It's been an itty bitty week this week. I don't really feel like I've had a handle on life at all. The anticipation and excitement about Nana's return seems to have overtaken most things.

One of the highlights for me has to be our trip to Hardwick Country Park. It's beautiful now but I suspect it will be absolutely breath taking in a few more weeks when more of the leaves turn colour.



The old gate tower has been restored in recent years and looks every inch the romantic Rapunzel tower. You can't climb up it but you can go inside at the bottom.



The play area is basic with swings, slide, fireman's pole and a wooden train. Quaint and surrounded by trees.



We can cross the lake at the stepping stones at the moment as the water levels are low. Other times we have been the water has been lapping across and the stones have looked slippery.



Although I've been here a few times now there is still lots more to explore. We haven't started on the big lake or some of the other ruins and buildings yet. Hopefully soon.



Hermione has carried on with her usual activities. She's been to Badgers, Rainbows, dance class and music academy. All is going well although I think she's just luke warm with the music academy. She's at that difficult stage of learning to play an instrument when quite frankly it just sounds awful. She knows it will get better - she can remember when Craig couldn't even get a note out of his sax but can now play recognisable tunes. I hope she sticks with it and moves past this point. Faster growth of her front teeth would certainly help in this respect!

She's also been rattling through her Horizon Maths book this week. Her numeracy skills are coming on in leaps and bounds. She's going at her own pace and doing fine.

We have read Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha this week. It's a FIAR text which tells the tale of a young boy who helps out in his families seaside hot dog stand. He also finds a moonjelly which he returns to the sea.



We looked at various images of jelly fish - medusa, flower hat. I had never thought of them as being so beautiful. I guess a lot of this is to do with the fact that when we see them they are usually in shallow water or just beached on the sand. Images like this show them in their full splendour.

We placed our story disc on new England where the story is set and looked at some pictures of New England in a brochure Nana brought back from Canada.

We talked about how moonjellies are not the only creature which can glow. We talked about glow worms and looked at this site which has a lot of basic information and good images.

We talked about how it may feel to be a shop keeper and played shops with real money. Although Hermione's numeracy skills are developing well it all seemed to go a little haywire when we were talking money. She enjoyed our shopping game and I think I'll suggest it again soon.

There were lots of other things I had hoped to do this week - find some corn to make corn dollies, make elderberry cordial and sort out the Amazon dvd rental list for starters. I'm not confident that we'll get much done next week as the carpet fitters will be here two days re fitting all of the carpets. Oh the joys!