Lovely weekend with the Rainedrops, including church on Sunday morning (and actually we just realised that M has still only been to a Catholic church – I think this week we must try to get him to Mass on Saturday and then to the Methodist church with us on Sunday so he can see what differences and similarities there are) and some game playing.
We had an uneventful trip back, thank goodness, but a very late night, having set off at children’s bedtime, and then a slow start to Monday, with music practice and not much else until the afternoon when the four older children were all booked into an activities roadshow in a park down the road. It was free, lasted 2 1/2 hours and seemed to cover a wide variety of fun sports and games – at £5 a head it would still have been great value so to get it free was fab 🙂 A and I stayed and played in the playground for an hour then popped home for a cup of tea before going back to pick them all up (and spend another half hour in the playground).
On Tuesday I was doing a sling morning so the children all came with me and worked or played in varying proportions while I talked six people (five families) through the why and how of sling use then we went to Gina’s for an afternoon of Geography, Maths, English and so on – an attempt to catch up a bit without the children feeling hard done by, so lots of playing as well – World of Goo is now on my “investigate” list 😉
Wednesday was Latinetc, with some great chemistry experiments involving substitution reactions, Latin, sewing (M was particularly pleased with the little cushion he made 🙂 ), parachute games in the field to make the most of the unseasonably warm weather and even a little French (but not for M!). No Baby Music or ‘cello this week meant we could go on longer than usual so there was plenty of time for play and chat too.
J should have had a swimming lesson each morning this week, but they were cancelled as not enough children had signed up. However a leisure centre relatively nearby was offering free lessons for children on Thurs and Fri as they had a training course for teachers and lifeguards so we decided to sign the boys up for both days and L for just Friday. On the basis of what Bob told them over the phone M was put into the most advanced group, which left him very tired and feeling slightly overwhelmed, so we have asked for him to be moved down a group tomorrow. J was a Beginner today and will try Post-beginner tomorrow, while K is a happy Beginner and L will join him there. That meant L and A came with me to Tots while M, J and K went with Bob to swimming and then came along to Tots afterwards, which in turn meant that not a great deal happened work-wise at Tots, although some rather lovely pumpkin paper plates were painted 🙂 M was so tired after a busy week and a very hard swimming lesson that piano lesson was put off (it is half-term after all!) and we came home to make popcorn, flop on the settee and watch videos. Oh, and roast a nice blue pumpkin for baking 🙂