Category Archives: art and crafts

Castle day/ weekend

Posted on July 29, 2007 by | 4 comments

we had a lovely time, thankyou everyone for coming. I can’t say that it was totally stressfree, but at the point that everyone had eaten, the kids and adults where obviously happy, I could begin to relax.

i loved SB’s welcome poster and goodbye poster by the door. Thanks T-bird for helping me out on the friday, and the multiple helpers on the sat when I had loads to do, and BB and B both decided to have complete wobblies about the whole thing! In fact, BB wobbled so much I had to take my dress off [Merry wore it] and wear a demure version of a wench outfit!!

The weather was with us – which was great, and loads of friends near and far came. Actually, at the end SB said there had been so many friends there that she hadn’t been able to play with them all properly, and we need to arrange to see them again.

I think Chris did a fab job with the castle. The crafts seemed to work well. The children were rather frightening in their mob mentality with the severed head pinatas. No major injuries despite much sword waving! Admirable mention to Vix making traditional mediaeval fayre – particularly the cabbage pottage, which I think only Michelle and I tasted, and is presently adding to the compost bin, and the interesting sweet spinach pie! The piggies were a def hit though.

So yes, it was a fab day, surrounded by friends, and I might even do something similar again. Didn’t take too many flickr photo’s as busy ‘doing’ but I see my friends have made up for this. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.

Relaxed evening as there was lots of clearing up help. and a good nights sleep.

Today had the usual wail quotient from far too tired children, but they muddled through for a bit, and the brainbox science saved the day really

4 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, General, history, science, socialisation

i don’t like password protected on the top.

Posted on July 9, 2007 by | 2 comments

so I’ll blog. today stressful at work, somewhere where not usually stressful. hmm.

anyway, while I was at work, BB did some painting, SB did some maths – subtraction her favourite! Also some handwriting practice. Chris has been reading her chapters of the maharbharata – what a complicated story that is, i an remember watching it in student days when on late at night.

when i got home the girls where ecstatic to see me – always good for ailing morale. we played in the water outside, brought in the washing. SB did some first language lessons – looking for nouns, read some bird things to me and loads of education city – first time for ages. BB did lots of poisson rouge, played with the ideal blocks making shapes and we all played tummy ache. spoke a bit of french
yummy dinner from chris. thinking now and watching prison break

2 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, General, language, literacy, numeracy, science, writing

Aunty V’s present.

Posted on July 9, 2007 by | Leave a comment

Sb spent some time making this, all her own ideas and work, I just left her to it.

It’s a house, in case you were wondering, with a table, bowl of fruit, tardis like bedroom and roof window with curtains – see the Flickr notes.

present for aunty V? Aunty V's present detail

She m,ade a nice card as well:

bird-day card ? IMG_7362

Leave a comment

Posted in art and crafts, Stringbean, writing

Il fait du soleil!!

Posted on July 8, 2007 by | 5 comments

Am trying to do a bit of weather with SB. we have had lots of il pleut and il fait du vent recently, so its nice to be sunny!!

A late start for me sine I was up till 3am working last night to sort out rota stuff for work. My parents arrived soon after, so the mayhem commenced! lots of showing off skills, dancing, singing, reading etc from girls. BB did a lot of poisson rouge. eventually we all went out into the sun. the paddling pool was filled and girls got v wet. unfortunately SB started a water fight with BB, that B soon escalated out of hand!

We had dinner outside, mum trimmed my hair. Did want it nic’s length, but she was too worried to go that short. The girls and Mum and dad played treasure seekers in the garden, and found a huge wooden snail shell – good, and a smelly dead hedgehog – not good! SO lots of chasing around instead. Some painting and lots of games.
I don’t really know how the day went so quickly. Must have been having fun in the sun!

5 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, General, language, literacy

Early to blog!

Posted on July 7, 2007 by | 3 comments

Am making frog-in-the-bog for tea with home grown veg on the side – that is the life! would have own eggs, but perhaps not yet!

BB is being dreadful again at going to bed, and is then so tired that she falls asleep like the dead in the day. So today we haven’t let her fall asleep – she’s been dunked in a freezing cold paddling pool in the afternoon to make sure! Whether she makes it to the tea I’m not sure, but they’re having a bath upstairs at the moment.

However, she IS being gorgeous about playing animals. Mostly lions and monkeys, which we have played a lot today. She also demanded ‘diolin’ practice – duly done for 10 seconds! Painting - 2 minutes, reading a book – hours! We have played shops and also with bricks, and a ‘find the’ game with the letter cube thing that Jax gave us – rather a hit!

IMG_7290 IMG_7314

SB woke early and plugged herself in front of the TV. When I got up – at 9.30 – so not as late as I would have liked! We read stories together of brer rabbit. I suggested we did the next bit of first language lessons – the aesop fable narration, and she already new the story so happily summarised it. When I said that I could write down her summary or she could, we then spent the next hour happily writing it down, whilst doing other things – see below! [BB and I were being rather distracting though I guess, with falling down towers!]. I was very proud of her, and she was impressed too. Though she is keen to improve her handwriting, I don’t think she’s bothered by spelling as long as she can read it back.

IMG_7294

She then spent ages getting dressed as a princess and cleaning her teeth, and BB did lots of poisson rouge – getting rather good at mouse control, but easily frustrated when she right clicks by mistake. I have stuck a hand sticker on the left click, which usually reminds her.

SB did some brick building with BB for a bit, and then we sat together as she read me various bits from the DK picturepedia on birds. We have also been watching the life of birds in the evening, so she remembered some of that to add in, as well as the other bird books we have read. Wanting to do some flying experiments, we went to the kitchen to make different shapes, but ended up doing mostly a craft session on birds with feathers! She is disappointed they don’t fly well, so we might to the experiments tomorrow.

IMG_7292 IMG_7318
All out into the garden to make the most of the sunshine, having pasta for lunch outside [v late!] and the then SB did some sudoko, BB tried to catch the fish in the pond, and then they both spent ages splashing about in the paddling pool or helping me pick broad beans and pod them for tea.

IMG_7302 IMG_7299
They’ve argued over helping me make batter for the frog-in-the-bog, so lets hope it still rises! Chris doesn’t appear to have drowned them yet, so I shall quickly flickr. oh, and no chris, I won’t be doing different colours!!

edited to add photos and say, frog in bog a success, BB fell asleep the instant she had finished chewing the last mouthful. SB went on to custard and banana. We are about to play a game. We played Amazon arithmetic and happy families.

3 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, Cooking, gardening, General, literacy, music, numeracy, photos, science, Stringbean's HE, writing

very tired!

Posted on July 2, 2007 by | 2 comments

well, i guess it’s poetic justice that I worked this weekend following kessingland, and its been the busiest weekend I’ve worked for ages. In all daytime and called all night. So today I decided to leave slightly early from work and have a short nap. 30 mins later, SB woke me up as they were back home.

it was sports session this morning – must ask Chris whether SB tried the older group? She loves the sports sessions, and BB also likes the careering around she gets to do with Daddy. After it, they went back to the deep end’s new abode. Chris texted this to me, but i must have been at a superlatively busy moment and missed it! Anyway, they had a lovely time, BB was frightened by a cat – we have 2!

both girls did some colouring with chalks on black card to start with – very lovely. SB did do some firework pictures – nothing like being topical! bit of a tussle over BB purposefully squiggling over SB’s picture.
We inspected the garden – i didn’t get to see it at the weekend. french and runner beans shooting up, and some flowers on the runner beans. the broad beans had loads to harvest – so we did that, as did the mangetout. the girls ate them in thier playhouse. still more strawberries and also our weird not quite plum tree – as yet unidentified, but prob if i could be bothered would be! has some ripe fruit that the girls ate. Sweetcorn looking most unhappy – far to wet and miserable for them. things in the greenhouse on the whole happy – toms romping away and some ripening fruits. BB could only be persuaded that the grapes weren’t ripe by eating one.
SB happily did some singapore maths – adding hundred tens and units, whilst BB and I podded broad beans for tea and read books. BB fell asleep on my lap eating dinner – so whisked up to bed, and we’re hoping she will stay asleep.

Sb and I read our birds book from the DK animal series – part of our book people order. She also read the penguin lifecycle book as we read the inroduction and she chose penguins. We followed this up with a bit of david attenborough and his flying with birds [or whatever!] first episode.

Thinking home-eddy thoughts, in part brought on by hearing a girl shout at her mother IN FRENCH!! what a skill. must start thinking more seriously about approaching modern languages and poss latin. [whether i do remains to be seen. hoping that the possible local jolie ronde group may get set up in the location of the possible leader's home as v conveniently located!!]

2 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, Books, Butterbean, gardening, General, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, SB-PE, science, Stringbean's HE

Natural history museum

Posted on June 16, 2007 by | Leave a comment

we went yesterday and it was fab. a full 12 hours out so we were exhausted on return! It did make the journey in easier in that we could swap to tube before the main London station which then took us to south ken. We had brekkie of cheese scones on the train, and a runabout when we got there.

SB chose the young explorers monster pack – which is the dinosaur one. I didn’t think it would take that much time, but it really captured her imagination. I thought there could have been a bit more, but it was free! There was a bag in it with 3 clues in it to identify your specimen. SB was so methodical that she had carefully scoured so well on this that we knew which specimen it was from clue 1, so it was a bit disappointing for us that clues 2 and 3 were the same one. However, we did expand it a bit! i loved her spottisorus [her spelling].

Chris took BB for a run around the whole museum in the end. She did come back and invented her own spider dinosaur! We had our packed lunch and made our way back, looking at the marine fossils, primates and then Chris took BB for a run in the garden outside, and SB and I went to the main dinosaur bit – which she really loved, espec the T-rex. We all joined up in the human biology segment. BB loved listening to the toddler talk and randomly pushing buttons, where SB tried a bit more! I don’t think we quite did enough homework to keep BB interested though, so Chris ended up not seeing much of the museum, and me not much of BB. we can work on that for another time. Chris and I were worn out, so had restorative coffee. we left the museum at 4pm!!

We caught a bus from Hyde Park to Trafalgar square and SB was desperate to climb a lion. We said she had to do it unaided, and she had a damn good try! We went to an Italian just of leicester square for a cheap dinner before heading off home. BB totally charmed the waiters there by scampering about, and giggling.
Such a great day. loads of conversations with Sb about allsorts [including congestion charges and car sharing which she was most taken by!] She def wants to go to the science museum and the earth bit if the natural history, an open top bus ride, the london eye [you get the drift] and would like to live in cenral london!! [no smallholding then!!]

great time out. we did take photos, but you may have noticed we are well behind on flickring again – oops.

Leave a comment

Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, geography, history, literacy, numeracy, Out and About, science

the most unrelaxing time off work.

Posted on June 14, 2007 by | 3 comments

partly because there are a couple of issues that mean i can’t actually switch off and rest from. but they are also difficult to do anything about. I prefer omnipotence than this worrying and dithering!

And because there were a variety of tasks to tick!

Anyway, Mon and Tues were good. I think – in retrospect – that I will never book anything dentisty in!

Wed a bit of a stress, as we made an unplanned visit to chris’s parents on the wed, to see his uncle, aunt, cousin with husband and baby [the teeny tiny one born earlier in the year]. Unfortunately Chris’ uncle has bowel cancer, and not presently suitable for operation. He is having chemo, and had a dreadful reaction the firs time. Yesterday he was tired, and not his full fettle, but certainly better than we were anticipating. [lots of prepping SB]. Baby A is gorgeous and very smiley and laid back [aargh I feel broody!] SB and BB adored her and helped bring her things. BB was amazingly gentle and gorgeous. I say amazingly, as she stabbed SB purposefully with scissors before we had left home! [scissor privileges most def withdrawn] ANyway, a family day. But I had to do dentist dash in the middle – and obviously dentist not so close to Chris’s parents! My Daa had also arrived before we left – so seemed a bit odd to hello-goodbye. He was on his way to a golf match, which got cancelled whilst he was here, so he trimmed our topiary – good dad!

last night though I had loads of unsettled dreams and woke up with work palpitations and too little sleep. SB did lots of reading to Dad and some singapore maths. he was trying to teach her to catch a ball. like Monster, I think she has inherited a non-schools sports gene pool. i was v good at swimmer [hey, I was a lot thinner!]. She does seem to be good at gymn type stuff too. Must follow that one day, but she is keen on joining trampolining club, so think that should do!

Then in afternoon we went into town to have eyes checked. I went in with SB, who confidently said she was home-ed so no whiteboard [when asked] but that she was good at using the computer and could read! The optician was good too, but when SB talked about pupils and could say which bit they were and seemed interested, the optician explained what she was doing at every step, what they might find. Coolest is the new machine for taking pictures of the retina – no more ophthalmoscope! BB was in there with us in totally charming mode. Both girls stayed oK, whilst chris and I dithered over glasses. You know, I look no great shakes, and glasses don’t add much. I have no style talent, so actually in front of everyone having to try the things on and look like I care – which I do of course, but I don’t actually have any ability here!! Oh well, chose an unlikely pair anyway.

we also went to milletts and BB investigated everything whilst chris pondered. Eventually we left, and it was tipping it down. Got back in time for SB to go to ballet, and BB and i made choc cookies and cheese scones. Lots more reading and some DS-ing and both girls now tucked up.

We must have early night.

oh, and the other bit of crapness was we were supposed to go and visit little nanny this week and drop off aunty margaret’s birthday pressie for next week. except little nanny is with aunty margaret this week. her pressie not that transportable. We were doing other things this weekend, but chris has apologised for our absence [I believe, if not, I apologise for our absence] as I have to see little nanny whilst Aunty M drops her off. its been ages since we visited, we can’t go till after kessingland. my life and diary are a mess!!

3 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, Dance/drama, General, literacy, music, numeracy, science

Me and my smelly shoes

Posted on June 12, 2007 by | 2 comments

well, me and Sb got some not-quite-crocs from ebay. very cheap unfortunately the seller had a problem with knowing colours, as we were supposed to have lime green and pink respectively, but she just focused on the pink! I can live with pink feet I guess!

Anyway, an early start as SB reading at the library [see, public speaking at 6!] she read a Clifford book, a couple of dog poems and a kipper book. i liked her way of getting the children to take turns with the flaps, and BB her little helper. She then did a sticking material onto cut out dogs craft. The session is obviously for under 5′s!!

We did some singapore maths 2A – finally we get to do adding up and carrying in columns! i breath a sigh of relief at this. SB though good at doing it in her head with the tens and units, but columns help with the hundreds. The only real difficulty is with doing 5 and 2 variably back to front, it can be difficult seeing what her answer is!!

BB did lots of colouring in and cutting, and playing games with the pencils being people. She has also just got keen on ‘galloping’ either with the hobby horse or broom! She also helps SB’s maths by shouting out random numbers. [not welcomed!!]

We played outside, picked some broad beans and mangetout – the girls ate the mangetout directly, the broad beans for tea! Lots of fun with watershooters for the girls – chris got a bit carried away [surprise suprise] so I was drenched. Though was nice after boiling alove in the greenhouse.

SB had swimming, and I watched in the gallery. she is a bit of a flibberdygibbert! the coach kept an eye on her, as she was doing duck dives as often as anything else! WIll try and at least get front crawl pinned down on holiday. And mushroom floats, as SB thinks the idea is to curl up in a ball, and then fling out as wildly as poss!

When we came back she did some jump ahead 1 CD – which she finds nice and easy, so a fun thing . And we did some violin practice, with me playing it with her a bit – mostly to try and pin down the timing. She was a bit freaked by this, so haven’t tried a canon yet! I think she has done really well to get so far,but not sure it will be up for a canon with Joe, but she is keen to go ahead. Back to positives though, we only really started practicing the violin vaguely seriously when Sarah suggested a duet, so I think to be playing a recognisable tune with a reasonable bow hold, though varying violin hold and enjoying it is a real achievement.

erm, more reading to each other, playing games and tidying up. ’bout it.

oh, and its the new crocs-a-likes that have a weird smell!!

2 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, history, literacy, music, numeracy, SB-PE

I should be in Cancun

Posted on June 11, 2007 by | 3 comments

the local carnival here continues on apace. this eve we had the local band playing in village centre and a raffle. SB was the proud winner of a box of chocs – chosen by her after considerable time!!

i went to work this am and then home. SB had done some maths and we did some violin, loads of reading/ jigsaws etc. Some colouring and writing. BB read books, did magic painting and bit people – lovely!! more strawbs harvested. I am sure chris will mention the milkshake.

Anyway, I should be in Cancun. but decided i really couldn’t face it [even though I would have enjoyed it once there] and it was expensive!!! so converted study leave into annual leave.

oh, I bought some goats milk, and we all liked it. SB is quite keen on the idea of a small farm. chris isn’t!!

3 Comments

Posted in art and crafts, Butterbean, General, literacy, music, numeracy, Stringbean, Stringbean's HE, writing