I know what you did last summer…

Not the teen horror film, but a thought I had last night. It was a Twilight at the Museums event where we used to live, and Katy took J and A to the botanical gardens while I took K and L to the Fitzwilliam Museum. We had to queue for ages to get in, but they waited very patiently (minor proud daddy moment) and we finally got in and were given a sheet to fill in.

The first room was the armoury, full of impressive suits of armour and weapons, including a fully armoured knight on horseback with lance. (Little fact I learned today from Wikipedia while trying to enter something into True Knowledgelance comes from the French word lancer (to throw) because it started out as a spear.)

Anyway, K saw a particular display case and said “Look, a zweihander!” Yes, a dirty great German sword from 1580 (in this case), used to attack rows of pikemen by anyone brave / foolish / drunk enough to do so, and strong enough to lift and swing the thing. The time spent listening to my patter on the MilPil (military pavilion) seems to have entered his long term memory – I’m not sure whether to be pleased or worried!

We’re liking…

Geography games – mostly European countries and Capital cities so far, but I’m branching out into African countries; can’t let the children do things I can’t do better 😉

Phonics resources and Bridge to Reading from Owl and Mouse

Seussville

The Animation Station

Bev Evans letter formation stuff (bottom of page)

Online Set game

I’m sure there’s more, but that’ll do for now 🙂

Two weeks for the price of one ;)

Well, bowling didn’t happen (one of the perils of having a godmother in high places!) but it will sometime…
Astronomy was good, apparently, slingmeet was good, scrapstore was great! Service prep happened and the sermon was preached 🙂

And then the snow came…

Monday should have been CHEF sports, but it was cancelled due to snow. Any good intentions of catching up with work faded away as the white stuff came down and we took a day off to play. Big Alice came round too (there wasn’t much snow here, really, although apparently rather more where sports should have happened) and we made a petite snowman and threw a few snowballs 🙂

By Tuesday the snow had pretty much gone, so CHEF swimming was on as normal. It was a pretty average day all round really 🙂

Wednesday was Latin etc, which was minus Puddle girls and felt rather quiet. We did lots of revision of vocab in Latin, and a couple of games, rather than starting new stuff, and we combined the two groups back into one. Science involved a Baby Annie and some more or less dramatic first aid, then some X-ray drawing, all of which went down well 🙂 We did some Winter vocab pictures in French, using some of the posh Scrapstore card and crayons to make a change from paper 😉 At the end some spontaneous music happened, including notation using colours to represent the bells. L and Em were given a couple of bells to take to another room so they didn’t disturb El and C who were creating in the dining room (why do we call it that, when we never eat in there?) and Gina did general encouragement of both groups, when baby-chasing permitted 😆
Baby Music – and A was very chuffed to join in with the “Hello Kate” and “Goodbye Kate” bits she had been quietly practising all week. The plastic bag Kate uses for teddies was looking a bit tattered so L decided we should decorate a cloth bag for her to use instead. We took bits to Gymnastics, but got sidetracked…
J made a birdfeeder at Cubs, using a 1l plastic bottle, a drill and a twig. He was very chuffed to have been able to do the drilling himself 🙂

Thursday found us under several cm of snow. I was uncertain about doing Tots, but a phone call to someone nearer to church revealed that there was rather less snow there so we decided we ought to go. In the end several families turned up, so it was as well that we did. We got a fair bit of box ticking work done too, which is always a bonus. J and J spent quite a while in the garden throwing snowballs through the window of the wendy house then stepping back to make it harder – target practice but without anyone getting cold, wet or hurt 😉 Bob was working from home, so when we got in we persuaded him to take an hour out and come and play in the snow; we built a large snow penguin and repaired a couple of battered snow forts we found abandoned in the field behind the house 🙂

Friday’s Maths and Art workshops were cancelled, as by then the snow had started to settle in. Our alternative plan of meeting up with Gina was also scuppered as the snow got more serious. Instead we ticked a few work boxes and then skated down the road to visit Emma. The children played with her boys while we chatted and we ended up staying there until Bob came to pick us up after work.

Sadly the weekend is a blank on the calendar and in my mind, so if anything interesting happened it will be up to Bob to blog it… I think that’s when A started to be under the weather 😕

We didn’t make it to swimming on Tuesday. J was ready (amazing!) but K and L were on a go-slow, even though they both desperately wanted to go and J didn’t. A clinched it by being generally grotty so I pointed out to the children that this was an excellent chance to get lots of work done… should have thought of that earlier; they were in the car in seconds! sadly by then it was too late. I got J and K to work it out and even with best possible timings all round we’d have missed most of the first lesson (the one J and L are both in) and on a wet snowy day best possible timings were unlikely anyway. We did lots of Maths :frog: and lots of cooking too, made cards to post to a friend and then walked to the post office with a parcel and just kept going to the playground 🙂

Wednesday wasn’t a latinetc day, but because we had missed out on seeing Gina and co on Friday we suggested they come here between cello and Baby Music. Gina whisked children off one or two at a time to do Music things while the rest of us did some French (Oh la la regardez-moi! J’ai trois… un deux trois! with much hilarity at odd choices of things we could have three of…) and then L and Em decorated a bear bag for Kate, assisted by J and K. It looked good, but we didn’t get a pic as we had to dash off to get to Baby Music.
We made the mistake of coming home between BM and Gym, as there seemed to be more time than usual. Of course we then started doing other things and ended up being late for gymnastics *sigh* but the boys had a good session nevertheless and L got lots of alphabet/handwriting “work” done. We were sitting next to a mum who was doing a workbook with her daughter (pre-school aged, but old in year) and was very interested in HE not from a doing it pov but from the “what do you do?” angle. I’m never quite sure how much detail people like that want! No Cubs so we were able to collect our stuff calmly for a change and eat tea at a civilised pace 🙂

Thursday was a Book Club week at Tots, but with a new twist. There’s a new 8+ multisport session being trialled on Thursday afternoon, the other side of the city, an hour later than multisports used to be. This means it is now at the same time we used to finish Tots, so we had to rush to get done in time to get there. It also means that the older children who come for book club hang around a lot longer. It caught me on the hop a bit; I hadn’t banked on the hanging around bit and had hoped to wangle a lift for J so we wouldn’t have to rush to get him there. As it turned out, the boot was on the other foot (a nice turn of phrase J and I were discussing this week) and we ended up giving a lift to the child of the person I had hoped would give J a lift. I need to find strategies for getting people either to leave promptly so that I can tidy up and still be out in time or to stay and help in a helpful way… We also need to think of something for the older ones to do which does not involve (or have the side effect of) trampling small children underfoot, climbing on mountains of chairs or breaking toddler toys…

We made it to Multisport in time, despite my not actually knowing where it was – a lucky guess as we sat at a junction asking ourselves whether we should go left or right helped! The venue was good, although we had only been able to afford to hire a section of the court so full games were not possible; the staff soon put a stop to it when the group spread out too far. It’s the same instructor as for Monday sports, but he had them doing more things, including boxing 😯 I think it could work well, especially if we can double it up with something for the younger children too, so that we have more attendees and can use more of the space. Apparently the hall is also used for trampolining sometimes, so that’s a possibility, and Gina said interesting things about fencing, which would be very cool. The foyer is a big enough space for siblings and parents to be, but it’s a long time to just hang around. In the short term I think we might use the nearby library for at least some of the time, or get lifts for J and J so we can linger at Tots a bit more and not have so much time to kill.
I felt gradually more and more ill throughout the day and only managed to get home (via dropping off J’s friend) by combined force of willpower and chocolate, not helped by horrendous traffic because we had stayed longer than expected. Handed over to Bob and retired with lots of pillows, honey and Olbas oil!

Maths and Art on Friday is rapidly becoming the highlight of J’s week 🙂 Today was a quick recap of the task they had from last time and something about fibonacci numbers, most of which we managed to miss because J and I both overslept and that made us late 🙁 Then they did some work on symmetry. Next time will be money, then integers and then some red nose day maths 🙂 The parent who is organising it and who helps with the sessions said that J and J were both doing really well, which was good to hear given that they squeaked into the group by virtue of being interested and able enough to outweigh their youth (it’s a 10+ group officially). Art was a continuation of last time, looking at textures and materials and making figures. Next time they’re going to start on portraits, including self-portraits if we can get enough mirrors.
Gina and I had both brought lots for the others to do, but after playing a few games they decided that the lure of the garden was too great and disappeared off to play on scooters and trikes and to whisper and plot in the Wendy house. There’ll be time for books later 😛

Saturday was a day for collapsing and recovering, but with lots of little jobs getting in the way – parcels to collect, presents to post and so on. Big Alice had offered to babysit and I had cinema vouchers from PIL for my birthday so we decided to eat a nice meal with the children and Alice and then scarper. Hoped to see Slumdog Millionaire, but you can’t prebook with vouchers and even though we got there early it was already full, so we ended up waiting for an hour and then watching He’s Just Not That Into You instead, as did most of the rest of the queue! Given the title I wasn’t setting my expectations very high, but it was alright, reminiscent of Love Actually but a bit simpler. Certainly not a bad way to while away a couple of hours 🙂 Perhaps I’d be more choosy if the whole going to the cinema thing wasn’t such a treat in itself!

A late night on Saturday pretty much wiped me out for Sunday, but we managed to send J and Alice off in moderately good time. They were going on a Cubs/Beavers trip to dig channels round a pond in a local nature reserve. I’m not entirely sure why. Still, they both got back muddy but happy at lunchtime and then we had a nothing much afternoon with Big Alice and an evening enlivened by winning a tent on ebay which means we now need to work out how to get to Cornwall to collect it. Perhaps that’ll teach me not to put bids on things because I don’t think I’ll get them, or not to look at ebay when I’m tired, low and poorly…