Cragside

It was unexpectedly hot! Almost too hot in the full sun of the adventure playground. Elizabeth enjoyed doing the 'challenge' as she called it:

Sebastian enjoyed having a go on everything.

Francesca's arm features in the picture above - she was there, honest!

Getting too hot, we moved on to the labyrinth, which I thought might afford us some shade.

Here are the girls approaching the carved wooden statue of a wizard called George, at the start of the labyrinth:

Here they are discovering an elaborately carved throne:

And sitting on it:

We had our picnic in the middle of the labyrinth.

We saw damsel flies, which the children were interested in. Incidentally, we did some map work, looking at the road route round Cragside that we followed to get to the various carparks for our destinations.

This is supposed to be the quintessential Cragside image, with the iron bridge in the background but I'm not sure you can make it out all that clearly.

We had a pleasant stream-side stroll and finished off with ice creams and coffee at the visitors' centre.

Alnwick Garden

Not the greatest picture, perhaps, but shows the sunshine and the playing in the water.

This is the sunlight filtering through the trees in my friend's garden as we ate our meal:

And the gorgeous girlies in the beautiful flowers. They called it the fairy garden.

Harbottle Crags

Seymour was off rowing all day so we went hiking in the countryside. Harbottle Crags, for an amazing 4 mile walk, scrambling over boulders, squadging by a lake, pottering through woodland and, finally, a route march along the road back to the carpark.

The girls walked amazingly well and I gave myself a crazy workout, carrying Sebastian in the backpack with lunch and water on board as well. I really felt those hills!

The children totally loved climbing on the crags and we picnicked by the Drake Stone.

(That's a lake, not snow)

Beamish

The drift mine, an open-top tram, the carousel and the coconut Seymour won.

We are still here(!)

You may be forgiven for thinking that we'd packed up and left home, or that we have gone back to real school, or that blogging is dead.

None of that is true.

I'm not sure why I haven't posted anything in ages. A few excuses spring to mind and they include:

• I've been working hard on my bread website and that really is all I have time for in the evenings
• We've had a lot of holidays - family over from the States, trips away to Yorkshire and Holy Island, a Christening, a wedding... It's all shaken up our routine and cut the amount of academic stuff (in the nicest possible way!)
• The sun has been shining. We've been out a lot. Day trips to National Trust places, walks in the countryside, playing out in the street. It's been months!!! Months of winter during which we felt like hibernating and hardly socialised. Now, we're OUT! I've been saying to myself, "Maths in the winter and playing out in the summer." Might be a good idea.
• I got bored of blogging the same old stuff: picture of the children at the table, reports of Maths, English and violin. These things continue but I didn't feel like telling you about them, again, every day.

So now, I feel like sharing some pictures again but I'm not going to require myself to report every last detail of our days. Please assume that the English, Maths and violin continue apace, along with assorted other activities (lately we've done a lot of History, for example). I'm still going to devote the bulk of my time to my bread website but I'll pop back here and post whatever pictures I have, with brief explanations if I have time.

Thus, skimming breezily past several months of fantastic education, (undocumented, alas, so you'll have to take my word for it) I give you today:

A smiley boy trying to get in shot with his jigsaws that he was proudly doing.

Unfortunately, despite all that leaning and that expression, the jigsaws had to be pictured seperately but aren't they great?!

A girl writing a story about a brainy bear, all illustrated and complete with the dodgiest spellings I've seen in a while.

Another girl threading beads to make a shiny happy necklace.

There.

I'm off, but I'll try not to be gone so long this time :)

Art At The Hatton

Today's Hatton art session was about making a poster for your favourite film.

We had been asked to bring along images from our favourite films but my children have never really watched any films, just a lot of CBeebies. So, instead of film images, we bought a couple of CBeebies magazines to take along.

Sebastian did some cutting and sticking, nothing to do with the brief but hey!

Elizabeth did some lettering with a stencil for "Everything's Rosie" and I helped her to colour in the letters as per the programme logo.

Francesca did an Octonauts poster.

Afterwards we went to Caffe Nero for a quick top-up since lunch had been a hasty sandwich on the Metro between the airport (to meet their long-awaited cousins off the plane) and town (for the art class).

Habitats Fieldwork At Gibside

Had a really great day out at Gibside on Tuesday, with some other Home Ed families, doing a workshop on Habitats. The children found minibeasts in the woodland and did some pond dipping. We even had time for a play in the playarea. It was a lovely sunny day and not too cold, though windy. We stayed far too long because we really didn't want to stop having fun and go home!

Here are all the participants heading off to the pond:

Sebastian having a lunchtime siesta with a friend:

Elizabeth trying on some enormous wellies:

Sebastian hanging out with a big boy(!)

Sebastian playing house: