Things we have done this week.

• Been to Asfordby, where there was a bring and swap session, where we took lots of things and only came home with a few (this is a good thing!)
• Piano lessons - for the first time in a month for various reasons - and practice.
• M's French horn lesson - and practice.
• Swimming lesson.
• Scouts for K.
• Read the final book in the Usborne History of Britain series; Britain Since the War, which filled a gap in what we had learned about Berlin on our recent trip, as it mentioned the Berlin Airlift, which although clearly was covered in The Story of Berlin museum, we had started to get rather hungry by the time we got to that part and had stopped looking at everything!
• Continued reading Piratica
• K has been doing crafty things, making flowers, a tiara and various other things out of tissue, paper, foil, pipecleaners and other things.
• M has started crocheting a hat for A.
• K and I listened to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage about Bletchley Park.
• M has bought, and read, two Daisy and the Trouble With... books on ebay. 

I'm sure there are other things, such as starting the monthly tidy up of the bedrooms, but given that I've been feeling rather unmotivated this week and feeling that we haven't done much, I think that's pretty good going!

Oh and I've had about two feet cut off my hair and posted the ponytail off to these people.

Reading, reading, more reading and a little bit of other stuff.

This afternoon I read The Second World War from the Usborne History of Britain to the girls.  K in particular was, perhaps rather excessively, excited by the rather brief reference to Bletchley Park.

I have also started reading a book that has been recommended and subsequently lent to us by a friend, Piratica, which we're rather enjoying.  It's set in seventeen-twelvty, in an alternate England which has become a republic, which is an interesting idea.  It's not the first time we've come across the concept though, having read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase a while back, which is set in an England in the reign of James III.

K & M have both been reading a lot lately.  They are working their way through the How To Train Your Dragon books, which M is requesting from the library in order.  Another series that they are both enjoying are the Helen Moss Adventure Island books.  M has also started reading, or in some cases re-reading, Daisy and the Trouble With... books.

I am also reading Which Witch to M, which K has recently borrowed from the library and enjoyed.  It's rather strange because I half remember it from my childhood, but the thing that I remember is having very vivid dreams having read it, rather than the story itself.  A is also reading another William book, to both girls which we've borrowed from friends.

Finally, on the reading front, our first copy of First News arrived today.  K got engrossed it pretty quickly and it looks like it was a good plan.

In other news, yesterday we went to see the second and final film of Into Film festival, Walking With Dinosaurs.  It was slightly stressful getting there, as we were running a little bit late and we arrived a couple of minutes into the film, although having spoken to friends who arrived 15 minutes before the offical start time, they started the film well before they were supposed to, but the sound didn't work and it took a while to sort it, but even then they started slightly early!  The film wasn't quite what we expected, having not read the information very carefully, but we enjoyed it anyway.  We had very vague plans afterwards with friends who we'd seen at Thinktank for the first time in ages, who were also at the cinema.  We went back to their house, where the girls, K, M & Ma, had a lovely time playing and then decorating paper bags as party bags ready for Saturday, which is Ma's 10th birthday, while L & I had lovely catch up chat.

Very finally, M has been crocheting and showed me this that she has make this evening.

Books (both fiction and non-fiction) and bookshops.

One thing I forgot to mention about our trip to Berlin, was the book that we took for me to read to them while we were there.  It was one that M had been given for her birthday back in June, but had decided that she wanted it to be one for me to read to the two of them: Wonder, which we would all thoroughly recommend.  It is a very thought provoking book, which led to discussions on various issues, which were all dealt with well in the book.

Since getting home, we haven't really been up to doing much, especially K, who's still getting over the sickness bug and not yet eating properly.  As a result of this we've continued with the Usborne History of Britain series and yesterday I read the whole of The Victorians and this afternoon all of The First World War.

This morning we went to the cinema to see How To Train Your Dragon 2, as part of the Into Film Festival.  Afterwards we popped into town to Waterstones, who are quite frankly brilliant.  K had been given Mary Poppins, the book, for her birthday and not only had she already read it, but indeed had a copy.  We didn't have a receipt (and indeed I'm pretty sure the book wasn't bought from them) but they do stock the edition that she'd been given and they were perfectly happy to take it back as a return and give credit for it.  Not only that but one of the assistants in the children's department spent quite a while talking to K and giving suggestions for what she might like instead.  Clearly the shop benefits too, as while we were there M decided to buy a book (a Daisy and the Trouble with one) and I bought a birthday present for a 12 year old boy (The Lord of the Flies - having talked to his mum about it) as well as getting a different book for K, The Fire Within the first in a series that does sound like something K will really enjoy, but you really can't beat a good bookshop with knowledgeable staff.

Back from Berlin - part two.

On Friday afternoon, we went to the girls' choice of the Natural History museum and it was a good one!  The dinosaur hall in particular is very well done and happily all the information was in English as well as German as both K & M spent a long time reading the vast majority of it!  We saw:

The world recording holding tallest mounted dinosaur, a very impressive brachiosaurus

Possibly the most famous fossil in the world, an archaeopteryx.

K & M were also very happy to find a fossil, which they said was Half Tooth, the smilodon (sabre toothed cat) that is the main character featured in one of the Walking With Beasts episodes (a series that followed Walking With Dinosaurs). 

Half Tooth.

We also spent time finding out about plate tectonics, watching a video that went from the Big Bang to present day and then from 'here' zooming out until they talked about the billions of galaxies each with billions of stars.

Our final day we went out to Potsdam.  It wasn't the best time of year to visit the huge Sanssouci park, as even the statues had been covered by rather sinister looking grey hut like constructions, presumably to protect them over winter.  We did go into Sanssouci palace, which was rather impressive though.  In the afternoon we went somewhere for the girls, a hands-on science museum for children, called Extavium, which had some really good things.  Among other things we did an experiment on probability and talked about bell curves, K lifted a car and both girls loved the darkroom where you waited for the flash to make shapes on the light sensitive wall.

K lifting a 'Trabbie', 'the' East German car.

Making their moves!

For the evening of our last day we'd booked to visit the dome of the Reichstag, which was quite interesting and reinforced quite a lot of what we'd learned about earlier in the week.  They have guides in various languages and a children's one but only in German.  A got one in English and I got the children's German one with the plan to translate for the girls, but it was so bizarre and sort of aurally cartoony and nonsensical a lot of the time that it didn't really work, but the girls found it hilarious to listen to the silly voices and funny music, so they enjoyed it anyway!

The Reichstag.

The Brandenburg Gate from the dome of the Reichstag.

We had a packed lunch each day (taking bread rolls with cheese from the enormous breakfast buffet at the hotel) and ate out each evening.  K & M are getting much better at trying new things, so we were able to eat in German restaurants a couple of evenings and they each ate schnitzel, as well as trying some of my spatzle, which M liked but K didn't.  We did have Italian the rest of the time though.

Something else that was very noticeable was just how confident and independent K & M can be.  This was particularly apparent when it came to going to the loo.  It didn't bother them in the slightest that they speak pretty much no German, they would happily go off to find it on their own.  I, on the other hand, found it slightly nerve-wracking when they did this!

Unfortunately the end of the holiday was pretty awful as K was sick.  Not just a bit, but copiously and repeatedly from 10pm pretty much all night to the point that we thought she and I might not be able to fly home and we had my parents on stand by to look after M.  Happily we managed to get home, but the journey did involve more vomit both in Berlin and Luton and was pretty horrendous.  Both K & M, who was very upset and unsettled by not knowing where she was going to end up that night, were absolute troopers, because without their efforts we might not have managed.

Back from Berlin - part one.

Last Tuesday the girls and I joined A on a work trip (which he extended so he could spend time with us too) for the first time.  Despite having lived in Germany twice, first for a gap year as an au pair in Dusseldorf (and then briefly Dortmund when the family moved house), and then in Tubingen for a term at university as part of my degree, I had never visited Berlin and it's somewhere I've wanted to go for a while but had never got round to.

We left home at 9.30am and got to the hotel about 6.30pm, via bus, train, bus, plane, local train and underground, all having gone pretty smoothly. We had a special guest with us for this trip, as K had asked if we could take her Scout troop's mascot Phileas Frogg.

K with Phileas Frogg and Arnaud on the train.

A's work meetings were on Thursday from lunchtime and all day Friday, so we had the whole day together on the Wednesday.  First we went to The Story of Berlin (although not the bunker), which was pretty good.  The girls were interested enough that we ended up having a very late lunch!  Both girls are at an age now where (depending on subject matter of course and the amount of written material) they are either happy to read information or have it read to them an awful lot more than they used to, so it's more interesting for me too!

At the Story of Berlin K, Phileas & M.

Later we explored a bit and headed in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate but before we got that far we decided to go up the Fernsehturm and although conditions weren't ideal we got a reasonable view of the city (certainly better than it would have been later in the week, when we couldn't see the viewing and restaurant area at all!)

Up the Fernsehturm...

....and in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

On Thursday we went to the zoo all together before A had to go off for his meeting.  The zoo sparked some discussion about the merits of zoos, since the enclosures of the big cats in particular looked really inadequate, versus the difficulties of protecting animals from poachers in their natural habitat.  We've been to Chester Zoo a few times and have sometimes not seen the big cats there because their enclosures are much bigger and have plenty of plants and rocks which means that the cats can frequently be hidden, which we all agreed is much better than the guarantee of seeing them in a small enclosure.  In the afternoon the girls and I went to the aquarium too and then to the Lego shop on the Kurfurstendamm, which was a 5 minutes walk from the hotel, for the second time (they have several areas where you can just sit and build things!).

A very unobliging blue-tongued skink that stopped sticking its tongue out when I got the camera out!

Phileas with some new friends at the Aquarium.

Friday A had to work all day, so it was just me and girls.  After a final visit to the Lego shop, where each of the girls chose the parts to make and then buy their own Lego figure, we went to the museum at Checkpoint Charlie, which the girls weren't too keen on.  They found parts interesting, such as the different way that people escaped to the West, like hiding in a converted petrol tank and hiding in two suitcases that were pushed together with holes cut in the sides, and they found it interesting to see a very small scale model of a section of the wall, with a fence, barbed wire, a big space with watch towers and search lights and a ditch on the east side and nothing on the west side of the wall itself.  The presentation is very heavy on written material, and after the part about the wall, there was a lot about what went on on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, which was too much for the girls.  We all certainly learned a lot before we moved on though.

At the Checkpoint Charlie museum.

To be continued...

More maths and making things.

It was Asfordby today and the children were making shoe box houses/rooms.  K & M really enjoyed this activity and spent most of the session on their shoe boxes.  They were each pleased with their results, although M is apparently planning a loft conversion (more extension than conversion though, I think).

K went for a room - with wallfeathers rather than wallpaper!

M has four rooms in her house, so far.

After having something of a struggle yesterday to get K to finish a maths worksheet, today she did two!  They were rather easier though being on bar charts and pie charts.  In each case she had some questions to answer about a chart and then some data to present using one.  There's only one page left in Basher Maths, which I'm half way through making a worksheet for, but K spotted that we managed to miss out a couple, so has requested that I go back and do one for each of those.  I'm not quite sure I can get a whole worksheet out of zero or infinity though!

M went to Brownies for the first time in a while, having missed quite a lot lately due to her 'under-the-weather-ness' from which she finally seems to be getting better.  She has been saying for a while that she's not really enjoying Brownies much lately, as she was finding it boring and everyone who she was particularly friendly with has now moved on.  We had previously spoken to Brown Owl about her probably stopping at Christmas (although she still can go on the Pantomime trip in January, which I've already paid for).  I wasn't happy about M just stopping, so we agreed that she would go this evening to give it one last chance and she could decide at the end whether she wanted to continue or not.  If she decided to stop, she'd be able to let them know herself and say thank you, and that is what she decided to do, so M will be having a break now, until she can start Scouts in September.

A little bit of History, English and Maths.

Having taken about 4 1/2 months to get through the Tudors and Stuarts book in the Usborne History of Britain, we finally moved onto The Georgians and I read the whole book in one afternoon on Friday!  We also had a visit from a friend, K, who at the girls' request brought a game with her for us to borrow again; The Settlers of Catan, which we had a game of in the evening.

K and I had a discussion about this and how it could mean different things if you added punctuation to it.

I wrote two possibilities:

Bless this house with friends' laughter and love.

Bless this house with friends, laughter and love.

and K correctly identified the difference in meaning between the two and then giggled about the difference between 'Let's eat Granny!' and 'Let's eat, Granny!', which we'd talked about previously.

K has also done another worksheet that I made for her to go with the Basher Maths book, this time on Per Cent.  The worksheet went a bit further than the info in the book, which was very basic - pretty much just turning fractions into percentages and how this is helpful to compare things.  She did this part of the worksheet very easily but then went off and eventually we got back to it this evening at my insistence.  The worksheet also covered increasing and decreasing by percentages, for example if something that costs £20 is 25% off in a sale, how much does it cost.  This initially caused a bit of a problem, because K worked it out quickly intuitively and when I tried to encourage her to work out how she had got to the answer we both ended up quite stressed.  With a couple of questions that were a bit trickier in terms of the numbers, we talked things through together and I think by the end she'd got the hang of it.  

We did have words somewhat when K wanted to leave it and finish it another time, but with only a couple of questions left I insisted we complete it before watching Strictly Come Dancing results.  She was somewhat grumpy, but after she'd finished I reminded her that she had asked me to insist on getting on with things sometimes, like I had done here.  When I asked her again if I had been right and she did want me to do this she said yes, so all ended well.