Happy Halloween!

🙂

Spiders, spiders, big and small…..

I don’t think any more explanation is needed… 😉

🙂

Pumpkin Time!

Just because it’s always so much fun to do, because they always look so wonderful when lit – and because it’s given me an opportunity to play with lots of different photography ‘affects’, I’ll give you an insight into our pumpkin carving session….. 😉

In true Maya style, she was still hard at work with hers hours after the rest of us had finished (doing the ghost above)…. And I just couldn’t help myself taking some photos of some cheeky sibling fun taking place…

…before giving all the pumpkins a ‘test run’….

🙂

A Homemade Halloween Dress

Maya really loves to sew, and this year she has decided to sew her own Halloween costume.
She’s going to be a witch, and she has already saved up for some black material, ordered it over the internet, and cut and sewn it for fit…..

Difficult to see, but here is where she has stitched it at the sides, to take it in…

Did I forget to tell you that she made her own ‘manequin’ out of cardboard rolls to help her….?

Here she is at the ‘preview’…

However, then she decided she needed a little decoration. She chose some sequins to sew on, making a pattern on paper first…

..before sewing them on….

Gorgeous!
I’m very proud of her! 🙂

Pumpkins At English Club!

This week at English Club we went all out for pumpkins!
Starting with a beautiful book with fairly simple vocabulary…

…we went on to carve mini pumpkins, and make orange sugar covered pumpkin cookies….

Now little Alfie is a little bit put out that we have so much fun at English Club, so I’ve promised him a little craft time with Lilly too…..

🙂

In Search Of Spiders….

We are so lucky to be living within ten minutes walk of a forest…armed with a packed lunch and a magnifying glass, we set off in search of spiders…
Along the way we discovered a snail…

..and wonderful leaves…

We discovered a stream…

…and a fire pit…

Ted was fascinated by the stream, and wondered what different things were floating in it…

He pondered over a pine tree, and we talked about their needles – he felt them…and tasted them… (!)…

We found our spider crawling over the forest floor..

…we counted his eight legs…

Having just rained, it was the perfect weather to find spider’s webs. We found a few beautiful ones…unfortunately I couldn’t quite get my camera to focus on the spider/web…and we just got the leaves in the background…

….however..the settled raindrops showed us the detailed web beautifully.
Then Ted decided to ‘drink’ the raindrops off the branches “like a spider”, he said…

He wasn’t scared of venturing in to the bushes….

We discovered the most fantastic ‘koja’ (den)…

..and observed an ant’s nest…

Hmmm…which way now..?

Time for lunch. Ted is in the middle of explaining something important..

And time for some spider stories….

Who couldn’t love this detailed, raised, web…?

Satisfied with finding our spiders, our webs, and a lot more besides, we started the walk home…

🙂

Troll Park

A few weeks a go, when the sun was still shining, Ted and I went on an ‘adventure’. We took a small picnic, and took the bus, and the train, to the ‘troll park’…just a little park.. but we weren’t disappointed…

The park was empty, but there were signs of play before us…

We gave our offerings to the troll..

..and to the squirrel…

There were secret toadstools…

…hidden away from the toadstool ring…and new little gnomes…

🙂

Apple Printing & Apple Cobbler!

We still have plenty of apples left on our trees…

…so we had some apple fun…

…printing with apples, and finding their ‘stars’…

…making new colours…

…and even, as Alfie pointed out, finding their ‘roots’…

So then it was time to try our hand at ‘Apple Cobbler’ – a surprisingly easy recipe to make!

Ingredients :

900g apples
2 lemon slices
55g sugar

Cobbler ;
225g flour
125ml milk
15g baking powder
55g butter
55g sugar

1) Peel, core and chop apples.
2) Put apples in pan with a drop of water and two lemon slices, and cook until soft on low heat.

3) Put butter and flour in to bowl and crumble together, add sugar, and milk…

4) Make in to a soft dough, which must then be rolled out on a floured surface…

5) Take apple mixture off heat, remove lemon slices, stir in sugar, and pour in to a deep pie dish.
6) Cut 6cm circular (or in our case, squared!) shapes from the dough, and place overlapping eachother over the top of the apple mixture.
7) Place in oven at 180C for 30 mins….

We ate ours with ice-cream – delicious! 🙂

Monster Math (And Other Creatures!)

Two popular books around here…

…easy for Alfie, but he’s highly amused by the different monsters and the cute spiders….
So while we’re at home recovering from chickenpox, inspired by ‘Nurture Store’, we tried a little magic ghost maths…

Write the sum, get them to answer, and write the ‘secret’ answer in white crayon on the ghost. Get them to paint over in black watercolour to see if they counted correctly.
Fantastic fun and very simple! 😉

Spooky Fun At English Club!

We have a wonderful book of Halloween poems, just right for english club…

…and excellent inspiration for our Halloween pictures…

Spooky! 😉