On Friday I had my first whole day as sole parent for a long time, as Katy was off to London to help sell nappies at a baby show.
After the common getting dressed inertia, I managed get everyone into the car and off to the post office to pick up undelivered parcels, then off to Friday Club. The children had all been before but I hadn’t, so the fear of not finding the place and so on was tempered by finding out what they get up to as I’ve heard about it a lot. It was in a village I’d never been to but fortunately it was easy to find.
There were only three other families – the planned nature walk plus bad weather plus half term may have scared people off. Shoes off at the door led to lots of skidding on the polished floor (this appeared to be normal). It is a churchy group, so prayers and songs first, and the we did a bit about autumn weather via percussion instruments which was nice. Each child had to pick an instrument and think how it could represent weather: L had triangle for gentle drops of rain, K had maracca for wind in the trees, J was heavy rain and we all did thunder by stamping on the floor. As the leader told a story everyone had to join in as the weather did their thing.
After that were slightly disorganised but fun games. I had the unenviable task of dividing a mixed age and ability group with several sets of friends into two roughly equal teams. Then was snack time where Katy’s cooking was enjoyed by all. Next was the main event – the nature walk. Down to the local recreation ground for a walk looking at trees (autumn leaf colours, conkers, seeds etc.). The rain had stopped, the sun was out and the children and adults enjoyed themselves. Back for lunch, then painting things we’d collected (L did some abstract art, K did a good set of conkers and J drew a huge mushroom he’d picked showing all the gills). More songs then home via some playing the churchyard. On the way home we got stuck in the [mostly private] school run. Another benefit of Home Ed. to society in general is that, even when we do drive to things, it’s rarely at rush hour if we can at all avoid it.
Tea and bed solo (Katy was still on her way back from London). I was at last re-united with my beautiful wife who was exhausted after standing pretty much all day :(. Being masochistic I decided to end the day trying to sort out our old scanner with our current PC, so that we could submit the children’s entries via email to the Nature Detectives competition at the last minute as the deadline appeared to have just passed. I went to bed late and defeated :(.
