Joe and I spent 3 hours this afternoon making this ship … only for him to then ask where his hama pirate was (don’t know how many months ago he made it but it went into the recycling bin ages ago 
)
It actually looks quite impressive from a distance …
I have really enjoyed reading a set of posts on Tall Skinny Kiwi today – Losing My Religion in London – start here and read on through, there are four in the series plus one extra on Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle which I also appreciated. Just interesting, and appealed to me on a number of different levels.
Otherwise life is back to boring humdrum carry on … with one highlight for Josiah – this week he is the ‘special person’ in his class at school. This caused rather huge excitement over the weekend as he gathered together bits and bobs to take in to school. I failed to produce a photograph though, just don’t do paper photos any more – they’re either good enough to be on the wall in a frame, or they’re on the computer, nowhere inbetween, and I don’t have a printer! Ah well.
Being ‘special person’ apparently means you get to stand at the front of the line every time the class lines up for something, take the register back to the library, and on Friday they get to do show and tell about their stuff/photos which has been sitting on a table all week.
Perhaps it would be worth adopting this approach at home too; less arguments about who should push the coffee down, sit in the front of the car, have the first bath, or choose which game to play!
We stopped in the park on the way home so Joe came home all muddy and I made him strip so that I could wash his uniform. He refused to put any more clothes on to go and play outside with the girls, so he and I spent a happy hour hamaing together, having been inspired by Merry’s flickr pictures.
He chose a pirate pattern to follow, from one of the pattern books. Swords do it every time 
I don’t think he’d ever really bothered following a pattern before, only followed the shape of a board, iyswim, so I showed him how to count it, and we did a pretty good joint effort. He’s really pleased with his pirate, and I’m thinking of taking it to stick it up on the ‘special person’ board in place of Joe’s photo tomorrow!
Often on Bank Holidays we end up staying at home, either because Steve is working or because we can’t be bothered to fight crowds anywhere, but today some friends had suggested that we get together, and I’d found the Pirate festival info the other day, so we decided to go out to Morwellham Quay for the day. As it turned out, another mutual friend joined us, as well as our neighbours Emma, Mollie and Ruby, so it felt like a bit of a party! It was a bit of a grey day, which probably helped things because it wasn’t too busy, and we had a lovely time.
More about Morewellham here … it was really interesting to hear about the history of the quay, once the greatest copper port in Queen Victoria’s empire. And weird that a place which was so central to trade and business 150 years ago could be so deserted now – very interesting to reflect on the changes that this part of the country has gone through in that time.
The kids loved it all, I think! The Pirate Festival was of dubious importance compared to the rest of the day – Joe had been really excited about seeing them, and went dressed as Captain Hook, but they were a bit miserable really – I guess it was the third day of their weekend and perhaps they were all a bit tired of playing pirates. To have billed it as a ‘festival’ was a bit of an overstatement, anyway, in my opinion – they were just there! We watched them firing muskets, and later in the day Steve and Josiah came back and watched them staging a ‘skirmish’, but otherwise the highlights of the day were Morwellham itself rather than the Pirates.
Anyway, a couple of pirate photos just for the sake of it:
So, the rest of the day. The girls dressed up as victorians:
We went on the train down the old copper mine, which was really interesting, and all three kids rated it as their favourite activity. It was well done – informative and interesting, pitch black and dripping wet in places, but very good. Must remember never to complain about work again, we don’t know we’re born sometimes, do we?
We saw a blacksmith at work, a cooper’s workshop, an assay laboratory, and a Victorian schoolroom & playground.
The blacksmith was excellent, the chap was really acting in character and managed to be informative at the same time as joking around with the children about pulling their teeth There was a rope attached to the bellows for his furnace so the children could keep the fire going by blowing the bellows.
The cooper was only a bit interesting, mainly due to the fact that he wasn’t actually making a cask/barrel, just talking about it, but never mind.
The Assayer’s workshop was fascinating – we were shown the rocks as they would have come from the mine, and then taken through the process of finding the percentage of copper content as they would have done in the 19th century. The woman doing the demonstration here was really good with the children and let the girls go and fiddle with everything afterwards 
The girls liked the school too! Joe only got as far as the playground, which I suspect was slightly more interesting than a genuine Victorian school playground – it had a big skipping rope attached to the wall (one of the ones that usually take two people to turn, but so only needed one person to turn it as it swivelled at the other end), hoopla, hopscotch, a wooden horse thing, skittles, etc.
The classroom itself was pretty authentic – Anna got to try on ‘school uniform’ and they all had a turn at writing on slates, reciting times tables and generally sitting in rows behaving themselves. There is something to be said for standing at the front of the room with a long cane in your hand, it tends to result in the behaviour you want … unlike our kids at bedtime tonight, but that’s another story.
Oh, there was a ship as well, I forgot about that – the Pirates had taken it over today but I suppose normally it’s still there to be looked round. We liked the Victorian cottage (which apparently was where the assayer lived, who was paid £200 per year and charged no rent), and there was a little Miner’s cottage as well – stark contrast here, apparently miners were paid between £20 and £40 a year and still had to pay rent on their cottage. The outside privy had been turned into a pigsty!
There was another little area where the kids could play with pulleys, pumps, and levers, seeing which kind of lever/pulley worked best, etc., so we stopped there a few times – and a nice play area near the undercover picnic tables, also a good idea as it rained on and off over lunchtime!
So anyway, a good day, we all enjoyed ourselves and I’m happy I can tick education as well, an added bonus Anna wanted to do the Victorians later this year so this will give us a good start (in fact, probably covers a lot of it already!).
We drove back across the moors, which really are beautiful, especially on an evening when the sun has just managed to break through the cloud. Picked up a couple of Bargain Buckets from KFC on the way home and our friends stayed for dinner and chatting and stuff this evening. Abbie’s off with Grandma in the morning so I have a couple of last-minute bits to get ready for her. I think it’s the first time she’s been away on her own so it will be interesting from all sorts of angles!
Found something exciting going on, just putting this here so that I don’t forget about it at the weekend, I know a little boy who would die to go there, he’s been in his Captain Hook suit all day today. Anyone else into pirates?