A visiting field mouse amongst other stuff

Yesterday Hermione got it into her head that she would put some cat food out for a mouse. Lo and behold, by lunchtime a small field mouse was sitting on the deck eating catfood. Nana was far from happy as her one big fear in life is mice. As the doors opened and small children ran out to take a better look the mouse scarpered and I thought that would be the last of it. Not so. A very startled Nana dashed out of the nannexe this morning to say that one of her cats had brought a mouse in but it was alive and now on the loose inside. We managed to catch the mouse wearing gardening gloves and let it back out onto the deck. Having just managed to convince Nana that it probably was the same one as we had seen the day before, a larger looking fella scampered right across the deck again. Looks like it's time to acquire some humane traps which will allow us to release the little rascals unharmed in the fields up the road.

Yesterday we read The Drinking Gourd and looked at some pictures of gourds. We also looked at a poster advertising a reward for the return of run away slaves. A discussion about morals ensued. Hermione decided she would help the slave. Lily felt inclined to take the money given the chance. We discussed what things wold help the slaves on their journey to freedom. We covered the obvious things like food, water and clothing but also went on to discuss the importance of being able to speak the language spoken in that region and the good fortune (or otherwise) of meeting people who would help and support them.

We placed our story disc on America with a big arrow pointing north to Canada.




Out in the garden we noticed that the courgettes are really starting to form and grow. We also harvested the first of our beetroot crop. It was delicious in salad today.



Today we looked at some art by Richard Haynes Jr inspired by the Underground Railroad. This in turn inspired us to get out the watercolours and do a bit of painting too. Hermione did a picture of slaves hiding in a cave.




This afternoon the girls tried to get out to do some garden rubbings with crayons. They made some good leaf rubbings and a did few pieces of bark but it kept starting to rain so they ended up just being in and out and in and out - not getting done what they hoped.

Later it was Rainbows. They made paper and talked about recycling.