Swimming

Last week we went swimming. We stayed in for a couple of hours and then we went to the park behind the leisure centre to play and have lunch.

Our first craft session

Theo wanted to have a go at making articulated hands.

You draw around your hand, cut it out, score and fold lines where the joints should be, stick straws between the joints for bones and then thread string through the straws.

When you pull the string the hand opens and closes.

When they'd finished making their hands we tidied up and had lunch together.

After lunch the children decided to play twister.

Anyone who's been to my house knows that my lounge is really small. In fact the little square of floor space is exactly the size of a twister mat.

It was hilarious, we had all six children playing twister until they collapsed in a giggling heap.

Rebecca had a game against Levi and she was winning until he leant against her and knocked her over.

Rebecca has found a new vocation. She's going to be like those women who put coloured braids in peoples hair only instead of braids she's going to put loads of coloured sticks in their hair.

She tried it out on my new best friend Laura.

It looks fabulous darling!

We finished off with a game of hot potato. I bought this in a charity shop ages ago.

You have to say a word and then pass the musical potato to the next player who has to think of another word that's associated with your word. They then pass the potato to the next player until the music finishes.

If you're holding the potato when the music stops you have to take a chip from the pot in the middle.The winner is the one with the fewest chips.

We've played this before but it was a lot more fun playing with a big group of people. The children really had to do some quick thinking to keep the game going.

Our new home education group

For a while now a few of us with older home educated children have been getting together informally to do various activities and after quite a lot of discussion I decided to go ahead with my idea to start officially organising weekly activities and meet ups.

So last week we went to the electricity museum in Christchurch. This week we met up at Butchers Coppice where they have a new adventure playground, agility trail and trampolines.

We were joined by two new families so there were quite a few of us. Next week we're going swimming.

Inside the electricity museum they have a fully restored Bournemouth tram. It's a bit nicer than a yellow bus in our opinion.

Rebbecca, wondering what sort of people used to travel on trams?

The notice above her head reads 'PLEASE DO NOT SPIT IN THE CAR'.

This was obviously very interesting because Theo spent quite some time in this position looking through the glass.

You can't see it very clearly due to the dodgy picture, but he has his head tipped right back and one eye pressed up against the glass.

This man was great. He gave the children lots of demonstrations of how electricity works. He then let them all try different things.

He did a demonstration of how the body conducts electricity, he got the children to hold hands in a line and the children stood at each end had to hold these metal conductors. When he switched on the current a mild electric shock travelled through everyone who was holding hands.

New bookcases

I bought the children some new bookcases to use as a bit of much needed extra storage space in their room. They really like DIY so I let them put them together.

Trying new things

I've always encouraged my children to have a go at everything and food is no exception. We all enjoy trying new foods and shopping at Waitrose is great because they have so many really unusual things. We've tried lots of unusual fruit and vegetables and now we really enjoy going food shopping as we try something new every week.

This week I found this lovely tray of sushi. Normally it costs £8.99 but was reduced to 99p so I thought I'd buy it for the children to try.

It's important when trying new things to take the right approach.

In this case Theo decided that the best thing to do was to hold his nose and go for it.

As you may have gathered from the bucket he's holding, he didn't like it.

In this picture he's got one of the salmon roe in his mouth and we're daring him to swallow it. He did and said it was disgusting!

Next week we're going to try buffalo milk!