Church, Rainbows and Book Group

This week i managed to get a few pictures of Hannah in the play area in church before sunday school started - she is enjoying going to sunday school so much and looks forward to it all week. This week they learned about Harvest Festival and made some pictures to decorate the Harvest Lunch with next week.

On monday we had a quiet day, Hannah did some of her penmanship book, some of her math book including adding and subtracting money, and practised her reading with one of her recently aquired Oxford Reading Tree books. Then in the evening she went to her Rainbows meeting (another highlight of her week)! The Rainbows all learned about road safety this week and started their own road safety handbooks begining with The Green Cross code (stop, look, listen, think)!

--------------------

Then yesterday we went to our Home Schooling group where one of the mum's had offered to run a book group. It was really fun! The children all read Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown before the session, so when they arrived they had a circle time and discussed the story and talked about the things they would like to do if they were flat, then they made their own flat people out of laminated card and also made them passports. Hannah made a 'flat Stephanie'.

The idea is that, like Flat Stanley, Stephanie and her passport can be mailed off to visit friends, who then take a picture of her on an adventure with them, fill in her passport and mail her back. She has today gone on her first adventure - daddy has taken her to work! If anyone would like to join in and have a visit from Flat Stephanie then we would be very pleased to mail her to you.

Forest School Week 2

Week two was all about building shelters. The children worked in teams to plan, design and construct their shelters and produced some pretty good structures!
Hannah loved sharing ideas and seeing them come to life in the woods, she made new friends and developed the friendships she made last week, and had a really fun day!

I'm afraid my pictures aren't all that good this week, i have hurt my back and was mostly hobbling around taking them from a distance, but you get the general idea anyway!!



Planning the shelter and the garden. trying it out for size more designing inside the shelterhappy :-) Making camp fire hot chocolate and drinking it back at the shelter and sharing with friends!

Home Education Group - New Location, New Activities, Lots Of Fun!

Recently our home ed group were lucky enough to obtain a new meeting place at a local adventure playground. The building has a kitchen in it, so yesterday the children all made their own pizza's for lunch.

Each child brought their own ingredients and mixed up the dough, arranged their toppings and took turns in baking their pizzas. Hannah loved making her dough (which came out very well) !

She especially enjoyed eating her pizza as well, it was delicious!

After all the pizza's were made, baked and eaten the children all went out into the sunshine to play.

Hannah had a lovely day with her friends and is looking forward to the book group session we are having there next week.

Thank you to Claire at Homeschooling Wonderboy and Debbie at Laura's Home Ed Journey for taking these pictures for me after my phone ran out of power in the first 5 minutes of the session!!

Hannah's First Rainbows Badge

Hannah was soooo excited when i picked her up from Rainbows tonight. The girls have been doing art and craft for the last couple of weeks, and today they all painted a garden themed picture and were awarded their Art and Craft Badges.
Hannah didn't know she was going to get her badge tonight, and when i popped my head around the door to let her know i'd arrived she came flying across the hall and threw herself at me leaping up and down in excitement - i'm so pleased for her as Rainbows really does mean a lot to her and she is so proud of herself for overcoming her shyness and fully joining in with the group. It is a big achievement for her!


Mummy and Hannah in the garden in the sunset. Hannah's First Rainbows Badge.

Now i just have to sew it onto her uniform....................................

Forest School At Last !

Imagine the excitement in our house this morning, Hannah has been waiting all summer for Forest School to start and today was finally the day!! The Forest School is held in an open air woodland classroom where the children can learn about nature and the season, and build self-esteem and independence through exploring and experiencing the natural world in all weathers. To begin the session today the children were told of a few safety rules and then were encourage to head off to build fairy houses around the site for the resident pixie. Hannah teamed up with her lovely friend Izzy and made a beautiful house with a fern roof, moss and bracken bed, doorway, pathway, picnic area and even a swing!


Look at these cute girls listening to instructions together!

Next they made twig fairies from tissue paper tied with long strands of wool to twigs,

and ran around and around the forest flying the fairies.

Just look at this happy little face!!

Then the children all learned how to work with wood to make their own name necklaces. The teachers demonstrated sawing and drilling the wood, and then allowed the children to each saw their own disc from a small log and drill a hole in it.

Figuring out how to make the saw cut,

and doing a really good job!

Then they made natural beads by pushing tent pegs through the soft middle of some sapling pieces, wrote their names and drew pictures on their discs, and strung them on twine.

Here's Hannah wearing hers!

The final activity was to take two beans and find a place to make a secret face. The children then searched the classroom discovering all the faces they could before saying good bye until next week.

Here is Hannah's face.

Hannah can't wait to go back again, and neither can I. She totally embraced the session and was the most confident I have seen her in any group setting ever. It was really lovely to see and i'm so proud of her.

Walking in Nature

Monday morning,
Me - 'what would you like to do today Hannah?'
Hannah- 'go to the fields, and the woods, and collect nature and have fun!!'

So, my sister picked up my mum, and Hannah and I, and we went out to Clanfield. We parked up in a lane and headed straight across the fields towards Denmead.

Hannah was VERY happy to be there!
We passed some very pretty cows on our way up the hill, and bushes laiden with blackberries, elderberries,

and hazel nuts.

At the top of the hill we came across a lovely wooded area. Hannah pursuaded Auntie Anita that it would be a perfect place to hang out and build a den...........Auntie Anita didn't need much convincing and they set to work dragging fallen branches across the woodland floor and stacking them against a sturdy tree truck.

They found as many branches as they could, and Hannah was very pleased with her den despite it's somewhat 'airy' walls !!

Then she wanted to explore, so i gave her my phone and suggested she take pictures of all the treasures she found - here are her pictures....................

This is what running through the woods looks like!

A fairy door.

Toadstool.

Another toadstool.

Yet another toadstool!!And the shell of a pigeons egg.

To finish our walk we left the woods and walked over the farm tracks towards Pitt Hill and finally back to the car.

The view from the top of Pitt Hill is wonderful, you can see for miles across the fields and Copses towards Denmead on one side and Hambledon on the other - it is really beautiful.

Thank you to Auntie Anita and Grandma for a lovely day.

Holiday in Devon

We are home from Devon! We've had a lovely, lovely week and were very sad to leave.
We have played on the beach,visited with friends, explored a gorgeous part of Cornwall on my birthday, with our friends who recently moved there, spent a whole day showing Hannah around the village where i grew up and also spent a wonderful day in Totnes. It really has been the best week!

This is what Hannah did on arriving at the caravan - she was soooo excited to see the sea!

She spent so much time in the sea, rock pooling and trying to ride her boogie board - she also swam every day with Dean in the heated pool by the caravan and loved every minute!

She also built lots of lovely sandcastles!

Wednesday was my birthday, and we drove to Lostwithiel in Cornwall to meet our friends who recently moved there. We have missed them so much since they left and it was wonderful to spend the day together. Emma baked me this delicious birthday cake, which we had after a yummy lunch (also a birthday treat - thank you Emma and Steve) and then the children all played in the river and had a great time spotting fish and little eels.

Later on during the day we visited a really sweet little museum in Lostwithial centre, before heading up to nearby Restormel castle.

On thursday we spent the day walking around Ringmore Village where i grew up and i showed Hannah all the places i loved as a child - it was so nice to see her enjoying the same places that i've always thought of as home.

We visited the church where i used to sing in the choir every sunday and Hannah sat in my old choir pew and tried out the pulpit, she was amazed at how small the little church is.

We finished our village walk with a refreshing drink in the 700 year old Inn in the village.

Yesterday we finished our holiday with a trip to the very green and alternative town of Totnes - what a fantastic place, i didn't want to leave!

Our holiday has made me realise more than ever how much i miss living in a rural area, and how much more i want for Hannah than this city childhood - if only we can find a way to make it happen!