A Day of Small Celebrations

What an exciting start to the morning!

First of all, Eldest's tooth fell out.  This may not seem much of a celebration to you, but it had been wobbling away, hanging in there for AGES!  So long in fact that the second tooth had fully grown into place behind it!  We kept having a poke, loosening it a bit at a time, and this morning it finally gave up.  Of course, Eldest is also very pleased about the £1 that the tooth-fairy-who-he-doesn't-believe-in will be bringing tonight! 

Anyway, even more exciting than that, our 'Painted Lady' butterflies emerged this morning (well, four of them did).  Three of them were already emerged when we came downstairs, and we kept popping into the kitchen to see if we could spot the next one coming out, but it did it when we weren't looking (and we were looking at least about every twenty minutes).  We were amazed by how quickly they pop out - and a bit frustrated to have missed the experience!  Ah well, if we miss the last one we'll probably get some more - it's been a fascinating experiment, and you can buy replacement caterpillars online direct from Insect Lore.  The only problem we've had was today after the butterflies had emerged, when we had to figure out a way to get some chopped up fruit into their habitat without them escaping when we unzipped the lid!  It was fun :)

 

Next we had a delivery in the post that I'd forgotten I'd sent off for - our free How Nature Works booklets from the Open University, linked to the recent BBC series, "Secrets of our Living Planet".  OK so it's a little thing to celebrate, but Eldest and I loved the TV series, and nice glossy nature booklets that we didn't have to pay for - well, they're more exciting to get through the post than bills!

Following that I received a link to a 2-for-1 offer for entry into Knebworth House (the park and gardens anyway) this weekend.  Exciting because I was after inspiration for somewhere to go, and we've been to Knebworth House before and loved it - the boys all really enjoy the dinsoaur trail, maze, train, adventure fort, giant slides etc - and now we can get in for a reduced price!  I'm holding back the excitement on this one for now though - the weather being the way it has, there's really no guarantee we'll be able to go... a Mummy can hope though...?

Finally we were inspired by a friend to do some baking.  Freshly-baked cakes are always cause for celebration in this house.  Incidentally, I love how much Maths goes into baking: Eldest measured out 70g of flour and then the electronic scales reset themselves (!) so he had to work out how much he now needed in order to have 115g in total.  Then he had a 200g bar of chocolate and needed 50g so (as the scales were failing) he needed to work out what fraction of the bar to use - and how many squares that equated to (out of 32 total squares)... great mental maths moment! Anyway, having looked through my recipe books, Eldest had decided to make Choc/orange cupcakes and Middle wanted to make Vanilla cupcakes... and as no mother likes having to referee (that's my excuse), they made a batch each!  Not convinced on the celebration front?  Let me tantalise you with some photos, so you can see why we were excited to get them into our tummies...

PS The boys may not have been particularly excited by their turns on Reading Eggs, watching Backyard Science, reading their books and playing card games etc - but I was!  Well, maybe not excited exactly, but I do love seeing how their learning is progressing naturally - especially since we're still deschooling so we are completely free from any obligation to 'work' at learning.  I do hope I can remain this chilled - we're learning LOADS as a by-product of all the fun we're having :)