Making It Up

Just a quickie as expecting visitors – made it to the Industrial Hamlet living history day yesterday. Rather disappointed by the fact they’d closed the carparks (I had to parallel park!) and the fact that the site is pretty much inaccessible to buggys. If I’d known that in advance I’d have planned to sling ds and carry a lot less stuff, but there you go. We thoroughly enjoyed the blacksmith and sweet making, plus playing with the victorian toys and dd enjoyed the works gallery.

Today we did two more postcards – only a couple more to do (apologies to anyone who is waiting) and dd practised her ‘s’ as the one letter she does have problems with. Then friends came over for lunch and we went to the farm park again. We wanted to collect leaves and stuff, but there wasn’t much to collect – most of the leaves seemed to have some sort of blight on them which wasn’t pleasant.

Plenty of time to play in the playground though, and we made it back to the car just before the rain started.

Yesterday’s McDonald toy is a big hit – it has two touch connectors on the bottom, so if you join the circuit it lights up. It’s designed to go in water (it’s in the bath right now lol) and dd is having a wonderful time experimenting with it.

Another incredibly busy day. Both dd and ds had me up during the night, so I didn’t surface properly til half nine. Dd came with a couple of books to sit with me while I was feeding ds, and after I’d read to her, she started letter spotting and then word spotting. Helped that one of the characters had a name the same as her dad! Does go to prove that the reading is coming along all of it’s own accord.

After than we piled in the car and pottered off to visit Kirsty and clan, which was our second visit up there, but I think about the fourth or fifth time that dd and Kirsty’s ds have now played together recently. They are definitely getting along much much better, although there is still the occasional loud moment lol! We’d taken a £1 badge kit from the works, and they all spent at least 25 minutes colouring badges, so that was quite successful. Dd also spent a while doing stencil animals, which surprised me as she’s shown little interest in that at home. Then Kirsty got out her hama beads, which are the maxi size. Dd was really into them, and made the outlines of both car and elephant quite happily, while I sat and made little towers and patterns with ds sleeping on my knee. I’d say from the level of interest that they are well worth the investment – we’ve got midi beads at home, and we have done stuff with them, but it does take a lot more encouragement.

Then we shot off to M* to do some shopping and dd had a nice play in the soft play there, before we grabbed our junk food allowance and came home just in time for the wind down tv programme. All in all a successful day so far -dd is upstairs having her bath with dp supervising as I type, and ds is singing to me about food, so I’d better go.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I am beginning to believe that dd can read rather more than she lets on. We were in the toilets today and she was heading for the door, stopped and came back and said “I’ve got to wash my hands, the sign says so”. Sure enough there was a sign on the back of the door, with a picture and the words “Now wash your hands” so I asked where it said it, thinking maybe she’d just looked at the picture, and she pointed to the words. I don’t quite understand why she makes such a fuss about not reading – we are wondering whether she is afraid that we won’t read to her if she can read for herself.

And over a week has flown by again!

Dd refused nursery last week, which threw all my plans out, but we did discover the reasoning. All her friends have moved up a room and she has no one to play with. I mentioned this to the staff and was told she could move up this week, so she decided that she would like to try that.

Otherwise we had a days shopping on Tues, went to a friends house on Wednesday, G* farm park on Thurs and C* house adventure playground and farmpark for another home edded friends birthday on Fri. Dd is fascinated by the plastic or wooden cows that they have at these places that you can milk, and she also spent a lot of time on the trampoline. We took some pictures of the milking demonstration, and if I ever get organised properly, we might start making project pages about these things.

At the weekend we had two other three year olds round on Saturday and an extra baby, one three year old stayed over, then we had him on Sunday too, so we went to one of these indoor play places. It wasn’t the most successful weekend, as the young man doesn’t particularly like me I feel – I am fighting to remind myself to be more positive with the smaller element, and while dd is used to me, he isn’t!

Then this week, I can’t remember Monday (which is probably not a good sign ) Tues and Wed dd did go to nursery, although she refused to stay over at her friends on Tues night which was a first and today we’ve been to the flea market.

Last night we made a dream catcher, which I will be writing up as a project (we took pictures) and tonight dd has done some reading with dp, and there was a spot the difference at the back of the book which led to some more online which she enjoyed.

Oh why can’t I remember Monday??