Paultons Park Trip

This week we have been to Paultons Park with 170 other home educators from our area!!

Hannah had a great time, despite being nervous of some of the bigger rides ( we are not really scary ride people) and really enjoyed Peppa Pig World and the water rides and spending time with one of her best friends!

Tree Huggers!!

The 'super scary' Edge - we watched our much braver friends go on this!

Fun on the teacups.

Our favourite ride, the Wave Runner.

George's Dinosaur Ride in Peppa Pig World

My favourite picture - Hannah and Hermionie in Daddy Pigs Car

I'd like to say my friend Emma made me do it, but actually I was desperate to ride a dinosaur too!!

A really fun day, and special thanks to our friends at In Search Of The Good Life for driving us and hanging out all day :-)

Pottery Class - Making Gnomes.

At adventure group today our friend Kelly held a gnome making workshop teaching the children how to mold clay around newspaper to make the basic shape and then sculpt a gnome from it. Hannah made a Tomten for her gnome from the Astrid Lindgren books and was really pleased with the way he turned out.

I'm afraid the pictures aren't very good - my phone wasn't really up to the job but hopefully you get the idea, and I'll post some more pictures after he has been fired and painted!

Piano Lessons

Last Friday Hannah started piano lessons. She has been keen to learn for quite a while now, and her Grandma offered to pay for some lessons to help, so after a little searching we found a lovely teacher to come to our house for weekly lessons.

She taught Hannah some warm up exercises, explained which fingers to use for which notes, and started her on three little pieces of music.

Hannah has been practicing every day since her lesson, and has done the  homework that her teacher gave her. She is very keen!

Thank you very much Grammy, Hannah is very happy to be learning to play the piano!

Kelly Loves

My friend Kelly has her own crafty / pottery business called Kelly Loves and last weekend we did a fayre alongside her (we were selling our books and she was selling her creations). Her stall looked lovely, and her things so pretty and unusual that I thought i'd share them here. I think everyone should know about Kelly Loves, she is super talented!!

Aren't all her things beautiful? She also teaches pottery classes and runs workshops and gardens!! She has run pottery and felting sessions for our home education group which Hannah thinks are great, and next week is teaching our group a brand new pottery technique :-)

Check her out HERE

Yoga

This week at Adventure Group the children all had the opportunity to try yoga led by Lucy, the lady who owns Portsmouth Yoga (and also happens to be one of our friends and mum to one of the home ed group children!)

Hannah LOVED it!

Lucy told the children a story about a valley and the animals and trees in the valley and the children acted out the story using yoga poses - it was a really lovely session.

Northney Farm - Open Farm Sunday

Yesterday was the annual Open Farm Sunday event in the UK.
Hannah loved visiting Northney Farm with our home education group last year so was thrilled to find that it was one of the farms that were opening on Open farm Sunday this year.

Northney Farm is an arable and dairy farm on Hayling Island, and they also make their own (delicious) ice cream, have tea rooms and run a small farm shop.

Yesterday we went on two seperate tractor trailer rides around different crop fields and saw peas, potatoes and maize growing. We went around the cattle fields, met the new calves in the barns, had a tour of the milking sheds and watched the evening milking.

Goats

Hannah and Grammy

A field of cows on our trailer ride.

Hannah on the trailer

The youngest calf on the farm

Making friends.

Milking time

Open Farm Sunday is a really nice day out - we didn't get to see the farm in as much detail as when we went on our organised group trip, but it was still a lovely day out and a lot of fun!

Hannah Spent Her Birthday Money On............................

..........Saige!!

Saige - taken by Hannah

Saige and her art supplies - taken by Hannah

She absolutely could not believe it when not only did she get enough birthday money to get Saige, but also her friend Tess was holidaying in the USA and was able to go to the store and buy her and bring her back!!

Hannah bought the doll, her border collie dog and her art set and has recommended that we start saving as she would reeeeaaalllyyyy like Saige's horse for Christmas!!

She was so happy when Tess brought Saige over, and Tess got a Saige doll also, so now she has an AG friend in the UK as well - awesome!

Of course Saige had to spend her first night here with Hannah in her bed -

All ready for bed

10 mins later!

We now have four AG dolls and Hannah's love for them is only increasing, I am so happy that my nine year old still enjoys her dolls and gets so much enjoyment from them.


Oh, and one more picture. When I took the pictures of Saige that Hannah had taken off of my camera I found this self portrait.............

............and thought it was too cute not to share!!