We might as well be walking on the sun

Today we have mostly been listening to Smash Mouth.

Davies was up, dressed and eating his breakfast at way-before-I-was-awake o’clock so keen was he about Forest School this morning. Scarlett and I followed at a rather more leisurely pace. I’d been woken at about 5am by some tap dancing pigeons who have taken up residence in the very small roof cavity above our bedroom and had some friends over for a dawn party. Clearly friends of the pigeon from yesterday at paraside park :rolls: and then Candle decided to come and prowl all over my pillow purring in my ear. Oh how I love animals.

I had a vague notion that I could get to Stanmer Park where Forest school is held without having to double back on myself like I did last week but couldn’t quite work out which turn off that would mean taking. After a wrong one I happened upon the right one by accident and had a d’oh moment when I realised it was the same turn off I used to use for the whole year I worked at B&Q in Brighton. Odd driving down the hill that I used to measure my lateness for work by which point in the road I heard the 7.50am travel news on the Russ and Jono breakfast show on virgin radio.

We were told that only a couple of mums can stay each week, which had already been made clear but last week it seemed there was no issue with us staying. Apparently there was a ‘divergence of energy’ with so many adults there last week. Davies and Scarlett were unprepared to not have me there this week but agreed it will be fine for me not to be there next time. Woohoo, 3 hours each Tuesday morning to myself :). But will feel odd as not only am I not 100% convinced they will be fine given the rather unsavoury nature of a couple of other attendees I also quite like hanging around to see what they get up to.

Davies offered to carry a rucksack which was almost as big as him and quite possibly as heavy. He was determined to manage it by himself though and did so 🙂

Round the fire circle which this time didn’t have a fire lit already. The ranger talked them through lighting it and talked a bit about keeping it going. They tried to play a game of going round the circle and saying your name and the names of all the people who had already said their name but it broke down by about the 6th child as so many of them didn’t want to play. I think the rangers have a really difficult job on their hands with this group as so many of the kids are really negative and disruptive. It really makes me wonder why parents are spending £75 a shot for it when their kids clearly are not either enjoying it or learning anything. And it pisses me off that I have paid for it and they are preventing my kids from getting every possible bit out of it too. Probably better I’m not there every week really ;). I did catch the eye of two of the rangers during the morning when particular kids were being difficult though and suspect they are planning to deal with it in their own way as the sessions go on. I hope so.

They talked a bit about May day and the green man and made garland crowns from willow and flowers. Both kids did it and enjoyed it although Davies adorned his with a stick (very Davies) and wore it round his neck rather than on his head :). As about half the kids decided not to do it (grr) there were plenty of extra willows so when a ranger offered me one to make I did so too 🙂

They then gave all the kids an orange pipe cleaner and they were supposed to stand with their back to the fire,walk as far as they could get with the fire circle still in view and then mark a tree with their pipe cleaner to create a boundary circle. They either didn’t explain or the kids weren’t listening though as loads of them bunched in a big group and several more went running right off into the woods.

Next they had hot chocolates and a story

One of the rangers found a bug and they spent some time looking at it and identifying it in a bug book.

Then they were shown how to make a ‘fairy shelter’ with a stick arrangement and sent off to make their own. Davies chose to work alone even though he’d been included in a group of boys who were working together. This was a very ‘Davies’ activity though and he was in his element creating a house, path, garden with miniature trees, pond, archway and more. Scarlett teamed up with another girl who talks with what I assume is a fake US accent (possibly from watching too many Disney films?). Maybe I’m wrong and it’s genuine but when I asked Tarly what her name was and whether she’d enjoyed playing with her she said she was nice, she couldn’t remember her name and she thought she was ‘learning American’ which cracked me up! 😆

This took up the whole of the last hour and then they all went round as a group to look at each others. Scarlett was very happy but Davies was very upset by a comment from someone that their one was better than his (he accepted they might think so but struggled with them saying so rather than just saying something nice) and looked really upset. He ended up crying over a very minor spat with Tarly as she really shrieked at him and, he claimed, the only time he ever gets shouted at is when he really deserves it because he’s done something wrong so being shouted at makes him feel naughty and that had upset him. And there was me thinking I yell all the time ;).

At home we had a longer chat and I got out of him that he’d struggled with everyone not being as enthusastic about his garden as he’d anticipated. It’s really hard as I try to strike a balance between praise for actual effort and for output and for Davies (and Scarlett actually) because they are so rarely made to do anything they don’t actively choose to do and therefore put full effort into because it’s something they enjoy / want to achieve they often get a fair bit of positive feedback for both effort and result. I certainly don’t think I overpraise and I try and be very realistic and honest with my feedback but he was really playing to the wrong audience today. Firstly by the time they’d all got round to his garden it was the end of the 3 hours and his was the last one. Lots of the kids were not just bored but were actively obnoxious anyway and of course privately (or not so privately) they probably all thought their own was the best.

We talked a bit about the instant you share something with someone else that you have created / drawn / written / performed you are opening yourself out to criticism and really the most important thing is whether you enjoyed the process of making it and whether you feel it is any good. Anything else is merely incidental. I fear this is something we will revisit many times and he brought up the whole Secret Santa at Helmsley incident again and how he felt about his gift not being so well recieved. Ady had a good chat with him about it tonight and I suspect he is better at this side of stuff than me anyway. I also suspect that painful though it might be Forest School may well have some lessons for Davies that are worth learning and this might be one :(.

Scarlett rather amusingly tried to comfort him by saying she hadn’t complimented him on it because she was so impressed by it she had been rendered speechless! 😆 😆

So home for lunch. Scarlett cut up paper for and sellotaped together a little book for herself which she proceeded to make a story book from, in full colour. It’s fab 🙂 All about the adventures of a hamster and a caterpillar. Davies did some great drawings of cavemen.

Then it was off to swimming. They had a good lesson (as far as I know) and I had a swim too.I managed 20 lengths in the 25 minutes,well actually it may have been 22 or even 24 as lost count twice and rounded down both times rather than up. I could probably have kept going but time was up. I’ll aim to improve on it each time but probably won’t go in every week. Apart from anything else I think £4.05 is loads of money for it. I noticed the swimming lesson instructor manager and another man were sitting in the spectators area with clipboards chatting to the parents and slightly regretted not being up there for that as quite possibly it was in a small way a result of my complaining email. I’m happy with them in the same lesson for now though so I didn’t actually have anything else I’d have wanted to say.

The children went into seperate changing rooms and then I needed the loo so I took my clothes and got dried and dressed in the toilets. I was really impressed to find them both waiting for me, dressed and dried, with their towels and swimsuits and my shoes that I’d left behind when I came out. Love the small steps of independance they keep taking :). I’d promised them fish and chips from the chippie for tea last week so they ran ahead with the money and placed the order for that then played outside while I waited for it to be cooked. Back at home they ate the lot, had yoghurts for pudding and then did more drawings til their bath was ready.

There was some debate about a book at bedtime and we read one chapter of Fish before deciding it wasn’t doing it for us and moving on to Charlie Small: Gorilla City which was an instant hit. We got about halfway through it and they would have happily listened to the whole book. Looks like there are plenty more in the series so that should keep us going a while :).

After pointing out to Ady at the weekend how far some of the fruit and veg travels from in the supermarkets he is joining me on a buying British kick and was delighted to find organic free range British chicken, jersey royal new potatoes and British asparagus in the supermarket all on half price offer so he cooked again (fourth night in a row bless him) and we had a lovely dinner.

The kids were really late to sleep despite going to bed about 830pm. Davies kept reappearing having drawn stuff he wanted to show us and eventually reappeared having made a 3d set of caveman, camp, fire, sticks and stuff out of toilet rolls and sellotape. Scarlett was packing her bag ready for next week’s forest school with a Scarlett-crazy assortment of stuff she thought she might need all the while singing along at the top of voice to her mp3 player and mis-singing loads of lyrics to great comedy effect. She really likes Katie Perry at the moment although doesn’t see what the big deal is about kissing girls and liking it and wonders quite what ‘you change your mind like a girl changes clothes’ is all about given she’d wear the same mud and chicken poo splattered jeans for ages -about five days infact, she knows a song about it ;). We turned the telly down to listen to her singing along to Rock Star by Nickelback (playboy bunnies with their beach ball hair apparently :lol:).