A Few Days Of Sickness

Poor Hannah has had to spend a few days in bed as she caught a sickness bug and was quite poorly :-(
She was still smiling though, and had her best doll Lanie to keep her company!

Today she is feeling better and really needed some fresh air so we had a short visit to the park to blow away the germs and try to stimulate her appetite again.


Two little pairs of feet on the slide!Only Lanie was up for the spinning pole, but Hannah said she liked it!!
On the swings
the basket swing is always a favorite!
We are hoping to get back to normal over the next few days - fingers crossed neither Dean or I catch the bug :-)

Thursday Fun

Another lovely day today and this time it was a trip to the beach with some homeschooling friends!

We met in a playground on the common and had a play there (well Hannah did - i just recovered from the bike ride there!!), before heading across to the beach. Hannah was very happy to be on the beach she loves it!

She even braved the chilly sea for a little while for a spot of paddling,

before tucking into her picnic lunch.

The next hour or two were taken up with shell seeking! The children collected a big tub full, and put plenty in the bike trailer too. It's amazing how they never tire of shells, we have literally hundreds at home but every new shell is just as exciting and special as the very first one.........i love that :-)

After the beach we all parted company and i cycled Hannah along to the other end of the seafront for an ice-cream break, before visiting another playground on the way home. Hannah was feeling very proud on the way home as she was finally brave enough to go head first down the slide, she's been wanting to do that for ages!!
And finally, a snapshot of the bike and trailer especially for Woolywanderer!! Sorry it's not an action shot but it's very difficult to photograph yourself cycling along lol! I'll get Hannah's daddy to run along next to us with a camera one day ;-)

Adventure Club - Parachutes for Eggs

Our Home Ed group's tuesday session is now called Adventure Club, as some of us thought it was about time we gave it a name!
Today it was Book Group and the children had read ' The Foxbusters' by Dick King-Smith. At least most of them had! Hannah only managed the first chapter and then declared it too sad, scary and horrible after Mr Fox ate a chicken!!

So, on to the activity, and Sarah had brought in an egg challenge for the children - to construct a parachute which would safely land a raw egg launched from the roof of the building! And they didn't do too badly!

They split into teams, and Hannah was with her friends Melissa and Oliver.

Here they are planning their materials.

Hannah tying the parachute strings.
The finished Parachute!
Then we launched them from the roof!!
This is Hannah, Melissa and Oliver's egg after landing - much less damage than i expected, it was just cracked at the top.
Then it was time to try our bouncy eggs. We had hard boiled this egg over the weekend, and soaked it in vinegar for two days. The vinegar reacted with the shell and made the egg bouncy!!

After the group finished Hannah and i went to Victoria Park in the sunshine where Hannah immediately climbed a tree to be a squirrel !!
Then found this beautifully decorated tree outside the Arts Cafe,
and finally kicked off her shoes and ran around barefoot on the grass - she loves grass and isn't a big shoe fan so eagerly awaits this moment each year :-)
On the way out of the park we spotted a real squirrel in a tree, he was just staring at us!
And finally we called into the shops to get a few bits and Hannah chose a puppet sewing kit which she did in the bike trailer on the way home. Aren't they cute?

Allotment Group and A Rainbows Badge

What a gorgeous day it was today, just perfect for going to our allotment group!
Today the children made bird scarers for the fruit trees, went bug hunting for slugs and snails, and helped to tidy up one of our group members allotments.


The fruit tree area
Daffodils outside the ecodome
Ladybug
Some of the bird scarers
flying in the breeze
hunting for slugs
Hannah found some daisies and wanted to make a daisy chain,

The broad beans are doing well,
and Hannah's pea has started to shoot.
Beautiful Hyacinths
watering the salad in the poly tunnel
cutting grass and collecting the cuttings
The allotment group has been such a success, Hannah really, really loves it and is learning such a lot from being there.

Finally today Hannah had her Rainbows meeting, and was very excited to come home with another badge :o)


Well done Hannah xxx

A Lovely Day Out

Yesterday was the most beautiful spring day, perfect for a trip to the Sustainability Centre to visit our friends who live on site there.

I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for how beautiful and peaceful it was as i was having such a nice time that i didn't take any pictures - oops! So, imagine warm sunshine, birds singing, frogs croaking, and children playing......it really was idyllic!

Hannah was fascinated by the the frog spawn in the pond, and really excited about all the birds and mostly just really happy to see her friends :-)


Here are a couple of pictures i did manage to take of Hannah playing with her daddy,

and with Mia and Willow :-)

Writing and Spelling

This week i rashly decided that our dining table was much too big (it really was!!) and i freecycled it. My plan was to get a smaller one from freecycle, but so far nothing has come up so Hannah has had to do her work on the sofa - not ideal but she's given it her best shot!


She has been working very hard on her writing and spelling this week and is getting a lot more confident. I think she has really surprised herself :-)

I bought her some proper crayola handwriting pens to use in her journal and this was her first entry written in ink.

She has also been working through her handwriting workbook - this page was a 'look at the pictures and write your own sentence' exercise.
Some cursive number practice.
Spellings
and choose the sentence.
She got a bit keen on the last picture and forgot to leave spaces in between her words, but i think she did a really good job despite that. Well done Hannah!

Natural History Museum Visit

Yesterday we met some of our fellow home edders at the Natural History Museum in Southsea for some exploring.

Hannah was really excited to go there with her friends, even though we have been many times before.

The children all really loved the aquariums and spent ages watching the fish and spotting waterbugs.

Hannah and her friend Melissa discovered a display of hives and i found them having a lovely chat about the differences in the hives of bees and wasps!


Hannah was really interested in the dinosaur display for the first time on this visit.
and the Ice Age display as well. She has found both of these a little scary in the past.
And finally we arrived at her very favourite section - British Wildlife.

This area has lots of British wildlife floor puzzles for the children to do as well, this one was a meadow in summer.

We had a lovely visit, and Hannah learned a lot of new things about our world!