Book Sharing Monday

Jump Into January - Stella Blackstone and Maria Carluccio

This is a really fun book for younger children, each page has beautiful illustrations of a seasonal picture, and all along the bottom of the pages are i-spy words of things to find on the page. It's a really nice interactive book :-)

Decoration Making

Today we held a Christmas decoration making afternoon at our house for some of the children and parents from our home schooling group. Despite our failure to collect much of anything yesterday, we still ended up with a pretty good selection of bits and pieces. I raided our autumn table box and found too many fir cones, beech nuts and twigs to count, another mum brought Christmas tree off cuts and another family made gorgeous dough shapes to decorate. Everyone brought paint, glue, glitter or craft bits and we made some beautiful decorations.

Here are some pictures of the things Hannah (with help),  and I made.

A Winter Walk

Yesterday we, and another family from our home schooling group, went on a wintery walk in the woods to collect fir cones and twigs for making decorations ...............well that was the idea anyway. About 5 minutes into the walk Hannah discovered a stream which obviously she immediately waded into............................

......................naturally if you find a freezing cold muddy stream the very best thing to do is share it with a friend!!!

At least Oscar had wellies on, Hannah managed to get drenched..........

.........and ended up sitting in it!

I think this bunch of fern was supposed to cheer me up after discovering her wet and muddy from the waist down..............and who could resist such charm?? Not me :-)

So after an hour and a half, another stream (or 20 - we've had A LOT of rain) and much tramping through undergrowth we went back to the car with a bunch of fern, lots of wet green moss and no fir cones lol!!

And here is Hannah back at the car - the cold had set in by then so this is her 'I'm frozen' face!!

St Wilfrids Christmas Reindeer Event

On Saturday we went to a charity reindeer meet run by St Wilfrids Hospice (the hospice that Dean works for), in  Chichester. We took one of Hannah's friends with us and the girls had a really lovely time. 

The event was held at one of the large charity shops, so we had a look around and bought some books for each of the girls, then we went to meet the reindeer. His name is Blitzen and Hannah fell in love with him!!

After a long visit with Blitzen we went to watch the local cheerleader dance troupe perform, before heading over to watch the Punch and Judy show.

Hannah had never seen Punch and Judy before and so i was surprised when she really got into it. Shouting at the puppets, and leaping around in excitement - she was so, so excited it was just lovely to watch her :-)

End Of Term Dancing

Today was the last day of dance class before Christmas and so mummy's and daddy's were allowed in to watch and take pictures. Unfortunately my phone camera wasn't really up to the job, but hopefully these will give you an idea of what happened! Hannah has really enjoyed these dance classes and seems to be getting really good at concentrating and following the steps, so we are going to sign her up for another term. 

Advent Calendar, Nativity and Season Table.

Yesterday at our home-schooling group the children learned about advent and the nativity, and then made advent calendars to take home. Hannah drew a Christmas tree on her calendar  and decorated behind the windows with drawings and Christmas stickers, then she covered it all in glitter. She made a really good job of it and is very pleased with the results.

She also started her advent book this week (given to her by Grandma). There is a nativity piece for each day through the book, which we are putting on our season table, as well as a lovely story to read. 

And this is what our season table looks like at the moment. Hannah made the Robin today to put on the mirror (he is of course, glittered!!) and the nativity pieces are gathered around a gingerbread house until the stable is added on day 5!!!

Reindeer

This week end at the garden centre we met this adorable little reindeer. His name is Garfield and he is two years old. He was there with one of Santa's Elves and was very popular with Hannah!!

So popular in fact that yesterday Hannah turned herself into a reindeer!!