I opted for one of the newly opened Drake’s Trail walks on Dartmoor, near Burrator Reservoir These walks even have podcasts that go with them, so I added those to all the ipods for extra interest, and they were really well done, interesting and dare I say it, educational! I would definitely do the other walks in the series, even without any caches near them. This walk, however, just *happened* to be near a good 10 caches

Walking on Dartmoor is always lovely – especially beautiful on a sunny spring day like today … I think the rest of the family got bored with the caching but at least they were all easy finds and as it was Mother’s Day they weren’t allowed to moan! Poor Abbie struggled with her boots too, she only remembered half way round that they are too small for her now – she spent half the time walking along the Plymouth & Dartmoor railway in her socks! At least it wasn’t wet on the ground!

Got home and had cups of tea, baths, a bit of music practice, and I’m going to have to fold some laundry later.
For now, we’re finishing off the day by watching Casino Royale together, in anticipation of the release of Quantum of Solace this week – none of us have seen it yet and I’m going to buy it, nothing like a bit more Daniel Craig on the shelf

Firstly we went to the library and picked up as many books on the Romans as we possibly could. Josiah particularly enjoyed reading Usborne’s ‘The Story of Rome’ himself, it was just the right level.

I confess to having cheated slightly; while googling for Roman Lapbooks I found an Ancient Rome Lapbook pdf pack at the HomeschoolEstore.com, and figured I might as well save myself the hassle of planning the lapbook out for myself so I bought the pack. I must say I was fairly impressed with it, it was very comprehensive and I think both of us benefited from not having the think up the ideas for things to do in the lapbook! It helped us to break the project down into manageable study chunks, too – as we did each section (food, clothing, specific people & places, etc) we learned about them separately. We didn’t do all of it, but we used the sections that we fancied learning about, and Joe’s lapbook turned out really well.

Steve took Josiah to the RAMM museum in town, and they inspected lots of Roman things (coins, mosaic pieces, games etc.), dressed up, learnt some Latin words [wasn't impressed at the suggestion of learning more Latin though!] etc.

We had a trip to the Roman Baths in Bath, which was great.

We took a trip to a rather lovely mosaic shop in town, Opus Mosaic, and bought ourselves a few tiles to make a mosaic with. Actually the lady in the shop (its owner) was really helpful and it turned out that her teenage daughter had been home educated so we had a lovely chat about that as well! Abbie enjoyed helping with this – and it was a great opportunity to bring in some maths and ‘planning’ skills as Josiah mapped out his design on squared paper before doing the tiles. Still need to get some grout to finish it off!

We’ve touched on a fair bit of maths; not only with Roman numerals which Joe enjoyed doing, but also due to discussing the timeline and calendar we ended up talking about negative numbers a fair bit, and adding/subtracting them. Josiah looked at a few of the Roman emperors in his lapbook, and worked out their ages from their birth/death dates, some of which were fully BCE, some were CE so easy to work out, and some crossed the change between BCE and CE. Can’t quite get the hang of this BCE and CE thing, I kept slipping into BC and AD by accident. Anyway, I digress – he got on fine with the maths of it!

The project and lapbook were pretty much finished by half term, then we discovered that during half term week the museum were putting on some Romans activities so we went and did some of those, which was a great end to the project. I think Joe would say he’d enjoyed most of it, well all apart from the writing, anyway! He is such a reluctant writer, he must have actually written about 10 sentences at most.

Weblinks we used:
History For Kids Rome Links
BBC Schools Romans
Roman Empire – children’s section
The Romans in Britain

The wet night did make the whole site a bit muddy for a couple of days but nothing too terrible on our side of the site anyway. My parents did have a bit of a Kessingland week in their awning though, and ended up throwing their groundsheet away rather than cleaning it! Think swamp mixed with cowpats and you have the general idea, yuk.

We were camped with friends from one of the other churches in the network, which was nice, because we were the only campers there from our own local church, so it meant that the children had friends to play with, I had more hair to braid (!!) and we had friends to laze around and share coffee and wine with

Saw a number of old friends throughout the week which was nice, and we also saw rather a lot of my youngest brother as well, who clearly had too much time on his hands and kept coming back to be clambered on by small girls – lovely to have him around though.

The organised ‘churchy’ activities (for want of a better word!) consisted of various meetings most mornings and in the evenings too, as well as sports and other stuff going on during the afternoon. The children all had groups to go to, which they really enjoyed and got lots out of. I was on a team helping with the 3 and 4 year olds during the morning sessions, which was a lot of fun.

We had a couple of free days as well, where we escaped the site (it was *so* noisy!) and did our own thing. On the first day we went to Herstmonceux Science Centre where we met some of the Screamteam and most of the Monsterteenies, and had a fab day there. (I didn’t ever get my email from the Art Machine by the way, what happened to that I wonder?!)

On our other day off we ended up in Eastbourne visiting Ros & Tony at Bonners Music Superstore. Steve made himself at home immediately and made a long phonecall but for some reason didn’t want me to take a photo Anna made herself at home too We didn’t spend too much money though!

Mooched around Eastbourne for a while, then went swimming again, then ended up at Pevensey Castle on the way back to the campsite. Fab castle with lots of interesting different parts added over the years. Tried desperately to get a picture of all three children looking nice at the same time but after four attempts I gave up!

We spent a fair bit of time enjoying Ashburnham again; it is a gorgeous site. Tried hard to get the camera to do things it isn’t really cut out to do with the lens I was using but the results weren’t too bad, all things considered.

As an aside, my Flickr post bar has miraculously sprung back into life tonight after months of not recognising me as a user – don’t know what happened there but I’m very glad to have it back!

Got a bit of washing done today but generally lazed around as we were fairly exhausted. Our wonderful neighbour(s) had done a fantastic job with the guinea pigs which was an extra blessing.

Then violin practice as usual, but with the addition of a pair of chopsticks! These are stuck into the holes of the violin at right angles, and serve to stop Joe’s bow veering off at strange angles down the fingerboard.

Don’t know if other teachers do this sort of thing as well or if it’s just a Suzuki idea but I imagine it will help a lot if he practices with them over a longer period of time. For a while he had an old 35mm film pot tied around the fingerboard to make sure his left hand didn’t collapse inward, and that helped a lot (although he still has to be reminded about the left hand shape sometimes!).

Steve came home mid-morning and we worked all together on the garage – it is now completely cleared out, and a garage full of crap (really should have taken before and after photos as it is an incredible difference!) has been transformed into a mainly empty space with tools/decorating/gardening stuff stored tidily on shelves at one end, and bikes at the other.

The girls got home after school and everyone had ice pops on the patio and played with the guinea pigs for a while. Then Anna went off to do music practice and Joe & Abbie got ready for swimming. Joe’s doing really well with his swimming at the moment, and his teacher rang over half term to say she wanted to give him a trial in the next class up. This means that he’s in the same group as Abbie! At first he was pleased about the move, then said he didn’t want to change groups [my heart sank, dreading yet another swimming lesson related trauma!]. I later managed to ascertain that the only reason he didn’t want to change was that he thought it might mean no time in the bar upstairs (where there is a tv, snack machine etc.), so we went up and watched the Simpsons as usual. He was still a bit nervous, but made a good effort. The trial’s extending to next week, mainly to help me out as if I get used on jury duty I can’t get them both there until 5.30pm anyway! Joe’s a bit titchy compared to the rest of them, so hasn’t got the physical strength/stamina of most of the class, but he kept up well enough, I thought. And perhaps him catching up will spur Abbie on, too

Dressed up for a Viking Day at school. Did the vikings wear plaits in their hair, does anyone know?!

Also – just look at the length of those school jumper sleeves. Honestly, children round here just don’t stop growing, aargh!

Anyway, here you go, Anna, copy and paste away, darling

It was generally a lovely week, highlight for us probably being the day spent at Eden Camp (cunningly fitting in with Anna’s history project at school this term), despite the fact that Josiah was ill so he and Steve spent the afternoon in the van not in the museum, but anyway. Joe just had a high temperature and was back to normal the next day, thankfully.

The children really enjoyed spending time with their friends, as did we. In fact they were annoyed with us for dragging them to York one day rather than leaving them behind to play, but we had a nice walk around the city walls and wandered around (the outside of) the Minster as well as some birthday present shopping in the city centre.

The weekend
Was spent in various places; Steve and the children at home, and me away in London. They had a ball doing not very much although they did manage to buy new school shoes for Josiah, I’m not sorry to have missed that particular ordeal. They mooched around in town, had lunch in the park, and bought DVDs which they then went home and watched (Steve’s idea of a good day ). Apparently they missed me, because I don’t get cross as often as Daddy. Grass is always greener, I think, I’m sure I do!!

I was camping at Crystal Palace, where I went in order to meet an internet/acww friend! I decided to camp so that I could check out the site for possible future use ourselves, but as it turned out it was only 10 mins walk away from my friend’s house, so that was handy. And, she rents a room from a home educating family, I met her landlady as well so we compared Hesfes stories and I wished I was still a proper home educator. Ahem. Anyway, Chorna and I cooked, chatted, and played DS, all of which was lovely. And then I had some very self-indulgent time in the van as well, reading, sleeping, etc. Didn’t see London at all, but I couldn’t really be bothered, we’ll go back to the site again soon I’m sure. The drive home was horrendous, but the less said about that the better.

Got back into town, picked Anna up from her Wizard of Oz rehearsals, then went home to watch King Kong with friends for film night, we had dinner together in an extended interval too – quite enjoyed the film, at least I managed to stay awake for once! Mainly because we started it so early!!

Monday
Back to the usual routine (only not quite so usual as Russ is away for a couple of weeks so Steve and I are on full office duty), I think it’s the first day since school started again that Josiah hasn’t said he didn’t want to go.

Emma and Robyn moved in; they’re staying for a while because Steve’s parents’ house is undergoing major refurbishment. Meant I was finally forced into sorting out the cupboards and drawers in the music room which has needed doing ever since we moved house so that is a good thing! Might be chaotic to have them around all the time but on the other hand it could suit us all quite nicely and I’m sure she can babysit for us as much as we can for her

Got some new books for Anna; she’s doing WWII in school and is getting really into it, so thought it was the ideal opportunity to try and get her to read something different (having finished Harry Potter she’s back onto Lemony Snicket and while any reading is better than no reading, there is limited literary value in Lemony Snicket! although I notice The End is out soon, must get it and finally put the series to bed!). She fancied When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit so I’ve got hold of the trilogy for her, as well as a couple of Michelle Magorian books too. Don’t know if she’s actually going to read them but it’s worth a try! Now if only I could wean Abigail off those wretched fairy books …

Watched another film in the evening but have decided I can’t stand Nicolas Cage and anyway I was wifi-ing with acww friends at the same time which was more fun

Tuesday
I’m blogging from work This morning was interesting, getting everyone through breakfast, getting dressed, music practice etc. is bad enough usually but with Robyn thrown into the mix at that time in the morning it was even more chaotic. My children are *so* easily distracted! But we managed it with only one broken glass (Robyn ‘helping’ to empty the dishwasher!), and hey, it makes everything more exciting

Stopped for a quick drink in town and then came home for lunch. Pootled around in the afternoon, took a trip to the park, and then Emma came to pick Robyn up.