They like to move it, move it!
Monday - Bank Holiday, I hate Bank Holidays! I had some work to do so the children were amused with building Brio train tracks with Monster designing a tricky bit first on paper and then copying his design to using track. He also drew a fab dragon on a large piece of card from the scrapstore including turning the card over to draw the back of the dragon on the back.
We read some of the large pile of library books inclucing one about a family of crocodiles which led to Monster making a pin the nose stud on the crocodile game just like in the story. He also crafted a blindfold from some material and we all played that for a while.
We made birthday cards for a family friend and Monster did some lovely writing in his while Teeny wrote her name really well too for the first time.
My parents came over in the afternoon / evening so they spent some time playing with them too.
Tuesday A bit of a fall out with the children first thing over some teasing of one of our cats, so they got some lessons in what our responsibility it to our pets, why we shouldn’t bully and what bullying is and Monster did some getting over being in trouble with his favourite activity - drawing.
We had a quick visit to the library to return some books, and of course come away with more. And a quick trip to the charity shop which netted some bargains 
Then in the afternoon some of their schooled friends came over for playing and tea after school. They all spent some time in the garden playing various games with sand, sticks and spades. Teeny and her friend L did some dancing for us too.
Wednesday In the morning I had some work to do so the children played with geomags and a foam interlocking pieces puzzle which can be used to build 3D shapes. Davies was also doing some maths basics whilst playing with it including learning names of 3D shapes (cube etc), lots of estimating numbers, working out how many pieces he’d need for various constructions and so on.
In the afternoon it was the first session of our new Home Ed local group. I’d dashed around getting stuff like cups, tea, coffee and sugar together to take as well as lots of paper for drawing and some playdough for activities. We had five families attend which wasn’t bad for a first time but we will need eight to sustain it ongoing so we will give it five sessions - all of May and see how we get on before making a decision as to whether to continue. It was nice to chat to a few new contacts though and the children had a great time running around, building lego creations, learning how to make and fly paper planes and then doing some collages with various dried pasta and pulses.
Thursday I spent most of the day sewing an outfit for Monster to wear to a fancy dress birthday party on Saturday. The children played at length with plasticine and playdough making all sorts of creatures and characters and then playing games with them once made. Monster also did some experimentation with animation such as making eyelids for one of his characters and opening and closing them, changing heads on one of the bodies and so on. After lunch we popped out to get some hair colour for Monster’s outfit and to look at camping stuff for our first camping holiday coming up next month with Muddlepuddle.
In the afternoon we played in the garden, the children with sand and water and the slide and me painting a papier mache creation made for a friend’s birthday present.
Friday The children spent the morning drawing and then doing some workbooks - I should stress here that these are workbooks which have sat on our shelves since I decided to Home Educate nearly 3 years ago and bought in preparation for Monster. The only time they have ever come off the shelves it has ended in threats of school, shouting and despair at him ever being able to read, write and add up. So on the shelf they’ve stayed and our approach to learning and education has changed accordingly. However today it seems to have been something they wanted to do so I left them to it, just explaining what they were supposed to do on various bits and letting them do their own thing if they decided they’d rather. On the back of one which was a Cat in the Hat themed book there was an optical illusion to cut out and make so Monster and I did that and discussed how it worked and talked about other optical illusions we could think of.
In the afternoon we went over to Ali’s where the children played outside for hours, getting filthy and worn out but playing really nicely with all sorts of highly creative and imaginative games and every child’s fantasy of a secret door opening to reveal a whole other world for exploring, only to be runined by us realising a fence panel had broken and let them into the alleyway behind the garden and herding them back in the house again! They then played upstairs, with , I believe further workbook related activity went on and they did some drawing too.
Saturday The day of the Madagascar themed birthday party for our friend Buzz. Monster was King Julien, the lemur and Teeny was a zebra.
They had a fab time doing all sorts of traditional party games as well as laid on activities such as making flags, plasticine modelling (always popular with Monster & Teeny) and repeated dancing to ‘I like to move it, move it’.
They had a great time and then dropped me in town to go to the opticians before going home with A to have all their face paints and hair colour washed off in a bath.
Sunday We went to The Sustainability Centre for the day meeting up with BIL, SIL and cousins J & M. We had a picnic lunch and walked right round ending up carrying all the children. After tea and cakes in the cafe the children learnt all about beekeeping and honey from a very friendly beekeeper;
went on the people-powered swing roundabout
Monster learnt how to make a kazoo from a very cool man in a teepee;
Teeny petted various dogs (she loves dogs )
and we had a go at making peg pixies from wooden pegs and scraps of materials.
