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At Home Day:

Bean, 9, played a lot of minecraft PE today, i played with him for about an hour we created two new worlds, one specifically to make cake on. He has started a new series of Pokemon and is continuing to enjoy The Simpsons. He had his hair cut whilst Pippin was sleeping. We played Hide and seek in the afternoon and there was wrestling. He asked to play with me on the wii repeatedly but we didn't get around to it today. He watched Star wars: The Clone Wars in the evening.

Pumpkin, 7, played Lego:Batman and we played mariocart on the wii together. We played several games of Chess this morning, i tried looking at our Chess book for some instruction but it was really confusing. He has been enjoying creating characters Tocomini.

Plum, 4, watched on her tablet curled up in a onsie on the sofa all morning. Her friend V came to play in the afternoon. There was duplo and minecraft, play dough, blindfold drawing, hide and seek, cafes, puzzles, and Elmo's Adventures in Grouchland.

Pippin, 2, worked out how to say the word Topsy today.

Working Together

I played chess this morning with Bean, 9, then Pumpkin, 7, and finally Plum, 4. Pippin got paper and pens out again and found dolly to play with. Bean resurrected his love of The Escapers and watched DanTDM play the soon to be released Christmas update. And then i had to watch it with him, and then Pumpkin had to watch it and then i had to watch it with Pumpkin.

We meet with our CHEF this afternoon, just three families this week. We tried a slightly different format which worked well and had the story of Joseph. A colaborative building project ensued with straws and connectors and Bean, Pumpkin and friends built a castle as tall as themselves. There was duplo and painting and wrestling and face painting and group games to end with.

Back home the children relaxed and watched their own things on their own tablets. We watched The Simpsons Movie. It was paused for an hour long wrestling match. We ate. Daddy came home and then went out again. Plum and Pippin and me mixed angel delight together and i watched more DanTDM with Bean and Pumpkin. Lydia went to bed and I read stories with Bean and Plum. Bean has requested a hair cut tomorrow. Plum slept in her top bunk again.

Pumpkin went to bed with me about 10.30pm

People are more important

Monday. Plum, 4, went to Little Verse with SGG and SGS. Whilst she was out i played chess with both Bean, 9, and Pumpkin, 7. Pumpkin made his own Skylanders using lego mini figures. Pippin, 2, vacuumed with me and went back to bed for a nap about 11.30am.

Bean and me played on the wii in the afternoon. He chose Skylanders. We played together for about an hour whilst the others played happily together in my bedroom. He also cut out biscuits and then decorated them using tubes of writing icing. He mostly made faces onto the star shped biscuits. He spent most of the day watching Pokemon Advanced on his new tablet.

Pumpkin has been making his own Skylanders on his tablet (for Imaginators) as well as lego mini figures. He has also played through Lego: The Lord of The Rings on his tablet over the last few days too. This afternoon we played Mario Kart on the wii together and in the evening he played board games with Plum and daddy.

Plum got the cars and car mat out this morning and continued to play with them when she was at home. She put cars on all the road to create a huge trafic jam. She played cbeebies games on her tablet and instigated the hour long game of mummies with Pumpkin and Pippin in the afternoon. She also initiated the idea of making biscuits and cut out and decorated her own star biscuits. She had wanted heart ones but we have lost the heart shaped cutter. We sand twinkle twinkle whilst we were cutting them out and she taught me Dingle Dangle Scarecrow.

Pippin, 2, has enjoyed watching Bing and Tospy and Tim today. She has been busy playing cars with Plum and cuddled up on the sofa to read books with Pumpkin. She has cut out biscuits and played mummies with Plum as well as hoovering with me and drawing tiny squiggles very carefully.

People are more important than things. Proverbs 27

Home is where the Heart is

Another Home Day. You can tell that the seasons are changing as we are at home again. It wasn't the plan. We had planned to meet our Christian Home Ed friends for a play but several couldn't make it last minute so those of us left decided to meet in the park instead. Despite talking it through with the smalls and checking the weather together and arranging to play pokemon when it came to leaving, the suggestion of a rain coat meant that Pumpkin did jot want to go out. Bean was happy to stay. Pippin was tired. That left a disappointed Plum. I put Pippin to bed, Bean and Pumpkin went and continued to play on the wii. I scoped up Plum for cupcake making which she had been asking to do since Sunday.

Bean, 9, has been watching more Thundermans today, played mario kart and wii games (bowling and tennis) with me and played lego star wars and lego pirates of the caeribean with Pumpkin. He choose Cars for a film this evevning.

Pumpkin, 7, and I played Chess together this morning. It was interesting to see how he thinks things through (he is very articulate with his thinking process.) He has been playing a lot on chess on my phone recently and it is visible how much it has helped him learn the game. He has caught up with Dan TDM today and found some more episodes of The Simpsons. He has played ont he wii with Bean. They got stuck at one point and came and got a tablet so they could find a walkthrough on YouTube.

Plum, 4, has been playing mummys again with Pippin. The doll's house has been out and the kitchen set. She has been setting up the magnetic letter for me to read to her, puttin random strings of letters together, and then putting them in coloured groups, and finally making a rainbow with them. We made and decorated cupcakes and sat cuddled on the sofa watching Cars.

Taking it easy

After all the birthday running around in the last three weeks this week feels rather slow and I was beginning to feel like we should be 'doing' something, then I chilled out and remembered we all need to take it easy sometimes.

We went to the needles Children and Family Centre this morning which resulted in a lot of building things, namely houses and boats. This seems to be a recurring theme in both the boys building and drawing lately.

Other activities today included Pumpkin requesting to play on the piano as we were listening to piano music on the radio. Both boys spent 20 minutes or so trying out various sounds, together and solo. Bean asked to play me at chess. He has been rather persistent in his desire to learn how and I found an app that showed you where your pieces could move to and an undo button - useful for if you want to try again. I know what the pieces do but beyond that I'm not much good, so today I won my first game of chess (against my 5 year old!)

We also had a tournament game of fruit ninja on my phone which Bean won. The photo here is off his victory pose.
And lastly the boys got fed up of not going out (again because of the rain) and put their coats and wellies on to play in the garden. At one point it was raining quite hard but they carried on.