So, Monday was a day for recuperating, catching up – and lots of washing! Maths, English, SotW and lots of snuggling up in bed reading 🙂

Tuesday was swimming, where K surprised himself by managing to actually “properly” swim when the teacher suggested he try 😀 L managed to swim with no floats (although more under the water than not, so lots of putting feet down in order to get back up again 😆 ) and then J had a go, very cautiously and only in the toddler pool, and he managed a couple of strokes too! Hooray for Centerparcs!
After swimming we walked down the main ethnic shopping street (handily near the swimming pool) to find some interesting food for Chinese New Year stuff at Tots and Nots and also investigated a couple of charity shops 🙂

On Wednesday J had a Tudor day at Peterborough Museum so we drove there, leaving ourselves plenty of time to find it – fortunately as it turned out, since parking proved to be less straightforward than I’d hoped and we ended up having to walk a fair way and only just arriving in time, despite driving past the Museum several times in our hunt for a space. While J was learning leatherwork, use of herbs, blackwork, penmanship and various other relevant skills K, L, A and I did a dinosaur trail round the rest of the museum, finding lots of hands-on things to try and ending up by a crate of games and books on the top floor which kept us busy until lunchtime. We met up with J for lunch, which should have been halfway through his day, but he decided that he was feeling too tired to do the afternoon session and would rather go home and have a rest, especially as it was to be weapons and armour and a couple of weeks hanging around the MilPil at Kentwell had already taught him pretty much all about those 😉 We walked back to the car via the Queensgate Centre where we found a Lush and picked up a couple of Grab Bags 🙂 then he dozed in the car (must have been tired!) while we drove back. We realised we now had just enough time to get to A’s Baby Music, an unexpected bonus. While A and I were singing J did some English and K worked his way through random exercises in random workbooks he found in my bag (some of which I then had to rub out for L to do later 😆 ) then we dashed back for the boys’ gymnastics session, then home again with just enough time for J to swallow down some tea before Cubs – Wednesdays really are all go!

Chinese New Year at Tots and Nots went well, very low key but with a fair bit accomplished 🙂 We got there nice and early so Gina was able to do some piano while I did some French and that set the tone for the children getting a fair bit done in between bouts of playing and craft 🙂 We put out noodles and chopsticks for the little ones to play with (eating being a bonus 😉 ) and at snack time we had green tea mochi (possibly more Japanese, but never mind!), laver, Double Happiness Gold cake, multicoloured tapioca balls, coconut juice and herb tea. We hadn’t managed to get fortune cookies, so J wrote out lots of fortunes (imagine what he’d have said if I’d asked him to write 15 sentences, yet writing as many random fortunes very neatly on strips of paper was fine!) and we folded them and slid them into cookie rolls for people to pick as they left 😀
The children played Chinese Chequers (is that really Chinese?) and made lucky red envelopes and dollar bills to put into them (some of them gained lots of extra noughts to become multi-million dollar bills!) and Gina showed the children how to play tunes using the pentatonic scale on glockenspiels. There were puzzle sheets with word beginnings and endings to match up and copy out and generally all sorts of ways for us to quietly tick boxes that reading and writing had been done without the children even realising it 😉 A good session 🙂

Today was another busy day, starting with K opening :birthday: presents and cards (how on earth did he get to be seven already?!) and then everybody piling in to the car, which currently feels like a second home 🙁
J had the first of a series of Maths sessions with Uni student volunteers, then an Art workshop with one of our HE group mums who is an artist. Meanwhile K, L, A and I took E (while Gina kept an eye on the two Js) off to Ely Cathedral for an animal safari and a brass rubbing session. I think K was a little disappointed when he realised that the animal safari was only to be in the cathedral, rather than in an exciting animal park he had somehow overlooked last time we went 😆 but he enjoyed it once we started. The man running the session was new to it, which was a shame as it meant that he did not know the stories behind the animals and in one or two cases was not even sure exactly where the animals were; we had to go back and look for the whale in the choir stalls once the children realised he had missed it out because he couldn’t find it! It was still fun though, we were given sheets with pictures of the animals we should look for so the children had fun colouring them in, ticking them off or crossing them out once found and we made up our own stories where necessary 😛
The brass rubbing was in a different building (in the Cathedral Centre, where we had had lunch) and was basically set out as a classroom with lots of small brasses on tables, with black paper, masking tape, bronze crayons and little sheets describing what was on each picture. We were told to tape the paper over the brass, press round the edges to see where the picture was and then rub up and down so that the marks were all in the same direction and it looked better. Each child was supposed to do two, but most of them managed three in the time allowed and the lady running the session then started to mutter about cost… I was helping L and E, whilst keeping A happy on my back, so K started off independently and soon did his usual trick of acquiring a friendly grown-up, in the shape of the safari man, who presumably didn’t know about the two pictures limit; K ended up with a great sheaf of papers! BB added to it by giving him one of her rubbings as a birthday present, which he was very touched by – thanks BB 🙂
We dashed back to the car and just made it back in time to swap E for J before Gina had to go, then it was home again, with J fizzing about his day – so nice to see such enthusiasm :clap: He presented K with a robot he had made in the art session, which now seems to have become one of K’s favourite presents 🙂 and they chatted all the way home, then K and L played DS while J showed me the task he has as a challenge for next week’s session. He’s also been challenged to get to more than 72 on the factors and multiples game (I assume this is the game; will have to check with him in the morning) presumably playing it as a one person game and just getting as far as he can – 72 seems to be the record so far so he is keen to do better!
K chose the menu for tea tonight, so we had pizza and chips (he hadn’t even realised this was possible but was very chuffed when I agreed it might be 😆 ) and then a yummy mint chocolate fudge cake, which we stuck candles into so that we could do ceremonial singing and wishing.

And now I really should be writing my sermon for Sunday, because tomorrow the boys have astronomy and I’d like to get to slingmeet and scrap store while they’re there, then K’s godmother has suggested we all go bowling together…