busy busy busy...

I wanted to get a quick post in because we've been so busy and I'll only end up forgetting and not blogging for a month again.

We're on for a busy week this week. Yesterday was our usual gymnastics and swimming routine, with a little lunch and socialising with good friends thrown in. We saw these particular friends last week as well as their youngest has a broken leg so they're not getting out much. The kids all had lots of fun pouring water down the drive, watering the plants, wearing the grass clippings and playing with the duplo before we disappeared off to swimming.

At gymnastics over the past few weeks the older two sprogs have been making great progress. Little has figured how to do a handstand properly, and as of last week can now do cartwheels properly too (when I say properly, I mean with straight legs and no falling over). Yesterday Small figured out how to do a backward roll into straddle stand, which he is utterly thrilled about and keeps doing over and over to show that he really can do it! We also bought both of them goggles for their swimming lessons a couple of weeks back, although as yet I am unsure if it has made any difference. They're both still in that phase of swimming where they're not really making any progress... which I don't think is helped by the fact that the lesson is a touch overcrowded. I am sure we should continue with the lessons, but at the moment I feel a little like we're paying a large amount of money for not much progress.

On Friday the sprogs all did some Reading Eggs/Eggspress, and we discussed how they thought they were doing and agreed that Little and Small would both try to do a lesson each every couple of days, depending on how it fit into our schedule. So this morning Small turned the computer on at about half 8 and did a lesson, and then decided he wanted to have a play on Mathseeds. We tried Mathseeds on Friday and it wouldn't let me log in for a trial, so I emailed their customer services and heard back yesterday that they had sorted it for me, so we thought we'd give it a go. Small raced through several lessons as quick as anything and then got stuck on part of a lesson that wasn't loading correctly, and got annoyed and gave up. Cue another email to customer services. Then Tiny had a turn on Mathseeds too - starting from the beginning with the number 1. She enjoyed the lesson, especially the catching butterflies, but each lesson part took so long to load and was then very short that eventually she got frustrated with having to wait for 2 minutes for something that only took her 30 seconds to complete, and she got down and left. I don't blame her. After that Little fetched out the laptop and did a comprehension lesson on Reading Eggspress, and was excited to note that she only had 2 lessons left to do before she could move on to the next level.

This afternoon, we hopped on the bus into town and Little went to a new 8+ group that has started up recently. When she started going she requested that she be able to go by herself without me and the younger two sprogs. As the group is being run by a good friend I agreed. I dropped her off and Small, Tiny and I walked to the market to get some meat from the butcher, and some fruit and veg and bread. Then we nipped into Cancer Research and managed to find a few books for the grand total of £1! (I love charity shop bargains!) I got 2 science books, a Brambley Hedge music book, a 'kitchens through the ages' book (history), and The Ardvark who Wasn't Sure :) Small also found a classic die cast bus and Tiny found some bangles. When we went to pick Little up she came out from her group with a bowl full of bath bombs which they had made during the group. We got the bus home (which was really crowded as it was not only late but the previous one had blobbed), and half way home a friend's hubby got on the bus with one of his daughters and she and Little spent a while talking about horses and then Little gave her a bath bomb... this is a girl she's never met before! :) shame she wasn't so keen to give one to Tiny who was desperate to be given a gift from her big sister.

This evening Tiny asked if she could help us put up our new greenhouse. My mum and I went to pick it up on Sunday afternoon/evening. It took some dismantling, and we hadn't planned on putting it up yet, but we thought 'well, why not?' so we spent a couple of hours putting the frame together this evening. We would have got slightly more done except we had some issues with the base which we eventually discovered had been put together wrong originally (explains why the back base piece was warped when we dismantled it), and once we swapped two of the sides over we made good progress. We've not put any of the glass in yet, and we've to replace 2 pieces that were broken, but it looks good so far!

Tomorrow morning we will be doing our final prep for our new science group on Thursday! I've a bunch of partly written posts on the various experiments and activities we have planned sat in the blog back end. People keep emailing me and saying they are coming and they hope it's not too late to tell me! I've a sinking feeling that I've not got enough supplies, and keep feeling like I've bitten off more than I can chew! I've been in contact with Lisa from An Ordinary Life? who also runs a home ed science group and she has been giving me lots of tips, ideas and support.... so thank you Lisa!! *blows kisses*

the National Media Museum - part of the SMG

Today we went to the National Media Museum in Bradford with some friends. We've been several times before and the kids really enjoy it there so it was a given really that we'd have a good day.

The National Media Museum is part of the Science Museum Group along with the Science Museum in London, the National Railway Museum in York and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. There are proposed funding cuts to the budget for the Science Museum Group, and if they went ahead then at least one of the museums outside of London will face closure.

While not surprised about this proposal, I am disappointed that this has been suggested as a way forward. There's a variety of petitions that have been set up.

Petition to keep the National Media Museum open here.
Petition to keep the National Museum of Science and Industry open here.
Petition to keep the National Railway Museum open here.

Most importantly though (and ironically, the petition that has the least signatures!), there is a petition here to not cut funding to the SMG and keep all four museums open and entry free of charge.

Please sign them! Sign all of them, but if you only want to sign one, sign the last one! It is so so important that our museums stay open and continue to educate young and old, preserve our heritage, and provide a much needed boost to their local economies!

a nice hot cup of cake

Last night for Small's bedtime story we read Mr Funny. At the end of the story Mr Funny goes into his house and makes himself a nice hot cup of cake... which Small thought was very funny. Then I mentioned that we could actually make a cup of cake. Cue stunned/excited face from Small. I asked him if he would be interested in having a go, and he was, so that's what we did this afternoon.

This is the recipe we used.

Now before you go getting all excited... don't. Don't make the cake. It wasn't nice. Good cake does not taste like that. Nor does it, upon cooling, solidify into a substance akin to old plaster - looks firm enough until you touch it and then crumbles into a dry, sawdusty spoonful of disappointment. The sprogs* and I felt really quite let down. Which was a shame because we largely enjoyed making it. I'm not sure whether it's that we all generally dislike cake that has oil in the recipe (the only additional ingredient from our usual recipe), or whether we would need to "tweak" the recipe to suit our microwave.... either way, it's not happening. We'll stick to real cake in the future.

*except Tiny, who went and fished hers out of the bin and dropped bits of it all over the house while she was bouncing about the fact that Podd had come home from work. She still only managed to eat about a sixth of it. Then she made him try it. He was also not impressed.

weekend walking

Today I decided to write a post about a day out we had... and I thought that I was only a week late writing it, until I looked at the dates on the photos we took and it turns out it was 2 weeks ago! I can't believe how fast this year is flying by! How on earth are we in June already??

Anyway, on with my post... 2 weekends ago we decided that we didn't want to spend the day inside as it was such lovely weather, so we went to St Ives in Bingley with a packed lunch to eat when we got there.

The first thing we found while walking up from the bus stop was a piece of wood with some really interesting looking fungus growing on it

Then we walked up past the wooden statues of "the witch who is making soup" and "the weeping angels"

We spotted some dens that had been made. We thought maybe a forest school had built them.

The bluebells were starting to carpet the forest floor...

While eating lunch we spotted a squirrel, although the pictures aren't great as they were taken on my phone (we forgot to take the camera!)

After lunch we walked to the pond. I say pond, but it's almost a small lake... it even has an island in the middle.

Just as we arrived there were two young ladies who gave us the remains of their box of duck food which they hadn't used up which was very kind of them. We thanked them and the kids had loads of fun feeding the ducks and geese.

When we reached one end of the pond we spied a pair of geese with 6 goslings...

The next thing we spotted which the kids were excited about was millions and millions of tadpoles...

And we spent a long time talking about frog life cycles, how frogs return to their pond of birth to breed again, and how nature works to ensure sufficient frog numbers survive whilst also providing food for other creatures in the food web. During that conversation we also spent some time watching some archers shooting targets in a field behind the pond. Little has been very interested in starting archery for some time now and really wanted to have a go, she was a bit disappointed that we have to book onto the courses and can't just show up and ask for a turn.

Here's a few more pictures...

Look at that gorgeous blue sky! :)

It was a long tiring day for Tiny... especially as on our way home we stopped off at our friends' house for a cuppa and ended up having a BBQ with them and their neighbours.

Last Sunday we decided we wanted to go for a walk again, but just a little one this time. What started out being a little wander ended up being a 2 and a half hour trek that had us all shattered by the end! We set off along a nearby bridle path, and then we got to the end of it decided to explore a slightly longer route home along another bridle path... by the time the kids were saying they wanted to go home it was quicker to continue than to go back the way we had come, but it was still another 45 minutes before we eventually got home and all piled ourselves onto the sofa for drinks and watching the Princess and the Frog (our way of keeping the kids spirits up instead of melting down). We did get a few lovely pictures though :)

Butterfly...

Random rock face that Small decided used to be a castle that had been ruined and hidden by the trees and plants...

Bridge over a local beck... I didn't even know there was a beck! You can't see from the pictures but the place was absolutely swarming with midges... we named it a midgie motorway :)

A little trickle that decided it didn't want to be confined to the ditch any more and preferred the path for a while!

Random interesting looking tree!

At one point near the beginning of our walk I found a little gap in the hedge and squeezed through and found a lovely picturesque area of trees and a bluebell carpet and it was just lovely (although apparently not lovely enough for me to take a picture of it!), but Tiny got a little bit worried when she realised I wasn'twalking behind her any more and started shouting for me. When I appeared again she said: "I thought you were kidnapped by aliens!" which had Podd and I chuckling for the next 10 minutes.

Overall, our family walks the past two weekends have been lovely :)