Author Archives: HHaricot

A much reduced number for wodensmeet, with the summer coming and all sorts of changes going on, it all gets just that bit more flexible! Em joined us tho and we had a lovely day together. We did some experiments showing osmosis. [from that fab biology web page] and did clearly show the effect of osmosis on water cells, and then on stomata on a leaf. With much encouragement and leading we got the whole photosynth making stuff, therefore waste products, increased osmolality within the cell [some digression wrt sharing smarties, which room would kids - water - rush into, the room with lots of smarties - high osmolality - or the room with few smarties - yep, they would go to the high concentration room ] causing turgor of stomata so they open etc etc. Biology is v clever isn’t it!

E and SB spent ages with Em playing the recorder [must sort the music out!] . BB also allowed EM to do some recorder with her – woot woot [and has picked up the recorder since] I clearly was hiding whilst taking pics so as not to disturb

A fair bit of game playing went on, both boardgames and bouncing about outside. Currently the 2 families kids are working well together, so that makes life much nicer as all get to play/interact and feel wanted.

We also baked some shortbread cookies- everyone was happy with that too.

great day, thankyou BB enjoyed judo at the end of it, but SB couldn’t because of her hurt wrist.

unfortunately i was on call over the bank holiday weekend. and it was gloriously sunny! and if i hadn’t been on call we would have gone camping – and it most probably would have rained!! ah bah! anyway, thinks we did – a LOT of mooching about and playing in the garden. SB is attempting to read all her skulduggery books by next weekend – so is mostly found curled with a book . DH has sorted out the pond and the fruit bed, I have sowed cucurbits and sweetcorn and planted out the climbing beans (slightly risky) .

SB finished her oil painting in the style of van gogh whilst i read story of the world – we are still way way behind!!

BB did a good cello and piano practice and is getting more confident and less phased by things – always good [tho i now remember we should hve done cello today - gah!!] SHe has also taken lots of opportunities to use her butterfly book to identify butterflies in the garden, including this holly blue

but our big thing was done today when i had the day off. I offered going out geocaching, cycling or perhaps to national trust, a park, a museum. none of these appealed, so i said lets repaint your wendy house, so that is what we did joined the masses at b and q, spent far too much on paint, and then came home and completely painted the exterior. took most of the day. both girls kept at it, and it looks brilliant

Before

During

After

then we all queued to clean up in the bath as so grubby and watched a rubbish film on lovefilm whilst eating pizza. A great day with my girls

it is true, its been out enough for me to start feeling warm! I have also cut back on my antimigraine prophylaxis, which has made me feel hugely jugely better. and a meeting at work happened and yet didn’t happen, but a process has begun. so lots of things to stress about, but summer is comming and that makes life feel better.

Also making life feel better was having weds off to do nothing whatsoever with my girls they were both v happy with this, partic BB. She says she likes doing nothing days . we didnt do nothing precisely we did cello and piano prac together, and she did them both well, learnt new note on the piano without stress – bflat! and had a go at 4th finger in a piece. not successfully, but we had negotiated we would just try the bar each practice until she found it easy, so that it didn;t matter that she felt muddled . She did some collins grammar with me on verbs as well, and we reviewed the gas in the test tube from last week and determined that it was oxygen .

SB has started so you really want to learn galore park history 2 – woohoo and so completed a whole chapter she also did 2 chapters of her biology IGCSE book – which went alongside the experiment – and transposition towards her grade 5 music theory. This all took quite a long time, and she did do some of it outside whilst i watered the greenhouse and BB helped DH clear the pond . Alfie the tortoise also got a good run about outside.

it was such a glorious day the girls did a bit of playing outside, and SB took the photos of me in my clothes for kentwell signoff, so that is us all signed off clothing wise

for a while the girls have wanted to use our vine leaves to make dolmades, so we used this recipe and both had a go at making them. they were delish tho i think i could have upped the herbs and garlic a bit.

BB went off to judo and SB and I played agricola together after that in the conservatory. SO a lovely day

other things of the week – SB wrist still hurts a lot, but she did multisports and conservation [as did BB] and both her ballet classes. After grade 5 her teacher thinks she will be grown enough and strong enough to get points to wear, so she is v excited about that!

since sb hurt her hand on sat, we weren’t sure how badly, but i didn;t think broken, so had made a decision that if it hurt on sun, she should go to a and e. so after faffing, she went off with dh at 11am. they returned at 5!! not broken, but has a splint. argh. she is soooo accident prone. so somehow bb and i didn’t manage to do what we had planned either! we seemed stuck in limbo waiting for SB to return!!

BB wanted to play a game, so we did play agricola, and she has started making up her own mind about what she needed to do

she wanted to make a little pot to put her tooth in, as the tooth fairy has been a bit slow in paying a visit – 2 weeks slow in fact! so came up with a beautiful design and mixed in some glow in the dark, to tempt the fairy that way

we ran about in the garden, watered our seedlings, all have sprouted well. BB bounced on the trampoline.

and then we found out how late DH was going to be home, so BB and i made the focaccia and started on a number of the meze. It might not have been what we had planned, but it was still lovely but yet another weekend not really spent with SB

our friends arrived i think just after DH returned and we had a lovely evening SB and C laid the table beautifully and made a fab choc pudding. It was great to have them round as I hadn’t seen them for ages.

when i get to put up this weeks ticklists, both girls have been v productive. SB has worked v hard to get going with things after we had a chat. I am very happy with her doing things other than on their, going out to groups, arty, crafty, experimenty, getting on stuff. but i am not so sure about endless fiddle faddling. we hav a strong fiddle faddle gene, all of us, and so we every so often need to be reminded to get going. famously i locked myself with a bike chain to my desk during finals to stop myself wandering off instead of revising. i still daydreamed and was far less productive than many friends, but far more than my natural inclination would have had. so well done to SB for getting on with it this week. It has helped that it hasn’t been much of an out and about week. BB wasn’t feeling v well, so didn’t go to pottery on tues and had hosp appointment thurs. in the eve BB also didn’t feel up to judo, tho did go to swimming and cubs.

Sb has 2 ballet lessons currently as working for grade 5 – eek! as well as gym, judo, swimming and guides. Guides was a visit to annie the musical, which she really enjoyed After a very rocky start for nearly 2 years, guides has settled down and she is really enjoying it. Partly perhaps because SB is far more confident in who she is. She has done lots of lute practice as well, and can play 1 piece from memory – woot we also have BB and DH signed off for costume check for Kentwell, which is a relief.

going to give wodensmeet its own post I think, as we met up on weds at Zoes for it

i had prewarned bb we were going for a freeflow day, as she is a bit more of a lists and timetables girl – maybe she would do ok in shcool, oh wait,it needs to be her list and her timetable – scrap that! but i did do the science that i nearly electrocuted myself setting up the week before and proved that dh had done a good job with the circuit breakers when he put in the new junction box in the house

from the rather brilliant biology experiments resources on the net we did the first and 6th photosynthesis ones. I have to say, the experiment number 6 has worked a real treat, and is definately easy to do at home and worth a go :).

That wasn’t all we did, S led the kids to find their names in nature and take pics, and hopefully she is joining them together on her computer and uploading to flickr [hint] , em did a fab long recorder play ensemble with SB and E and it sounded fabulous. SB did some music theory. BB resisted doing anything else, but did have a fab time playing with R and sometimes O as well. SB and E played labyrinth too. Z made a great pineapple upside down cake and we did lots of chatting – hence the timetable. changes are afoot for wodensmeet as z and family plan their trip abroad and look to the future, so we will enjoy what time we have before the pebble in the stream effect takes place!