Rainy days and Mondays

 Roopt

'A word is dead once it's been said, some said, I say it just begins to live that day.' Emily Dickinson.

After a lazy morning for me (thank you daddy for the lie in) in which the boys got busy building railway track and drawing pictures we headed for Owlbeach and Leechpool woods dressed for rainy weather. 
         
It was a good job as not only did it rain but unsurprisingly the woods were wet and muddy. The boys loved it. Bean and Pumpkun both struggle with walking (as such) and either stand still or run! Standing still involves looking at a twig that could be a slug, or watching where the river runs, smelling the flowers, discussing which path to take, listening and looking for the birds, splashing in a puddle, squelching in the mud or just pausing to climb the fallen tree or drive in the rotten tree stump. Bean was particularly taken by the 'blanket of bluebells' (his words) and Pumpkin interested in the puddles and mud.              
           
Bean's use of words to describe the bluebells really impressed me and daddy. Our children's language development has always impressed me, it seems to be something they are good at and enjoy playing with words. Bean regularly asks what words mean or who might use them.I felt sorry for the boy in the synthetic phonics training video who was marked wrong on his hestitation to pronounce 'roopt,' which is a great non-word but is clearly a word he knew was wrong and therefore hesitated to read it as such. I think the world may have gone slightly crazy when it asks a child to read a word that is not a word and tell them they got it right and when they pause to question the non-word tell them they are wrong. I think maybe we have forgotten we are dealing with people and not processes (rant over.) 
          
We ended up in the play park where I fed Plum under the play equipment in the only 20cm squared patch of dry bench I could find. Bean hasn't been too well and rode back in the buggy but Pumpkin managed the whole walk there and back again.