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The rhythm that I described last week continues to work well for us.

We have baked again this time cakes and biscuits, this is a good start to our week as it gives us a supply of snacks.  Before joining our singing group we sat and did a craft together making acorn people which we have placed on our seasonal table.  We have put our autumn books on our table but the tree is still looking summery.  We have some autumn leaves to put on it but as the leaves are still green where we live we have not changed them just yet.

We have lots of birthdays and other celebrations coming up in the next few weeks so we sat and made a few cards on Tuesday morning.  I am usually scrabbling around at the last minute to make a card or I don't send one at all, I will try and remember to do this each month in preparation.  In the afternoon we join our friends for our usual play date.  I was given a whole sheep fleece by one friend which I am hoping to dye, felt and spin.  I need to do some research before I can start this so if you can recommend and good websites or books on this I would love to hear about them.

After retuning home from all our various trips I asked the children what they really wanted to do once they were home.  My youngest wanted to go on a train ride and visit a castle which is what we did on Wednesday.  We were lucky with the weather as it has been really wet lately and it was a rare dry, sunny day.  We explored the castle and museum, had lunch and then found we had some spare time before returning to the train, we spent it in a secondhand bookshop close to the castle.  It is an absolute warren of a shop, as most secondhand bookshops usually are we came away with three books, I could have bought many more!

We managed to fit in a swim on Thursday as part of our trip into the local town.  Last week the pool was closed so we had to give it a miss, this week we had the pool to ourselves.  It is a great time to swim, between 3 and 4 pm only the small pool is open at that time as the larger pool is in use for adult swimming lessons.  It is unlikely to ever be that busy as most of the users of that pool will be picking their children up from school.  We have not managed to fit in swimming for a few weeks now, we missed the last few weeks of our outdoor village pool which is now closed for the season it will be good to fit this into our week once again.

Today we have stayed at home for the day.  We did some more science experiments this morning, we looked at vibrations and air waves which included playing some loud music!  We also looked at forces, inertia, acids and alkalis.  Our crystals did not grow that we set up last week we will have a go at them again with different materials this time.  In the afternoon my youngest and I had a go at making a bowl using strips of material and glue, fabric mâché an idea from a book we got out the library this week.  I hope to put this on our seasonal table to store our finds from walks.  If it works I can think of other bits and pieces that I could put in them, we need to wait for the glue to dry to find out.

At the beginning of the week the children got our farm set out.  This is a collection of animals, vehicles and buildings that we were given by some friends their children have grown now and they no longer had space for it.  They set up a farm using fences to make fields for various animals and the buildings for storage and sleeping.  Throughout the week in between other things that have been going on they have spent time together playing with their farm.  They have milked the cows, sheared the sheep, baled hay, fed the animals and driven vehicles around on various jobs.  The fields have changed shape and position through the week as have the animals within them.  It has been lovely to listen to them interacting throughout the week as they have managed their farm.