Monthly Archives: April 2013

An eventful swimming lesson

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Today I took Tiddler to his swimming lesson.  I really enjoy spending time with him by himself, and he likes having the extra attention.  He loves swimming and is becoming more confident and independent.  He swam by himself today, with armbands and was very proud of himself.  We had been in the pool for about 15 minutes, which is half way through the lesson time, when the fire alarm went off.

We had to leave by the exit which is right next to the teaching pool, and as I walked out I could see our towels hanging up about a metre away the other side of the barrier but couldn’t get them.  As we lined up by the door, we were given foil blankets, but I only got one which was quite small and didn’t go round both me and Tiddler.  So obviously I wrapped it around Tiddler and managed to get it round my shoulders a bit, which meant that I had to walk out and round past the main entrance of the building and across the car park with rather a lot of the rest of me on show!  I was glad that I had my decent Boden swimming costume on (at least it never happened when I was wearing my old baggy maternity swimsuit that had done four pregnancies) but even so I wasn’t particularly impressed.

I was also annoyed about having to walk across the car park which seemed to be rather unsafe.  I couldn’t help imagining what it would have been like if I had been with all four children – and even worse, what it would have been like three years ago if I’d been there on my own with a 5 year old, a 4 year old, a toddler and a baby.  I suppose that’s like a weird kind of reverse disaster planning, worrying about how bad things might have been if they had happened when the kids were younger.  But of course it could happen to someone in that situation now, so I really think that they need to rethink the location of their meeting point.  The other problem with it was that there were a lot of cars moving around and leaving the car park at once – presumably all the people who had all their possessions with them (and their clothes on) when the alarm went off – so it was even more dangerous than usual.

I was very lucky that as soon as we reached the meeting point, we saw Granny and her friend (our neighbour) who had just arrived for a swimming session that was due to start just after Tiddler’s lesson.  They kindly lent us their towels so we were able to warm up and cover up a bit, which was good because it was about 5 minutes before a member of staff came to offer me an extra blanket.  It was a nice sunny day, but we had got very cold in the first few minutes after we came outside so it took us a while to warm up.  I don’t want to imagine what it would have been like in the middle of winter.  After 15 minutes the fire brigade arrived, and 5 minutes later we were allowed back into the building.  Tiddler had by then missed the rest of his lesson, so we just had to get changed and go home.  It was rather disappointing and confusing for him, but it least he got to see a fire engine and four firemen!

Pink pudding and gloop!

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Today we had home education group at our house again.  It was a sunny day, hot enough for sunhats and suncream, and the children played in the garden all afternoon.  It was really good to see our friends, including some who hadn’t been for a while.  It was nice to have the old crowd back together (with the addition a very lovely baby boy who was born two weeks ago!) and the children had a brilliant time.    We made the most of having two tuff spots, and set up one with pink pudding (strawberry angel delight) and one with gloop (cornflour and water), and an assortments of bowls, cups and utensils.  I also added cake cases this time, and some of the children enjoyed making angel delight cakes.  Between the two tuff spots and the play sink, the children were very happy and busy all afternoon.

More messy play in the sunshine

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Sometimes the best things in life are unplanned.  This is certainly true of the best opportunities to play.  This afternoon it started with the arrival of our second tuff spot – one just wasn’t enough for four children (and all their visiting friends!)   As soon as it arrived, the children were very keen to unwrap it and take it into the garden.  We put it next to the other one and started to discuss what we might play with, but it was time for the big three to go to Dramabuds so I told them they would have to wait until after supper.  While they were out, Tiddler wanted to sit in it, but the plastic had got too hot so I put some water in.  He really enjoyed sitting in it and just splashing with his legs, and for a while he didn’t really need anything else.  When he seemed to have had enough of that, I suggested he added some rocks from our collection, and he split them between the two tuff spots to make two beaches.  We collected some boats from the bath and I gave him some pots and bowls for tipping and pouring.  He played with them for a while, then went inside to look for something else to add.  He returned with a bowl of lettuce which he had found in the fridge, which was rather cheeky, but funny, so I let him have it and we decided it was seaweed!

When he had finished playing with his beaches, we combined the two into one tuff spot, and he and Supergirl played with playdough in the other one while I got the supper ready.  When the others came back from Dramabuds we had supper, then I gave them a big bowl of strawberry angel delight in one of the tuff spots, with lots of spoons and other kitchen utensils.  They had fun playing with it, making patterns, writing letters, drawing pictures and eating it!  I think the big boys may have eaten most of it, so I gave them all a yoghurt afterwards to make sure they had enough pudding.  Anyway, angel delight is a big hit and I’m sure we’ll be playing with it – and eating it again.  I just won’t look too closely at the list of ingredients.  After years of serving up organic fruit and yoghurt for pudding, with the occasional home-made apple crumble, it is a bit of a U-turn to be giving them angel delight.  But they love it, and it certainly makes a good satisfying mess!

Painting stones

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On Saturday, I read Jennie’s post about a brilliant messy art session, which started off with a plan to paint some stones and led to some glorious toddler body art as the twins decided it would be more interesting to paint themselves.  I tweeted Jennie saying “I love this! Wonderful how E and W took it in the direction they wanted to and you let them. Child led play is the best!”

I was thinking about this on Sunday, when I gave Rabbit and Tiddler some paint in the garden while the big boys were at choir.  I suggested that they might paint on the garage doors to start them off, and then waited to see what they would come up with next.  They enjoyed painting the doors, and even painted the handle with black paint.  (Unfortunately I forgot to warn daddy!)  After a few minutes, Rabbit asked if she could paint some stones.  We have quite a good collection of stones, rocks and shells, and they spent a lot of time painting them, and Tiddler also painted a piece of wood.  Monkey joined in when he got back from choir, and then Owl had a go later in the evening.  It didn’t lead to any total body art this time, although Rabbit did paint her hand and made a lovely gold handprint on the table!

Playing with water beads and ice

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On Friday afternoon, we played with our new water beads.  They arrived on Thursday and I soaked three packs overnight in two plastic tubs of water – red in the red tub, pink in the pink tub, and clear beads split between the two tubs.  I had been going to add food colouring until I remembered we didn’t have any, so instead I added some peppermint essence which made the water smell lovely.  I also made peppermint-scented ice cubes (hearts and fish.)  When we were ready to play, I put the tubs with the water beads on to the Tuff Spot which was out in the garden, and the children helped me to add the ice cubes.  They spent a little while exploring the textures of the beads and the ice in the tubs, before deciding to tip them all into the Tuff Spot.  This made it easier for all four children to play with them at once.  Tiddler spent quite a long time concentrating on carefully placing the water beads in the empty fish ice cube tray, and Rabbit did the same thing with the heart tray.  Monkey was wearing his new tool belt, so used his hammer to explore and play with the beads.  Luckily, he did this very gently as it is a real hammer.  Tiddler then went to get his toy hammer and bashed the ice and beads as hard as he could!  Owl made a picture of a helicopter by placing the beads on the studs of a Lego Duplo base board.  After a while, Rabbit and Tiddler couldn’t resist getting into the Tuff Spot so I added quite a lot more (warm) water and this extended the play for a while longer.  I enjoyed watching them play, some of the time together and some of the time alongside each other, and I think they all found it quite absorbing and calming.  It’s a good addition to our water (and ice) play, which we do quite a lot, and I’m sure we’ll be getting the water beads out again very soon.

Book Day

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On Friday, we decided to have a book day.  Owl had suggested it when we were tidying the children’s bedrooms last weekend and I commented that we had more books than we could ever have time to read.  I really liked the idea of a whole day centred around books, so we did it.  After Owl and Monkey were back from their early morning violin lessons, and while Tiddler was at his Musicbox class with Supergirl, we started with a little bit of time working on the Gruffalo and Gruffalo’s Child activity books.  After that the children collected all the soft toys they could find that were story characters, then hunted for as many of the matching books as possible.  They then spent a long time setting up displays of each set of books and toys, and we talked about the possibility of making some story sacks.  We have done this before, for Goldilocks and the Three Bears and the Three Little Pigs, but it was a couple of years ago and the contents have long since been scattered around the house (and some of them returned to the charity shops from whence they came) so we need to start again.

This all took a really long time and we suddenly realised it was time for a rather late morning snack.  The children were keen to have a book-themed snack, and the only thing I could think of was sandwiches using dinosaur cutters.  So we collected up our Harry and the Dinosaurs books, and they made dinosaur-shaped jam sandwiches and had a drink of milk in their dinosaur cups.  While they were eating, I read “Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs” to them.  When Tiddler came back from Musicbox, he was keen to join in and the others were not happy with him spoiling their displays.  I read one of the Thomas books to him, carefully replaced it in exactly the right position, and then did my best to keep him out of the way while the big three finished the displays and read some of the books.

In the afternoon, the children spent some more time reading and playing by themselves, then we did some messy play together with water beads and ice, which I will blog separately.  They then watched some DVDS (Kids Praise Party and Friends and Heroes) while we were waiting for daddy to come home with pizza for supper.  He was a bit later than expected, and I thought the television had been on for long enough, so I offered to read to them instead.  We read “Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Book?” by Lauren Child, which is very funny and clever – highly recommended!  We enjoyed our book day so much, and have so many ideas for what else we could do, that I think we might do it every Friday.

Playing with oats

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Yesterday our friends from The Adequate Parent and 3 Kids and a Gluestick came over and I decided it would be a good opportunity to get going on our Farm topic with some more messy play in the Tuff Spot.  Owl spent a long time carefully setting up the farm animals and fences, and then I added two large bags of oats, and a few shredded wheat.  Some of the children helped to crumble the shredded wheat up; Tiddler particularly enjoyed this, and was happily occupied eating it for quite a while.

I set out some farm-themed books on the table to provide an alternative activity.  I knew we had rather a lot of farm books, as it is something we all love, but even I was a little surprised at the size of our collection.  In fact I think we probably have even more, as I only spent about 5 minutes looking and we have books in nearly every room of our house.  It was fun to gather them all together anyway, and we will be using them for inspiration over the next few weeks.  Monkey and Rabbit rediscovered some rather nice little stencil books and drew pictures of horses and farm animals.  Rabbit also drew a rather lovely picture of a horse for one of her friends.

The children played with the farm scene nicely for a while, and then a few of them decided it would be more fun to throw the oats.  So we moved the Tuff Spot outside!  This meant that the children spread out a bit and found other things to do.  They decided to fill up the play sink with water, and then inevitably decided to add some oats.  They made a lovely mess and it kept them busy all afternoon.  You can read another version of events here.

Messy play in the sunshine

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On Sunday it was so sunny and warm that we spent the whole afternoon in the garden.  I was probably most excited about being able to hang the washing outside, but the children enjoyed the chance to play with all their garden toys, and to swing, climb and ride their bikes and scooters.  It was also a good opportunity to take our messy play outside, using the Tuff Spot and our empty plastic sand pit.

I started by filling the sand pit with the leftover rice and split peas which I had been saving since before we went on holiday.  I added playmobil people and some stones and shells which the children had been using to set up a miniature camp.  In the Tuff Spot I placed a tray of flour, also saved from a previous play session, and surrounded it with shaving foam.  The children had fun helping me to spray the foam, and enjoyed watching the shapes it made as it came out.  Rabbit, Monkey and I had a go at writing in the foam, which was fun, but we couldn’t do it for very long because Tiddler was impatient to get stuck in.

Soon the three of them had taken all their clothes off and were in and out of the Tuff Spot and the sand pit, and covered in an interesting mixture of shaving foam and rice.  Owl didn’t want to get right in but enjoyed playing with the rice from the edge and then standing in it.  What he really wanted to do was get into the paddling pool, but the others were so messy that I decided we needed an intermediate stage of washing first.  I got out the three flexible plastic tubs I recently bought for messy play (I wish we had four, but there were only three in the shop at the time) and filled them with warm water.  Tiddler easily got right inside his tub, and Rabbit squeezed into hers.  Not to be outdone, Monkey just about managed to get into his, but it was rather a tight fit.  Owl was quite jealous – I really must find another one – but was pleased to be able to play in the rice quietly without the others, and asked me to help him bury his feet in it.

The children then had fun pretending the three tubs were the carriages of a train, and Owl was the driver.  We soon added our train-shaped paddling pool and filled it up, and they spent the rest of the afternoon splashing in and out of it in the sunshine.  They also enjoyed mixing the rice, split peas, flour and shaving foam into one big sticky mess, though I was glad that they didn’t actually get in it as by this point it was rather late in the day.  It was a really good fun afternoon of play, and we’ll definitely be getting the shaving foam out again, especially now we can do it in the garden.

Easter holidays

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I have been erratic as usual in blogging what we have been up to, which often happens when we are too busy doing it to write about it.  I am really tired at the moment, and have been going to bed as soon as the children finally settle, but I have made myself stay up tonight in an attempt to catch up.  The holidays started with a relaxing and fun Easter weekend at Granny and Grandpa’s.  The children enjoyed lots of arts and crafts, cooking and playing, and I enjoyed having time to blog about it all – a one to one ratio is very civilised!  Since then life has been a little more hectic.  I had two days at home, mainly occupied with washing and packing before setting off annual trip to Butlins in Minehead for Spring Harvest.  It is a… well I’m not sure how to describe it… Christian holiday/ conference type thing.  I’m sure there’s a better way of putting it.  We are the group organisers for our church, and we enjoyed spending time with the other families in our group, as well as meeting new people.

Our Spring Harvest highlights this year:

  • soft play and Bob the Builder world – we spent a lot of time there, as always
  • the children settled in well to their group activities in the mornings, and had a lot of fun
  • I managed to attend four of the adult sessions this time – a significant improvement on my previous best, and a testimony to the fact that life is getting easier as the kids get older (though that did make me a bit sad – it was weird being at Spring Harvest without a little baby)
  • the Big Start in the big top – an all-age introduction to the day’s theme
  • the evening all-age worship – a very chilled out end to the day
  • having two extra children with us for 24 hours while their parents’ drove home (four hours each way) for their eldest son’s confirmation.  This was a lot of fun, and also a highlight because it felt like quite an achievement that it all went so smoothly, and it was nice to be able to help our friends out.  Six children? Easy!
  • some evening socialising with the other parents (thanks to Supergirl) and daily chats over coffee
  • swimming (for the children) and not swimming (definitely a highlight for me and thanks – again – to Supergirl.  I love swimming but not the kind that involves standing at the bottom of slides getting cold and hoping your children will emerge safely.)
  • setting foot on the beach (for about 15 minutes, in between all the other things the children wanted to do – there is never enough time to fit everything in!)
  • feeling proud of Owl who had a little more freedom to explore this time, in the Skyline where the book stall and exhibition stands were, and was very responsible about coming back when he said he would (usually only about 5 minutes at a time, but it was a good experience for him.)
  • twinning our toilets (I kid you not)
  • Tiddler’s birthday, which was the last full day.  All four children were extremely lucky to be chosen to dance onstage in the final Big Start in the morning (the link is to someone’s video from Week 1 and we were there in Week 2 but it gives you the idea!)  Later on, to celebrate Tiddler’s birthday we had lunch with three other families (19 of us in total) in one of the restaurants on site.  And for me another highlight of the day was catching up, briefly, with my lovely friend (Owl’s godmother) who came for the day and joined us at the all-age worship in the evening.

I always come back from Spring Harvest feeling tired but happy, and inspired about something new.  This time I got most excited by a conversation with others from our church about the idea of starting a “messy church” service, which we have been wanting to do for a while.  It was good to discover that the others liked the idea too!

Since then, we have had a quiet few days at home, trying to catch up with laundry and housework, but also having fun with the children and enjoying unstructured time before the term-time routines start up again.  They have played with their trains and cars, Lego and puzzles, and set up a shop selling toy food.  We have enjoyed time together drawing, colouring and working on sticker and activity books, and playing with playdough.  Monkey, Rabbit and Tiddler made food, and Owl made a red planet with a space police prison on it (apparently this is based on the Lego Clutch Powers movie!)

On our way to and from Spring Harvest we drove past Stonehenge, and the children drew some great pictures for our Prehistory project when we got home.

We have also started a new project based on a Friends and Heroes DVD which we bought at Spring Harvest, along with a curriculum pack for home educators.  And today we have been making the most of the sunshine with a whole afternoon of messy play in the garden, involving rice, split peas, flour, shaving foam and water.  I really need to blog that separately I think.  Tiddler hasn’t been very well for the last few days, but he seems to be getting better and he really enjoyed playing in the garden today.  I hope Spring is finally here!

Birthday interview with Tiddler

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Tiddler is three.  This is his birthday interview (a little late because we were on holiday.)

What would you like to be when you grow up?

A grown-up

What kind of job would you like to do when you are a grown-up?

Doing lunch

What’s your favourite colour?

Orange

What’s your favourite book?

Topsy and Tim – Red Boots Yellow Boots

What are your favourite toys?

Cars, cars, cars!

What is your favourite food?

Lunch

What is your favourite thing to wear?

My George dressing up costume

What do you like doing with mummy?

Helping mummy

What do you like doing with daddy?

Making some stuff and a cake

What makes you happy?

Sprinkles on my cake and jelly tots on my cake and chocolate buttons on it and icing on it

Tell me a joke

Why did the apple go to the doctor’s?  Because it was running round the house. (He made this one up all by himself!)