On the way to Highdown Gardens we listened to Labi Siffre Something inside so strong on a cd. When I was at school my favourite teacher used to take us for dance and she would choose one of her own favourite songs and then the whole class would work together to create a dance routine to go with it, or we’d work in pairs and then all show the rest of the class at the end. I used to love those lessons and one of the songs I have really clear memories of choreographing a dance to is this one. Davies really likes it too – it’s on a compilation album we have and always tells everyone who’s in the car who is singing it. Today he listened to the lyrics a bit and asked about how something inside could be strong? So I spent the car journey explaining about emotional self and physical self. I explained how there are some crossover traits and then we mentioned various things like ‘bored’, ‘hungry’, ‘tired’, ‘sad’ and so on to decide whether they were emotional or physical. He quite liked this and we talked about how you could be physically or emotionally strong or weak and I have him some examples of people we know who are one or the other and how you would demonstrate them. Scarlett appeared to be listening too and then suddenly asked ‘Mummy? What are you two talking about?’ which made me laugh.
We then talked a bit about racism. We’d watched something on Class TV fairly recently about racism through history and briefly touched on it then, so I reminded him about that and then said that Labi Siffre was talking about being oppressed and held back and considered not good enough but that whatever people thought he was strong inside, emotionally, and would show them he could do it anyway. Then we turned it up really loud and he listened to it again to see for himself. All deep stuff! 🙂
Then we arrived at Highdown so they spent a happy two hours playing and running about. They did join in with two other little boys for a while but the younger one was pretty rough and was chasing the rest of them with sticks and spitting. Davies did bait him rather and he only looked about 3 so I think he was imagining it was all part of a game really, but when he really started laying into D with a stick I did shout ‘Oi!’ at him. His mother yelled at him and dragged him off 🙁 I did try and catch her eye to say it was OK and I didn’t think he was entirely to blame but they disappeared. So we then had a post mortem about behaviour and what was naughty and what was not and how Mummies should deal with it! Ah, nothing like parenting advise from a 5 year old! 🙄
They inspected worms, looked at fish, ran around, all fell over and got muddy at least once, sniffed flowers, ran screaming from the first bee of the Spring (isn’t that supposed to be the first sign of Summer or something?), they clambered and balanced on rocks and generally enjoyed being out of doors.
More on flickr. Got some really nice ones of Tarly today. 🙂
We left there when two out of four children had had enough and the other two were fading fast and our fingers had started to numb slightly. Very nice to see all the spring flowers and hear birds calling for a couple of hours though. Before we’d left Davies had been all excited about going, which quite surprised me as it must be getting on for six months since last we went there and he said all casually that the sun dial wouldn’t be working as it was cloudy today! Which really amazed me as I didn’t think he’d paid much attention to the sun dial there last time we went. He asked how they worked and I explained about it being a shadow cast by where the sun was in the sky and that shadows were formed by something being between the sun and the ground, such as people, casting a shadow. He nodded throughout and looked at me as though I was telling him something so basic he’d known it for ages, which I suspect I might have been actually! 🙂
We came home and he asked me to divide a page into boxes so he could do a story board to use his plasticine characters for, apparently it is ready now but I said it would have to wait for tomorrow now. They played a rousing game of running in and out of every room in the house, scared the cats silly and had a bath. Davies is still awake so clearly nothing is going to wear this child out. 🙄
Ady came home so we spent some time working on his presentation for a big meeting tomorrow and now he is reheating a curry and making rather lovely smelling bombay potatoes whilst waiting for me to go and do the rice so I’ll leave it there except to update that our frogspawn has hatched to tadpoles and some are already showing little buds where their legs will soon be forming so great excitement at life cycles in action going on here. 🙂
Love the one of them all peering into the pond! All sounds like fun 🙂
Comment by Alison — 29 March 2006 @ 8:00 pm
yep nice piccies
Comment by chris F — 29 March 2006 @ 9:36 pm