Off for a Winter Walk this morning with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna. We met at the woods in Slindon. Last time we met there Jack and Maisie were really keen to head to the nearby park so we cut the walking in the woods part short. I said to Davies and Scarlett that actually driving for half an hour to sit on a bench while they played on some fairly crappy swings was not something I was prepared to do too often and if we were going to head to parks I thought it was fair we met halfway between them and us rather than us doing all the driving. They both took this on board and Davies, who is wonderful and gets all his very best bits from Ady made sure we had a proper woodland walk today with not a hint of playpark about it :).
We set off and the four older children ran ahead while Julie and I walked at Lorna pace. It’s actually a very small area of woodland that all four of the children know well and have been walking in since they were toddlers so Julie and I had no worries about them running off ahead. At one point we reached a fork in the path that didn’t have an obvious direction they may have gone in so we made an educated guess and when we came across a man walking his dog a few minutes later as we exchanged ‘good morning’ s with him I casually asked if he’d passed four children to ensure we were going in the right direction. He looked horrified and wanted to exchange mobile phone numbers with me incase we saw them and everything. I tried to reassure him we were not worried but just wanted to check we were treading in their footsteps but I’m sure he thought we were dreadfully neglectful. Within moments we heard Maisie calling and they all reappeared and told us we were being rubbish at tracking them as they’d left us marks of arrows on trees. So it turned out it was Julie, Lorna and I who were lost, if anybody was.
We headed back towards the cars and poor Tarly managed to have a real wipeout fall scraping her knee (through her ripped jeans) in several places. She is at least a fairly stoic child so sort of spat on her hand and wiped the blood off, then kept going 😆 Julie and I were talking about the differences apparent in Home Ed kids and she remarked on how very bold and confident Davies and Scarlett are. I guess she’s right but I spend so much time around other Home Ed kids to me they just seem ‘normal’.
Really nice couple of hours tramping around in wellies and putting the world to rights :).
We came home and the breadmaker had just finished baking a loaf I’d stuck in before we left so we had nice fresh bread for lunch. The kids played with Scarlett’s Noah’s Ark for a while, Davies messed around on the Bamzookis website and they watched some CBBC. I read my book and drank lots of tea.
Yesterday at a charity shop we’d picked up a craft set called ‘Party Penguins’ which mostly involved threading beads onto wire in a certain way to create little peguin ornaments which you then decorate with felt and more beads. We did one each of those before Davies and Scarlett got distracted by The Chuckle Brothers! 😆
Tea for them and then off to Badgers. I had to take various ridiculous amounts of ID with me which I must get out of Ady’s car actually as if that envelope gets lost I probably have nothing else left in the world to confirm I am me and really exist! 😆
I caught up with a couple of the other parents, had a glass of mulled wine (Ady arrived after me and came in with ‘blimey it smells like camp in here!’ :lol:), filled out what is now my fourth CRB check form – I almost worry that I will flag something up somewhere for having been checked so many times now! and then rejoined the rest of the room for Presentation Night.
They have been doing Healthy Badger this term and it’s been very craft based activities so they paraded baseball caps they’d decorated for ‘staying safe in the sun’, frisbees they’d decorated for ‘staying fit and active’ and various other crafty bits and pieces. They all got their Healthy Badger badge and certificate and then Scarlett got a Silver Paw (for completing 6 badges – they get one every third badge) and Davies was made a Follow Me Badger :). Finally I was asked to stand up so they could tell everyone that I’ll be becomming Assistant Badger Leader from next term. As Ady said to me later – who would have thought when I first started taking a very shy and tiny Davies aged 5 that this would be the result 4 years on.
I am particularly proud of Davies as Julie is very firm about not just giving Follow Me Badger to every Badger who turns nine – they have to really earn it and she is quite happy to not have any if there are no deserving candidates :).
I brought the children home and we read a pile of books as we’ve not had stories for ages. I can’t be bothered to find links now but it was nice to snuggle up and read to them 🙂
Ady and I had a late night, I cooked tagliatelle using some bacon from Tom (Ady’s work mate and our meat dealer) who’s parents had their own pigs this year. It was simply the best bacon I’ve ever tasted and had Ady and I all enthused anew for self sufficiency again.