesterday, after a slow morning getting going, we headed on the bus into town and spent the whole afternoon there pretty much.  Much of the time we were thinking and planning for M's birthday and party, but we did also pop into Waterstones and while there I bought a book and K & M each built a lego model.  Although we haven't done much of our body topic lately, it does occasionally crop up in conversation and we may well get back to it at some point soon.  Something that I had noticed among our numerous reference books on the human body, is that there wasn't anything about epilepsy or dementia in any of them that I had found (admittedly I haven't read them cover to cover, but there was nothing in the index!).  Given that K & M have seen and are continuing to see the effects of these diseases in close members of our family, I wanted a book that at least touched on the idea of things going wrong in the brain.  This book did and when we got home, K sat down and read it pretty much cover to cover.

Today, we started on the process of making more wands.  One of them was essential, since I managed to lose the one that M had made for her friend D on the way to ice-skating ( my bag has a hole in it) and we're going to his birthday picnic on Friday, so she wants to give him one then.  Then this afternoon, C, who M invited to her birthday party on Sunday but who sadly can't make it (she would have been the only adult guest along with 7 children including M & K), came to make up for not being able to come to the party.  We had smoothie and various treaty nibbles (we'd got dairy & gluten-free things in especially for C and she brought some French fancies), showed C our holiday photos and played Destination Hogwarts.

So as you can see, we haven't really had any time for learning.  We have however had conversations about old money, decimalisation and wizard money, including doing some adding up of old money in shillings and pence.  This led onto talking about imperial measurements compared to decimal ones and me seeing how many different imperial units I could remember.  There was also comparing of prices of things as M decided she wanted to buy some Lego with some of her money and spend some of it on a treat for herself and K & M in Hotel Chocolat (we always go in when we're in town as they have tasting!), so she added up and worked out change of various options.  Then there was the question about the difference between jealousy and envy on the way to swimming this afternoon.  So really, who needs learning!?

Lovely weekend away.

Having got back from our holiday on Thursday, on Sunday we packed a bag again, just an overnight one this time, to go and stay with friends, Mn, C & Ma who live in rural Worcestershire with lots of space outside to run around.  They have a field with a badger sett in the far corner and, nearer to the house, chickens along with three still fluffy chicks.

After lunch, C & I went on ahead to some local woods to set up a trail for the girls to do, and they followed on a little while later with the dads.  We tied half a dozen bits of paper with activities on them to trees with strips of cloth (easy to undo and take back home).  Things like, collect 5 different leaves, play the 3 Billy Goats Gruff (over a little bridge - Mn was the troll), play hide and stick, find a stick and have a play sword fight with a grown up, climb a tree and walk along a fallen tree trunk.  As well as this we also had an eye spy chart and the girls each spotted a holly tree, bluebells, ferns, a butterfly and a few other things.  The woods were beautiful and, given the very late start to spring, the bluebells were still spectacular.  The walk also marked the start of the husky game, in which the girls were C's huskies, and which involved them pulling C along especially when going uphill.

The bluebells

Tree climbing

Balancing on a tree trunk

Cookie break!

 Once we'd had tea and the girls had played more and climbed more trees in the garden we played a board game, Let's Buy Hollywood.  It was fun and the girls played again this morning, so they obviously enjoyed it!

Today we made good use of our National Trust membership.  Firstly we went to Kinver Edge and Rock Houses.

One of the houses - the brickwork to the right is the chimney

 The houses, built into the sandstone rock, were pretty spectacular and reminded me a lot of our visit to the Nottingham caves last summer.  After a quick pit-stop at the cafe, we climbed up to the top of the Edge, with some more tree climbing en route.  We had talked before we went about how Mn & C had been before a long time ago, before the houses had been restored and had spotted adders on the heath although we weren't particularly expecting to see any.  Particularly not on the edge of a really quite busy path...

Fortunately for us a family in front of us spotted it, so we stopped to see what they were looking at.  We then had a fantastic walk.  It had loads of variety, woods, sheer cliff with a scramble down the not sheer but still pretty steep side, more sandstone caves and occasional things to do, such as a 'story glen'; a little clearing with about a dozen tree stumps seats and one big chair for the story teller (Ma & K both had a go in it and told us a little story), and things to climb on.

The scramble down

We started at the top and ended down here in a pretty short space of time and then explored those caves

I just really like this tree!  Very characterful I thought.

Once back to the car, we headed off to our second NT place Dudmaston.  After a picnic lunch, we did the children's activity trail, which included 'slug quoits', hula hooping, skipping, skittles, hop scotch and a couple of others and had a look inside the house too.  We just managed to fit all that in before it started to rain a bit before heading back to Mn, C & Ma's for tea, tired buy content.  K, M & Ma have plotted that we need more than just one night together next time and suggested that 'the whole summer holiday' might be a good idea, so it's fair to say that they certainly got on well!

As you were!

We're back to it today after returning home yesterday in time for gymnastics, today's activities have been a rather eclectic mix.  M got up before everyone else this morning, got herself breakfast and then did some box-modelling, making a snake, a hedgehog and a rather odd looking parrot.

For most of the morning and a while after lunch, K & M and, for some of the time, A (who doesn't go back to work until Tuesday) along with a number of soft toys were being a pride of lions.  I think this was inspired at least in part by our trip to a zoo on holiday.  K got one of our non-fiction books on Big Cats out to find out more about them.  This involved building a den with chairs, cushions and blankets in the front room, which I don't think is entirely true to life, but then catching a friendly zebra who agrees to help the cubs learn how to hunt is particularly likely either!  But as I've just been talking about with A, although much of what they were up to seemed like nonsense and 'just playing', the flights of fantasy they went off one were all based on reality and the conversations they were having showed clearly that they'd taken in the social structures of a pride, that the lions and lionesses have very different roles within the group and the methods they use in hunting.

This afternoon we headed off to the library and while there M started writing another space themed story.  This one involved a trip to the planet Dismal, to visit the aliens who live there who are all very happy!  Meanwhile K and I continued with the maths book we'd started before our holiday.  Following on from fractions, we moved on to decimal fractions.  We started with the fact that 1/2 is the same as 0.5 and that you can get from the first to the second by doing a division sum on a calculator.  I gave her a number that was over a thousand with three decimal places afterwards and asked her to read it out, which she did with a reminder that the digits after the decimal point are read individually.  Then we talked about what each of the digits in the number represented and K identified the thousands, hundreds, tens, units, tenths, hundredths and thousandths and I labelled them.  Then she correctly put some decimal fractions in order of size.  She matched up some simple fractions with their decimal equivalent, with some support.  When we looked back at the number we'd labelled and I asked what the 6 in the tenths column meant and she realised that it meant 6/10, it seemed to click.  Finally we looked around rounding numbers, in this case to two decimal places.  I drew a number line with 0.33, 0.34 & 0.35 on it and we took a couple of numbers either side of 0.34 and look where it would fall on the number line and therefore whether you would round up or not, and then K used a calculator to convert some fractions to decimals and rounded them to two decimal places.  Phew!

Then, after they tidied up the lions' den, K & M watched the start of Part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (they watched Part 1 yesterday, as after a night on the ferry, the morning in the car to get home for two hours of gymnastics they weren't really up to much else!).  Then while K had ballet, M & I did some planning for her birthday party which is just over a week away.  She's decided on a Wild Animal theme and we have been planning games and activities and she also typed some of the invitation to give to her friends, which I then finished off to add the details.  M now has quite a few things that she needs to prepare ready for the party, which she was itching to get started with but it was getting quite late by this point and she and K both wanted to watch the end of the Harry Potter dvd, so she agreed to wait until tomorrow.