last post was about Friday. Since then:
soa rolled over twice during a nappy change, and is becoming increasingly mobile on the floor. She also managed to wriggle herself around in the cot and pick up toys that I thought were out of her reach. Am loving watching her figure things out.
Big and I have been working on her General Election lapbook. We had a long session on first-past-the-post voting systems and how unfair they can be. Tim finally got the point across with a menu analogy – if a group of ppl all chose food and three of them chose caramelised red onion sausages, and all the rest wanted different things but they all ended up with the sausages because that had got the most votes that wouldn’t be very fair. We also showed it with a bar chart and a pie chart, covering compass, ruler and protractor use along the way, as well as degrees in a circle, percentages, and revision of division by ten.
I’m aware that we will have to go over several of these skills rather more times, but for me the magic moment came when Big said “this is fun!” 😀
Small had an important moment of personal growth this weekend. Yesterday we were heading out to West Stow Anglo Saxon village and he put on the usual performance about leaving the house, magnified by the fact that it was a Sunday and apparently that makes it even worse. We dragged him out anyway and he had a fabulous time as we all did, and in the car on the way home entirely unprompted he said “sorry for shouting at you, you were right, I did enjoy it.” Wow!
West Stow was great, apart from a 20 minute stretch when I couldn’t find anybody. This was because when we arrived I stayed at the car to feed the baby then when I walked up to the village I couldn’t find anyone. Turned out that they had joined in with the tour, along with Michelle and C, Beccy and R and Zoe and co.
I was a little sad I missed the tour (btw, have managed to detach baby so this part of the blog is brought to you by my touch typing skills 😉 ) but it would have been difficult to join in with soa attached, and I figure I’ll get to do all this stuff again in a few years time when she’s interested 🙂 Tim really enjoyed it – he’s been meaning to go to West Stow for years and years and never got a round tuit before. After they’d done touring we meandered over to the picnic benches and ate, and then all the children hared off into the trees and played. Given that my two hadn’t met any of them before they meshed really well, and we let them run around for ages while Tim queued for hot drinks, Michelle and I sat inside to drink them (meaning I could feed soa inside, a much better idea!) and Tim took Small to buy a roman helmet.
Eventually, after we’d greeted another home ed family in passing, all the adults decided they were tired of freezing solid and we packed up and went into the little museum. For all it’s small it’s rather good, and we enjoyed that too. Quick stop at the shop on the way out and over to the playpark which the kids seemed to enjoy nearly as much as running around in the trees.
I was the first one to wuss out when soa started making feed me type noises and I headed off to the car for another feed. (I’m not shy of feeding out and about in case anyone was wondering, but I am rather reluctant to risk frostbite 😉 ). Rest of the family gathered and we eventually ran for home.
Let’s see, before I pick up squawky again, is there anything I’ve missed out? Yes. We got a Wartime Cookbook
out of the library on Friday and I did Lord Woolton’s pie for tea on Saturday. Obviously Small didn’t eat it, but the rest of us really enjoyed it, and Tim (carnivorous though he is) even had seconds! I’d been savvy with having the oven on and did apple crumble for dessert as well, so that made for a really good meal. (Especially as the meat eaters amongst us had sausages with their pie 😉 .) So that gets added to the recipe pile unlike Dublin coddle as recommended in The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less
which was a bit disastrous.
(Lord Woolton’s pie followed by apple crumble, meal for 4 and including the sausages came it at under £5 for those keeping an eye on the pennies, while I think the Dublin coddle has rather more potential to be expensive as it’s bacon and sausages. Obviously depends on the quality of your bacon and sausages though, and the price of your veg. Our local fruiterer is very good value and I do like to shop there and get whatever is local – it’s all labelled up accordingly.)
I’ve totally lost the thread of this post, does it show? Think I’ll draw to a graceful close and go off and drink my cup of tea 🙂
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