Petits Haricots

another great day with friends, this time the deependers with their en famille daughter. A history day, but some friends had broken cars, and others appointments to keep and others still extra working days. The theme was trade with china – lord macartney and opium, and also coal and steam. We took an artist from the period as well = turner. We met the deependers en famille daughter as well, who is lovely and SB is more than ever keen to go.

DH thought we should use our skills to potentially create opium but instead we baked bread and put poppy seeds on the rolls and discussed opium, what it does and how it is used and abused [PSHE?] . Our bread roll baking does seem to be going well. We clearly had to let it prove, knock back and shape and then cook, but here are the finished loaves, v well received

Following that, K took everyone in the conservatory to make bonsai trees from pipe cleaners, wire, felt and sequins. This was to discuss Macartneys mission to China, develop the need for trade to be 2 way idea, and discuss kowtowing. ANyway, it is thought his emabssy may have brought back bonsai . SB spent ages making her bonsai. We also looked at a book of bonsai and discussed the techniques. I think we will dig up some seedlings and have a go – meant to do that in history as well but ran out of time!

After the obligatory pasta lunch, we then discussed the life and art of Turner, and used watercolours to try and get some of his blurry shots. There is a gap here as k-the-younger only finished after i took the pick. K and I did one each too, as nice and relaxing. I agree with waldorf that using good materials enhances the learning. Poster paint wouldn’t have had the same impact here as watercolour. I have to say, we def aren’t Steiner educators tho, just like many learning philosophies there are interesting and relevant bits to pick up.

Our final history was to discuss steam, making workable steam engines, the beginning of the end for the cottage industry and the rise of mechanisation, and from their industrialisation. I would have discussed luddites, but TBH, the pop pop boats were far too much fun K had bought some some while ago at Greenbelt, so we didn’t self assemble, but that is on our list of things to do

A great day, thankyou

Tues was pottery group for BB, and she brought back a fair bit of work already done. SHe really enjoys pottery

my parents came up to visit, having holidayed in turkey. Dad did some garden tidying up for us, mum some music practice with the girls. We had some good chatting in the evening, and they found out about en famille – slightly less shocking that home ed it seems . Lovely seeing my parents, we just don’t do it quite enough really. And I got a present – some pomegranite and pistacio turkish delight – yum [i only like proper turkish delight]

Saturday we went out to kentwell open day. I had a storming migraine of massive proportions [which ended up lasting 5 days - grr!] and so mostly sat in my chair trying out the appearance of human However, looking forward to Kentwell in the summer – do come and visit! As we left it suddenly tipped it down in mega flood proportions and then hailed – fabulous. It immediately reminded me of duke of edinburgh award

The day after was our en famille home visit. Ever since SB has had friends going off doing en famille exchanges, i have always been pleased she has shown no interest whatsoever. However, last year she declared she was ready to go, to the point that she got the forms and filled them out. SO we did too. I have to saythat i will miss her massively if we get matched, am not sure the whole 6 months away is bearable, and worth it for me, even if she would speak fluent french on return. However, for her, she is absolutely sure this is something that she would love to try. S here goes, we have applied, been to meetings, and now had our home visit. Hopefully that went ok too. not sure what they are looking for! SB made fab choc pudding again tho, that may be a swaying factor in her benefit

i did some gardening, sweetcorn second lot sown now as well. Next thing to do will be potting out and on the toms etc.

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.