On Monday. It was a fantastic day, perhaps best summed up by this video.
Highlights of the day included addressing, stamping, posting and franking letters, then travelling with them on the old post train, seeing how the mail bag exchanges used to be done (until 1971) on the track side, then collecting and sorting the mail and finally receiving back the letters we had posted in the first place. Activities were set up slightly differently for readers and non-readers to make sure everybody had a chance to join in at their own level and all my children voted the sorting to be the best part of the day and would happily have done it for twice as long 🙂 In between all that there were engines (including the original Thomas the Tank Engine – but with no face as that is now TM 🙁 ) and carriages to see, bridges and platforms to explore, a playground for letting off steam, a gift shop and a cafe to visit… and we still got back in time for L’s gymnastics and K’s Beavers 🙂
Not surprisingly then Tuesday morning was normals and catching up, then violin and gymnastics.
Wednesday was another Latinetc day, as last week’s had been a delayed one. Helen had brought a nice array of poisonous chemicals for the children to play with 
and they made invisible ink in different ways to see which method would be best for spies to use 🙂 Latin happened too, with both groups coming together to make up little doctor/patient plays which they performed at snack time. Music, both theory and practical, and French were squeezed in too, but we all agreed that we missed Merry’s craft as a keep-’em-busy time filler for those odd children in gaps between activities. Then almost before we knew it it was time to head over to cello and Baby Music and then back for a little more play with J, E and S as Gina wasn’t teaching until later. A quick tea for our Cubs as they had an early start to the meeting this week, with torches needed as they were to walk across the fields to the next village, where they were able to go into the church and ring the bells 🙂 an early night for K and L so that they at least wouldn’t be too tired today (but a late one for A who had napped after Baby Music) and an evening of Suma ordering and whittling for me.
Today was Tots and Philosophy. K was initially not very keen, as he said they had been repeating lots of things last time, but after being persuaded to give it another try he came out happily saying that they had moved on this week and it had been great again 😀 M seemed to cope, L loved it and J was happy enough. Despite traffic we managed an early start and fitted K and M piano and J/J French in before Tots started, while L, S and A had fun with large amounts of newly-arrived MegaBloks and the play-dough and laminated mats from last week. We had a few new families this week, which is lovely, but always seems to make for more chat and less work, leaving us with a few boxes unticked at the end of the day. Normally this wouldn’t matter at all, but we seem to be in the middle of an incredibly busy period just now and we’re struggling to get any sensible amount of work done at all. Free films this week and next will take up more time, and lots of visits seem to have been planned all at once too. I’ve already declared next week to be half-term and warned the children that we will use the break from activities offered by actual half-term to catch up on normals. Such a slave-driver I am 😉
Anyhoo, after Philosophy Gina grabbed various people and did recorders then we sat and talked poetry while we ate lunch. A bit more French (persuading K’s friend K [why must both my boys have friends with the same initial??] to have a go too) – playing games with knife, fork and spoon then looking at food vocab – and lots of play and it was time to leave. Maths just had to happen when we got home, although it was only finishing off yesterday’s work really. Ah well, tomorrow is another day – and we’ll be spending a fair bit of it at the cinema…
