We all walked into Lancing together this morning; I went into the library and did more photocopying of songsheets while Ady, Davies and Scarlett had a wander round to look at the rest of the festival stuff happening. They bumped into our next door neighbour who gave them children a pound coin each which is now burning holes in their pockets and then they came back to join me at the library when Rhyme Time had finished.
I had 20 attendees of mostly Dads and their babies with a couple of Grandads and two sets of twins one who came with their Dad and his sister (and it only occured to me afterwards to wonder if they were twins) and another set who had both parents. It was a good sized turnout – not too big to be unmanagable and not too small as to feel like it was just me and two blokes singing to a couple of babies :lol:. The age range was fairly wide with a boy somewhere between 5 and 7 who had very slow speech and I suspect some learning difficulties but was incredibly friendly and chatty and delighted to find someone who was interested in his chatter and knew what he was talking about (Lazytown mostly :lol:). Anyway it went well, we all sang and shook instruments, it sounded very different singing with just a couple of women and a load of men than the usual all female voice sound. Plenty of them hung around to drink coffee and eat cake and whilst I strongly believe it should be utterly normal for fathers to take their small children out to things it is still a rare enough thing to see to enjoy the novelty of it.
We popped to the supermarket for a few bits for a barbecue and then came home via Mick the butchers for some sausages. We had lunch in the garden, the children did loads of chalk drawings (including a big picture by Davies that he and I tried to jump into Mary Poppins style but it just didn’t work!) on the paths and then we walked along to the village green for Sompting festival.
There was an exhibition of photos of old Sompting in the old school which is now a community centre. We didn’t linger long there as the children were restless but we did have a look inside the schools air raid shelter, which was interesting.
The green was slightly disappointing; it’s usually got loads more happening and more stalls than this year which was a big fun fair with very expensive rides and attractions. There were a few stalls; a big church one, some guinea pigs and the biggest draw which was a stand with about 10 owls -all different sorts and different ages from a 9 week old chick to a 12 year old small owl. I got to hold the small owl on a gauntlet so D and S could stroke it and then after they wandered off I stayed a bit longer holding it while other children came over to stroke it and found myself being asked loads of questions about it 😆 Beautiful creatures.
We had ice creams and watched the two local pubs have a tug of war competition and then it clouded over and we decided to come home. Davies and Scarlett carried on playing with chalk and created a ‘Chalk Wonderland Special’ for us to visit complete with spotter sheets for us to look for and tick off, chalk ocean, bridges over it and ending with two camping chairs and lemonade in champagne flutes for us to sit and drink :lol:. More emergent spelling happening and Davies did little bits of reading today of things like the guinea pigs names at the festival (he read Cheerio).
I’ve spent ages playing Scarlett’s new Dolphin Island DS game as all she actually wants to do is play with the sealife without the pressure of ruining the game so I need to complete all the levels so she can do that. I’m doing well with it although the appeal of gaming / DS in general is still rather lost on me. I played some of Davies’ Ben 10 game and just found that annoying and fiddly.
Davies and I watched Doctor Who and Doctor Who Confidential while Ady read Scarlett some stories, then Davies went to bed. They were both (finally) asleep pretty early tonight. Crap weather put paid to our barbecue plans so Ady cooked burgers indoors while I did more Dolphin Island and watched Neil Diamond.
coffee and cake?? I’m surprised you weren’t overwhelmed with attendees.
Comment by Michelle — 01 June 2008 @ 4:15 pm
Eve got dolphin island for her birthday, and I have to say, it is rubbish! She seems to like it though. Hang on, having said that, I think I’ve seen her play it twice. Always going back to Mario Party instead. I think its more that she really *wants* to like it.
Comment by Em — 02 June 2008 @ 12:47 pm