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or week -2. It is sooo hard, i feel like a bottle of champagne being picked up, that fizz reaction is starting! I have 2 more weeks to go though before I can let all that emotion out. Oh My Goodness! However, speaking to her, I try and remember to ask about france, advising her to make the most of the time she has left, live and love there and truly feel it speak through her. No, i don’t say that exactly, she would just roll her eyes at me! But that is what I hope she does. Pick up some gallic insoucience.

She went to a schoolfriends house for the whole day today and loved it she crimped her hair and thinks it looks fab. Whilst on the phone she was joking with her big sis C and FrB and sounds very self assured. I guess we will have the full lowdown when she returns and tells us all the ins and outs. I do wish she had done more with her blog, more of an online journal to look back on. we did ask her to blog a typical day but life is clearly too much fun and too busy. I am glad that she has had such a wonderful time. Next weekend she has 2 sequential sleepovers with schoolfriends. have suggested she takes her camera so she has memories of them and the time she shared with her friends.

Oh, and I am just so excited that she is coming back soon. I just haven’t really let myself see up to that date, but stopped my thoughts just before, and restarted them the week after when FrB joins us. However, that fizz reaction has started…

This was a game designed and made by bb based on settlers. We need to tweak it a bit but we enjoyed it and bb enjoyed designing it.

Good everything week really. Good bookishness, good social including new group to out and about

we have bought , as a temporary measure, a second hand sofa and chair for our front room. they fit beautifully and look better and are quite comfortable, as well as having a 0 less than the duresta ones I fancied!

with the sun shining, it was perfect

this week BB tried out a new history group for its first session on romans. she went on friday. she enjoyed it, tho said she knew it already and she would have liked a few more crafts. Having said that, she has regaled me with snippets about romans all day today, so clearly she listened carefully and it was a good session. unfortunately she will miss the next 2 sessions as they happen on our holidays . No photos tho, as a friday thing done with DH.

Also she did some more of her airfix kit, and started a robot kit.

Other new groups are in the offing. BB is going to a young engineers group with our local Home ed group. We are hoping a composition group comes of for SB and FrB, and hopefully BB too [tho not sure what she will make of it] and DH is contemplating setting up a more teen like group and hopefully actioning some short courses at a not quite local outdoors place. Already with our local home ed group the girls do a conservation session and multisports. You never see pics on this blog tho, as DH is in charge of all days bar weds, and he doesn’t take photos or blog! But these things still go on, and BB is really enjoying them. Hopefully when we have FrB he will take a few, and maybe blog so that V and E can see that all is well.

So, onto today! We got up late having gone to bed late last night. in fact bb fell asleep snuggling up to me watching Jem’s explosions. we watched this when it first came out, but i knew she would enjoy it. We have made gunpowder a number of times for home ed experimentation [within the law, small amounts, not stored but used immediately, and set on fire but not enclosed so not an explosive] . We giggled about having a go with the honey version – tho it does look scary! but we will definitely not make guncotton! oh yes, back to today BB started with minecrafting, and was on a private group server which she enjoys and skyping with the eldest of TheB’s children, tho i think all came on in the end. When i could drag her off she made pancake herself and then we did some more of her minecraft edition of settlers. finished the board and made the fimo game pieces. she worked out how she wanted the board and charged me with ‘putting the numbers in’ so I hope that bit works out.

we did do some of the homeed things she only likes to do with me. that list is currently getting longer! so she waits for the weekend or weds for the collins, music theory, piano and whatever! tho today she actually did conquer maths with me as had been stuck on carrying over [now sorted] and the schofield and simms science book – which she loved because she ‘had a reason to write poop’!!! [seed dispersal]

bb’s fav game with me is the snake game – we pretend my arms are snakes and she tries and stuff into sleeves and we have a tickle/marmalisation fest . we played a lot! now she is back on minecraft and i am wonering if the dhal will ever cook or the split peas too old [ 1 hour 45 so far]. need to get bb to bed!!

to be continued…

BB likes playing settlers of catan. it crossed her mind that all the resources can be found on minecraft. she LOVES playing minecraft. SO the minecrafters of catan 2 player game was born. [in our house, and not for sale, so hopefully not impinging on copywrites etc as we have the original games!]

we started by printing our resource cards

and we backed them on card.
We then thought about the development cards – and BB decided that currently she doesn’t want any, tho we can build them in at some point. We put the usual recipes on a card and then also decided what we were doing with the dice rolls, as BB wanted some opportunities to pick up cards of her choice.

The board took a bit of thinking about! she only wanted nine tiles on it, so couldn’t be 2 of each, and she wanted them to be spaced properly. In the end we decided that we could divide the squares, and then have different numbers on the divisions.

so finally it looked like this:

We then made our play pieces out of fimo, which turned out to look like slimes vs diamond. SO we made a steve instead of the robber.

SO now we just have to play the game to see if it works

TheB and co joined us today for weds4ed and we had a great time. although again had a 24 hour shift, i did at least get to spend the post midnight on call bit of it at home! so not as shattered as last week. i did some prep, looked up Mondrian, printed bits off, and looked up what is doable with what i have of the next section of young engineers. need to speak to bigger group about what they want to commit to tho, as it does cost to do any others due to kit considerations.

so here we are doing oils in the style of mondrian, having heard a bit about his life, the movement, and the progession of his art and vision of the future.

when the paintings are dry, we plan to go over the lines with black thick marker – steadier than paint! it was good to use a different medium of oils onto oil paper, and we got quite differing things out of the brief. Kids all enjoyed it, and i think also enjoyed using oils for a change. When they are complete they will go into the ‘tableau’ shot!

TheB then did maths games whilst i got the pasta going. a nine mens morris game, followed by a cunning card strategy game. This week BB in a far better frame of mind and enjoyed playing all the games. I am intrigued enough by the card game to have a few iterations of it to see what the best strategy would be

The young engineers activity this time [from the Be ENGineous section, as I am a registered Young Engineers leader] was producing, packaging and marketing bathbombs. I just happened to have all the ingredients. I have to say, it did surprise me a bit that bath bomb making was in the younge engineers stuff, but the kids really enjoyed doing it. They did it all very nicely, and found helping each other worked better. R’s was very puffy to start with, but did solidify!

we then tried out one of the bathbombs each in warm water. BB’s didn’t come out of the ramekin, but it did demonstrate very nicely that the reaction is endothermic, as the water in the ramekin became quickly cooler. Following this was some messy water play…

The children finished off at minecraft. unfortunately i had a ‘short conference call’ lasting nearly an hour!! we said goodbye to TheB , BB did some non verbal reasoning and piano prac, but unfortunately went completely wobbly over the theory – i thought the jump was too big, and now we are at an impasse… i am sure we can sort this out. She enjoyed judo, and we snuggled watching a film rather than her minecrafting the evening away.

sometime ago, some minecrafted out parents of minecraft crazy kids suggested meeting up. the original plan was to meet at TheB’s but their house is currently semiruutus. so we met here instead. the date eagerly awaited by the 3 family children, and they were allowed to advertise it on their limited group internet forum and luckilly it was limited as we had lots of friends rather than thousands of unknown fbookers arrive! some did one day, some did both.

DH had set up the dining room for a massive LAN party, and it did have the look of a serious IT class! those that could brought laptops or desktops, and we had some too. we sorted out a world [tho may do that differently next time!] and the kids got stuck in. apparently it was v v noisy!

of course not every child in every family was minecraft crazy! so we did have some older teens meeting, chatting, giggling and we had some little ones with the brio, a bit of board games and a lot of adults drinking tea

the kids almost all went to bed very late, and we had 13 of them sharing a room, so didn’t necessarily sleep!! but they were up bright and early for more of the same on the sunday. the traditional ‘second breakfast’ of pancakes was enjoyed and people started leaving somewhere between late lunch and the evening. We all had a fab time, and thought worth trying again some time!