Odds and Ends From A Quiet Week!

After a really busy few weeks this week has been a blissfully quiet one! It has been the schools half term holiday this week so we have stayed close to home and avoided the over crowded parks and play areas.

Hannah has been doing lots of art and craft. She has done clay modelling, painting with acrylics on canvas and today, at history group she made a replica lighthouse (we were studying Grace Darling ).

Hannah's lighthouse

Painting

The canvas Hannah painted for her bedroom.

She has been baking and has made cookies and cupcakes.

She has played outside in her pool a lot (even though it's been pretty cold this week),

and she has worked on her math brainteaser puzzles and continued with her study of The Boxcar Children.

Today, after history, we met up with our friends on The Common where the children flew kits and had a picnic before going to the (much too busy) splash park and playground...................... so, actually, it hasn't been all that quiet a week after all!!

Happy Birthday Hannah - 9 Years Old!!

It was Hannah's ninth birthday on Sunday! She wanted to have a camping sleep over with two of her best friends and a campfire with sausages cooked over it! I was a little bit worried as she has never had a sleep over before and is often quite nervous at night, so we decided the best thing to do would be to put the tent up in the lounge room where the girls would be safe, and have an afternoon cook out with her friends and their families. It worked out really well!

We had a fire in our fire basket, the children had fun with a bubble machine and water balloons, they toasted marshmallows and played. Hannah had some lovely birthday presents, a Moshi monsters Cake and lots of yummy food. She was really excited to have her loose tooth come out on her birthday and wrote a letter to The Tooth Fairy before she went to sleep. She left it in her room so that the tooth fairy wouldn't have to venture into the tent.

Lunch!! 

Alex volunteered to be fire keeper and chef - Thanks Alex :-)

Dancing in the bubbles!

Toasting Marshmallows

Moshi Cake with a flower candle that my mum bought.

The candle played Happy Birthday

'Make A Wish'

Ready for bed - it took another 4 hours to actually go to sleep though !!

Toothy Gap!!

Thankfully the weekend weather was hot and sunny and Monday was a Bank Holiday so the girls who slept over stayed with us for most of the day and played in Hannah's new paddling pool which we bought her for her birthday.

It took over 3 hours to fill this pool, and it was freezing!! They still had fun though, and luckily it came with a solar cover so should warm up pretty quickly!

It's deep enough to float on a boogie board in it and has plenty of room for three little girls to chill out in the sun!

Guess where Hannah is going to spend the summer?

Thank you to everyone who made her day special, she had lots of presents and cards and messages and a really happy day!

Kite Making And Birthday Cake!

We have been to our two homeschooling groups this week. At the first group (on Tuesday) the children made kites from recycled carrier bags.

They even flew a little bit!!

We have a tradition at our Wednesday group to bring cake to share for our children's birthdays. As it is Hannah's birthday tomorrow I baked cakes to take to group this week.

Chocolate and Vanilla Cake

Lemon Cake

All Hannah's friends sang Happy Birthday to her - she was very happy!!

So, tomorrow my little girl turns 9 years old!! Where has the time gone? Happy Birthday Hannah xx

A Little Bit Of 'School'.

We have some new work books! We have Learning Language Arts Through Literature which was sent to us by friends in USA and Scholastics Success With Math which looks really fun and useful and came from Amazon.

The LLATL set we have is grade 4 and Hannah is only really grade 3, but the grade 4 set uses two of her favourite books - The Boxcar Children and Sign Of The Beaver - so she was happy to work up a grade.

We started them today and she did really well and enjoyed working on them.

The blue glue stick may not have been a great buy !!

Finally, Hannah is currently dancing up a storm to two ukulele playing misfits  Daddy and his friend Nick playing ukulele in the living room!

Countryside Day - Sparsholt

Sparsholt College is a further education college offering courses in Agriculture, Equine Studies, Forestry, Fisheries, Game and Wildlife Management, and just about any other rural study you can think of! Hannah has been really keen to see the college as she is still hoping to pursue a rural career, so when our friends told us about the Countryside Day they were holding we had to go!

It was fantastic! We got to see and do so much, and spent the day with our friends which was great.


Hannah met the calves,

Watched a riding display,

Met the farrier,

and climbed a rock!

We watched working dog training,

and a dog agility class.

Hannah and I both had a go at Archery. It was really fun - i'd love to do it again!

We learned about eggs,

and slow worms.

Rode on an old 1960's bus,

 visited the animal enclosures with our friends,

 and had a really long, happy day :-)