Day on the Farm

We had a slight home emergency two weeks ago which required L and I to leave J in a floorless home and move down to my parents for the foreseeable future.

The massive upside to this was that we got to spend Easter Weekend in Suffolk with my family. Lovely. We took advantage of a nice looking day to head to the farm on the Saturday and visit Jimmy's Farm. This is really close to my parents and we have eaten there a few times but never visited the animals. 

Today we rectified this and paid the wholly reasonable sum of £10 for two adult tickets and two bags of feed, under 2's are free. This price includes entry to the nature trail, woodland walk, butterfly house and all the animals, feeding time or petting specials and two fantastic adventure playgrounds. There is also a large picnic area and giant sandpit which I think L will love when she is a bit bigger or less sleepy as she was today. Brilliant by my books. If you are a family of two adults and two paying children there is a family ticket option as well as an annual charge which I think would be well worth it if you were going to be visiting regularly. 

We ate in the outside cafe because the main restaurant was fully booked, much to our disappointment, but were speedily served burgers and chips and were able to borrow a highchair from the main restaurant for L. The burgers were meaty and the chips crispy. L enjoyed some of each and loved the floured bap! A quick look round the farm shop found some sweet treats for afters in the shape of fudge and cookies! We have previously brought sausages from Jimmy's and been really chuffed with them, and the pork pies look fantastic today. 

After filling our tummies it was onto the main event! The queue was short and quickly dealt with meaning we were in and ready to meet the animals in about five minutes. 

Picture Book Challenge: March and April

Library haul! It's nice to relearn the farm animal signs and we are also learning the sounds. I love Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes and we had to get another lift the flap book after the popularity of Animal Hide and Seek so Spot seemed like a good place as any to start.

Park Life: April 2014

A big photo dump for the weekend! 

Enjoy the Easter weekend with your family and loved ones, this is what bank holidays are made for. 

Spring Book Round Up

Following on from my spring and easter discovery basket here is the book round up as promised. Handa is in many popular children's book and this story helps teach counting and Handa looks after her hens. 

Discovery Basket: Spring

Spring has sprung. Daffs, blossom, lambs and at the end of this week is Easter. 

I made a small discovery basket on the theme for L to enjoy and to focus some talk on Spring. As L becomes more and more chatty with a greater range of sounds it is becoming really important to me that we have lots of chances for high quality talk during play times now. Discovery baskets provide a great chance to talk and to introduce new vocabulary to both young babies and older children. I would use similar discovery baskets as focus activities in my classroom for those children for whom talk and language was an important focus. 

 

Discovery Basket: Shiney Things

This was a really fun basket to use with L and one in which we were able to adapt and expand playtime through the week.

It started with a five minute dash around the house looking for shiney things.

Our basket contained

Breast Feeding and Proud

The news has been filled with breastfeeding and breast issues recently. From a perhaps ill thought out campaign in a newspaper famous for its breasts to mass feedings in support of a nursing mother secretly photographed and labelled a tramp. 

It has respired my desire to normalise breastfeeding for the hundreds of thousands of women who every day whip out a boob to feed their babies. 

Breasts, mammary glands, boobs, tits, norks, jubblies, chesticals, masoomies, chebs, jugs, whaps, baps, bosoms, pillows, melons, personalities. (Thank you Daddy Morkus for sharing this list)