On Thursday, for my birthday, Stringbean spent ages doing a picture (of a church) and then writing on the back, then putting it in an envelope with 60p she got out of her piggy bank. Except for asking me who you spell ‘er’ (of all the things) she did it all herself
It really is Wuendvul, and I was very touched.
Posted in art and crafts, Stringbean, writing
well, we did a modicum of tidying, got the food ready and then went to the play barn. disaster! the leccy was off, people were mending the overhead wires and it was shut! We texted those we had numbers for and rapidly thought of a plan B. The village chemist sells little toys, so I went there – shut! Ah well, bye bye plan B.
Guests arriving so I pillaged SB’s craft cupboard and found enough bits for pass the parcel, a treasure hunt and a prize. SB gutted that playbarn closed, but put brave face and decided the games sounded good, so once others arrived, they played in the garden, adults nattered and with help organised the pass the parcel. The games went well. Katy and children arrived eventually having had communication probs with our mobile – thank goodness for the balloons!
From then on, all the children had fun and plan C worked pretty well. SB said it had been a lovely birthday and she was very happy. Thanks to all the guests from near and far, it was lovely seeing and having you here [apologies for chaos - might have done a bit more cleaning and tidying if we had started off with plan C!].
SB and sleepover guest might now be asleep [with a bit of luck!] and hope all the rest went home safely with their treasures. I must now restock the craft cupboard as SB was saying she also had this and that when they were being won by others – oops!
Posted in General, photos, Stringbean
As Helen has blogged below, SB went to a HE friends birthday party on Saturday (also 6 and very much SB’s best friend there). Rather than an indoor party, they had procession around the local park, with people wearing as much rainbowy coloured stuff as they could, singing songs , making noise etc. The girl of honour was transported round in a homemade sedan chair.
Ended with time in playground, a coconut shy (went on forever given the poor throwing accuracy of young kids) which was popular, fish and chips and cake. We sung ‘When we Were Two Little Boys‘ a couple of times, which always brings a bit of tear to my eye. I was often sung it from as far back as I remember as a kid by my Auntie Ethel,? before Rolf Harris did it.
Posted in Out and About, photos, socialisation, Stringbean
Which was sort of what Helen told me – seeing as I’ve been a bit lax in the blogging stakes lately.
So some gap filling:
Last Sunday
It was my Dads 70th birthday on the Friday. On Sunday we went over to theirs to go out for a birthday lunch. It was an all you can eat buffet type thing at an local Indian restaurant. It was nice, but would have been a bit better if the restaurant had been a bit more together.
My mum had rung them to say that we were veggie, and would there be veggie dishes, as was told there would be. When we got there, there was one veggie dish on the buffet (a rather nice potato thing – there were veg samosas but they were mixed up with meat ones….). It turns out that we could order something from the menu instead (same price) – that was fine, but we didn’t realize this until we were all sat down and were going to get food. so of course mum and dad had eaten a lot by the time we got our food. Not helped in that we had ordered some onion bhajis and samosas – ok normally you have them as starter, but seeing as everyone was eating, we thought they would bring the rest out as well. But no – though obviously they were cooked, as when I asked they appeared straight away.
So, could have been better with bit bit better clarity from them on what was happening, but food was good (though weird Mutter Paneer had chickpeas instead of peas – not so good when you have ordered Chana Dhal as well…..) Girls enjoyed it, SB at least at well, BB was entertained by the various fish tanks.
Finished up with cake and game of Ludo at mum and dads house.
Tuesday
SB started with more palying with the Polydron stuff before breakfast. Then the usual black hole that takes in breakfast, getting dressed etc. did sit down for more maths. After that we had a various bit of food shopping to do, so over to the post office (where of course as we only had quick in and out transaction the person 2 in front seemed to be carrying out every possible transaction you can in the PO in one go….). Then the bakers, then home again. Then get the bike and trailer out, tootle up to the farm shop for veggies. They are putting up a nice big polytunnel, so hopw to have some more interesting home grown things this year. It’s at a local plant nursery, opened when the village greengrocer shut. As a ‘farm shop’ they are supposed to grown most of their own produce (85% I think – by value I guess?) so he has been gradually increasing that.
Returned to lunch, then not sure, but we did sit down to SOTW later on – moved on to India, the Indus and the Ganges and the story about the formation of the Ganges. Then off to swimming lessons – for some reason they are now continuing through half term. but this hasn’t really been brought to peoples notice – I only new because some one else has mentioned it to me. So seemed a bit lower in numbers. treated the girls to dinner there (kids meal so they offer burger and chips, nuggets and chips etc….. anyway, SB likes the veg nuggets so they had those). Makes the evening easier really, as wqe don’t get back to past 6 pm so dinner becomes a bit a rush. This was me and Helen can have dinner bit later once girls are in bed.
Thursday
Umm again…..
One of my targets is to get out and do more regular bits in the garden to keep up with things. So we did spend about 1 1/2 hours outside, the girls mostly played in and out of the playhouse etc. I was weeding the strawberry patch, BB helped out a bit. SB decided that the playhouse garden needed a climbing frame so moved the Little Tikes one over there. It easier than last year to do this, as this time last year BB was still in pretty early toddler stage, so would fall over lot, get stuck etc.
After that and Lunch , whilst BB napped. We got out the Physics science kit we got given last year (thanks Raihanah 
) SB wanted to do something involving test tubes and the spirit burner. So we did one boiling, evaporating, condensing and distilling water (boiling old coffee, collecting clear water. Liking to have things correct, we talked about the difference between water vapour and steam – one day she will remember She enjoyed it , and it kept us busy for an hour or so.
BB got up and made herself a paperclip aeroplane
She does love doing experiments etc. and we don’t really do as much of it as we should I think- certainly no excuse on the knowing what to do front….
We um and ahh about the Young Scientists Club kits on and off. Whilst we really ought to be able to sort the things out ourselves, we don’t as much as we should and there is also the whole ‘kit thing’ that seems to appeal to SB. She does seem to enjoy the whole box of bits. instructions etc. that is ‘hers’ thing. Umm, ahhh…..
Friday
Other than shopping, not a lot really. Typical morning blackhole stuff meant leaving later than I wanted to. We went out to Staples, where SB wanted to investigate all sorts of things, then to the pet place to to get cat food and spent ages looking at fish, rabbits , guinea pigs etc.. Then Tesco’s via Tesco’s cafe for lunch (well, a plate of chips and carton of milk for them to share). Time we got home it must have been about 3, and the rest of the afternoon sort of just frittered away with cups of tea, Ed. City and other kiddy websites, some reading, cooking dinner etc.. We did do a bit of piano practice I think.
Posted in Butterbean, gardening, history, literacy, numeracy, photos, science, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
The playhouse was delivered today, Merry’s girls ensured it got a good testing out It is rather lovely.
Thanks to my parents for buying it and to Mark from Windmill Crafts who supplied it.
Posted in Butterbean, photos, socialisation, Stringbean
This was from last week – Thursday I think, somehow it got left as a draft and dnot posted, so here it is.
Yesterday SB emptied out her purse and counted up all the money. She did very well, did it pretty much all herself. Got bit lost with lots of 2p’s, until I showed her how to sort out the money into piles of 10p each and then count them all up. She had the grand total of ?19.01 (there was ?10 of xmas money in there). WSo she was quite excited by that
She has just sat down with a Vertbaudet catalogue looking at all the kiddy furniture, bedding and stuff, deciding what is too much, what she can afford, and whether or not it would be really owrth it spending all her money on it.
Posted in Daft Stuff, numeracy, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
Seem to ahev lost the muse when it comes to blogging, I’ve managed to not really blog all week Including fun science-y things we did last week. Hmm, anyway this is for now, cos going to bed soon. Also behind with Flickr as well…
My brother and his youngest son O are over on their way back over to France from Ireland (mother and son live in France, Dad in Ireland, makes life complicated…)? They came round yesterday, lots of playing, mostly happily :-)? BB splits her tiem between chasing the bigger ones about and? hanging around with the grownups.
Today me and the girls went over to my Mum and Dads were they are staying, mostly happy playing again. A bit of? split when O wanted to play with his video game football game thing(some cheapo thing, not a flash thing like a DS …) so she played with the Dolly. Eventually compromised, she was the Mummy, and he was the Daddy who was a computer programmer And an argument over the crackers (used up soem old xmas ones) over who had how many and which cheapo-plastic-toys-we-will-lose-or-forget-about-by-tomorrow-anyway 
Did have a few interesting conversations in the car though. Had one about the reality of imaginary people like Santa Claus/tooth faeries/’this character made up by one of her granddads, who seems to be some sort of satellite/alien thing. Not fairies though – ‘I know they are real , I’ve seen them‘. Got a bit metaphysical? when we talked about the idea of liking things things to be? real in our imaginations even if we don’t believe them to be true in reality. We watched ‘The Snowman’ a few times this Xmas. BB likes it. So I mentioned that I liked to imagine that somewhere, Snowmen were really flying off in the midnight air, even though I didn’t really believe it. – just the same as I want to believe that there really is? town and inhabitants like those in Northern Exposure. I think she decided that she sort of didn’t believe, but wanted to so was going to anyway.
We also had one on the way back, after listening to a travel report on the radio about all the various roads closed in relation to the strong winds ‘ Ohh, there is lots of places closed, must be very windy‘. So we got talking about strong winds and hurricanes and tornadoes, she was taking with the idea of Tornadoes picking things up. So she mused on people being picked up, ‘They’d probably be dropped on a cloud, so then they would fall back down, so they would probably die I think, then the tornado might pick them up and then drop them again, up down , up down. Might be be a bit of mess at the end‘. Errr.. yes, quite
On that note, off to bed
Posted in Butterbean, Daft Stuff, Stringbean
Stringbean has had this Jump Ahead Starting Maths CD-ROM for ages – 3 years? dunno, but she was doing it in our old house anyway. She’s done it on and off in spurts, probably redone it at least a couple of times, so? a little bit of a fan fare when she finally completed the last bit tonight tonight, had got the 100 candles and had the party
Posted in IT, numeracy, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
This was taken at 9.30 last night, she was still at it at 10.30 And yes she was actually reading it, not just looking at the piccies 
She is so pleased with herself
Posted in Books, literacy, photos, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE
