Christmas Catch-up

It's New Years Eve already - how quickly the time has gone! I hope you have all had a lovely Christmas, ours was so, so nice. We had my mum staying with us over Christmas, and my dad and step-mum stayed nearby with my sister so we had lots of visits and lots of fun. 

Here is a quick re-cap of the last week in photographs!

Hannah making christmas cards on 23rd december.

Finally asleep on Christmas eve!
Santa's been :-)
Opening her stocking
and her presents from Santa
She very carefully cut each present open and folded the paper up afterwards!! 
Eating Christmas dinner
Playing in the park with Granny Heather (Hannah did get a go on the swing too lol)
Grandad and Grandma - my parents :-)

Happy Holidays

Hannah and I would like to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday, and say a big thank you to everyone who has followed our blog this year. 

See you all soon xxx

Monday

Yesterday Hannah and i went to the local school to a Christmas workshop morning. Hannah met some of her friends there who go to the school and had a lovely time. There were cooking workshops, music, drama and dance workshops, art and craft and storytelling as well as an activity farm where Hannah met the goats, sheep ,pigs and chickens - and it was all free!!

I didn't get many pictures as she didn't actually keep still for very long, but here is one of the Christmas heart she had painted on her face........................

.............and running around the dance studio!!!

In the afternoon Hannah was very excited to make some Christmas goodies with Dean. She got all dressed up in her chefs outfit and they made mince pies, jam tarts and cinnamon pastries. 

Ready to cook!

cooking
the finished pies.
They are very good pies so i'm hoping for more baking tonight :-)

Snow Day

We had snow today!! Hannah was so excited when we got up this morning, especially as we were going to visit our friends, Gina and her family, which involved a train ride out of the city to the village where they live. 

They had even more snow than we did, and the children had a wonderful day playing snowballs, and running around indoors and out, while Gina and i were able to relax and chat in the warmth of her lovely home. It was a really, really nice day - thank you so much Gina.

On the way there.

Hannah, Mia and Tarka playing in the snow.
Watch out, there's a snowball about!!
Snowball fight!!!

Wednesday December 16th

Today was our last Home Education Group meeting before Christmas, and what a lovely meeting it was!!

We started off with a Horrible Histories Christmas quiz, then had a Christmas story which was 'Christmas In The Big Woods' from Little House On The Prairie. We finished with the children all filling and decorating Christmas Crackers to take home with them.

When the session finished we all went to the park (where it was even snowing a little bit) and had lunch in the Park Cafe, before heading down to Gunwharf Quays to the Snow Village there. The village has a 45' toboggan run, and a snow garden which is lovely. Hannah had nine......yes nine, turns on the toboggan run and had lots of fun with her friends in the snow garden and came home cold, wet and very, very happy :-)

Hannah with some of her friends at the home education group.

The crackers Hannah made.

Playing in the snow garden at Gunwharf Quays
The toboggan run 
This time she was spinning as she came down!
I am so pleased that we started our home ed group this year. We have made some lovely friends, had some really good times and learnt a lot too. Hannah and I are both looking forward to many more fun times in the new year :-)

The Tree Is Up

And from looking at it you would never guess that it took Hannah and I HOURS to decorate - I must admit that most of those hours were spent untangling lights, but I had hoped it would photograph a little better than this - oh well, Hannah thinks it's the most fantastic tree ever so it's ok with me!!

Art, craft and friends.

This week has been all about Art, Craft and friends - what a lovely combination! 

First of all we made these lovely woolly snowflakes ,

and a fab pop-up Rudolf card at our home schooling group. It was a really lovely meeting on wednesday with lots of new faces and a really happy atmosphere. The children all had a great time in the park after the meeting , so much so that it was dark by the time we finally left!!

Then Hannah made herself these clip on earrings and a ring using her Shrinkles kit. She coloured in the pictures and then baked them in the oven, following the instructions carefully, all by herself and lastly attached the clips with glue. She was very pleased with the results.

Yesterday Hannah decided to use her Usbourne Art and Craft book as inspiration and painted a lovely bright picture of fairies flying around a funky flower. Her art work is becoming much bolder now, and she is using lots of colour and imagination.

And finally, today we spent an amazing day with Gina and her lovely family from Our Unschooled Family . I really wish i had taken some pictures, as Hannah had the BEST time playing with Mia, Tarka and Willow (and Ash lol) and it was so nice to finally be able to sit and chat with Gina - Thank you Gina for a wonderful day :-) 

Book Sharing Monday

Jump Into January - Stella Blackstone and Maria Carluccio

This is a really fun book for younger children, each page has beautiful illustrations of a seasonal picture, and all along the bottom of the pages are i-spy words of things to find on the page. It's a really nice interactive book :-)

Decoration Making

Today we held a Christmas decoration making afternoon at our house for some of the children and parents from our home schooling group. Despite our failure to collect much of anything yesterday, we still ended up with a pretty good selection of bits and pieces. I raided our autumn table box and found too many fir cones, beech nuts and twigs to count, another mum brought Christmas tree off cuts and another family made gorgeous dough shapes to decorate. Everyone brought paint, glue, glitter or craft bits and we made some beautiful decorations.

Here are some pictures of the things Hannah (with help),  and I made.

A Winter Walk

Yesterday we, and another family from our home schooling group, went on a wintery walk in the woods to collect fir cones and twigs for making decorations ...............well that was the idea anyway. About 5 minutes into the walk Hannah discovered a stream which obviously she immediately waded into............................

......................naturally if you find a freezing cold muddy stream the very best thing to do is share it with a friend!!!

At least Oscar had wellies on, Hannah managed to get drenched..........

.........and ended up sitting in it!

I think this bunch of fern was supposed to cheer me up after discovering her wet and muddy from the waist down..............and who could resist such charm?? Not me :-)

So after an hour and a half, another stream (or 20 - we've had A LOT of rain) and much tramping through undergrowth we went back to the car with a bunch of fern, lots of wet green moss and no fir cones lol!!

And here is Hannah back at the car - the cold had set in by then so this is her 'I'm frozen' face!!

St Wilfrids Christmas Reindeer Event

On Saturday we went to a charity reindeer meet run by St Wilfrids Hospice (the hospice that Dean works for), in  Chichester. We took one of Hannah's friends with us and the girls had a really lovely time. 

The event was held at one of the large charity shops, so we had a look around and bought some books for each of the girls, then we went to meet the reindeer. His name is Blitzen and Hannah fell in love with him!!

After a long visit with Blitzen we went to watch the local cheerleader dance troupe perform, before heading over to watch the Punch and Judy show.

Hannah had never seen Punch and Judy before and so i was surprised when she really got into it. Shouting at the puppets, and leaping around in excitement - she was so, so excited it was just lovely to watch her :-)

End Of Term Dancing

Today was the last day of dance class before Christmas and so mummy's and daddy's were allowed in to watch and take pictures. Unfortunately my phone camera wasn't really up to the job, but hopefully these will give you an idea of what happened! Hannah has really enjoyed these dance classes and seems to be getting really good at concentrating and following the steps, so we are going to sign her up for another term.