Summer is going on just a bit longer...

A quick post just before Ramadhan and some random pictures from the summer (which is reappearing, much to my tomato and chilli plants delight!)

This is why there are v few safe places to put things inthe kitchen!

A fine harvest(!?) if you consider the plants were practically dried up sticks that somehow managed to come back to life. There are more to come if Hz doesn't get to them first...

Ramadhan Mubarak, may it be beneficial to you all amin!

The Outings!

Foteviken Viking museum: with our Viking guide

Inside the reconstructed Viking houses, partaking in a little pretend feasting...

The boys seemed to want to remove the teeth from these jaw bones, they were unsuccessful.(which was fortunate, see later)

M and Biryani marvel at the sight and feel of fox hides. I couldn't bear to touch them! It was a very hands-on museum.

Viking weapons which you can imagine were highly popular!

Battering some 'silver' left over from coin making.

Teaspoon, desertspoon or just plain greedyspoon?

Some more manly viking activities, chopping wood.

and then a chance to make it in to something, Viking style.

Making flour, a fellow tourist from Ghana said they still use the same equipment there.

Did you notice how many of the pictures involved the kids touching things? Well, I have calmed down now, but the friendly guide told us we can touch as try anything in the museum as long as we don't take it home with us. One other member of staff decided otherwise, and basically made one of my kids cry and I had tears welling, as 'This isn't a playground'. We had moved a few items, shut a few doors, nothing broken, nothing destroyed. Ok, so I'd had to call them down from the roof of a house and advise not to wave swords like a real battle, but here was no harm done. I ended up not saying anything except trying to calmly explain that we'd been told they could touch things. I really felt like having a go after my kid's tears appeared as did DH, but we didn't want to be chucked out as the kids had been enjoying it so much.

And now from wood to plastic as we enter Legoland Billund

only these photos as DH took them and most had the kids in, I stayed behind with the little'uns.

Now it's been back to school, with all 3 big ones in the same school! The season of timetables, homework and routines!

A surprise of sorts..

Probably not a frequent activity amongst home educators, but those of us with schoolkids have to be on the lookout for slips of paper sent home from teachers. Well, I have been relying maybe too heavily on them being delivered into my hands, and so yesterday I needed to use one of the kids' rucksack and what did I find? The school note informing us that school starts the day after tommorrow!! Normally their school goes back a week after the mainstream in the early 20s of August but not this year apparently. This summer holidays has been characterised by the first half trying to get the car sorted and therefore doing things close to home. In between has been hub going off here and there in Europe with plane related things, swimming school, and a final flurry to use to do those activities for which I had free entrance tickets etc. I still have 2 activities planned but they will now have to be postponed to a weekend I suppose, alhamdilillah, But I am hoping that I can go somewhere more than half and hours drive away from home before Winter hits, just to check out the rest of the world is still there...



So here are some close-to-home snippets:







M conquering the climbing wall




Biryani playing with the neighbour's grandchildren's bubbles (always a hit with 3 year olds!)

Hz's favourite area of our park to wander about without being told 'Nooo!' and a big flagpole to try to shake down....

An egg H found (isn't it the wrong time of year, it was too small and round for a chicken's egg).

and the hunters stalk their prey...

The prey

A snippet of conventional education stuff..

I've been doing a bit of English work with the boys: S doing spellings along with word meanings when they come up. I take words from the series of Unforunate events books he's been reading. Last year or maybe it was the year before, these were recommended to me, but he found them too wordy. Now they're about right for him. We've been doing words like 'mischief' 'orphan' 'assume'. M seems to have the greatest difficulty spelling dipthong vowels (like many children I expect) and their various spelling, e.g. 'ow' 'ay'. This ends up being a difficulty with homophones e.g plane, plain.
H is really needing to practice his writing, and I can see the effect that left handedness has on it (ie makes it harder) He's never been keen on putting pen to paper, drawing etc. Funny, he' s just asked me if he can do some drawing, did he read what I was writing from across the room?
Today H has just asked me how cement is made and can we make some! After looking it up, it seems little chance of this being possible as we need a stone crusher, and an oven that goes above 1000C (mine only does 250C) so maybe we'll head out to the sandpit and make some pretend cement.

Just back from the beach..

Today's been a hot one after a long batch of 'showery' weather. So we went down to the local beach this evening. Fun was had flinging stones into the water, a dolly was lost and found and we saw what turned out to be not too serious ambulance and fire engine episode.