Book Sharing Monday - late again!

This week we have chosen The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book by Lisa Hildreth as our sharing book. We love the easy, child friendly recipes in this book which have been gathered from Waldorf schools and teacher across America.


There are recipes for Breads, Soups, Fruits, Grains, Birthday Cakes and Festival Foods with the aim being to provide simple, healthy and nourishing foods that children can help to make themselves and enjoy in as natural a way as possible.

Art, craft and play

Today Hannah and I cycled over to our friends' house for a playdate and some art and craft. The girls had a great time playing in the garden in the rain and the sun, playing with bubbles, dressing up, and making and decorating hearts and fairies. We had a lovely lunch there and it was a really nice, relaxing, fun day.

Here are the girls making their hearts.

Building Train sets and reorganising.

Today Hannah rediscovered her train set. She hasn't played with it for a while now, but we decided to reorganise her learning room to make all her things a bit more accessible and she got really excited about setting it all up again. Here are a couple of pictures i took of her playing after her mammoth building session.

And this is the reorganised learning room (and the cat!) We still have far too much stuff in there, but at least now Hannah can get to it all and everything has it's own place - we even managed to clear the table :-)

Up in the Trees

Today Hannah and i went to the park in the city centre . There is a big playground in the park, a small pets area and a big play train, so what did we do?? Sat in the trees! Hannah found this lovely,easy to climb tree and we spent a long happy time sitting in it ( even me!) until we were invaded by teenagers, so then we moved on to a lovely big evergreen which is growing sloping really gently sideways  making it a perfect playground for a 5 year old. She had a great time and forgot all about all the things she wanted to buy at the shops and came home with bamboo grass, a bunch of daisies and some feathers instead.

Amelie Stories

Hannah would like to let everyone know about these lovely, funny audio stories. She has recently received them from a friend who asked us to review them, and they have been a big hit. Each cd has a collection of short stories about a naughty little French girl called Amelie. They are in English, with a smattering of French vocabulary through them to introduce the listener to a new language and Hannah is hooked on them. We have 'Amelie and the Ferry' and  'Amelie Starts A Band' and they sell them on Amazon :-)

The Lost Pizza Pictures - Found!

I don't know what i was doing yesterday when i couldn't find these pictures - i opened up the picture files today and there they were, practically shouting my name....................i worry about myself sometimes lol!!

The Lost Pizza Pictures - Found !! (part 2)

Baking.....but i lost the pictures :-(

Poor Hannah is very upset as today she baked her very first pizza, and then i lost all the photo's in transfer! Sorry Hannah :-)

Anyway, i promised i'd tell you all what we did so here goes! First we chopped up lots of vegetables to roast, then while they were cooking Hannah mixed up the pizza base dough. She had great fun kneading the dough, and the kitchen got very floury lol. Then she rolled out the dough, spread tomato paste on it and topped it with roasted veg and cheese. It was the best dinner ever! 

We also baked some really nice spelt bread while we were cooking, and it came out surprisingly well with a nice light texture and flavour.  We will be baking with spelt again :-)

Luckily i did manage to take another picture of the loaf before it was eaten!

Home Education Group - The USA

Today our home education group studied the USA. 

Hannah had chosen American Pioneers to study as her contribution as she is very fond of the Laura Ingalls Wilder 'Little House on The Prairie' stories. She told the group about the wagons the pioneers travelled in, about life on the trail and the food and toys they would have had. We had baked some trail cakes to try and took along some wooden toys we had (spinning buttons on string).

Hannah's friends Gabrielle and Hannah came dressed in traditional outfits, Hannah as a pioneer child and Gabrielle as a cowgirl. The girls also gave presentations on their home states, as did another family. 

We also heard presentations on Native American instruments and music, and the life of Walt Disney. It was a really interesting group, made even better by the fact that 65% of our group are American which meant we could share real experiences and views of the country together.

Healthy Popcicles

Hannah loves popcicles and lollies, but we don't love all the additives in them, so she decided she would make her own from frozen smoothy mixture.

She chopped a banana, squeezed two oranges and then added lots and lots of strawberries and raspberries, blended them and poured them into molds. There was even enough for a drink, and apparently they taste delicious!!

Chopping

Filling
Blending
Pouring
Finished!

Book Sharing Monday

This week we have chosen 'Roots, Shoots, buckets and Boots' by Sharon Lovejoy.

This is a fabulous book full of really creative, inspiring ideas for cool, child friendly, gardening fun. There is a Pizza garden, and Moon garden and a garden of Giants, lots of gardening activities  throughout the book and even recipes for herbal remedies. Hannah and i love this book and recommend it to everyone.

Rainbow Day

Today we have been to a charity event for the hospice that Dean works for. It was called Rainbow day because of the huge wooden rainbow that is covered during the day with rainbow coloured messages from the visitors to the event.
They also had junior archeology, where Hannah dug in big sand tubs for pottery and flint tools, an exhibition of locally found Roman coins, funky fun mirrors, music, dancing and stalls. We were particularly pleased to find a herbalists stall and bought some gorgeous Rose, Linden and Lavender tea and some Rose and Geranium hand cream.

Afterwards Hannah and I walked to the shopping centre in Chichester (Dean was running the BBQ and couldn't leave the site), where we discovered an amazing new shop called Kids Love Earth. It is a children's nature and science shop and has everything you need to be a gardener or nature detective, and has some amazing science kits. We bought a book called 'George Saves The World By Lunchtime' all about reducing, reusing and recycling, and have a list of things we want for payday! Here is a link to their website for anyone who is interested http://www.kidsloveearth.co.UK/index.php.