Garden Centre

Today we dropped Hannah off with her friend to go shopping and to the cinema, and we went to the garden centre to get some ideas for the garden. We are a bit late, what with busy Easter and then the 'not-holiday' so we were really pleased when we found vegetable seedlings that we could just plant out.

We cho0se peas, beans, cauliflowers, broccoli, parsnips, carrots, sweetcorn, beetroot and potatoes for the garden, and lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and peppers for the greenhouse.

Late night pancakes

Not having to get up for school tomorrow means that sleepovers can happen any night of the week, whenever they make sense. Mollie spent the day with Afra today, and is planning to go seed shopping with her tomorrow, so bringing her home for the night was no problem at all.

They decided they would like pancakes for supper, so they mixed up some batter and got out the frying pan. Chocolate spread seemed to be the topping of choice tonight :)

Felting

Today we went to friends to do wet felting. Using wool and warm soapy water the girls made balls, adding colours once they had formed the central core from natural wool.

Once they are dried they can be decorated, either with needlefelting or by sewing on decorations

Mountain Biking

We were really lucky to get a space for Mollie on the mountain biking class in Loch Gelly. The centre supplied the bikes and helmets and then took the group round the forest, showing them how to handle the bikes ove the rough terrain. It was a great success all round, and another session is planned


After biking, they took advantage of the lovely weather and played on the lochside beach for a while.

Monthly Gathering

Being home meant that we could go to this months gathering at Dalkeith Country Park. It was a good chance for the girls to meet up with lots of their friends. They saw some people they hadn't seen for a while, and plans were made to meet up for other activities in the next couple of weeks.

They enjoyed the adventure playground and also spent some time walking round the estate looking to see what plants were growing.

Holiday and Volcano

We are suposed to be going on holiday - flying to Dubai and then cruising, via Egypt, to Barcelona.

But as we were preparing and packing the news was breaking at all flights had been grounded by the ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano, ours included.

So, our trip has been cancelled and we are at home. It will take us a few days to get back into the swing of things, everything had been cancelled so now we have to restart things and try book onto activities we thouight we would miss.

Luckily we had booked a package and so the company have transfered us to another cruise, leaving on 19 May, going to Russia and Scandinavia

Spring Biology

As we have so many daffodils in the garden wwe decided to use some more of them in our education. When Grandma was here over Easter she told us about an experiment she had done as a child with doffodils and ink. While she was with us we looked everywhere for daffodils but none we out, so we couldn't re create it with her.

But now we have flowers, so we stood a daffodil in a glass containing ink and water. After only a few hours the colour from the ink began to appear along the petals. This illustrated brilliantly how flowers and other plants use water.

The photo shows a 'before' flower on the left, and the 'after' flower on the right