We had a fantastic walk this morning.  It was one of the Histree Trail series.  I picked up all of the walk leaflets from the libary about 3 years ago but we hadn’t managed to do any of the walks.  Sam had organised a walk so we were motivated to go and do the walk. [Continue]

Jonathan and I had plans for today.  Yesterday Jonathan had made some shortbread and crispie cakes at the HE meet – but they weren’t dairy free (I hadn’t been on top of things enough to remember to take alternative ingredients) so he couldn’t eat them.  He was happy to give them away to the rest of us [Continue]

We don’t really celebrate Valentines day much as a couple or as a family.  martin and I usually exchange cards – this year I made a card based on this circle activity.  I changed it to heart shapes and mounted them on pink and red cards. I didn’t manage to get up in time to give [Continue]

Learning Zone games night tonight – about 6 families with a variety of ages of children and adults playing all sorts of games. We played Rummikub which we haven’t played for ages – it has lots of good memories for me.  Martin’s gran taught us how to play it before we were married and we bought the [Continue]

We had a lovely time today at a HE friend’s house.  After a bit of trouble finding it the children played in a barn.  It reminded me of how the barn at Coleman’s farm used to be before it got all jazzed up and nowhere near as nice!  Full of things to swing on, bounce [Continue]

Last year we had our fist NBTSP to celebrate the positives about home education in the light of all the negative stuff going about to do with the Badman review.  We enjoyed it so much last year that, along with other home education groups up and down the country, we decided at have another one [Continue]

We’ve just returned from out 5th Camping trip this year!  This is possibly a little excessive and Ruth will be doing a further 2 camps with expedition club.  I don’t even like camping!  We started with church camp, then Corfe, then Parkhurst then Greenbelt and finally Appuldurcombe. The campsite at Appuldurcombe has a number [Continue]

As part of our no plans week the children decided they wanted to do some more cooking.  They decided to make a 3 course meal doing a course each. They started off in the morning – Rebekah made bread and Ruth started off the Banoffee pie. We thought we’d head out to the beach in [Continue]

So today was the first day with nothing in the diary.  We had seen in the Fizz booklet that there was a reasonably priced 1640s re-enactment at Northcourt Manor in Shorwell titled Ring of Steel and decided that we would give it a go today.  This was influenced partly by my tight side – they give free readmission for the rest [Continue]

Now I understand to readers not on The Island (and visiting friends were very taken by the fact that everyone here including us calls it “the island”) that Parkhurst means, if anything at all, the prison.  But if you live here and say you’re going to Parkhurst you probably mean that you are going to the forest.  Now some [Continue]