At the end of last week, I thought we were more or less over the sickness bug, though that didn’t turn out to be the case.  On Friday we had another day at home with ill and recovering children, but as the day went on they all seemed to be fine and we had quite a nice time.  Owl, Monkey and Rabbit did a little more work on their Prehistory project, which we haven’t done anything with since before the summer.  We received a parcel from PlayMerrily which caused a lot of excitement, with boots for the little ones, a crystal science kit and a sewing kit.

Owl and I had a go at the crystal science kit, but it wasn’t that successful.  I was rather distracted, we were too hasty, I’m not sure what went wrong but we have some rather tiny crystals.  We need to wait until all the lovely green water evaporates off and then have another go I suppose.  I started the sewing kit with Rabbit, then she did some more knitting and we all continued making the pompoms we had started the day before.  Granny (my mum) was here too and the children had a lovely time playing with her.  Rabbit also painted a unicorn picture on a canvas that she had been given a while ago, and she and Monkey drew some pictures with chalk.

  

  

On Saturday, we took Supergirl to her au pair training day, and then visited my aunt as the training day was near her house.  We then had lunch in a pizza restaurant, and went for a walk.  It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and the children had a great time jumping in a really big muddy puddle, collecting leaves, picking brambles and rosehips and bug hunting (we took some ants home with us!)  We also found an interesting snail on a leaf,  saw some horses in the meadow, looked at some mushrooms and joined hands around a huge oak tree to see if we could reach round.  (We could, but only just.)  In the evening we visited Granny (my mother-in-law) and then went to the Harvest Supper at church.

On Sunday, we went to church, and Owl played his violin in the service.  We had a quiet afternoon at home doing housework while the children watched a DVD, then they did their music practice and bedroom tidying before Rabbit’s friend came round to play at the end of the day.

As the children had been fine at the weekend, we thought we were over the illness, but Rabbit was sick again on Monday night so we were back to cancelling some of our activities again.  We managed piano lessons and swimming lessons – even Rabbit swam as she was fine yesterday and hadn’t been sick for several days.  She did really well in her lesson, and swam unaided for the first time.  However, last night she was sick again so we have had another day at home today.

We have done lots of things at home this week, and I can probably only remember about half of them.  I played Stairs and Slides (a times tables version of snakes and ladders) with Owl and Monkey, and also Scrabble.  We have done some Maths work on money and time, English work on homophones and writing character descriptions, lots of Reading Eggs, and a Reading CD-Rom, music practice, hama beads and plenty of playing with trains, cars and Lego.  Monkey made a brilliant computer (with monitor, keyboard and mouse) out of Duplo.  Monkey has also been to Beavers and Owl has been to Cubs.

Owl spent a lot of yesterday experimenting with bits and pieces from various electricity kits and is trying to design a helicopter.  Monkey spent most of the day and part of the night writing long and very detailed wish lists, mainly Lego Ninjago with a few other things thrown in as well.

Today I went out with Monkey to the deli and local shops, and we collected some more leaves on the way back.  We also did the Maths and English activities that I mentioned in my last post.  In the afternoon Rabbit and Tiddler played in the garden, on the swings, blowing bubbles, drawing with chalk, and collecting leaves in buckets.  Owl made a kite from his flying science kit and then he and Monkey tried to fly it, and I then I had a go with Owl as well.  We just about got it flying but obviously need to take it out into a more open space sometime.  Then we all did some painting for an Autumn display, which was very successful, particularly as the children did it separately in between other activities (kite-flying, Reading Eggs and watching Cbeebies mainly) which made it nice and calm.  Tiddler was asleep and I didn’t wake him until everyone else had finished, which worked really well as I could then focus on him completely.  We printed with apples, potatoes, carrots and leaves, and painted some trees and various Autumn-coloured splodges which I’m sure I’ll be able to work into a display somehow.  It was fun anyway!