The Gruffalo's Child

Kit is Gruffalo-mad and we went to see The Gruffalo at the beginning of the year, we were so impressed that when I saw that The Gruffalo's Child was on in Bromley I had to get tickets, so that was my birthday treat. Kit really loved it, and so did we. Tall Tales really know how to put on a great show for kids and their parents, we can't recommend it enough. Bromley was one of the early venues so we recommend that if they are showing near you to go along the schedule can be found here.

We prepared for going to see them by dressing in every item of Gruffalo attire Kit could find, and making masks from The Gruffalo website.

Disclosure: We just really love the Gruffalo, we don't need any incentive to promote it.

Booth Museum of Natural History

 
A much more managable in one visit museum than our usual haunt of the Natural History Museum in London, we checked out the Booth Museum in Hove when we were visiting my parents recently. I remember going as a child, but couldn't remember much about it - I don't think I was taken with taxidermy enough to want to go when I was older. I was keen to take Kit though because he isn't quite at a stage where he doesn't scare wildlife off by shouting at it, or running up to it, so really stuffed wildlife is the only way he can see things for more than a few seconds (unless the live animals are tame and used to boisterous pre-schoolers). We chose the wrong time to go, because we went swimming and had lunch before and Kit was hyper trying to keep himself awake. He just ran most of the time, barely looking at the animals but was impressed by what he did look at. I am definitely going to take him back because he is really into birds at the moment and they had lots of birds which he might be able to see better than the ones he is scaring off in the wild.

Happy Mother's Day from Gingerbread

 I hope all the mums out there are having a fantastic mother's day. I was in receipt of a beautiful card that Kit made at pre-school and we're spending the day with my mum. It's hard to celebrate being a single mum when your little ones are small, but I think all mums are people to be celebrated. Gingerbread have released a video celebrating the skills of single parents as part of their 'Make it Work' campaign. Please take a minute to watch why single parents are an asset to any workforce.

In search of a twisted tree.

Despite my getting very lost on the way (I'm no good at driving and navigating at the same time) we spent most of the time we were at Ightham Mote map-reading. Kit has because very keen on the children's maps you can get at most of the National Trust properties. They are really brilliant and guide you via landmarks (like the wooden whale I mentioned yesterday). As we walk around Kit keeps asking to find where we are on the map, and it means that he can plan where he wants to go. I've found it great because it slows him down. Kit is generally a flight risk, he runs and runs and runs and runs, and never looks back to check that I'm anywhere in sight, it keeps me fit but it's nice to have something to focus him so that he doesn't just run all the time with me in chase. Generally though, it's a great start to map-reading. I want to do some geo-caching with him soon so this is a great start for preparing him for that.

We searched for the 'twisted tree', which happened to be at the furthest end of the grounds so we got a chance to find all the other landmarks upon the way.

Where are you deer?

We spent a day at Knole Park. It's a bit hard to miss the deer there (they are normally in the car park!) but we still used it as an opportunity to track them. We tried to follow their hoof-prints but were firstly distracted by some horses prints, which led us to a wooden whale (which if you look really closely at Kit's face he ran scared from). When we did get back on the right track (see what I did there, sorry) we had a mass of choices of directions to go. Thankfully all roads led to deer so we did find some.

I have printed out some animal track montessori nomenclature cards but I doubt we'll encounter any mountain lions here, so I'm planning on trying to make my own with the local wildlife, but we did look at the bird, deer and bear ones (because I thought that might help later on our many bear hunts). Next time we do this I'm going to take the BBC animal tracks field guide with us (I'm only saying that one because it's free and I don't know of anymore, if you do let me know). That way we can see if we can find any other tracks, and identify poo, which (lets face it) is top of every small boys interest list!

Sunshine

I find myself apologising again that I haven't posted but we've been enjoying the sunshine too much and I've been being lazy in the evenings. We are using every opportunity possible to get outside at the moment, whenever we are off work/pre-school and the weather is slightly sunny or at least dry. I have nearly finished a Tree-Fu Tom costume for Kit, and my lovely mum has made him some fingerless gloves to finish it off. Hopefully I'll post it complete next week. I've also been setting up some Montessori activities in the flat for Kit to do, he goes to a Montessori pre-school and loves it so I wanted to bring a bit of pre-school into the home so he can follow on what he enjoys when we aren't out and about. I'm also planning on getting him to help out more with meals so I don't feel so rushed cooking (he never wants my attention more than when I am in the kitchen). As I said before I want to put more effort into meals, I'm going to start meal-planning and have been searching out wholefood recipes so we can cook all the things we need from scratch, I'll share this with you once we are up to scratch. For the rest of this week though, I'm just going to share with you the fun that we have had outside, and some of the things that we have got up to.