Not a promising start, as I woke up feeling as though I had been gargling razorblades 🙁
L’s hand absolutely fine though 🙂
We had to go to Friday Club, as I had the key to the building, but if it hadn’t been for that I’d’ve skived, I think. Nobody dawdled exactly, so no shouting and not much grumping, but by the time we were all ready, with lunch, sketchbooks, watercolours, spare nappies, things to take and show people (bilibos this time), things to return to other people, little pieces of card with double-sided sticky tape on them, laminator and pouches it was too late to do the collecting things on the way that we had planned and we had to phone Bob to get him to phone S and say we’d go on the way home instead… Fortunately this meant that we were now on time for Friday Club itself so no stress 😀
We met at the Rec (where we usually go after the session just to play) for our termly nature walk. Somewhat depleted, as three out of six families weren’t there, and rather young-child-heavy, we decided to set out anyway, making the most of glorious sunshine and trying to ignore the rather vicious wind. The sticky-tape cards were a hit and all the children were soon rushing round looking for things to stick on them and needing to be reminded that whatever they chose would have to fit through the laminator (so no, J, that piece of bark is not a good idea!); this handily distracted attention from the fact that none of the mums who were there were ones who normally lead the walks, as we know about as much about it as the children 😕 I really need to get a good nature guide, especially to UK trees and woodland. The worst thing is that I used to know lots, but it all seems to have trickled away… Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to teach the children when I remember so little of anything I have learned myself 🙁
Once we were all thoroughly chilly, well-laden with bits of greenery and tired of spotting sticky buds, early blossom and furry or dangly catkins and then having to guess which tree they came from and what it might be we went back to the church centre for a cup of tea and snack-time, then did the laminating, which worked fairly well, especially considering the chunkiness of some of the things the children had collected. I’m not sure how well they will last or how good they will be as bookmarks, but in both cases I think the answer is that being laminated gives them a better chance! Then set up watercolour paints and pencils and did some sketching and painting. Incredibly hard to persuade the children, especially K and L, that their Nature Study sketchbooks really are just for that and not for random pictures they feel like doing. I started to feel like horrible pushy/strict mother, but I do think they need to learn that some things are for a specific purpose – they have lots of opportunity (and paper!) for free expression, but only three or four specially planned nature study times a year and only one specially designated book. Perhaps if we did more it would help. All of them can produce really nice work if you can just get them to focus, but it’s very hard to get that focus… I did some sketching and painting myself, as A was pottering happily. I’m not good, but I am starting to enjoy it and I think it is hard to expect the children to do discipline I am not prepared to practise, including modelling making an effort and trying to be pleased with the process even when the results can be less than we would have liked, if that makes sense.
Lunch was late (bilibos went down well and kept them all busy while we got it ready 😉 ) and we were all tired so decided to just finish after lunch, without the usual trip to the park, which meant that even though we had things to collect from S on the way home we were still back by about our usual time.
Both boys did bookwork without complaining (!) and Bob arrived home and took L and A off to do something upstairs so we could finish in peace, then a bit of pootering before tea and bed – not too bad, as days go, except that the computer decided to turn itself off just as K was doing really well on a new game and then said it had overheated and was generally unhappy 🙁 So it’s Bob’s work laptop or nothing until he manages to sort the problem…
