Another seven days has passed and we've had stress, sadness and continued sickness at this end, but have managed to still keep up with bits of home school and other activities.
Face painting fun.
Flower Girl.
Edible Science.
Yep that is green coloured cake mix!
Sedimentary Cupcakes!
The original edible science recipe called for crushed biscuits dyed with food colouring and sandwiched together using a "mud" of butter and syrup. Not good with a diabetic kid thrown into the mix so I decided to make our usual low sugar cake mix and then colour with green, red and yellow food colouring. Each layer contained chocolate chips representing fossilised animals. I must admit the colour combo looked ghastly so we topped each cake with a little buttercream and a few chocolate chips for good measure!
A cross section... in culinary terms it was a spectacular failure!! I think I either overbeat the mix when adding the colouring or added to much xantham gum, sometimes gluten free flour can be quite tricky... well that's my excuse anyway. However in geological terms it really did resemble a rock strata, so yay for that!
Friday was our once a month forest school meet. I woke that morning and truly did not want to go as I felt so unwell, but the look on the kids faces when greeted with that news was pitiful, so armed with a heat pack and painkillers we made the journey. I'm so glad that Dave does the driving on the days out for if it was solely down to me, we wouldn't venture beyond our backdoor!
At the visitor centre.
Pip waiting whilst the adults ponder the sudden downpour and hailstones raging outside. In short typical British weather!
Den building an absolute must given the very changeable weather.
Making wood necklaces using Elder bark.
Prior to this shot Pip had been a scamp and charged past the tree boundary! This girl is amazingly fast on her feet and her ancient mother sadly is not. This is not the first time I've called on her Guardian Angel to intervene, especially since she was some way ahead of me and to the right of us both was a very large lake! She did eventually stop and was very remorseful, I however vacillated between relief and anger, so I was very glad when the craft activity appeared.
Whittling sticks ready for marshmallow toasting.
On Saturday Benedict attended a day cub camp and for the first time ever it was without either Dave or me shadowing him, hurrah! He was in a "nag free zone!" and Dave and I trawled through months of paperwork and other boring yet necessary activities.
Free Time Fun.
Playing Capture The Flag.
On the way home to bed.
Creative Chaos.
Not wishing to miss out on the fun, Sara and Pip spent some time creating this colourful display using fabric crayons. The design was fixed using an old sheet to protect the art work and then ironed. The fabric was an old white pillowcase which I think will be turned into a toy sack by running a casing around the top and then a drawcord through the channel.
We are still in the process of final fixing re the building work and Dave has patiently trawled through several hundred photgraphs to bring you a very small snapshot of the work involved. I've limited him to a two part blog post containing no more than ten photgraphs per post! Wouldn't want to bore you rigid!!
We've made some solid progress in the homeschool department. We've begun our narration on the book "Leif the Lucky" and Benedict drew a lovely opening picture for our work. He worked hard with Shein this morning and after lunch he chose a lesson to complete from his workbook "Responsibilities For Boys." The chosen lesson involved making a chore chart and so we first of all brainstormed the types of jobs done throughout the house and then narrowed it down to five easily achievable tasks on a daily basis, with one weekly chore to be completed on a weekend. He had fun decorating his work with mini drawings, so all in all a good day.
We had hoped to visit the National Railway Museum at York with friends tomorrow but my health is not up for that, so instead we'll visit them at their house. We all get on really well and S has offered to make a warming leek and potato soup, goodness knows it is needed in this cold wintery like weather.
3 comments:
hugs to you, san. i hope you are feeling better soon. and i can totally relate to your feelings of ancientness! guardian angels are very important. i'm glad all was well.
it was such a busy week for you! i love your photos. those cupcakes were very interesting! and gluten free flour is NOT the easiest to work with. sara and pip's artwork is beautiful!
warm leek and potato soup is one of our favorites here. enjoy :) and i look forward to the renovation pics.
The cupcakes are different, I have to say. They look very American, I think, with all the colors. Great that Benedict could attend a day camp. That must have felt very strange to you I bet. Your week looks like fun, so many activities. I like the sky picture. Peter was once in York, but not in the museum. He attended a conference there. I hope that all is well with you.
Love from New York to all!
I love the sedimentary cupcakes idea!
I hope you're feeling better soon x
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