Ding Dong Merrily….

Crap nights sleep – again. S in bed coughing in my face and sharing my pillow from the early hours. We then totally overslept and I misunderstood Ady asking what time we’d be ready for him to pick us up with what time I wanted him to wake me up so he woke me with about 15 minutes to spare before us being out of the house.

But we did it 🙂 Complete with warm clothes, most of a picnic and a cup of tea to drink on the way 🙂 We even ended up arriving early.

We were at a Traditional Victorian Christmas workshop at Weald & Downland museum. I probably should have learnt really from the breadmaking…

I think the W&D museum is an amazing, unique place. I think they bring history alive, are a fabulous venue for events and are staffed with a wealth of informed, passionate volunteer staff who want to share their knowledge and enthusiasm. Unfortunately I think it all goes rather to pot on their educational workshops. By virtue of being ‘class sized’ Home Ed groups can book them but I think they struggle to accomodate the mixed age and ability if the group and fail to take the oppportunity to create something really special. I have been at educational trips and workshops where it really works – Butser, the flint knapping one recently and others where they rise so well to the challenge of dealing with an out of the ordinary group. The W&D don’t pull this off in my opinion.

So we were split into two groups – by virtue of pissing off the organiser woman I was in the opposite group to her and sadly two of the families I’d have quite liked to be with 🙁 The kids were fine as was I as we did know most of the families in our group anyway, would just have been nice to be with specific mates.

There were two workshops so we did one each and then after lunch swapped over and did the other one. We started with Christmas card making. After a very nervous introduction speech (Scarlett afterwards: she spoke to us like babies at the beginning!) about how the Victorians introduced Christmas cards, decorations, presents, trees etc. and how the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ originated directly from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol when Scrooge says it at the end , some rather poor photocopies, of insufficient number were passed around to show the elaborate colour Christmas cards. Then they got to make their own using a large amount of coloured card, paper, glue etc. I felt a trick was missed here as having talked about how fancy, papercraft and fiddly keepsakes those early examples were they left us to it. Some examples of 3d, pop up or moving parts would have been good, as would some actual guidance during the session where the two girls leading it just stood back smiling rather vacantly as everyone just got on with it.

Scarlett wasn’t really into it and did do some slapping glue on stuff and made a half hearted attempt to create a cut out snowflake before deciding she’d rather drink Lucozade but Davies made two fab cards – one each for Ady and I complete with pop up bits, humour and stacks of Davies-ness. MUSt do that post about where the kids are at.

Then it was lunchtime. I wandered over to get a cup of tea and the kids came with me. I sat and chatted to Lucy and Scarlett begged 50p for duck food from the shop, returning to people’s amusement carrying a bloody great big Aylesbury duck in her arms. She’s like a Duck Whisperer.
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An hour was far too long for lunch really given the weather was horrid so no one was up for wandering around outside. I got Scarlett a hot chocolate to warm her up from duck whispering and then we started our second workshop – Christmas decorations. This was the one I was most looking forward to thinking we’d learn something and get to bring something home too. It turned out we were making a collaborative thing to leave there though. The woodsman had built a tree shaped frame and gathered some ivy, we walked up to the woods where he had already cut down some holly and brought it back down then threaded it in to the frame to create a Christmas tree from holly and ivy. D&S both joined in and both said they enjoyed it butreally it was quite an expensive workshop for very little in the way of learning, experience or something new and different.

But we all got something from it – Davies made some fab cards, Scarlett cuddled a duck, I got to catch up with a couple of friends and we were all reminded that actually the reason we rarely do these workshops which I eye up on local lists and facebook groups and wonder if we are massively missing out on stuff by not attending is that they generally have little to offer us. Smugness for under £20 😉

Ady collected us and dropped us home. I chopped wood, made pancakes for tea, refereed a dispute about what to watch on TV – Scarlett was allowed the documentary on a man who played surrogate parent to an orphaned polar bear in exchange for an episode of Simpsons later for Davies, followed by several chapters of Mr Stink read by me before bed.

Scarlett shocked us by being asleep pre- 9 pm, Davies was still awake creating caricatures of Ady and I in his sketch book.

Ady and I watched Good Life Christmas special and I had a rant about What Christmas Is Really About (special non religious version not sponsored by Tescos either!).