Wishing you all a ...

A good chilled week here! Kids have had lots of fun playing the one and only game we have so far on the PS1 (racing cars) and Club Penguin! In between all this we've done some more arts and crafts and looked at some other websites with a Christmassy feel.

Lots of play with the beeswax this week. The children, and their friends, have enjoyed experimenting with it as much as making things with it. K has sculpted quite a few different coloured ponies now and also decorated a candle with beeswax Christmas trees.

Last weekend there was a Frost Fair in Southwark, London which sounded fabulous. We would have loved to have gone along and participate in all that was happening. The website is here. This week, we've been doing "ice" things (including scraping the ice off the car on a couple of mornings!). I froze a couple of containers of water to let the children have a go at carefully sculpting the ice. B must be quite heavy handed because his soon broke into small pieces but K managed to dig a suitable centre hole to produce a rather lovely icey candle holder. We also went on a very cold walk through the local park to pick up some foliage to make ice bowls which we'll light on Christmas Eve when we have our family meal. B and I have been looking at these wonderful snowflake photographs and I see there's a few activities listed on there which perhaps we'll try next week.

B and I have been watching Penguin Week on Channel Five and he's completed his Penguin project poster and is very proud of it. The project has information not only on penguins, but on Antartica and ice bergs too. There is just so much information to absorb on this topic that I hope he'll want to delve deeper in due course.

We continue to read the wonderful "Letters from Father Christmas" and have also found this good book from the library titled "Transform! How Everyday Things are Made" by Bill Slavin. Really good - it's certainly written for children with interesting drawings and snippets of information on a number of everyday items like CDs, chewing gum, yogurt, pencils, to name a very small few. I may try and add this one to our home collection as both kids have been picking it up to thumb through since we got it out.

Finally, K and B enjoyed playing this game shown on the "byothermeans" blog, and it's educational too! Also, if you and the kids want to track down the "man in red" on Christmas Eve you can check his journey here.

Have a wonderful Christmas time and fulfilling 2007!

Elle, P, K and B xx