Church

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and Hannah was thrilled to be chosen to light the first Advent candle in church this morning. She was nervous about going up to the alter in front of all of the congregation, but she did it - she was so proud!

History Day

Yesterday we spent the whole day at an Introduction to History session that I helped to run with two other mum's from our group.

Sarah ran the morning session. She taught the children about ordering events, timelines, evidence, and making deductions from primary and secondary evidence.

Here are some of the children ordering themselves by date of birth!
All the children brought photos of themselves with them, one for each year. They sorted them into order,


and made their own timelines.
This is Hannah's completed timeline!
Sarah explained evidence to the group.

and the children sorted it into primary and secondary (and at least one mum - (that would be me) - learned something as well!!)
After a break for lunch we had an afternoon session of Victorian Christmas crafts.

I made Christmas crackers with the children,
Sarah made tree decorations,



and Claire made Sugar Mice with everyone.
It was a really busy day, but so worth it as Hannah told me last night that she had really enjoyed the whole day and wanted to do it all again :-)

Santa Comes To Town!

Last night was the night that the Christmas lights were turned on at our favourite local shopping center Gunwharf Quays

Hannah was really excited and totally in the Christmas spirit! She watched out for Santa from daddy's arms as she was too little to see over all the people, and finally saw him coming through the crowd with his reindeer and elves!!



She loved the show they did on the stage, and joined in with the Christmas songs!
And then it was time for (faux) snowflakes, fireworks and finally Santa turning on the lights.


Now, of course, Hannah wants us to put our decorations up, but i'm holding out as long as i can on that one!!

Park Play

This afternoon we went to the park. It was really, really quiet for such a sunny day! Luckily Hannah took Lanie to play with.................





..............and had a fun time :-)

A Chilly Allotment Group!

I think winter is finally on it's way! Yesterday's allotment group was a very chilly, mist, damp session - but Hannah still had a really good time!
She planted beans and onions out into the beds,
and harvested parsley, chard, raddish and nasturtiums.

It was lovely to see her busy in the earth and especially nice that she had her harvested food for dinner last night!

Blog Award :-)

I've been awarded the Versatile Blogger and Stylish Blogger awards by the lovely Adventurer over at (Our) Life's Adventures . As i did this recently i'll just direct you to my replies here - Blog Awards - and say a huge Thank You to Adventurer for thinking of me! Please check out her blog, it is really lovely.

Sunday Sunshine

What beautiful autumn weather we've had today! Dean was working, so Hannah and i went for a walk down to the seafront. Hannah took her dolls pram (with Lanie in it!) and i packed her a picnic and we walked down to The Rose Gardens just across from the beach. There were a few stops on the way for tree climbing!


And then a picnic in the sunshine! There were even a few roses still blooming.
After our picnic we went across to the beach, where there were some quite excited waves, and a quite excited little girl!

Throwing pebbles in to the waves,
and running away from them when they came too close!



Whenever we visit the beach Hannah always leaves the sea a gift - last week she left a sand face with seaweed hair, today she left a stone circle!


The beach certainly blew the cobwebs away today!

A Couple More Pictures From The Tree Walk!

My camera ran out of power just before the end of the tree walk, so i took these on my phone and have just found them!

This was the Dawn Redwood tree, a branch had come down and the children got to have a good look at it, Hannah loved the color of the bark - it reminded her of hot chocolate!



That's definitely all the photos now ;-)