just another morning here

On Sunday afternoon we went to visit a couple of the kids’ favourite places, the House of Marbles and Cardews Teapottery, at their request. Took a number of photos which are all pretty much the same as the last lot I took there – kids painting pots, and kids in the play area – all pretty boring if they’re not your own kids really. Thankfully no-one fell off any swings this time though

Came home and played marbles, and the children had a crazy idea to play with cornflour gloop as well, so they did that, and successfully covered the kitchen and downstairs loo in it as well

Monday was a non-event of a day really, although Joe and I did defeat one big bad boss in Sonic at teatime so that was good (only one more to go now!). We did some maths and music workbook pages, and also played with pattern blocks and talked a bit about symmetry, reflections, rotations and translations. Reading and comprehension activities over the past couple of days have taken the form of hint guides and walkthroughs for Lego Star Wars and Sonic!

Especially for Ruth – I hope your two were tired when they got home, we aim to please

Josiah was tired because he went back to Start Right today. When I told him earlier in the week that Start Right was starting again he squealed with delight … still asked me to stay ‘for about five minutes’ at the beginning, but in fact I only stayed for about 30 seconds before he was ensconced playing with the garage. Lots of other mums looking extremely nervous at their offspring’s first time at nursery, quite amusing … anyway, Steve picked Joe up today and apparently that is preferable to having me pick him up – so Steve has got himself a job for the rest of ever.

This evening we looked at the books he’d brought home, and he read one of them straight away – he’s recognising the words ‘help, look, we, I, you, no, yes, in, here’ perfectly most of the time, and a bit of help with ‘it, is, where, not’ and believe it or not, you can have a story out of those words. He’s quite motivated to learn to read, probably because he sees the girls reading, so we’re encouraging him, and having the graded books home from Start Right is actually quite helpful.

Anyway, the other four children were my girls and their friends Caitlin & Riona … we all went on a home ed group trip down to Bovey Tracey to visit the House of Marbles and Cardews Teapottery. Apparently this was a timely trip as Caitlin had wanted to visit and not been able to earlier in the week!

We met up with our EO group friends at the House of Marbles and enjoyed the marble runs and watching glass being blown – always fascinating, however many times you have seen them.

Then on to Cardews where we had a picnic (the less said about the wasps the better, at least no-one got stung this time!), looked around the pottery, then the girls each chose a way to spend some money … Abbie threw her own pot while the other three painted pieces of pottery to be fired. Oh, and we bought some clay to bring home, too. Anyway, as a picture paints a thousand words, here are a few – rollover for descriptions

All in all a lovely day!

A very impressive title – actually we didn’t go anywhere near the castle! There was a family fun day going on at Powderham today, although not actually in the castle. (The castle looks great – I would definitely consider buying a season ticket there one year, maybe when Joe is a bit older and will appreciate it more. There was also Medieval Jousting which also looked really good, especially if one was doing a suitably linked project! Sometime next year maybe …)

We went with some friends today (where are the pics, Ruth?!) and had a lovely time. The children did a little quiz, for which they each won a giant marble from the new House of Marbles shop at The Country Store. They queued for ages to get their faces painted – if only they could be so patient at other times! We had a picnic on the grass, just far enough away from the live band to be able to hear ourselves think. Are we getting old?!

There were some races organised for the children, croquet, plus some big games like giant Jenga, giant snakes & ladders etc all out for them to play with, so Ruth & I managed lots of chatting time while the kids played for ages. We left (via the ice cream stall) and went back to our friends house – supposedly to watch a Red Arrows video but we ended up staying for a scrummy barbecue. Highlight of the BBQ food was slices of aubergine, barbecued with mozarella slices on the top – no, it wasn’t mozarella but I can’t remember what it was … something similar, anyway. We don’t barbecue at home very often, mainly because our house isn’t at all conducive in the way it’s laid out, but I might try doing aubergines like that under the grill, they were really nice.

Steve managed to come and join us, but wouldn’t budge from home until Superman had finished … he went home from work early to watch it! I suppose it is a classic, of sorts. He’s now watching The Italian Job – another classic, but I’m not a big Michael Caine fan. Our discussions about the TV have resulted in a decision this evening – we’re going to limit tv watching to the weekends. It has been getting a bit silly recently and we were wondering about getting rid of it altogether; hopefully this will be a bit of a compromise.

This level of activity is definitely getting tiring – it is unusually busy and yes, it’s because there is lots on due to the holiday season. In some ways it will be nice when schools go back, and some things will start again (like swimming lessons and Girl’s Brigade) but in other ways it will be harder work because there won’t be all these lovely events to go to. Having said that, September is looking pretty packed already so I’m not too worried!

addendum!
Here are the pictures kindly donated by Ruth as I still haven’t got any new batteries.

First, the picnic … note how Abbie has a spiderman face while the other girls all chose flower fairy designs. Say no more!

Here are Anna and Caitlin eating some chocolate lollies they were given for taking part in the races.

And finally, Anna with some funny pink things on her head?!

Had to take Joe for his 2 year check this morning so Anna went in to work with Steve because I didn’t want to have to answer any awkward questions about school and why she wasn’t there … and then the HV asked me which school to send Abbie’s records on to!! I was a bit flummoxed so gave the truth (I hadn’t thought about how to avoid that question!), and mentioned that as we still are connected with Emmanuel on a part time basis, she should send the records there. Hopefully no more will be said.

We’ve had a nice couple of days – yesterday we went down to Bovey Tracy again to pick up our pottery from Cardews, then we took Steve to see the House of Marbles as well. We’ve enjoyed reading Roald Dahl’s ‘The Twits’ together (in fact I must get off the ‘puter for another instalment). Today both girls have done some workbook things and are investigating magnets again having been reading a book about magnets this evening.