St George and the Dragon

Ended up with a quieter end to last week and weekend than originally planned as L came down with a mild temperature, sore throat and cough, so she spent a lot of time needing cuddles or sleeping. So I have spent a lot of time sitting on the sofa with her, reading stories, watching films and crafting while she sleeps, which means I have knitted her a pair of the workhorse mitts in some teal green wool I had left over and also managed some cross stitch. She is hopefully on the mend now, still a bit croaky and was rather tired by bedtime tonight. Any way yesterday we read Saint George and the Dragon and today we read two dragon stories from A Year Full of Stories, one from Britain and the other from Poland. The end of the Usborne book has a nice map and talks about were St George is patron saint of and some other nice info that we read through.

I had planned some bread making in dragon shapes and maybe painting or chalk pastels but the children decided to draw some pictures of the dragon, love the different facial expressions.

We've been doing lots of counting and L and one minded child seems to have really learnt all their numbers to 10, so today thought I would see what they could remember, so out came the crochet bowls, button pot and some number cards. They love sorting buttons into the bowls, so this is a fun activity for them and I am pleased to say they can recognise their numbers one to six and add the right number of buttons to the bowl. This is the  pattern for the rainbow nesting bowls

I then added some mirrors and coloured lollipop sticks, this is great way to introduce the idea of symmetry, reflection, half etc in a fun way, love the oh wow when I demonstrated how you could turn half a lollipop man into a whole man. They then had fun creating their own patterns.

In the garden the sunflower seeds we planted the other week are just peeking up above the soil, the peas are doing the same at the allotment and some of my Californian poppies that seeded themselves last year are now flowering. The children love these and have been watching how the buds develop, open and now seeing the seed cases form, at some point we will have a dried seeds that they can then plant.

L's fingerless mittens, she is really pleased with them, the colour looks really blue in the photos but it is a teal green in real life! Hoping we won't have much need to wear them until the Autumn! Joining Frontier Dreams for Crafting On

I came across an eggless carrot cake last week and L and I had to give it a go, it is really delicious and moist. It's great to find another dairy and egg free cake to add to my list, the recipe can be found on Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth blog  Carrot Crazy cake we didn't ice our cake as I find it a bit too rich. My photo of a little slice doesn't do it justice but had to show that it isn't a dense cake at all, which I sometimes find when trying eggless baking as you don't always get that light fluffiness that you get with eggs.