*Note to self*

When sending 5 year old out to veg patch to collect more broccoli leaves for ever more “tremor”-like caterpillars, it is important to suggest one or two leaves from each plant… as opposed to stripping two plants completely bare……

My word, the balls of poo are getting big……

We had a really nice day today. First i dropped the kids off at the playgroup summer club – they are going two days this week, two next and two the week after. The i took Bubba into town and got her her first shoes – i hadn’t intended actually buying any – i was just going to try some on then come home and sift through the offcasts – but the pair she tried on were blue with pink flowers and when we tried to remove them she had hysterics and clung to them!!!! Giggle… third child tenacity!

Then i picked up the big girls and drove up to Burghley House

Burghley House, Stamford

This fab Elizabethan House is free to go around the gardens in the week, so we had a picnic, although i seemed to do more eating while they climbed….

then we went into the sculpture garden…
the_gardens

where we played Dora Explorer in a maze….

climbed on some sculptures while feeling others and doing rubbings of others…. (note the start of the word education here!)

and were frankly awe-inspired by others.

The boxing hares were a big hit…

But Bubba preferred a beer… i mean juice!

The girls in front of the house….

…and stood next to a very big toadstool/mushroom.

Pud is very into Weeping Willow trees at the mo and points out every single one we see so we took a tree book and brought back some leaves to look at too. The house was home to an advisor to Elizabeth 1, William Cecil, which made it just fine by her and she bought a couple of postcards to add to her little book of him and the house – and counted out the money and paid! Thats all come from a reader rabbit maths game which makes you pay to release a character with proper GB coins. it was a pretty big deal for her to be brave enough too!

We sat for ages at what was probably an old drained lake, near the big face, which was studded with big carved cones. It was slightly sureal because it was exactly the same shape and size, and the view down into it was also the same, as the “bottom lawn” at my junior school, its was like gonig to it after hundred of years and seeing it all reclaimed by nature. A bit like that bit in Prince Caspian, where they gradually realize they are sitting in the ruined Cair Paravel…. made me feel quite odd!

Well – its been a lovely weekend.. although some sleep wouldn’t go amiss! We’ve seen great gran, been slidy dancing (ice skating), been to our town park which is gorgeous and full of beautiful trees, done some “stuff” and i pulled up everything in the front garden.
One of the things Pud and I did was make this….

which is a copy of an tudor costume made on to a little felt doll. We used this site to build up a proper layering of clothes
Tudor Doll for Sale from Crafts Unlimited
which consists of white felt body for “underclothes”, a blue felt wrap around skirt, a “stomacher” top, an over skirt and top (would be a bit like a fitted coat but we cheated by doing the two bits separately, and then a french hood headdress, complete with beads to trim it.
It was great fun – if i can refine the doll a bit so its easier to do, we might make this something we do with projects… she wants to do the rest of the wives and a full scale one for her! GULP!

Also – for posterity… the most beautiful Hama bead elephant, which is completely her own with no help at all…. i just love it.

Weyhey! the comments work! Lovely lovely sarah! :~)

Identifying caterpillars. What sort of caterpillar is this?

Oh yes… we have caterpillars… we don’t know WHAT caterpillars… but we have them. We have two types, one is velvety green and a cabbage white, the other i don’t know… its lime green with a yellow stripe on its back and black spots. AND my goodness do they grow! I reckon they have grown 10x in a week Now they are nearly an inch long and significantly broad… i’m fascinated…

I do sometimes wonder if Home Ed is a chance for adults to reclaim the education they wish they had had!
Some photos…

These are the new batch… tiny weeny.. thats a 5p

And our week old ones who were only a little bigger than the others when we found them

This is a “new broccoli leaf” feeding frenzy!

And this is i think, a cabbage white caterpillar :~) I could be wrong….

I’ve decided to give a comments box ago….

Miss Saigon

Bit of a rambling post this i suspect… but there is a point, sort of, to it!

A couple of weeks ago i had an email from a very good school friend who i went on to drama school with and shared a flat with for a year. Drama school didn’t really work out for me, but it seems to have done for him, because he has just started “calling the show” for the National Tour of Miss Saigon. Its one of those shows that was very big before and while we were at Central, so we got to see it, or its contemporary shows, a fair bit. Its one i particularly loved but the last time i saw it was the day i waved my best friend off to India for a gap year. So a long time…

It is, for anyone who doesn’t know, a modern day Madam Butterfly, based on the fall of Saigon and the very brief love affair of a local orphaned young woman and an American GI, who leaves in the evacuation unable to rescue her in time to take her too. Three years later, she is found with his three year old son, still waiting for him to rescue her. But by now he has married another woman. Devastated, knowing he has come to Bangkok to see her and lay the ghost to rest/help her, she kills herself, knowing he wil take their son back to the US and give him a better life than she ever can.

Anyway, i dug out the cd to play in the car and inevitably Fran started asking questions… so we covered the vietnam war, civil war, communism, racism, love, adultery, marriage, betrayal, theatre and real versus drama, love of a child by the mother, suicide… all on 5 year old terms! Its been a rollercoaster, not least because its an emotive storyline at best, but after last week, and coming to well loved music from my past, with the adult trappings of motherhood on top, i keep starting to cry while trying to explain it all! Even Fran looked a bit choked as the shot that kills Kim sounded out at the end.

Anyway, she asked to have the cd in her room to listen too and its been playing every night… somehow i fear that my theatrical inclinations were genetic! I feel bad in a way that maybe i introduced something with such adult themes.. .but i don’t really believe in coddling children, just presenting info in a “copeable with” format – and i guess music is…. Anyway, the site above has really lovely photos and video clips in it which we have been looking at today.