just another morning here

Finally got around to writing the review after finding the photo in the depths of my camera! Will copy to the appropriate places asap

We received the ‘Great Oceans’ Ein-O science kit from Play Merrily a couple of weeks ago. Josiah (8) really enjoyed unpacking it and independently doing the activities that he could from the kit. One of the experiments required the additional purchase of some seeds, it is a shame that these were not included in the kit, as we still haven’t got round to this one! Otherwise it was informative and fun; the instructional book was clear, well presented, and gave all the appropriate background information to the activities.
These science kits would make great birthday presents for 8-10 year old children especially.

Not difficult to blog in 10 minutes here, as we rarely do anything out of the ordinary at the moment! The days go by containing school, work, and various kids’ lessons, and then we all go to bed – usually Steve and I around the same time as the kids!

The highlight of last week for me was having the opportunity to attend the first session of a National Autistic Society course on understanding autism in the early years, which the TAs in my class got a place on due to the parents of one of our class children having a place on the course as well. I’m hoping to attend a few more in the next few weeks although we are sharing them between us, so I won’t get to do the whole course. It was really interesting, from both a professional and a personal point of view.

Our weekend was really busy and mainly taken up with mainly musical activities as usual. We held an Open Day at the children’s orchestra on Saturday morning which went really well; we had an extra 45 children who visited, including 6 new cellists, which Anna was thrilled about! Hopefully some of them will come back next term.
In the afternoon we went to Joe’s Suzuki Group lesson so that took out the afternoon.
Did a few jobs and crashed watching The Other Boleyn Girl in the evening. Enjoyed it, but I haven’t read the book

Sunday morning we decided to skip church otherwise we wouldn’t have all been in the same place at the same time at all over the weekend! Instead we went to Sainsbury’s for brunch and to do the shopping.
Later on Anna and I went out to Crediton for a Youth Orchestra concert which also went well – we sold most of the cakes left over from the day before!

Got home in time for tea, then did a few more jobs and went to bed. See? boring!

Today Anna had a special Science Fair at school; all the Y7s had been asked to prepare a display of scientific interest – they had liberty to choose any scientific subject. She’d chosen ‘Bones’ and (having finally found some information on the internet as well as in some books that we already had ) made interactive labels to go on a skeleton, as well as some other information presented in lapbook style. Unfortunately she couldn’t hang the skeleton properly anywhere and her folders kept falling over, so she was a bit disappointed about that, but apparently she still won a prize for ingenuity.

We then had to explain the word ingenuity to the other two …

Couldn’t be bothered to go and get a proper camera so the photo’s rubbish but I don’t care all that much any more.

Spent most of the afternoon helping Abbie with her science homework. Just sometimes I am grateful for my folder of home ed links, as we first did this activity over four years ago (when I had an even more rubbish digital camera!).

Had orchestra this morning, and while the kids were there, I showed a friend and her partner around our ‘to let’ house and they have decided to rent it so that was a great result. Their first baby is due in 5 weeks’ time so they needed somewhere to live rather urgently!

Now cooking a roast and getting through the essential housework very slowly … and looking forward to a relaxed Saturday night.

We had toyed with the idea of going to Longleat Safari Park today, but given the weather and the general health of the family we decided to opt for Paignton Zoo instead, and the kids were thrilled when we told them first thing this morning. While we’d been away over the summer we’d refused to take them to the zoo in Amsterdam on the grounds that it would be pretty similar to a zoo in the UK, at which point they commented that that was all very well, but we’d never taken them to the zoo in England. Entirely true, hence the trip this week.

It was grey and misty for most of the day, then rained in earnest early afternoon – we braved the rain for a while but having got wet and cold we decided to head home for cake (the orange chocolate potato cake is great btw) and a film!

Had a fantastic day though, the children loved it. Anna played photographer during the day, having been inspired by the exhibition of wildlife photography (these images) that we saw at the museum yesterday, although even she realised that a few snaps around the zoo were never going to be as amazing as some of the images we’d seen. Here are the best of hers, anyway … and a few of mine and Steve’s here and there – and a couple more on flickr for anyone who’s never seen an elephant wee!