Autumn finery and stuff

Still enjoying autumn in it's finest here. I love the clear blue blustery days, kicking the piles of fallen leaves which accumulate by the road side and admiring the trees and bushes bejewelled with berries. Of course the flip side is finding dog sh*t in the pile of leaves you have just kicked and constantly watching wee folks to make sure they don't eat berries best reserved for birds. Thankfully we have had no dog sh*t or poisonous berry episode incidents as yet this year - and hopefully won't.



Hermione tried her hand at silk painting for the first time this week. Here is her finished creation, a silk rainbow.



This lead on to a discussion about silk and how it is made. We looked at some sites on the Internet and found out about the silk worm and how it spins a cocoon which is used to make silk. There were some really good pictures of the cocoons and I thought I had saved the links but appear to have misplaced them.

We have also been working our way through the RaW Family Storytelling pack. A home educating friend gave this to us last week. Hermione isn't generally very enthusiastic about workbook type formats but she is enjoying this one. Nana is enjoying it too. They have been doing it together, a few pages a day.

Hermione has been to Rainbows and the home ed meeting at Natures World. Badgers wasn't on this week as the helpers were required to be on duty for fire work burns. Sad but how it is I guess.

We also met up with a group of home edding families at a local soft play centre. It was great to see people. I think the adults and children both had a good time. My only grumble was about how loud the music was. It took me back to the days when I regularly frequented nightclubs - the only differences being that it was the middle of the day, I was sober and surrounded by children. Is it really necessary to have dance hits blasting out at high volume in a soft play establishment. I don't know, perhaps I'm just getting old huh?

We made it to Saltwell Park for the first time in about a year today. We played in the leaves,



paused for thought at the water garden,



fed the ducks,



examined the hedges,



climbed trees,



watched the doves, rabbits, guinea pigs and peacocks.



Busy couple of days ahead. Hermione is performing in a dance show at the weekend to help raise money for Children In Need. The dress rehearsal is tomorrow. Busy, busy, busy.