A Mammoth Catch-Up (now where did I put my stone age woman outfit and club?)

Ok, no mammoths, but that looks like a dinosaur to me. I'll get the club if you get the stone age oven on:


making play dough creations with friends:

Showing the week-long visitor child how to eat with chopsticks:

Warhammer creations, encouraged by ds1's friends sleeping over:

At the natural sandpit with our week-long visitor:

My little Miss David Bailey at work with her camera:

"So long and thanks for the fish":

Runner-up in the Ice Cream Beauty Pageant:

I spend a fortune (about £27) to take two small children to the wildlife park. What do they want to do...

Oh yeah, I know, paddle their hands in the mucky pond by the smelly cafe and try and fish out the 'lucky' coins that people have thrown in:

... And feed the chickens (hasn't anyone noticed we have 4 of the blooming things in our back garden?!):

...And pat a goat. Hey! We can do that for free at the local garden centre. The clue is in the title of the place - 'WILDLIFE centre' Argggh! Anyone interested in seeing some WILD LIFE?

And later in the week...more ice cream (at the park) after going round a little museum with the grandparents (which the kids declared as 'boring' - the museum, not the grandparents).

A trip to do a home ed 'art' workshop at Waddesdon Manor:

All about the paintings of Sleeping Beauty, by the painter Leon watchamacallit:

A fab workshop with a wonderful good-with-kids workshop leader (makes a pleasant change), which actually inspired my kids to put pen to paper:

Yep, I took a few more photos, just to record the event. I repeat, PEN to PAPER :

Ok, so they were rewriting the story of sleeping beauty as 'Sleeping Beauty learns to swear', but hey ho, but did I mention they were putting PEN to PAPER. (By the way, I think the above is a picture of a time machine).

And dd drew dinosaurs (and dogs) for her version of Sleeping Beauty. 'Is that a picture of sleeping beauty?' 'No. It's dogs and dinosaurs' (oh yes, silly mummy).

As she has so neatly demonstrated, dinosaurs are just spikey versions of dogs:

Playing at the local natural sandpit with friends again:

Making 'Clay Man' out of the natural clay she found at the sandpit:

We test out the new smaller tent and have to lop a few branches off the apple tree to fit it in the garden. Are we really going to spend 3 weeks camping in that?!:

A busy week and feeling peaky:

A farrier turns up at the cottage near our home ed group. We are invited to watch by the inhabitants, who coincidentally home educated their children too. The woman looked strangely familiar, but I just couldn't place her and it's going to bug me for some time.

The end (for now).