And its October

The Ancient Egypt project gradually drew to a close at the end of the summer although the books still piled up in the kitchen would say otherwise! Its quite a good topic to have a go at as there is so much to find out that I'm sure he will get even more from it when we do it again. Minni hatched 3 of her eggs. I was a terrible midwife and kept lifting her up to have a look! She hatched 3 tiny little black chicks and was by all accounts a fantastic first time Mum. The boys adored having them in the lounge as did we until Min did her first poo in 3 days then her presence was felt just a little bit too strongly and she and the chicks were relocated to the section under the hen house!

The summer holiday was a camping trip to the Isle of Wight. First time camping and I won't deny that I was a little nervous but we had a ball. The boys loved it. IOW is fantastic for rock pooling and the first afternoon there was spent dibbing in rock pools with the set that terribly organised home edding Mummy had bought from Sainos. It was a really good buy actually, it contained a net (which I will be very surprised if we can find next year but hey!) A Viewing tank with magnifying bits, sandpaper (we're not sure what for) and other bits and bobs for the general poking and prodding of rock pools! The viewing tank was fab and we ended up with a small collection of children oggling it. All was well until a crab started to eat one of the shrimps in the tank.....nature at its most gross and we emptied the tank back into a pool! T, L and I all had a swim in the sea and the regular swimming meant the T came on really quickly. The camping experience suited us down to the ground! We had a three day cross over with my Dad and his lot so T followed L round which drove her crazy but I'm sure she secretly loved!!!

When we got home we had a day to chill then H arrived with 3 out of the 5 kids she has so they could stay with us for 5 days whilst she had a break with her DH. Thankfully it wasn't the carnage I sort of anticipated and we had a laugh. Both T and L had another child thier age to bug/play with. Dan took the older ones off to fish for crayfish which we made into a risotto. We also went off collecting Elderberries to make cordial. The aim was to get loads this time and not give it away so it lasts us throughout the cold season. We have buckets of the stuff. Even though the summer was shit we still managed to have a fairly good crop on the allotment and the blackberries and elderberries seemed to like the crap summer so there were loads to be had.

This "terms" project is space, so after meptying the library of all the books on space they had we laid out the solare system in the back garden using a selection of fruit, marbles, blu-tac balls and a space hopper for the sun (no expense spared then in pursuit of authenticity!!) After various attempts at lay out we ended up with the sun at the back door step and the planets stretching out into the allotment. Pluto was in a good couple of metres into the allotment and when asked how what is must be like being that far away from the sun T replied "bloomin freezing!" which actually isn't a bad description! I was stuggling to find a through line with the project and did want to go a bit more structured, if only so D would have something to do with T when I was at work. After asking for ideas on an EO list I was pointed in the direction of Live and Learn press - http://www.liveandlearnpress.com/ where I bought a fab lapbook from. For those who don't know (and I didn't) a lapbook is like a scrapbooked folder with lots of mini books or fact files within it. I bought the one aimed at older kids Grades 3-5 which is a little advanced in places but we're modifying bits and T seems to be thoroughly enjoying it - along side the lap book we are creating a wall display with using different art techniques to create the planets accompanied by a mini fact file on each on. So far we have done a balled up tissue paper collage of the sun also using shredded sainsbury's bags, foil and glitter - cue many repetitions of the Mickey Smith quote from Dr Who "sit at the back with the safety scissors and gli'oh!!". Mercury has been created with sand mixed with grey paint and pva glue and Venus has given us cause to crack open the marbling inks (which smell but make for very pretty pictures) Earth is goingt o be another collage and then we are also looking at doing planets using chalk, papier mache, water colour over wax and many ways we haven;t thought of yet! We also did some scratch art . Covering a piece of paper in wax crayon then painting over it with back poster paint and using a cocktail stick to scratch out a pic. came out very well and even L enjoyed it!