St Patrick's day and Spring Equinox

Our story on Friday from a Year Full of Stories, was The Pot of Gold an Irish story just perfect for a talk about St Patrick and leprechauns. Little ones loved the idea of the leprechauns and their pots of gold, we talked about the story of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and read The Pot of Gold where the leprechaun had hid his pot of gold in the cabbage field and how he tricked the human and didn't loose his gold. They then spent some time drawing rainbows and pots of gold.

  This is the leprechaun with his field of cabbages.

We've also been reading Roxaboxen a favourite for sparking the imagination, L remembered how last year we drew roads on the patio with chalk and asked if we could do that again but as it was raining heavily, not an activity for that day. I suggested she could draw a map on paper, she asked if she could use one of the large sheets of cardboard I had been saving for a rainy day. M decided to join in and the girls spent ages creating a town, with shops, caves and a dragon, it's been used all week with the lego and dolls house people.

On a dryer day we made it up the allotment to do some weeding, I have bought a stirrup hoe or sometimes called a wiggle hoe and wanted to try it out, it's fantastic and now wish I had come across these a few years ago, hopefully it will make the weeding seed of the allotment a lot easier and quicker, fingers crossed. It's great to see the fruit trees all coming to life, seeing the baby leaves uncurl is always an amazing site, the children and I spents ages looking and talking about the different stages the leaves were at.  As this week is the spring equinox, thought it was a good time to talk about what this meant, came across this you tube video background music is rather loud but it covered a lot of information in a good way. This astronomical event of the equinoxes, the how and why the days change length etc. We've also learnt that some native American tribes call the march full moon, the worm moon, the time when the soil softens enough for the worms casts to appear and plants start to push their way up through the soil.

We have been looking at colour theory, the plan is to create some art using just warm or cool colours but to start with I created a colour wheel, so the girls have something to refer back to, knew M would be interested in it but was surprised how interested L was.

I have finished L's summer pyjamas, the pattern is this Burda one, in the last of the lovely pink floral fabric, now have sorted out some white swiss dot voile to make her top in and

 finished the button borders on my cardi, that was over 300 stitches to pick up, now have some very cute self patterning wool to start making a first birthday gift and a unicorn to embroider for another little girl's birthday.