Fairy Niamh

From wool fleece and pipe cleaners

Bulbs

We planted our bulbs today, adding some extras we were given from next door. The children had a pot each to arrange in their own style and then, of course, to decorate afterwards.

Rose jam

Harvest

Afterschool harvest celebration. Each child brought a vegetable and we chopped them up for a harvest soup.  Then 'mother earth' left a bulb for each child to plant next year.

A school birthday

Party yesterday morning for the whole class! We went to the Quaker meeting house, joint with another child. Party had sandcastles, willow crowns, pass the parcel, pinata and of course, cake!

St Andrews park

Putting up a cabbage net

Midsummer

Celebrating the longest day at boiling wells

Ashton court

Sunny day, but dexter was the only one up for swimming

Bluebell railway

He was very excited to go on a train ride, even more so to go in the engine and wear the hat.

Under the apple tree

Snail races

Midsummer calenders

Counting down until the longest day

Oldland mill

Windmill in ditchling

Green Monsters

Tim returned from Brussels with these presents for his children: masks - which they have decided to paint green in order to be true monsters.  They are great fun, except that I think L finds it very tricky to climb up stairs whilst wearing it and A's mouth has turned green...
Dressing up certainly seems to be the game of the month in this household.

Easter bonnet parade

Decorating candles

We made some more coloured candles, and A made a paperchain flower from the wax sheets

Snow angel

We caught the last day of proper snow in London.

Art work at school

Painting the world map

More snow!

Community allotment

After a hard day barrowing compost I give the kids a lift home.

We have snow!

Fun whilst it lasted but its now raining so nothing will be left by morning.

Happy imbolc!

Supposedly a celebration of the first day of spring, we decorated candles for candlemas.

Cake

I promised A a cake for being four and a half, and she requested snow white, so here it is! The cake is blueberry sponge from the hummingbird cafe book, and the picture is from the Disney video jonny gave her for Christmas. I traced it onto greaseproof paper and used a skewer to indent the outlines onto rolled out marzipan. The skin colour was reached my mixing natural and golden marzipan in equal amounts and adding a drop of pink. The trickiest bit was painting on the lips and eyelashes. Pictures of the seven dwarves cup cakes to follow...

First ever haircut

He sat very still for the whole thing. I used clippers round the back to take off the curls (of course I'm keeping one in the drawer) it looks very sweet but unfortunately I went a bit overboard on the fringe. Congratulations on your first haircut my big grown up boy.

Snack time, again.

Sunny spell

We are really enjoying the spring- like weather, spending the weekend in the garden and even cooking our first outdoor meal of the year.

First day at forest school

In leigh woods, today, we joined twelve other children from 0-4 to play hide and seek and explore the woods.

Kitchen gardening

Planting a few leftover bulbs

Happy new year

Back home and its time to cut up the seed catalogues