Thursday 1 December 2016

November 2016 - Finale

On Tuesday 22nd, we made the long journey to Wrantage again for the children's horse riding lesson at Oakhill Farm.
Matthew couldn't stop smiling the whole way through, savouring every moment of the experience.
I am so glad that there was a space for us to join this activity when we did.

After the horse riding session, we had a little wait until Sarah's tennis lesson.
I can't remember for the life of me what we did to pass the time before the lesson.
But I know we went to make sure there was an indoor court available.
We were determined not to let rain stop play!

Success! We got back in time for Sarah to play tennis indoors.
While she played, Matthew enjoyed watching telly and drinking hot chocolate.
The life of Riley or what!
And then our friend Vicky turned up and we had a good natter with her.
Her son Andrew, who is the same age as Sarah, is helping to coach the junior tennis squad.
It is pretty impressive and always good to see children taking responsibility like that...

Mum was a glutton for punishment, as we returned to her house for the night as, the next day, we had our last Science and Art sessions of the year....

After dropping the children off, I drove out into the dark to pick up a couple of sacks of Bramleys from a remote address in Spaxton. It did feel rather foolhardy, as the weather was still rather treacherous. But I am glad I did it. I wanted to take some to offer to our friends the next day... It was good to be able to give something back and pass on the wealth as it were, even if the bounty had belonged to someone else ....

So on Wednesday 23rd, we travelled to Taunton for Science and Art, laden with a sack of apples....

In Science, the children explored different ways of getting an egg safely to space, which was great fun. Much hilarity was involved in their experiments and their ideas were tested out on the lawn...

In their Art lesson, the children took "a close-up look at a piece of Alce Harfield's beautiful artwork and the different textures and layers she uses", before creating their own "vibrant paintings"


For us, these were to be the last sessions of the year, as we would have to miss the final Art session and party the following week, This was rather sad, as the children were going to be looking at The Snowman paintings by Raymond Briggs. It would all be rather Christmassy too.

When we got back home later that evening, we enjoyed watching several episodes of Hank Zipzer together in the one warm room of the house. It was very entertaining.


November 2016 - Part 2

On Friday 11th November, Sarah had her second cornet lesson of the month.
It is always a joy to listen to her playing alongside her teacher in the little Music Room...
.
Then after a few catching up activities, we went to pick up our friend Mandy from Wheddon Cross. She had promised to tend to the guinea pigs with the children,
 
then plant bulbs with them
before taking them for a walk.
They were very excited, as they love her company and she has an amazing way with them.
 
They set to with planting up all the large pots with bulbs
 
 
and made themselves hot chocolate to take on their walk.
 
 
They ventured right to the top of the hill and Matthew apparently raced all the way back down a very steep slope.
 
 
While they were thus occupied, I had the opportunity to do some writing, and make some phone calls, which were well overdue.
 
On Tuesday 15th November, the children went horse riding, an activity they thoroughly enjoy.



Matthew is always excited to meet up with his friend Acey, which makes the session even more enjoyable.
After trying out the new outdoor sand arena there, we drove to Caroline's to help make some decorations for the Taunton Home Ed Christmas Tree.

This will feature as part of the Round the World Christmas Festival at The Brewhouse in Taunton.
I think it must be related to the Round the World in Eighty Days production there.

Brewhouse Production
 
Matthew really enjoyed this activity:
making a snowman with polystyrene balls,


decorating a tree offcut circle with another snowman, fingerprint style,
Found this example on the internet.
This medium provides endless opportunities for creativity...

making a hamabead snowman
Example from internet
and a glitter pinecone.


Sarah also enjoyed making her own unique decorations.
 
On Thursday 17th November, we took pizza to our friend Barbara's house.


Sarah and her friend made muesli bars and they all made an attempt at playing Junior Monopoly... This was cut short, as Matthew became rather restless and sadly sabotaged the game for some reason. Barbara took it all in her stride, which was very reassuring, as I tend to panic, when behaviour is unexpected and mystifying...I am not quite sure why Matthew chose this course of action...
Thankfully, peace was soon restored... 

We always have such a lovely time at their house.
The whole family are welcoming and fun to be with.
 
We had planned to attend an engineering activity morning, hosted by EDF in Angel Place in Bridgwater the next day.
Grandma had kindly said we could stay the night at her house again.

On the journey over the hills to my mum's,
I began to feel quite unwell and dizzy.
I had to drive very cautiously.
It was dark and we had just left Kingston St Mary and were climbing up towards Buncombe Hill.
It was a wild and remote stretch of road, particularly at this time of year.
But we made it.

The children were wonderful, taking charge of our overnight stuff and helping me into bed.

Sadly, I was still feeling awful the next morning, and so we had to miss this innovative session.
I was really disappointed.

My sister Ruth kindly dropped into EDF to check it out. She saw a hive of activity with a lovely group of children all happily engaged at different work stations.
She explained the situation to the organiser, who told her the children would be welcome to attend in the afternoon with some school children from Nether Stowey and my sister offered to take them.
I was really touched by her offer, but knew that Sarah and Matthew would find it difficult to relax amongst a group of children they didn't know.
So reluctantly we had to abandon the idea....



However, a few days later, when we were discussing the event on Facebook,
the lovely lady who organised the session assured me we could go another time.
 
We were also sad to miss out on visiting our friends in Bridgwater, with whom Matthew has recently struck up a firm friendship.

The weekend of the 19th - 20th November,
I had the luxury of being able to rest up at mum's,
while my dear husband Paul took over the responsibility of childcare...

It was a very welcome break.
I so enjoyed sitting quietly with my mum, just sharing the space companionably together.
They were moments to be treasured.
Lying in the bed next to hers, I enjoyed the feelings of safety and togetherness.
I wanted them to continue forever.



While I was resting up at mum's, Paul took the children to the park in Dulverton,
He told me that the River Barle was so swollen, that Drury Lane was shut and they had to drive the long way round...
Apparently the Lane up to the farm had the appearance of a stream and the little brook near our parking area, was twice as full...
The children felt adventurous and trudged past the flooded ponds and noisy waterfall in front of our house, to play with their walkie talkies in the woods...
Sounds as though they had a wonderful Sunday.

Paul took the day off on Monday 21st November
and so I drove the journey back to Exmoor in the early afternoon.
It was lovely to feel so unhurried,
despite the fact that the driving conditions were particularly treacherous.
The little streams were fit to bursting, particularly at Cedar Falls, where I joined the main road to Minehead.
From Ralegh's Cross, conditions became worse,
as there was standing water at regular intervals.
The light was poor and it was difficult to anticipate when it would be necessary to pull into the centre of the road, to avoid the deeper areas of standing water.
Fortunately, I didn't meet many other cars.

Arriving back home, I was confronted with the sound of raging water, as the streams close by the house had formed new water falls.


The children had been excited to tell me about the ponds, which had merged into one.
They were very disappointed when the farmers appeared the next day
to clear the weeds and the water settled back into its usual state.
Sarah had so enjoyed playing with our neighbours' dog
and watching him skim through the shallow water on the bank, which divided the two ponds.
She loved watching the spray of water from the overflow pipe.
She came up with some funny names to call the farmers,
all because they had 'ruined the fun!"

After such a long rest, my energy had been revived and I was ready to get stuck back in.
I enjoyed tidying up here and there and helping the children with their tasks.
I was rather bossy though, and need to allow peace to characterise my deeds and actions.

Sarah was struggling with her Maths lesson, which was unusual.
The questions didn't seem to match the taught lesson. We were rather bemused.
A few days later, I decided to ring Aaron, the Conquer Maths Coordinator in Scotland,
to find out if there was a mix up with the questions.
But he told me that they were intentionally tricky, to encourage students to think outside the box.

In the end, Sarah and I managed to work out a formula to solve the questions.
This was quite satisfying...
even though her first attempt, meant that her overall score was still lower than usual,
despite getting 100 % on her second attempt.

We were so sorry that daddy had to go back to Bristol to work on Tuesday and Wednesday.
It would have made such a lovely change to have him around.
He had a course to attend on Wednesday
and some essential paperwork to see to...
But he would be back on Thursday to watch the long awaited performance of Peter Pan at Oake Village Hall.

We had been collecting Craft materials for our second Cubs Meet in Bampton.
We were due to help the whole pack make a snowman each.
We had got the idea from Caroline's Arctic Antic's session last Christmas.
The snowmen were to be made out of socks stuffed with rice.
Sadly however, the pack leader took the decision to cancel the session, due to the inclement weather. Although disappointing, it was probably the right call.