Our first history lesson

Well, I made some notes of the stuff that has been going on the past couple of days, but I have lost them in the piles of tat around here. But we've been doing some good stuff!

Earlier this week, I bought two children's cassette tapes (for 29p each!) from a charity shop. The first one was songs and stories, including "London's Burning" which Tamsin had never heard before. "Why was London burning?" she asked, so I told her that a long long time ago there was a very big fire in London. She asked more and more questions about it, so when at home I Googled it and found some interesting information which we looked at together, including an animated map of how the fire spread. I then looked in one of my earlier charity shop purchases, this book, and found a story about the fire. It has very advanced language for a 4-year old, but she seemed to enjoy it and has requested it and listened to it again this morning. Since then, she has asked several times "Why was London burning?" so we have gone over the reasons time and time again - houses made of wood and thatch, built very close together, windy weather, started in a bakery, no fire brigade, etc, etc!

We have also read a couple of other stories from the history book - about the first Eddystone lighthouse and Stephenson's 'Rocket'. I don't expect that she'll retain a great deal of it, but it's a start on history anyway.

This morning, following a second reading of the 'Fire' story, I showed her a practical experiment with fire. I lit a candle, and explained how it needs air to burn, and then put a little glass ramekin over it and we watched the flame go out when it had burned up all the air (OK, so I know it's oxygen, but thought that 'air' was a simpler explanation at this stage!). We did that a couple of times, and then I explained that's how you put fires out - by excluding the air with water or foam or whatever.

She's also been asking questions about why plants die (plenty of evidence of that round our place!) So we've talked about the things they need - air, soil, water and light. Each time she sees a dead plant or flower now she asks why that one died. Actually, those questions started being triggered when we went to Benjamin's grave to check on the little trough of alpines that we planted up there, and they have died :-( I haven't been watering them, thinking that they were well established enough by now to be able to cope with a little dry spell, but apparently not! So we'll be off to the garden centre to replenish those shortly.

She's also been working on several of her Learning Land CDs and she's now pretty proficient at 'left' and 'right' (tells me which way to turn while we're driving), and I've heard her working on simple fractions, adding and subtracting and this morning has been introduced for the first time to odd and even numbers. Actually - just checked on Ebay and some of these are available but I have learned that there are more issues than I have (I have up to number 28) so that could have just cost me more money to try and complete the set. Tamsin does enjoy them and they are good.

Lulu the speckledy chicken has given us a surprise! She disappeared earlier in the week, and I thought I had lost her but later in the day she unaccountably reappeared. She did that a few more times during the week, and once I saw her coming out from behind some old fence panels that are propped up in their run, but I didn't have time to investigate. Then on Thursday morning I let them out in the morning and she was missing, and having been out all night I thought for sure she would be a goner. However, I thought it was time I investigated behind the fence panels, although I had tried peering behind them a few times when she was missing. On moving them one by one, I eventually found her - sitting on 17 eggs!!!!! I knew we had only 2 hens laying but had thought it was the black hen, Flora, who wasn't laying. Now it turns out they have all been laying, but one in secret! Lulu was most outraged at being chucked off her eggs but she fails to realise there is no fella around to give her any babies!!!

Apart from that, playschool has now finished for the summer so I will have childcare struggles for work, especially in the coming week when Kate is away. Never mind - we're flexible enough that we can just shut the office if it's impossible to go in.

I took some lovely photos of the girls earlier this week - will try and get them uploaded asap, but must go and get showered and dressed now!