Yesterday I took the three youngest over to a home ed fencing session near Cambridge. A long way to go for a couple of hours, but we made the most of it with a visit to a nearby library for the little ones while Small was fencing, and then we spent the afternoon in a nearby park with a couple of other home ed families.
Small enjoyed the fencing, we’ll be looking for a more local club. (Yes, I know. I was kind of surprised too. Goes to show your children can always surprise you 😉 )
And the little ones loved our library visit. We read quite a few books.
There’s Winnie the Witch at the seaside. Oh no George in board book form. A rather dubious Thomas the tank engine spin off, something about a Lemur in the Laundry, Bob and Rob, and the rather wonderful Can you see a little bear?
That last was definitely the find of the day. As a result I followed Jackie Morris on twitter and instagram, and discovered she’s also done the cover art for the new Robin Hobb, which I really must catch up with. (I’ve liked Robin Hobb since she was Megan Lindholm 😉 )
I did ponder somewhat on the bear book. The words are sparse, rhyming and lyrical yes, but few and far between. And they could have been illustrated in so many different ways – cartoon anthropomorphic bears perhaps, or cuddly toys. But in this version they are glorious and somewhat wild, though they travel with a circus. Very definitely not tame animals though.
It’s difficult to explain, and definitely a case of a picture thousand word thing. All I can do is recommend that you seek out any and all Jackie Morris books, as I’m planning on doing, and find out for yourself what it’s all about. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Afternoon, as I mentioned, was spent in the park, catching up with a couple of families that we see all too infrequently nowadays. Smallest in particular was thrilled to spend time Afish, while Tigerboy discovered a new playmate in Jfish, who really is very good with little children.
And I got a shot of a squirrel.
On the way there and back we listened to the audio book of the Worst Witch from Puffin books. Suffice it to say Smallest is now a huge audio book fan, and wants to listen to any and every worst witch book I can find. Which was the result I might have hoped for, but certainly didn’t expect. We’ve not done that much long reading – we do do chapters here and there, but so far she’s listened to it straight through three times – she may be working on memorising it. A definite hit, which is all you can ever hope for really.
Leave a Reply