Monday was the beginning of our quiet week this fortnight, and started with a bit of a lie-in all round – I think as the weather gets worse the urge to hibernate increases!
Maths and English happened, and so did a bit of house-tidying since the weekend had been too busy (again!). History, spread through the week but starting on Monday, took the form of writing up our Kentwell trip and putting it into the back of the folders as a point to aim for and then watching this documentary on Celtic Britain, which was very good but long enough to merit breaking up into manageable chunks – easily done as there are four separate programmes within the one video. This week’s History will be to write up the Celts so that we can move on to the transition to Roman Britain – already covered a little by the last of the four programmes. If the weather permits, we’ll also head off to Flag Fen to see the Iron Age camp there; otherwise we may have to backtrack later.
On Monday afternoon K and A had cello and then we got back to find that a couple of HE families I had agreed to do some French with were already here so I came straight in to a lesson while the children sorted themselves out for half an hour. Then K and L went to football, which was slightly damp but not enough to merit using “the cage” rather than the grass, apparently, so that’s an experience yet to come. L wore a pair of J’s old football boots, which were better than trainers for grip but turned out to be not completely waterproof so he got one damp sock!
Meanwhile Bob was at a meeting about J’s forthcoming orchestra trip and J was doing his online English course and somehow in amongst everything else Lfish’s Guides got completely forgotten until about half an hour before it was due to end, by which time she was in pyjamas and curled up on the settee with the others watching something lighthearted… Ho hum.
Tuesday began with a visit from the social worker (and her student) for L, just to check that all is well. She looked at some of his English work with him and chatted a bit and then declared him happy and healthy and left, with an appointment to return in just under six weeks for the next check. Phew! Flag Fen had been on the menu but we decided to watch more of the documentary instead, with brief forays out to the garden when weather permitted, as well as the usual everyday bookwork and music practices, making the most of a quiet week 😉 Kfish wanted to try making soap and found a kit in the annexe waiting to be used, so we made a basic start, with a view to trying more fancy things later on. Afish had Brownies, but other than that there was no reason for anyone to go anywhere – a nice change for us this term!
Wednesday was another quiet day; I think we all needed this week of calm! Bob was working from home, so I was able to leave L and Afish here when I took Kfish and Lfish to choir and Jfish to Italian. We had intended to leave with enough time to take K’s cello and bow to the strings shop and ask for advice about his recent loss of tone but somehow that didn’t happen. Lfish and I went in to talk to them anyway, while K was at choir, and arranged to go back in on Friday for him to try bows.
On Thursday we thought about trying the Cambourne multisport but staying at home won out in the end. In fact, since trombone was cancelled it was another day with no need to go anywhere until Afish’s gym class at 5 🙂 I recently bought the What Your Child Needs to Know books for year 3 and year 6 for Lfish and Afish, who both love reading them – so much so that I think I might pick up the other years too, just so they have more to look at when they’ve finished 😀 A’s current chapter suggested soap carving as an activity (to make a frieze) which she thought sounded a really good idea, so we decided to do some practical History. The weather being better again we took ourselves outside and did some cave art with read paint (to be ochre) – fingerpainting, blowing and splattering. Then we took a bar of soap each and pretended it was bone, to be carved like the artifacts we saw at Cresswell Crags.Even J came and joined in the fun. It started to rain so we had to bring everything indoors in a big hurry, and the carving took so much time and effort that it stayed as an ongoing project for several days – in fact some are still not quite finished. We also have a little bowl of soap shavings to try to melt down and mould back into a bar 🙂 The rain got harder and led to lots of playing in the rain and getting very wet – then hot baths and showers to warm up again.
Friday began too late to allow us to get back to the multisport session we had optimistically thought might be good every other week. Ah well. In the afternoon Lfish had violin and we were somehow running so late by then that we ended up taking lunch with us to eat in the car (I think it was all the soap carving that slowed us down :lol:) and all going to violin rather than having time for a library drop-off first. The strings shop is close to where I often drop the boys off for the library anyway so we all went there and K showed the owner his old bow. The man asked if he had been given a medal as well as a distinction for his grade 5, for using such an elderly and decrepit bow, and proffered a new one which he said was not really a grade 6 bow but was cheap, miles better than the old one and would see him through until he goes up a cello size anyway. Very nice man 😀
Choir, library, music hub, choir… and home 🙂
Saturday was a shopping day for J and me – once his English was finally done. Procrastination rules! The others had music school, then L had gym and then we all did some housework and gardening, so it felt like quite a productive afternoon 🙂 We finished the day with Great British Bake Off and home-made pizza 🙂
Soap carving often done here though the cheap supermarket soap has proved disappointing as splits too easily. Moisturising soap seems easier to carve.