wodensmeet – halloween and plant cells

This is going to be a short blog I think, due to the speed i plan to write it in. I should be doing one of two things, either lying own with eyes shut getting rid of migraine [well i have eyes nearly shut and am lying down, and am typing this without looking at the screen, so it may look a bit weird!] or getting up and tidying and hoovering this room as my parents and my nepwhew and niece will be arriving soon. DH has been scurrying around trying to get our bombiste of a house a bit tidier – one day we will keep it this way [thinking prob only when kisd have left home as neither of us like housework, can always think of something better to do with time, and and and!] girls are tidyhing their desks. these are allegely for doing home ed on [or will be if the LA ever did a home visit, whicih we don't plan that they will]. instead, they are a flat surface for shoving half finsihed projects, boxes, books and anyhting and everything on! so currently looking more like the himalayas.

Anyway, I am gicing myself half an hour max to blog and drink tea and try and pretend i don’t have migraine [ot is moderately under control with tabs today] and then tidy and hoover this room, and then make this quiche enough for 8 for a lateish lunch. [will feedback on whether i actually did this!] so, back to weds and wodensmeet/weded/hewed or whatever else we are calling it!

this started with pumpkin carving. we nipped into somewhere along the way advertising pumpkins for sale [the good thing about being rural!] tho still one pound each. and arrived a leeetle bit late at zoes, and the girls got stuck in. i went to get my camera or phone to take pics and UTTER DISASTER I found i had left both behind on the ktichen table! I don’t mind being cold turkey without phone, but no pictures!! [imagine voice going up into a squeak] even when we had cameras with film in them i took lots of photos. so for this post i am borrowing the photos from the others since i harangued them into taking loads and posting on flickr [not good to be owning up to bullying!] . anyway, gids did a good [if messy] job, but didn’t quite scrape out enough from all the pumpkins to make pumkin soup, so it was pumpkin and other veg soup for tea

tidied away and got science and poetry ready. for science this time we were looking at plant cells, so we discussed what plant cells should look like and what we should see, and a bit of a comparitor with animal cells. kids then got a bit of the onion skin between layers, dipped into iodine to help with staining and then made a slide. gradually getting to less bubbles! we used the microscope from the portico – which we all think is fab and sent lots of love that way . we got brilliant views. i did lots of bobbing up and down to reset and focus, but we didn’t crack any coverslips [which i think is a result!] next time i must take some lens paper, as the eyepieces did get all smeary between looks. then we drew what we had seen at 2 different magnifications.

lunch was the normal pasta, and the second science and poetry group happened afterwards. Poetry was the lady of shalot. SB said she remembered the bit in anne of green gables [a book she likes a lot] and they drew some illustrative pictures. SB and E sightread their recorder duet beautifully between them, and hoping that if they practice they might play it at caberet. but even if not, good to practice playing together. when they are confident, should try more complex music with em and i on lower instruments! Em also kindly took SB for a clarinet nag, as she isn’t practicing much currently as we are between teachers! [thankyou] SB also did some music theory as 2 weeks away from grade 4 exam [panic!]

Merry had brought a fab fimo idea of making pixie houses using Bene’s baby food jars and fimo [waste not want not!] and the kids all spent ages and ages on it, their results were impressive. definitely an idea to revisit another time in another guise, as i thought M was going to do an arabian nights one for a bit [she didn't] and it struck me that several of them of different heights on a board with candles in would make a beautiful hand made gift. they spent so long it did mean that zoe and i did the first kneading of dough to make rolls to go with the soup, and got a bit giggly over not being gbb candidates :).

we said goodbye to merry and family at that point. After washing hands, all the kids left had some white and some grain dough and made a roll of each to bake – plaits and animals and hearts etc and smelled lovely :). then did bells with EM. Hopefully we are going to play bells to a care centre nearer christmas and also sing some carols, so that would be good Beautiful

soup and back for BB’s grading at judo – went fine, SB judo and now my hlaf an hour [plus 8 mins!] is up, and the girls are shouting so need to go and intervene, then hoover and then make a quiche