Cello, icy ponds and Beavers

It has been a good weekend. Harry had his first cello class and ensemble session at The Sage yesterday morning. He was a bit rusty and we have some new interesting things to practise so we will be doing that every day this week.

I had a hair cut yesterday afternoon and the boys stayed at home with Stuart and had a lovely afternoon of Lego and garden play. Harry read really well at bedtime, sharing the reading of Mr Tall with me with hardly any pauses.

We were surprised to see a thick frost this morning and Harry was excited so he quickly got dressed and went outside to see. He took his remote control car for a drive around too. Peter wisely stayed in his pyjamas with me, watching from the window! 

We went for a walk around the Washington Wetland Centre today too and the winter view was stunning. Harry loved scraping frost from all the fences and they both spent a lot of time throwing stones and frozen mud onto the ice-covered ponds and watching them slide over the surface. They played in the garden for an hour at home too, so they have spent a lot of time outdoors today. They warmed up under blankets watching The Snowman and The Snowdog, recorded from Christmas.

Harry finished listening to The Silver Chair at bedtime tonight, book 6 of The Chronicles of Narnia. He has been enthralled by these books and we are both really looking forward to The Last Battle. I think he will listen to and read them several times in the future.

Just after he went to bed, I read my emails and discovered that Harry has a place at a local Beavers group and can start tomorrow night. He has been looking forward to this and likes the idea of earning badges. One of the boys from our Tuesday home ed group session attends the same group so it will be good for Harry to already have a friend there. He has quite a busy week as he already has gymnastics and enjoy-a-ball classes on a Tuesday and Friday tea time but he is very keen to continue with them all so hopefully he will cope with the extra activity.

Polar paper mache and instant snow

We have been thinking about the polar regions a lot over the past week and doing a project I had been saving for a snowy time of year. The idea came from this book, which has some other lovely ideas I will be using. The project in the book is for Antarctica but Harry wanted ours to be the Arctic and Antarctic so we could use polar bears and penguins at the same time!

We watched Snow Babies, which is a documentary I recorded that was on BBC over Christmas. We also read parts of a book from the library about penguins. We liked a page showing all the different kinds of penguin in a line to show their relative size and features.

We created a paper mache polar landscape by scrunching up newspaper and covering a piece of stiff card (I used an unfolded Amazon delivery wrapper) with mountainous icebergs and valleys. We then added smooth layers of newspaper to join it all together and covered it with a glue/water mixture.

Once dry, we gave it a few coats of white paint and added shiny blue and silver paper in the valleys to represent pools of water between the ice.

Harry made some polar animals from air drying clay to live in the model and painted them - penguins, whale and seal.

So the model was finished and we were very happy with it and then the fun really began. I had bought some instant snow powder from Baker Ross with my Christmas order and we hadn't used it yet so we got some out to make it snow on our model. This stuff is amazing! 50ml of water and 1 tiny scoop of powder creates a few handfuls of fluffy fake snow (looks a bit like dessicated coconut) in seconds. 

The boys played with this for 2 hours this afternoon! We hid polar animals in the snow and talked about camouflage and how they might evade hunters if they dig deep enough not to be smelled. We talked about polar bears having huge paws to spread their weight over the slippery snow. Peter had a great time transferring snow between pots.

The Octonauts got involved and we had several rescues from snowdrifts caused by blizzards. 

Trucks then came along to help clear up and loaded and bulldozed snow for a while. We talked about why it would be important to clear roads after snow (using the book Katy and The Big Snow as the basis) and what services are essential - police, hospital, airports etc.

A snowman friend and a morning surprise

We have had enough snow this week to make a snowman. Harry called him 'Snowy' and the boys have been going out and to the windows to say hello to him. He started off with three layers but collapsed under the weight so ended up shorter and fatter but is still standing! Harry kindly lent him a sun hat and Peter lent a scarf.

We have had a real downpour of snow today! Peter had fun looking at his footprints and brushing the new snow away from Snowy. We were on our own this afternoon as Stuart came home from work early to take Harry to enjoy-a-ball. I am currently confined to the house with some sort of German measles strain, rash-inducing virus so we have spent much more time at home this week than I had planned! I am really hoping it is gone by the end of the weekend.

Stuart is currently out in the snow... in the dark...building a small friend for Snowy, who will be spotted by Harry and Peter in the morning! Harry likes reading 'Harry and The Snow King', where snowpeople appear in the yard overnight, so hopefully he will be pleased. They have a great daddy, they are lucky boys.

Winter Harry

Today, following the 'Olympic Harry' craft we did during the Olympics (where we drew round a full-size Harry and decorated him as an Olympian), we created 'Winter Harry'. I think this may become an ongoing craft as the seasons change - Harry has really enjoyed doing them and has been asking for a week to make this one. I had planned to include Peter and we managed to keep him still to draw round him but he was too tired to decorate so we will have to help him decorate 'Winter Peter' another time.

Harry did most of this on his own. He used wool to make a hat and a jumper, which was covered by a gilet. He painted wellies and trousers and we used felt to make mittens which he painted. He said they were different because mummy couldn't find the matching one! I helped him to plait a scarf with the wool.

We added snowflakes and glitter and used wool to make snow on the ground. Harry used tissue paper to make snowballs.