Another 2 weeks flipped by...

OK, in the 2 weeks since I last blogged, this is what F and/or I and/or J have done:
built various tents: with clothes rail, small table, small chair, sheet and blanket. This involved conversations about space/geometry, safety/flammability (proximity of fire to wayward textile parts of tent) and F designed the interiors each time, bringing various items to place them exactly where she wanted them, designating areas as sleeping or eating areas etc.
looked up at F's request, what makes holes in the large sea-smoothed pieces of chalk you find on the beach: the piddock, a little molluscy thing with a special boring body part (LOL, I know, most of us have a few boring body parts, my arse is tedious, for a start). Thanks to Google: Images, we were able to find pictures of similar pieces of chalk and of the piddock itself
Study Dogged and Leap Padded steadily in the direction of pre-reading, as you do: Leap Pad is currently flavour du jour here, the green GO circle sound rings out merrily at every opportunity. She's playing with letters and sounds and enjoying it, so that's great. She has also been 'reading' to me and to Dozy Mog quite a bit, which is just deliciously cute and I make no apology for my rapt adoration on these occasions. I find I can be extremely patient in this area, which is nice for me! I have also printed out a few fairy tale 'print and colour' booklets from CBeebies website for her too, reading them a few times, colouring, re-reading...
Goggleboxed: Cinderella ad nauseum, Nick Jr (loving the Backyardigans), CBeebies, but also a bit of Class TV now and then - we watched a Magic Grandad introducing his grandchildren to Samuel Pepys, and saw the Apple tree through the year, both of which we very much enjoyed and talked about a bit afterwards, will definitely try to catch Watch again, it's good.
Socialized: Not as much as recently, due to illness including my bladder-challenging cough *waves in sisterly pelvically inadequate fashion at Joanna*, which is now finally disappearing, slowly. But we have managed to catch up with MonsterTeeny - thoroughly excellent visit from them yesterday, and not an eye full of chilli seeds. Ms MonsterTeeny generously humoured me by allowing me to play 'Teach' with her lovely son, so I got out my microscope pics from internet and he was very good at working out which microscope pic went with which ordinary pic (all pics lovingly laminated and now in a folder for future reference, and activity highly recommended for 5/6 yrs and up). F was distinctly not bothered (activity highly unadvised for 4 yrs and down). Think the bit they most enjoyed was all playing train going round a route round the house, with Monster as the engine on the spacehopper, and F and Teeny as his Annie and Clarabel, with track blockages and various other encounters. All seemed to have quite a laugh with that. F and Teeny also played throwing the (vegan fake) feather duster down the stairs and Mrs MT and I decided to let them as they were having FUN! V. important.
Also socialized with each of the Grandmas at various points, which was nice for all concerned (well, hopefully nice for the grandmas).
Made an Ultimate Paper Plane: J found a good set of instructions on the net and the plane thus produced was definitely a superior beast of the sky. Some good conversations had there too, in a general slightly sciencey manner.
And finally, activity borrowed from 'Happily Home Edding' at no.42 Early Years HE blogring and very enjoyable:
Made an Ice Lantern: Beautiful, enjoyable, involved conversations in sciencey area and hands-on activity, aesthetics, light, temperatures, etc. How we did it - put a small plastic bowl inside a larger one, weighted it to keep it from floating and filled the ring-shaped gap between them with water. Added pretty things into the water (in our case, this time, beads, but Happily Home Edding used nature items, and am already thinking of lots of other ideas. Stuck it into freezer for most of the day or overnight would do. Then you have a ring of ice with beautiful things in and you can put it on a tray with a night light in the middle and it looks like some exquisite piece of glass art. And if you don't have any storage for craft items, get this: it melts!!!! Which means it's not ideal for any littlies who would be wanting to keep it forever, but you can take pics. Definitely will be doing this again. I boiled the water for about 10 mins to get it really clear, which may have helped.
On a less HE note: I've been ill and have been working very hard and have had no money, so it's not been a great month in some ways, but hey, look, even in a crap month, we've done loads, when I look back.

Highlights: ice lantern; leap pad; being read to by my lovely daughter.
Lowlights: coughing and, er, clenching; no money; sleeping badly with cough or not enough with work.
Thoughts on Xmas and decs and stuff: BRING IT ON, YEAH BABY!