A fabulous day.

Today Oscar and I went to The Victorian Festival of Christmas at the Dockyard. The Dockyard had been turned into a Victorian winter wonderland with people dressed in period costumes and absolutely loads to do and see. 

Here are some photos of our fabulous day.

As we walked in the gate we were greeted by this couple singing Christmas Carols.

Oscar got to meet a traditional Victorian Father Christmas.

We saw a local youth theatre group perform a scene from Peter Pan.

Oscar thought the Queen of hearts playing croquet was hilarious as was the white rabbit.

And he loved Doctor Dean's Flea circus with Hercufleas, Fleavel Knievel and Miss Flea Flea.

He was very pleased to discover a chicken amongst all the horses on the merry go round.

The Victorian style magician was brilliant.

Oscar really likes Mary Poppins so this performance of songs from the musical was very popular.

Oscar spent ages trying to count all the instruments being played by this one man band.

We both enjoyed this performance of Scrooge.

Oscar didn't really rate Victorian bicycles as a mode of transport.

Oscar was surprisingly happy to sit and watch the Pearly King and Queen.

In the afternoon we stopped for a hot chocolate and snowman biscuit and when we went back outside it was dark and everything looked even more magical.

You can't beat a Salvation Army brass band playing carols to get you in the festive spirit.

Oscar thought this was a statue so got a real surprise when he jumped forward at us. 

After that I had no chance of getting a photo of him with Oscar in it too as Oscar seemed to think it wise to keep at least a metre between him and the statue/man at all times.

Fagin can't be so bad as he gave Oscar a lolly pop.

The petting farm was lovely, as well as this sheep there was a Shetland pony some ducks, chickens, rabbits and a goat.

The Warrior looked stunning lit up, this photo really doesn't do it justice.

When we had our lunch we shared a table with some friendly old ladies visiting on a coach trip.

They all thought Oscar was lovely and really well behaved and when we left they each gave him a pound. Oscar used the money to buy this lovely super soft super floppy bunny that he has named Frank and I could resist the cute raccoon hat.

We both had a really lovely day and Oscar has already asked if we can go again next year.

Computer Games.

Oscar has spent pretty much the whole day today playing computer games.

He has learnt allot and his spelling is definitely getting allot better.

By the time we left for Taekwondo his was very pleased that he has completed all of the year 2 games for Science and Literacy on Education City as well as about half of the French, German, Spanish and Maths.

A catch up.

We have been really busy recently so here are a few pictures of the things we have been doing.

Last week at the home ed group the children made papier mache bugs.

 Then there was lots of fun to be had out in the playground.

Oscar got some new wellies and was pleased to have a chance to road test them on the way to his drumming lesson (and his Taekwondo lesson and St. Johns Ambulance).

On Friday we went to pick up Oscars friend Tyler from school and he came back with us for a couple of hours play.

We have done some more of the Christmas Symbols project. This week Oscar learnt about why we give and receive gifts and the history of Christmas cards and Christmas trees.

We found this book in a charity shop.

One of the activities in the book was this advent calendar we could put together. Oscar was really surprised last week to learn that advent calendars haven't always contained chocolate! This was a great chance for him to see a slightly different advent calendar to the type he is used to and a chance for me to prove that I wasn't making such things up.

The book also contained these two pictures printed on translucent paper. Oscar made a real effort colouring them in and is looking forward to putting them on his bedroom window when we put our decorations up.

This week at our home ed group a lovely lady from the council came and spoke to the children about road safety, all the children seemed to have a great time.

Today Oscar and I did some more of this maths workbook which included some questions about angles something he has not learnt about before but he really enjoyed learning something new and seemed to get a good grasp of it all very quickly.

These are some of the books we have been reading. 

 We are reading Treasure Island because the children will be discussing it at the next book group and we will be going to see it at the theatre next month and anything about Vikings is popular at the moment due to Oscar reading the How to Train your Dragon series.

Oscar has also been to his usual Taekwondo lessons, along with drumming, Latin, St. Johns, swimming (he got a certificate and badge this week so is very proud), dancing at the home ed group (one of his favourite things) and there was lots of lego construction this afternoon when my mother in laws new foster son came to visit.  

OK that will have to do for now and I shall try to get back in the swing of blogging more regularly.

Christmas Project

Today Oscar and I started a project about Christmas symbols.

Oscar learnt about the history of advent wreaths and advent calendars.

I had planned for us to make our own advent calendar but then I realised that all the Christmas craft stuff went up the loft with the decorations back in January and I had no chance of convincing Roger to go and get them for us as he had a lot on today.

Instead we got out our new Christmas cookbook (another charity shop find) and made some cheese stars to have with our lunch.

After lunch Oscar spent some time on Education City, he hasn't logged in for a while but he really enjoyed it today.

We also read some more stories from this lovely book. 

Oscar particularly likes stories by the Brothers Grimm.

Oscar has recently developed a love of K'Nex so after Taekwondo and dinner Oscar and Roger made this. They were both rather proud of themselves.