Weekending

This week has been varied and busy.  We started as usual with our trip into the local town for food shopping and visit to the library.  In the afternoon we headed to the swimming pool rather than home, it was the only time we could fit a swim in.  We are trying to go every week and did not fit a swim in last week as we were away.  We popped in to see a friend on the way home for afternoon tea and a catch up.

On Tuesday we joined our usual play date friends for a wonderful celebration of Imbolc.  The following day I took the children to see their first play.  An adaptation of the wonderful book, Stuck by Oliver Jeffers.  It was a perfect length at 45 minutes and they both really enjoyed it.  Thursday we visited friends who we have not seen for weeks, it was great to catch up for lunch and a short play.

On Friday we packed up and travelled to see family.  We stayed with my in laws for the weekend.  My father in law is in poor health and I think we will be making this trip a fair few times over the coming months to share the time he is still in good enough health for us to take the children.

In between times we have been baking, cooking, reading books on castles, knights, armour, Romans, celts, Vikings, medieval cathedrals, drawing, talking about numbers, playing with Lego, play dough, soft toys, making dens, pretending to cook, go shopping and so much more!

Sunshine

   

 

 

Yesterday we arranged to go out with friends as the weather was forecast to be cloudy but dry.  We woke up to find a clear blue sky and sunshine.  It's the first time we have seen the sun properly this year, except for a few hours on the beach on New Years Day.  It was wonderful to feel the warmth of the sun on our faces again after so long.  The world felt bigger with the open blue sky, rather than thick grey cloud pressing down on us.

We had a great time, walking, playing, swinging, jumping, hiding, clambering, climbing, eating, drinking, talking and creating with our friends.  As I drove home through our village there were lots of mums walking to the school to pick up their children, I wondered wryly who had had the best day of learning.

Linking in with The Magic Onions for Friday's Nature Table a sharing of nature activities.

Weekending

My life is busy these days.  During the week my days are full, come the weekend they are busy too, but somehow I seem to have more time  and I am not exhausted come the end of the day.

This week started with a birthday my lovely husband did the shopping whilst the rest of us stayed at home to play with new toys or baking a birthday cake.

We joined our friends on Tuesday as usual for some noisy fun, the weather was cold and wet so the children stayed indoors their play got noisier as the day wore on.  The adults had great fun helping to build a set of storage boxes and a set of shelves.

On Wednesday our friends organised a day with apples.  It was a really interesting day made all the better by the lovely lady who we spent the day with.  She is something of an expert on all things apple and had a wonderful manner with children.  My eldest is naturally cautious around those he does not know but she spoke to me about what his interests were and then quietly drew him in to what we were doing.

The next day we headed south to join friends who we missed last week.  We were welcomed with soup for lunch and the children played and the adults knitted (well almost all of us one was in the garage!) and chatted as the afternoon gently rolled by.

After a hectic week we had a quiet day at home playing, reading and drawing.  The weekend was also spent at home working in the garden, sewing Christmas presents, knitting, baking and tidying the house.  My weekends are becoming more focused on my house and family and I am finding them a good end and start to the each week.  During the week I concentrate on our days out and at the weekend stuff at home.  I am longer spending time during the week wondering when I can fit in sewing, gardening or tidying.  I also know that come the spring my weekends will start to get busy again and my time for doing stuff at home will be pushed out.  I will need to ensure that some of my weekends are kept free, always easier said than done!

Weekending

This week has been a bit quieter than some, we have been feeling under the weather so some quiet time at home was needed to bring us back to health.

We started the week with our usual trip in to the local town for shopping and a visit to the library.  It took me all morning to get organised to go so we were late heading out.  We had a lunch/tea meal in the  late afternoon before wrapping up with lots of layers to head out.  It was a freezing night, I had to defrost the car before driving, but we could not miss the annual bonfire and fireworks in the next village to observe Guy Fawkes Night.  The bonfire was enormous as it usually is but it was good to feel the heat on such a cold night.

On Tuedsay we headed to our friends for our regular play date.  There were just three families this week so play was quiet which was good.  It has got a bit fractious and noisy of late.  Wednesday saw friends come to us for a play and lunch the house was noisy and felt full of children.  At one point they all had capes made from playsilks and a musical instrument each and were marching round the dining room table.

The end of the week we spent quietly at home, I woke with a very sore throat and hardly any voice on Thursday.  We rested and read books together.  Friday Daddy returned to us after a week of working away, he was tired after a long journey so wanted to sleep, the children were hankering for his company  they were dissappointed he just wanted to go to bed.

Over the weekend I was feeling better so I spent some time in the garden planting and tidying, I also managed to make a start on a curtain for my youngest's bedroom.  I do not get the chance to sew very often so I am really slow when I do.  It took me all day to sew the material and linings together.  I must have unpicked as many stitches as I sewed.  I need to make some tab heading and sew the hem, I expect that will be another days work.  Not such a quiet week after all!

We have been mainly.......

having fun with friends and family this week.

We started the week with our usual trip into the local town.  After the busyness of last week, we set off earlier and managed to avoid it.  We found a fantastic book about spiders, The Diary of a Spider a fun story about how spiders live.

On Tuesday we joined our friends for our regular play date.  The children all rescued a baby blue tit which had been caught by a cat and cared for it.  It was interesting to watch them working out what to do with it, what they needed to keep it safe it kept them busy for a long time until they could set it free.  They also decided to put on a show on the trampoline with jumps, songs, a short play and joke telling it was great.

We stayed at home the next day and kept ourselves busy reading books, playing with Lego, painting, knitting, baking bread and observing Lammas. We cooked a meal in the evening based on the few bits of produce that we have in the garden at the moment, it's a lean year this year.  After supper I headed off to a meeting with friends to plan a programme of activities for a local Explorer Scout group it was the first time my youngest had gone to sleep without me, she managed just fine with daddy for company.

We joined friends the next day at a local pick your own farm.  We managed to pick a pound of strawberries there were not many as it is the end of the season, and three pounds of raspberries, I have given up trying to grow strawberries they will not ripen in my garden and I really ought to get some raspberries canes for my garden.  Having picked our fruit we drove up the road to a play park where we had a picnic and a play.  It was really quite warm for a change, although you needed a jumper when the sun went in.  I made most of the fruit into jam when we got home, some of the raspberries got eaten with cream for supper.

On Friday we visited our friends to the south, it has been a long time since we were able to spend time together and it was great to catch up with them again.  We joined them for lunch after which we walked to a local park so that the children could all run off their energy.  I seemed to be doing a lot of that as they had me whizzing them around on a heavy roundabout!  We returned to their house for a drink with  scones and jam before heading home it was a lovely day.

Over the weekend we enjoyed an adventure with our canoe and sail on a local lake on Saturday.  It started off sunny with light winds and ended with wild weather heavy rain, wind, thunder and lightening.  We had the lake to ourselves at that point, not surprisingly.  Whilst cooking tea that evening my children decided to raid my utensil draw.  My youngest had a colander on her head and a funnel as a trumpet, my eldest had two measuring cups and a whisk as a drum set.  They were marching up and down, making music.  They soon had many items on the table which they were tapping with the whisk they realised that the size of the item had a bearing on the sound it made, it was lovely to listen to their conversation of discovey.

We stayed at home on Sunday drawing, reading books, playing Lego and watching DVDs a quiet end to the week.

We have been mainly.........

missing daddy this week.  I have already posted about him returning into the fold, but during the week leading up to his return it was really hard for the children.

We started the week with our weekly trip in to the local town for food shopping and a visit to the library.  We arrived home with our new selection of books which is always exciting.

The next three days we had play dates.  The first at a friends house the other two days at ours.  At our friends we managed to stay outside for most of the day.  My oldest spent most of the time building and setting up a base on a shed roof, at one point he was up there with two other friends sitting in deck chairs looking through binoculars and chatting away!  On the days we had friends to play I could tell that not all was well.  My oldest didn't seem to want to play, preferring to be alone on the sofa with a book.  I was concerned that the week was too busy for him and I had not allowed enough time alone. On talking to him discovered that he was missing daddy and did not feel like playing much.  We were due to go out the next day, so I suggested that we wait and see how we felt in the morning as to whether we would or not.

We started the day at home playing with lego.  The time raced by, we all sat together on the floor amongst a sea of pieces and minifigures, creating models, playing with them and the minifigures.  Around lunch time my youngest announced that she wanted to go out somewhere.  My oldest looked at me, I said that the choice was his today and we would do whatever he wanted.  About an hour later he announced he did want to go, but only for a play.  We were joining a home ed group who were doing a workshop.  We packed a picnic and off we went.  We had a lovely afternoon in the sunshine sitting with our friends as they built their creations.  I didn't see my oldest for the whole time we were there.  He announced in the car on the way home that he had a great afternoon.

We had another day of sunshine the following day it has been along time since we had two days of sun!  We had a great day which you can read about here.  We all went to bed excited about the return of daddy/husband in the morning.

We have been mainly...........

creating with cardboard this week.  We ordered a number of boxes last week to store some of our kit in the loft which, we have discovered, has mice living there!  We needed some mouse proof storage.  Each box arrived in it's own, larger, cardboard box.  At first I thought what a waste of packaging, but then realised that even though it would have been better to have had less, it provided hours of entertainment for the children.

 I provided the items that were asked for, paints, brushes, scissors and tape.  I gave them the run of the kitchen floor (it has survived!) and an hour later with a small amount of help from me, there was a sizeable ship and a house.  The ship was created by putting two boxes together and was big enough for both children to sail inside.

Over the rest of the afternoon and the following few days the ships and house were played with extensively.  The ship went off on numerous trips to watch whales and sharks, to go fishing, to find an island to live on.  A cardboard tube was found and served as a telescope to look from the rigging.  The house was a home on an island and also served as a lifeboat when the ship started to sink with the cardboard tube as an oar.

The boxes have also been used as percussion instruments, for playing a jack in the box game and hide and seek, to name but a few.  With a little imagination the uses of a cardboard box are endless!

TV

I live in a house without a TV, I grew up in a house without a TV, I have never owned a TV.  Why have I decided to live without one?  I live a busy and full life and have no idea when I would fit in watching TV, but then I suppose I have never tried to.  We do not live in a 'screen' free house, we have a screen, projector and a means of playing DVD's which we do watch, mostly documentaries.

I am always interested and intrigued to read about TV watching and children.  I have no doubt that watching too much cannot be a good thing but how on earth do you measure how much is too much, does it depend on the age of the child or the type of programmes watched?


As parents it's easy to use the TV as a babysitter, but are you just setting up problems for yourself when the amount of time that it is on increases and increases to the point where, when you do turn it off you are greeted with anger and disappointment at it being turned off and a child(ren) who are at a loss as to how to occupy their time.  Many children have TVs in their bedrooms how is it possible in such a household to be aware of how much TV your child is watching and what they are watching? 

When you are watching TV and for that matter DVDs your brain goes into sleep mode, it pretty much switches off.   If you were to watch many hours of TV or DVDs in a day you brain is not being actively used.  It is therefore not surprising that if children have many hours of screen time, that when this stops they are at loss as to what to do.  Their brains are not used to being used in the manner required for any kind of play.  My children have, from a early age, engaged in self directed imaginative play, which usually involves talking out loud with whatever they are playing with.  They are always busy and never ask what can I do now. 

In moderation, like so many things in life, TV watching has its place, it is working out what 'moderation' is appropriate for your family and sticking to it.