Thursday, 1 August 2019

What We've Been Up To...#17

We're running a little behind with posts, but thought we'd carry on from where we left off. Here's what we did over the Easter period...

Tahlia and Jory enjoyed their sponsored bunny hop at playgroup

A fun trip to the National Marine Aquarium

Caught in a net

They all enjoyed looking at the pictures and finding the different sea creatures in the tank

Looking for starfish and crabs with Bumble

Zachary enjoyed some activities with magnets at our local home ed group

Fire engine fun at Hedge


The Hedge group also did an Easter egg hunt with cryptic clues and a big chocolate prize at the end; pictured with their friend Chester

Making a papier mache pinata ready for Easter

We made our own puppet theatre and acted out puppet stories

Here we are at The World of Country Life

Work was continuing on our house to build a loft bedroom

Jory particularly loved the 'tunnel of scaffolding'

Easter crafts with Zoe and Reuben before we headed out on the St Thomas Easter trail

Making chocolate Easter nests at home


Completing the Easter donkey trail at the Donkey Sanctuary (here we are at the centre of the maze)

Everyone pretends they're about to sneeze!

Fighting over the door; one wants it open, the other wants it shut

The stepping stones kept them amused for ages

The Darts Farm Easter trail

Making Easter cards at John Lewis


An Easter treat: dinner at Pizza Express

Jory decided he didn't like any of the food so he was overjoyed when the cake came out

The Paignton Zoo Top Trumps trail - Zachary had to see if his card beat the different animal cards around the zoo.

The Occombe Farm Dinosaur trail


Bird watching at Occombe Farm

Tahlia is going aloft at Paignton playground

Riding a lion
Ball drop at Paignton Amusements
Surprisingly, Zachary wins on the grabbers! Tahlia names him Uppaliappy
Our slow cooked lamb dish for Easter - lamb neck chops
Searching for letters on the Kentisbeare Easter trail
Thinking about our dinner
Having a 'Passover meal' with a slow cooked Middle Eastern lamb dish, flatbreads and wine/grape juice

Tasty lamb
Windows appearing in the loft room
Playing chess at the House of Marbles

The fantastic marble run playground at the House of Marbles
FAB club Easter party!

Playing Guess Who with his FAB club friend
Very happy connecting four on his own
Fun at our local playground
Mummy was away, so Daddy was in charge of games and activities for the day - here is the mini smarties game
Egg and spoon race

'Jump into the ring without it falling off' game 
Opening chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday...


...until they'd decided they'd had enough. Poor Mummy and Daddy had to eat the rest!
Easter Sunday afternoon was spent at Hound Tor...

Doing our own Easter egg hunt!

Enjoying the views

Finally breaking into our decorated pinata!

Tuesday, 7 May 2019

What We've Been Up To...#16

Here's an update on some of the things we did in March...

Our loft conversion work commenced!

Kids very excited to see a huge truck delivering heavy supplies

It was Ptolemy's 2nd birthday
He very much enjoyed opening his presents...

...And playing with his new toys
He had lots of cake for his birthday...
...Sadly this Hey Duggee cake didn't survive when he decided to sneak over and join in the decorating!

He had a fun birthday party at home

The kids even made the adults join in with musical chairs

Ptolemy's squashed Hey Duggee cake now decorated with sweets

Ptolemy had lots of fun dressing up

Zachary has been building molecules

Playing the fishing game

Jory loves the 'tunnel of scaffolding'

He wants to be a big boy

Our current project is the Sumerians, thought to be linked to the Tower of Babel in the Bible
We also built our own 'towers of Babel'

Zachary also built his own version of a ziggurat - a Sumerian temple

We had a go at writing our own cuneiform clay tablets
(Cuneiform is thought to be the first ever written language, created by the Sumerians)


We visited the World of Country Life and met Angus, the mascot deer
Both sets of kids enjoyed running around

We also visited Living Coasts and saw the penguins up close

A stroll around Torquay marina

Jory spots a seal at Living Coasts

Making Mother's Day cards at Hedge: a home education group in Exeter

Playing in the little playground at Hedge

Tahlia made a giant flower

Having a run around with skipping ropes outside

Trying the giant xylophone on the Zog (Julia Donaldson) walk at Haldon Forest Park

Beautiful views from the top of Haldon Hill

They all found Zog and his friends along the trail

Daddy was away at a conference in London so we enjoyed some activities related to our favourite books; here is the enormous turnip treasure hunt game - we needed to find all of our favourite characters around the house to help us pull up the enormous turnip!

Here we are about to go on a bear hunt


Uh oh! A forest. A deep, dark forest. We can't go over it, we can't go under it...

Uh oh! A Bear! Quick! Back through the cave!