Saturday 21 December 2013

Advent

It was a busy advent. Far to busy to write the blog! So here are some photos:

Our advent ring plans were affected by the shapes of oasis available and the dishes we own. So we present the advent tray!

I declined to purchase a chocolate advent calendar (because I am mean and nasty and don't think that a five year old and a two year old need to eat chocolate every day), so instead we had two! One with windows to open to reveal a picture, and one consisting of little evelopes to open in which there was an adventy activity to do (which sometimes was some chocolate!). Here is the second one:

One of the activities, as you would expect, was going to collect the christmas tree. We had left it later than most people, so it was a bit of a round trip around several shops, but we did find one that we liked the look of, and the kids got to wade through piles of trees and do good impressions of escaped caged animals as they ran round the garden centre! And then we got to prepare it:

Another activity was making snow dough. This would have been more fun if I'd tried it myself first! We had fun mucking around with the ingredients, but it would have been better if I'd known what we were aiming for! Once it coalesced properly it was much better!

I had decided that I wasn't going to be buying and writing 25 christmas cards for everyone in Nathaniel's class (though as I never actually managed to send any adult cards in the end, this seems a bit mean!), and had intended to help create a giant card for the whole class in which Nathaniel could write all the names if he wished. But he got so much pleasure from opening all his cards as they drifted in through the last weeks of term, that I relented, and helped him make a batch. We did cork-print christmas trees, biscuit-cutter stars, and tacky foil Father Christmas stickers when we got bored! And Nathaniel wrote each and every one! (Their name and his name)

Making presents was fun this year because both children understood what we were up to. If you think you may have received something that they made, you may prefer to look away now (or get your jabs up to date!!).

And at last we got to buying all the food for the masses. Here, Nathaniel has set up a French market stall from which to sell us our veg. There are scales (out of shot), which tell him how much our purchases weigh (20cm more often than not!) and how much we owe him (in multiples of 2ps).

And then there was Nathaniel's school Christmas performance. What can I say! It was a 70's show called Rock-around-a-Christmas, and every class had a dance. Nathaniel's class were animals with headresses made by themselves and sung the songs along with the rest of the school and did a dance of their own to "Crazy Horses".
video to follow

They all managed to stay awake for the 90 minutes and were able to remember all the words and dances to the encore songs when they got up on stage at the end (at 7pm!). It was highly entertaining!

Monday 16 December 2013

How they are now


Dorothea at 2 years


Nathaniel at 5 years and 2 months

I'll attempt to do some more updating very soon.......