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!

Can’t think of a good title for this post, too late to care now, suggestions in the comments box and I’ll change it later!

Have had a fabulous if a little exhausting weekend, lots of travelling of various sorts, but also lots of fun spending time with some of our best friends, which makes it all worthwhile. (was that too soppy?! )

Saturday saw us have a very lazy morning with a delicious brunch, and then we headed into London to visit the slides at the Tate Modern. Simultaneous delight and anxiety is about the right description for my feelings as we walked into the turbine hall – the queues were soooo long, never mind the sliding itself! So we queued for tickets, then walked along the river for an early dinner at the Gourmet Pizza Co., then back to the Tate to queue more to use the tickets! Still it was a good day which we all enjoyed. More photos here

Today was E’s 6th birthday, the real reason for our visit – lovely to see him opening and enjoying presents, and then stick around for his party which was one of the most peaceful kids’ parties I’ve been to for a long time (usually I avoid them like the plague, even for my own children!). 13 children sat around the table painting pottery for a good hour and a half, courtesy of a lovely mobile pottery company (which I’ve forgotten the name of, otherwise I’d link to it).

We had to leave very shortly after the birthday lunch, to make sure we were back in time for Anna’s rehearsal – the penultimate (extremely long, and the first one actually at the theatre) rehearsal for the Wizard of Oz which she is taking part in all next week. Have had dinner thanks to Emma’s cooking, still need to do a fair bit of sorting out but there’s plenty of evening left …

Love the expressions in this photo …

I’ve had too much to drink this evening, have just got home from a late night wine and chatting session with Ruth – she informs me that Steve was looking sheepish this morning driving to work, and that he didn’t seem to fit into the car he was driving. A bit of an old lady’s car, it has to be said. (and it drives like a pig, I had it yesterday!).

Highlight of today was going to the 2-4 TV studios to watch a bit of the editing, I think the programme will be okay. Apparently Will (the director) has been doing draft voiceovers but has been told off for ‘endorsing’ home education in his commentary – so that’s good, I think. There is far too much of me in it, as far as I could see, but apart from that I think it should be okay. Also they’re not allowed to release the programme even to us before it is aired, so we will see it for the first time at the same time as everyone else – scary! Although I have been promised a transcript of the narration once it is finalised.

What else have we done? Picked up our pots from the pottery on the way home from the TV studio, a few more errands, some maths, played with Geomags again (Joe does a good line in Geomag Gun production), cello/recorder practise (am I getting tired of hearing the same tunes over and over!), made bread rolls and soup for tea at Abbie’s request … played outside and watched some TV … so not too much really. Lunch was in the middle of all that somewhere