We’ve had a lazy sort of week and it’s been a welcome break from homeschooling. The girls want to spend every day in Stormont at the minute, exploring the little trail and playing in the big adventure playground. I love the fact that coffee is available too, even though I usually just bring my own anyway 🙂 Time seems to vanish in that playground. After lots of time on the biggest slides and zipwire, we went for a walk/scoot to the little woodland trail. The girls love sitting in the big throne and finding the wooden animal sculptures. They stopped to look at fairy houses, dens and then paused for cookies at a picnic table. The weather makes everything in life feel easier and I’m hoping it sticks around for a while.
At home, we tried an activity from the girls’ Make + Wonder box. It is based around shadows and puppet theatres this month. The girls spent some time drawing around shadows in the garden with chalk. The card suggested going for a walk to do it and I like the idea of finding more of a variety of shadows, but I’d also feel random letting my kids draw pictures on footpaths outside people’s houses 🙂 So, I’m trying to think of somewhere more secluded we could do that. The girls got the paddling pool out as soon as there was a second of sunlight 🙂
They have been spending most of the week making mud pies in the garden, which has resulted in a swamp-like garden, but it has kept them happy. The chalk we got with the art box is very vibrant so the girls have enjoyed just using it to draw pictures on the ground too. We drew hopscotch and some other chalk games on the ground to create a little obstacle course-type of thing for the girls.
On another sunny day, we got out the tuff tray for an outdoor craft. The girls made chalk pictures using black paper and tape. You just add the tape in whatever pattern you like, colour in the sections with different colours of chalk and then peel the tape off to expose the results 🙂 I made one too and it was so relaxing despite the gusts of wind trying to steal our pictures 🙂
We had another park day and stopped for our first day of collecting fallen cherry blossom 🙂 The girls are always immediately drawn to it and pick it up without me having to point it out 🙂 I always feel like things are becoming more positive when you first see a blossom tree flowering.
We visited my parents’ garden and I stopped to take pictures of some of their bright and more unusual plants. I like the one that looks like snake skin 🙂 I wrote down the names of them so I wouldn’t forget, as I seem to have no memory for plant names. Everything seems to be flourishing in their garden, in contrast to the flagging plants in our own 🙂
We made some banana muffins and a cake since there was so much batter 🙂 I added some big chunks of milk and white chocolate too. Both of my daughters have decided they don’t like banana bread now, which they always do when I’ve baked vast quantities of something 🙂 The photo below is of my daughter announcing she doesn’t like my cake 🙂 I’m planning on doing some Easter activities with them tomorrow so I’ll share those soon too 🙂
The Funky Thrifter 