One a penny, two a penny

Today I have been eating mostly hot cross buns. Hot from the oven freshly cooked and then later on toasted (using that revolutionary bagel setting which truly has changed my life). And reading. Lots and lots of reading.

Davies woke feeling fine but still covered in his rash on his arms, legs and cheeks. Scarlett was more rash-y today too with it on her arms and her bum and tops of her legs. I didn’t bother with antihistimine as it wasn’t bothering either of them but took the decision not to go swimming. Partially as not being sure what it is I don’t want to risk them being infectious (although of course I did take them to Chatterbooks yesterday), I didn’t want to bring the possible irritant of chemical-laden swimming pool water into the equation and I didn’t want them to feel self-conscious about being all blotchy half naked infront of other children. They were both disappointed but understanding and philosophical.

I’d brought home a dvd of Jamie and the Magic Torch so we stuck that on and I enjoyed being transported back to the 70s and early childhood. I had to collect a parcel from the post office and we needed a few grocery essentials so I nipped into Lancing to do that leaving them infront of Jamie and Wordsworth and was back within half an hour. The parcel turned out to be a letter with insufficient postage on which my irritation about was dispelled by it being my certficate proclaiming me a qualified Waste Prevention Advisor and my returned exam with a score of 97% of which I am very proud :).

Davies and Scarlett continued to watch Jamie and made several observations about it having watched several episodes. They were both on the tired and floppy side still so I was quite happy for them to have a day of doing not a lot.

Over lunch they watched Flipper – I’d got the most recent dvd from work although even that is about 15 years old and has Elijah Wood and Paul Hogan in it. They enjoyed that 🙂 I was furiously reading as I’d only really toyed with the first chapter of the book for Reading Group tonight up until yesterday so was having to read pretty much the whole 250 pages in one go today.

After lunch I took a break from the book and we looked at the folder for the Wildlife Action Awards. We’d done really well last year steaming through the bronze award and most of the silver award but I’d not written up the last couple of activities they’d completed and printed it off to send for their silver. I’ve promised to do that and we looked through the program to decide which activities they want to do to complete their gold. After some discussion they chose a final six and while I stayed inside reading they went off outside armed with a plastic tub to bury in the ground to create a pit trap to catch some bugs complete with banana bait.

We took some photos of them digging the hole to bury it and it in situ and will check it tomorrow for any bugs found for the ‘minibeasts up close’ activity. Next Davies made a chart for a ‘Save it’ activity based on saving energy and water. He came up with six things he will try and remember to do to save them and will add a tick to them each time he does so – the list includes turning off taps while cleaning teeth, turning off lights, turning off electrical equipment, opening curtains in daylight and drawing them at night, showering instead of bathing and turning the heating down. We struggle a bit with these sorts of activities to find things we can change as to be honest we are all pretty aware of and good at ensuring we are not wasting water or energy anyway but Davies does often leave his bedroom in the morning with his nighttime light on and his curtains still closed so those will be good ones to crack. Both the children were most bemused at the idea on the activity instructions of ‘give yourself a star when you do these actions. When you have ten stars you could reward yourself with a treat’ as they felt the reward would surely be having been more environmentally friendly rather than giving yourself some sweets. Yay us and our non-perpetuation of extrinsic rewards eh?! 😉

Scarlett did a chart for ‘bike, bus or walk’ which she needs to list all the journeys we make in a week and whether we could take more environmentally friendly alternatives. We drove to the library yesterday so discussed whether we could have used a different mode of transport, having ascertained that with the amount of books we took there and brought back walking would not have been an option and deduced that public transport (would have to be bus, train station is further away than the library) would have involved almost as much walking as walking would have done! It is an area we could improve on though, not public transport use so much as once you have a car and have forked out financially to do so I think public transport becomes prohibitively expensive and I do think we are good at lift sharing etc but we do rely on the car for journeys that we could conceivably walk instead. It will be an interesting chart at the end of the week anyway.

So that is 3 out of the 6 activities already begun 🙂

Scarlett made me laugh loads while we were doing it when I said ‘slash’ as I was spelling something out to Davies (open slash close). He asked what slash meant and I drew a / and said ‘like that’ to which she piped up ‘is it like that or is it that?’ which is something I am often asking her when she peppers her speech with ‘like’ 😆 😆

Davies and Scarlett did some drawing while I read some more, then I did their tea, read some more and Ady came home as I finished the book.

I went off to the library for Reading Group having finished the book not even an hour before hand but was at least able to talk about it with very fresh impressions ;). It was an enjoyable meeting and I stayed behind to help tidy up which seems to have become a habit now. I don’t mind though and it all goes down well in terms of my committment to work.

Back home for dinner and we watched Richard Hammond’s Invisible World which I thought was very good and will try and show the kids on iplayer tomorrow as I think they’ll enjoy it.

Now it must be bed o’clock.