Surprises

Hannah has had two lovely surprises today. First of all she received this gorgeous book of Fairy verses in the mail from a lady who read our blog and noticed that Hannah liked fairies. The lady Marian Bell, wrote the book in memory of her daughter and sent Hannah a copy just because...

Thank you so much Marian, the book is wonderful, and your kindness really touched us.

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The second surprise came this afternoon when we let these lovely ladies out for their afternoon run around while we cleaned up their run and house.

They enjoy pecking around the garden, even though it is mainly paved,

and especially like the borders for digging around in.

We swept their run, refilled their food and water, and when we went to clean out their house we found this..............

.............. our very first egg!!! So exciting :-) We love our chickens!!!

Catching Up

We had a quiet time this weekend as Hannah and i both caught a horrible cold, and Hannah developed a earache with hers. We got some remedies from the homeopath on saturday, which have helped though so we are on the mend now.

Our weekend started with a tea party organised by Hannah on friday evening,
She even baked and iced a cake for it!

On sunday she did a spot of dressing up, and made herself into Cinderella.

This morning she built a den in the living room - another den!!!!

It was very cosy and full of sheepskins, cushions and fleece blankets.

And then this afternoon she felt 'much better, even well enough to paint', so we got out the watercolours and she did this beautiful rainbow over a flowery, grassy hill with a pot of gold at the rainbow's end! I was quite impressed as it is much better than i could have done!!

In progress.

Finished and on the wall

She also did this crayon drawing of pony riding, which unfortunately did photograph very well, but hopefully you can make it out.

This evening Hannah went to her second Rainbow's meeting and had a lovely time making chocolate birds nests and playing games.

Home Education Group, Park and Craft

Yesterday we went to our usual wednesday meeting at our home ed group. We made some new friends as a couple of new families came along, worked a little more on the Honey Bees lap book, and then the children each made some large hanging mobile bees to take home.
After group we all went to the park where it was beautifully sunny and mild. Hannah took her silk rainbow streamer and had a fantastic time running around with the other children. Of course, being Hannah she also found a big puddle, and then showed it to the other children so everyone got a little bit damp...............and Hannah got drenched!!

And she LOVED it!!

When we got home we hung up her Bee mobile in the serving window between the kitchen and dining room,

and today Hannah made a flower garden for the bee to fly over :-)

A Foggy Ride

Hannah had a ride booked for 10am this morning, so when i woke up at 7.30am and heard the fog horns in the harbour I knew it was going to be a bit damp! I didn't really expect quite so much fog, but it did make for a lovely still morning, and out on the bridleway the bird calls seemed so much clearer, and the dampness smelled so fresh and clean that it was as beautiful a morning as if it had been perfect sunshine.

Arriving in the yard

Getting ready to ride - the pony is called Shaley.

The driveway leading out onto the main road.

The Bridleway

I stopped to admire the morning, but no one waited for me!!!

Those blobs in the fog are the other horses!!

After leaving the stables we came home for some lunch, and then Hannah's friend Oscar came round to play for the afternoon - they had a lovely time having a picnic in the kitchen and dressing up.


Lastly, tonight, we let the chickens out of their run for the first time - they were very excited and quite hard to take pictures of, but they were very good and happily let me catch them after a peck and scratch around the garden.

Rainbows

Yesterday Hannah started Rainbows. She has been wanting to join something for a while now, but after a rather disasterous visit to the local Woodcraft Folk, she was very, very nervous. When we arrived i could feel her legs shaking and she looked as though she might cry at any minute, but everyone was so welcoming and the leaders went out of their way to encourage her and make her feel comfortable, so she soon forgot her nerves and had a really lovely time. She got her Rainbows book at the end of the meeting, and as soon as we got home she started filling in the pages she could do. I'm so pleased that she liked it :-)

Feathered Friends

There is much excitement in our house today, because this morning we collected Rose, Daisy and Tilly................................. They are beautiful - they settled in really quickly and are already very friendly, and we are hoping they will become quite tame when they get to know us properly.

Hannah is very, very pleased and is visiting them about every 10 mins, of course i am being much more restrained and am waiting at least 15 mins between visits lol.

Oh, and it is raining, really, really raining so the chooks who have lived inside since they hatched have today discovered car travel, wet drippy rain and mud - welcome to the outside girls!!

It's Friday :-)

I'm quite glad it's the weekend tomorrow - this week has seemed long !! Luckily friday is the day that Hannah's tutor visits, which cheers us both up. Earlier on today Hannah was writing in her journal and it was soooo sloppy, so i suggested that she might want to write neater so i could read it, this was met with a very stroppy 'i can't do it any better'. Fast forward to 4pm when her tutor was here and she did some very nice, perfectly legible writing. When i asked her why she could do it so much better for her tutor she told me it was because she wanted to 'make Claire happy so she keeps coming back' !! So getting a tutor to come in once a week is a success then :-)

We did do some things Hannah liked today as well, first we did some of the maths workbook we started recently. It's a homework helper really, but Hannah is enjoying doing it as part of her maths.
She did these number grids really well,

and did some subtraction, and practised her two times tables.

Then she did a page of journal.............see above story to explain the lack of picture!!

After that i thought it would be a good idea to do something a bit more creative, so Hannah tried out her new water colours. We had bought a pack of spring pictures ready for painting for the season table, so she did the first one and really liked the way the water colours went on to the paper.

And finally Hannah's tutor arrived, and peace was restored, legible writing returned, and Hannah was all smiles :-)

A quiet sort of day.

Today has been quiet. Neither Hannah or I have been feeling all that healthy (so many bugs going around at the moment), so we stayed at home and did some gentle activities. Hannah did a page of her journal, writing about, and drawing her favourite fruits (blackberries and cherries) - then, inspired by telephoning her grandma, Hannah wanted to know how a telephone works. We did some internet research and found some quite simple explanations and drawings and read about Alexander Graham Bell. We are going to try out the experiment that we found making a home made phone using cans and string as soon as we have two empty can!

Later on, Hannah wanted to try her Eco Activities workbook that we got at Christmas. She has thought it too difficult up until now, but as her reading and spelling is improving she found that she could make sense of it at last!

She completed the sort out the recycling challenge, and then managed her first ever wordsearch - well done Hannah!!

Lastly we read some stories together before bed - we are working our way through all of the 'Jill's Pony stories' by Ruby Ferguson, which means we have to say 'simply topping' and 'absolutely frightful' to each other quite often and is very funny!!!

Online Learning and More Planting

Hannah discovered a new website today with some fun maths games on it. It's called Softschool.com and she really enjoyed playing some of the mental arithmetic games on there. She can only add and subtract so far, but she likes it and that's the main thing! I would really like to get her a subscription to Education City as soon as i can, as this seems to be something that not only appeals to her, but really inspires her as well.

After lunch we did some more planting, and Hannah started off her radishes that we bought at the weekend. She now has beans, onions, carrots, radishes and rocket. I think we'll get broccoli next and see what we can do with that.

Just as we were clearing up i came across a 'Fairy Garden Set' that someone had given her for christmas and we had put away until spring. Well of course this caused huge excitement as it involved expanding soil discs, decorating with fairy stickers, and sprinkling glitter everywhere, not to mention the actual planting of some beautiful mixed flower seeds.

I must say it does look very pretty twinkling on the window sill in the sunshine!

Hannah with her fairy Garden

Some of our pots of veggie seeds on the window sill.

It has been a very nice, and unexpected day at home (unexpected because we would usually have been at our home ed group but today's was cancelled) today, and has made me think that perhaps we should spend a bit more time at home just taking the day as it comes...............................

Mother's Day

Today has been the best Mother's Day! First i had these lovely cards - one home made and one bought, a beautiful Primula and a 'chicken in a nest' candle.

Then, after a lie in and breakfast in bed, my lovely family took me to Manor Farm Country Park near Southampton. It was a beautiful, mild, sunny day and we had a lovely time.

The Old Shepherds Hut - imagine living in this tiny space!

There were masses of snowdrops everywhere, and beautiful primroses in the churchyard.

Hannah made friends with an unusual family!

The Victorian farmhouse and school rooms.

She is sitting on a wooden badger. Notice the unexploded bomb sign, it is in front of the old air raid shelter.
Inside the tiny shelter.

The entrance to the shelter.

Playing in the Victorian schoolyard.

Trying out the school room.

In the farmhouse parlour.

Outside in one of the barns they have an educational display - here is the inside and outside of a woodpecker's nest.

Q and A board 'Wildlife, Friend or Foe'

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mummy's in Blogland :-)