Origami, Changes, Book Club

Weekend 2nd and 3rd Feb
I was working, and I can't remember much else! How crap! I know I really did have my head in the laptop a lot of the time though.

Monday 4th
MMs - MMs has gone monthly, as we're not getting enough families to cover the rent (rent went up last year), so the hope is to get 12 or so families in once a month instead of 7 or less once a week.  It was a good session, the children made pizza and I took in some origami instructions and paper for older ones, to make star boxes, hearts and angel fish, which suddenly got noticed at the end after they had spent much of the session doing races out the back. Freya is sad about MMs changing, it's been part of her life for such a long time.
Back in Lewes I delivered F to dance/movement and I went to visit mum. It was a good visit, we had a go at the origami as I still had some in my bag! I did a fold with a piece of paper, then mum did it copying, with me helping for the harder ones. Got in a pickle though as I didn't have the instructions, but it was fun, and we giggled quite a bit as usual, with some involvement of other residents and staff - just something to look at and talk about (and giggle about!) is good there. I also had my knitting with me and that was subject to much discussion too! Mum was happy and well. Another resident's relative told me about the relatives' meeting next evening and encouraged me to come, as changes are afoot.
Tuesday 5th
We had one of those starts where getting ready seems hard going and shouldn't take as long as it does, but does, then headed briskly up the hill for Freya to go to LAMDA drama. I went home, made her a packed lunch and then went back up the hill less briskly to pick her up, with L and M. I took them to Baltica (Polish cafe) and they had nice things and we talked about writing and books and all sorts.
Then we carried on down into town and I delivered them to Little Green Pig creative writing at The Nutty Wizard.
I went home again and did some things that needed doing and hadn't got done when I had head in laptop.
I picked Freya up - she felt she hadn't had such a good session as her writing hadn't worked out quite how she would want it to, I think.
In the evening I went to the relatives' meeting at the care home and found out changes were very much afoot, I'm going to hope for the best, what else can one do really? Change of manager, under odd circumstances, which means at least 2 very valued hands-on staff are leaving too. It was at least good to be able to address questions to senior management, some of whom seemed committed, others less so. Interesting and I'm glad I was able to go. I think staff morale will suffer though, just hope that will be temporary. I know most of them are on stupidly low wages, it pisses me off, they work so hard and are really lovely with the residents and visitors.

Wednesday 6th
Freya went off to Forest School with L's very kind grandpa and L and M. L came back for a short play afterwards and they made a film.

Thursday 7th
Freya went off to Art - clay - with L and L's very kind grandpa again! They painted their models this week.
Afterwards I had my head back in my laptop again, it's been that kind of start to February. Needs must really. I ended up having 3 deadlines converging on Friday 8th, plus last-minute prep for the Book Club!

Friday 8th
I printed up various items as preparation for Book Club (part of Friday Club, with a pretty regular group of about 10 girls aged 9-13) and we got a taxi in to save time. Our theme this time was Families and they had read one or more of "The Family At One End Street" by Eve Garnett, "Six Cousins at Mistletoe Farm" by Enid Blyton and "Cookie" by Jacqueline Wilson. We started the session with True or False where I read out statements related to the books and they went to one side of the room or the other depending whether they thought they were true or false. Needed a bit of movement as The Nutty Wizard was still warming up and it was a chilly day!
We then did picking book-related discussion questions out of a cup (e.g. How is the character Rhona important in "Cookie"? and

What would be the differences if "The Family from One End Street" was written today about a modern large family similar to the Ruggles?)

and had lengthy discussion - it's a lovely group, with lots of interest and enthusiasm. When I looked at the other printouts I had for detailed discussion I realized we'd already covered them at length, so scrapped that idea! Then they divided into two groups of 5, each taking turns to act out an adverb or adverbial phrase with actions chosen by the other group who had to guess the word or phrase.
After that we finished up on the Families theme books, looking at a map of Otwell-on-Ouse (Eve Garnett's book is set in this fictional town, based on Lewes!) and a photo of Lewes High Street from the 1930s when the book was written. We played a game of putting 6 extracts from "Cookie" in order, in which Beauty describes her appearance and how she feels about it, in order, so we could see how she changed and became more confident and found a 'her' that she felt OK with.
Then they had to remember the adverbs and phrases they'd had in the acting game as the first letter of each one cunningly spelt out our next theme (it was Friendship).
Finally we did our usual game to find out the next set of books - I put various items of information (picture of cover, author name and book title, date of publication, a couple of reviews or blurbs) all cut up separately and folded up and they take turns to close their eyes and pick one out, gradually putting all the information together as a group and finding out what the next books are (Violet Raines,
A Little Princess and Fortune Cookie)
We finished with a few rounds of Stop The Bus. Phew! 
Apologies for detailed description of Book Club, but I want to remember what we did. Am very much enjoying running it and usually come out buzzing!
We then walked up to Yoga, which looks like it will have to finish at Easter due to not enough people (more change) and I had a good chat with M and later K while I did a bit of knitting.
Home for curry and a reasonable night's sleep.

Saturday 9th
Head in laptop again a bit, but took Freya to rollerdisco - thought it would be the usual 3 families but we had more company, which was lovely. Freya fell over twice - now she is going a bit faster and able to join in playing 'it' with her friends and it was very busy and more risk of people suddenly appearing in front of you! The yellow-top skating staff person who assisted when she fell said they had seen how well she had improved and they were impressed with her, which was really lovely I thought.
Back for Britain's Brightest Final, with pie and chips! And Paranorman, which I rather liked - quirky. And J and I managed to watch Utopia before I got too tired and had to collapse in bed.
Have got a bit more work then can get head out of laptop hopefully.