Melissa's 5th Birthday...

I can't quite believe it myself but my little Melissa turned 5 earlier this month. Though her actual birthday was on a Friday, due to school, we celebrated on the Saturday with a party. Not being one to do things by halves, I decided hiring a room and having a big party was the way forward. That way I could invite her old friends from playgroups, nursery, my mummy friends kids etc... as well as any new school friends. Because she had only been in school about 2 weeks when I sent out the invites, I decided, inviting all the girls in the class would be the way forward. Well about half of them replied and came but the other half; rude so and sos did not even bother to reply!!
As usual I invited too many people, thinking many wouldn't turn up. That meant in total there were about 25 children at the party. Melissa wanted it to be fancy dress so all the girls came as princesses where as the boys were a mix of pirates, super heros and dinosaurs.
In the beginning I had this idea I would provide the entertainment myself. However I soon chickened out and we hired a very good, but very expensive children's entertainer. The kids, however, did seem to enjoy it and join in!
Here are some photos...

Starting school

Well, we are almost half way through the autumn term; Melissa's first year at school and Louis first year at nursery.
It all seems to be going ok thankfully. Louis took a while to settle in to nursery. Although he always said he enjoyed himself and the teachers said he was fine, he would cry when I dropped him off. The teaching assistant has been really good with him and would make a special fuss and read him a story. Anyway, fingers crossed, about 2 weeks ago he said 'I've decided I am not going to cry now mummy.' and that was that. He has gone in happy enough ever since. It is really cute seeing him shout the names of the other children and nice he is making his own friends and devloping his own personality with some time away from Melissa.
Melissa being at school means me and Louis have two mornings together when I am not in work. I have all these plans to teach him his letters and numbers ready for school but so far all we have really done is play or have a cuddle!!
Melissa, on the other hand seems to have taken no trouble settling into school. I took her in on the first day and she went and sat down like she had been going every day of her life. She is mentioning the names of a few other children so hopefully she is making friends fine. She is very indpendent but seems popular with the other kids!
School seem to have started already with reading, writing and numbers. At the end of the first week Melissa brought home her first reading book. Strangely it had no words in it but appparently this is to get the children used to the charactors of the scheme they use. She has been bringing home 2 new words to learn more or less every night and seems to be picking them up very quickly. I am under no illusion she is a genius though-she is almost a year older than many of the kids in her class!
Tomorrow is parent's night for both kids so will find out how they are getting on.
Here are some pictures of them in their uniforms....

School holidays

Well, the school holidays are almost over. Louis had his first day at pre school and Melissa will have her first day in reception class next Monday. I haven't really blogged much over the holidays so this post is a summary really of what we have been up to.

Meeting up with friends
I got the phone numbers off quite a few of the mums of children Melissa had played with at pre school so on most days when I wasn't working we had someone to meet up with. Activities included, trips to the local park, trips to soft play (when the weather was bad) and playing in the house. It was nice that Melissa's friends included Louis too, infact most of her friends have a younger brother or sister so he had people to play with also.

Baking

Unfortunately I have come to the realisation that I am not in any way shape or form any kind of cook so our baking activities involved making up packet mix cakes.

Horse riding

My sister and mum have horses-actually one of them was mine before I had the kids. We took Melissa and Louis down to the stables a few times and they enjoyed brushing and a quick ride on the smaller of the two horses.





Playing in the garden

I usually jump at any chance to get out in the garden with the kids at any sign of sunshine (a rare sight in the north of England). We bought the kids a trampoline which they love!



Outdoor chalking has also been a hit...


Days out

We have had 3 proper family days out. The first was more an attempt at one as we set off from our house in overcast but dry weather but when we arrived at our park of choice, only 11 miles aways, everything was soaking. It ended up being a trip to costco instead!



Another day out was to Southport where we had a walk round, some fish and chips and then Melissa and Louis went on a few fairground rides.



Thirdly, we took a trip to Tatton park, a national trust park which has a fabulous adventure playground and lovely gardens and nature walks.

Caravan mini breaks

My parents have just bought a caravan in the Lake District so we have had two long weekends there. Unfortunately, particularly the first time we went, the weather was quite wet. However the kids enjoyed the indoor pool and have improved their swimming and managed to get a few goes on the outdoor playground. In the evening we went to the clubhouse and my husband and I had a few drinks while the Melissa and Louis watched the children's entertainment. Louis even won the fancy dress competition.

Jam jar decorating

Join the play academy link up...http://nurturestore.co.uk/join-the-play-academy-idea-swap-51

Being a typical North west England summer, we have had quite a lot of rain in the last couple of weeks so I have had to find ways to keep the kids busy in the house (my least fav thing,being stuck inside with bored kids!). In preparation for this, before the start of the summer holidays, I asked people at work to save for me any old boxes and also jam jars.

The boxes are for junk modelling which we have not yet done and the jam jars for decorating.

I did consider using glass paints but thought the kids may be a bit young especially Louis. So I decided the best thing to do would be firstly paint the jars all over with thick pva glue.



I then gave the kids a tub each of tissue paper shapes and asked them to stick them all over the jars so no white was showing.




The results turned out quite good!

Ibiza holiday

This post is about 2 months too late but I wanted to do a little post on our summer holiday to Portinax in Ibiza. We went with my mum, dad, sister and her boyfriend as my dad paid for us all to go for his 60th birthday/retirement celebrations.

We stayed in a wonderful all inclusive hotel which was extremely child friendly. Melissa enjoyed going to the kids club in the mornings where they did craft and theme related activities. Louis unfortunately would not be left in the kid's club as he is going through a phase of being very clingy (dread nursery start in a few weeks!).

We had gorgeous weather and spent every day partly by the pool and then partly on the beach and the kids stayed up really late in the evening to watch the entertainment.

Here aere some photos anyway :-)
The beach....




Melissa and Louis in the kids pool (excuse Louis sunhat!)



At the beach


Melissa on the slide



We all had a lovely time and have booked to go again next year!

Outdoor play-camping and kitchen

Follow this link for the Play accademy to see more outdoor play ideas...http://nurturestore.co.uk/tag/the-play-academy-2
So the last week or so we have had some semi decent weather-not paddling pool weather but certainly outdoor weather. The good thing with outdoor play is it means the house stays tidy :-) and I can get on with a bit of gardenning while the children play.
Anyway, firstly I decided it would be quite a nice idea to make a home made tent. I bought 5 long bamboo sticks from a DIY store and me and the kids tied them into a basic tent shape. Unfortunately I didn't have an ideal blanket to cover it with as all my spare ones have been used as floor cloths for painting so we used a fitted sheet.


If we do this activity again, then I am going to buy a special 'thing' which can be used to make a tipee! These can be bought from the DIY store as they are designed for making a tipee to grown creeping plants on!

In addition to the tent I decided to bring the children's kitchen accessories out which we bought in Ikea. They don't use them much in the house but I saw many ideas on blogs about setting up outdoor kitchens so thought they would be ideal for this. Added to that I brought out a mini oven which I purchased for £3 at a local car boot sale.

Oh no rain again...

It may be July but the last few days we have had nothing but rain. I must admit I really do struggle to keep the kids entertained and also to keep my patience when stuck in all day. Here are a few things we have been doing any way. Sensory tubThe latest sensory tub for this month (except I am never organised enough to actually present the kids with it at the start of the calender month) is a kind of sweet shop/ice cream shop theme. I added pompoms, plastic reuseable ice cubs, scoups, bowls and tongs and then I added some beeds to empty gumball machines. The kids have used this to play sweet shops as well as making sequencing patterns with the coloured pom poms and ice cubes using the ice cube trays. In the Pond I came across some wonderful pre school packs on a site called homeschool creations which I have been printing off to put aside for rainy days. Each one of them fits in with a theme and I have that many books that I should be able to find a related book for each one so I thought on rainy days we could focus on a different pre school pack. I am the kind of person who if I don't have a plan, I will just tend to leave the kids messing around and spend far too much time online browsing Facebook etc.. Anyway the first one I chose was the Pond theme as we have a book called In the Pond which fits in well with this! Also, on a site called Sparklebox.co.uk I found some wonderful 'life cycle of a frog' cut and paste activities! Again these fitted perfectly with the book! and finally here is a video of Melissa singing a song she learnt at ballet which cheered us all up in this gawd awful weather!!!