Elodie named her tractor 'Betsy'.

Grooming Minstrel the Pony.

...other side.

'Bunny Hop'. All the rabbits are let out and allowed to run around on the straw bales. Dom was delighted.

Elodie waited quietly and eventually had 3 rabbits sniffing at her boots.

Lucia was fascinated by the long-haired rabbit being groomed. She took some rabbit fur home with her which the lady gave her from the comb.

Yesterday Lucia worked really hard on her words. She surprises me everyday with new vocab she can spell. She writes backwards and forwards without seeming to realise it (she's a left-hander :).

Yesterday we made a cake for our new neighbours, discussing which ingredients come from farms.

This afternoon we had excellent news from Lucia's appointment at the hospital. She is doing really well.

Elodie is learning the sound 'ar'. Together we worked out how to spell barn, farm, car, park, darn and arm. She also completed a dot to dot in tens (10, 20, 30 etc) which she has not done before.

Both girls completed their pig workbooks and Lucia read 'duck', 'dog' and 'cat' from flashcards. I am noticing a difference between the two eldest with their spelling. Elodie spells out the words and then condenses the letters into a word and Lucia obviously does the process very quickly in her head. She said 'duck' almost immediately.

This morning we made butter!

We put some whipping cream in a pot with a pinch of salt, a tiny bit of yellow food colouring and a clean marble and shake shake shake shake shake shake. The girls took it in turns to shake the pot which eventually ended up as a crazy dance around the house. Suddenly we couldn't hear the marble inside the pot anymore. We took off the lid and hey presto!... butter!

We made butter!

Lucia enjoying her butter on some crackers.

Ally and Lucia doing some stamping with a Farm Stamping set.

Elodie playing with the farm which Grandad made for her.

These cards are great. I used them today for maths with the girls. Elodie created her own sums with them and Lucia had fun counting and adding up.

Elodie and Lucia had a fine time this evening blowing bubbles in the sink :)

Laughing their heads off.

This afternoon we popped some pop corn and talked about how corn grows in farmers' fields.

Today we discussed what animals on a dairy farm give us. The girls continued their stick on pictures... cows give milk...

...sheep give wool...

...and chickens give eggs (the body is an egg).

The girls made a 'Little Bo Peep' mobile.

The two eldest have both started a pig book, with word searches, sums, vocabulary etc. Lucia did surprisingly well with the rhyming words and worked out how to spell 'pig, 'big' and 'dig' all on her own. I think she will soon be ready for her first book :)

Elodie's farm vocabulary that she is learning.

My cousin Ally, staying with us for a while from Australia, (hooray - a babysitter!).

Elodie (and later on, Lucia) had a great time creating sentences with word sequencing cards (farm theme). Elodie made the following 3 sentences:

"The horse tickled the red chicken"

"The tractor ate the blue pig".

"The farmer hugged the yellow horse".

The two eldest each pieced together a scarecrow...

...and a pig.

and Dominique did some beautiful colouring :)

The girls called various friends and relatives for the beginning of a 'Favourite Farm Animal Survey'.

Today the girls did lots of jigsaws...

...

... and read lots of books...

Today was beautiful. We went to our local Forest Centre for a long walk with the dog. Lucia commented on the silence and we all had a good look at the cloudless sky.

Lucia wading in puddles.

Dom and Lucia. Dom grinned the whole time :)

Italy window display

Our Italian friend, Maria Rita, taught the girls an Italian song and dance:

"Batti le ali, muovi le antenne, dammi le tue zampine!...

... e vola di qua, e vola di là...la canzone della felicità....bo bom bo bom bo!!!!

Thanks to our Italian friend, Maria Rita, the girls have learned to count to 1 - 10 in Italian:
Uno
Due
Tre
Quattro
Cinque
Sei
Sette
Otto
Nove
Dieci

After lunch today Elodie worked on her maths book and Lucia had fun with an African Safari sticker book.

This morning we looked at images of the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica and Pope Benedict which the children cut out for their Italian workbooks.

Following on from this we discussed a stained glass window of the Holy Spirit which is above St. Peter's Chair in the Vatican.

And then we made some stained glass windows...

Dom painting an elephant stained glass window.

Lucia working hard.

Drying.

Hanging in the window.

This afternoon, after gymnastics, we bought 2 rainbow trout for dinner. The girls, as ever, wanted to help me cook...