The wind's song

 This is one of the books we are using for our current Survival Skills project. Ray Mears has written many others of course, some detailed survival handbooks but this has proven the most useful as it consists of some of the many photos he has taken on his travels, and explanations about the skills or points he is illustrating.

 As such it is perfect as a table time read aloud, and we've been doing a little most days.

It is also, quite simply, beautiful.

The wheel's kick

My Book People order arrived yesterday!

Yes, I succumbed to them again... well, they sent me a discount code, what's a girl to do?! Besides, you can't have too many reading schemes, that's what I've discovered. You can never be sure which child takes to what and besides, if you have several then you can alternate and switch things up and really, Dot and I have both had enough of the ladybird readers and Letterland, she's done with Peter and Jane and doesn't want to go back to Piggie and Elephant.

So, I got the complete Appletree Farm stories- we have a few of these, mostly in miniature or sticker book form and they really are great and, more importantly, Dot rather likes them so she got those out of the parcel.

I also got the complete set of the Ladybird Keyword series. My originals are falling apart and the set is incomplete and the 1a to 3c replacement set I got ages ago went down well, and Hoof claimed these and is avidly leafing through them. Of course as far as I'm concerned they have the 'wrong' illustrations but they're still enjoyable!

Petal and Fluff are both avidly into coding and Scratch at the moment and are booked on a Scratch coding course for the end of the month so I got an Usbourne flap book on Computers and Coding for Petal and a book on Scratch coding for Fluff. At least one if not both were in the sale so I made double savings and both have gone down very well indeed. Petal is carrying hers about with her at the moment, showing everyone who will listen 'my coding book. It's about computers!'.

The final thing was four write on wipe off grammar books on verbs, adjectives, tenses and nouns. I thought we could do with some of these and they're really well put together. The children all love them in that slightly mysterious way that sometimes happens, I think it's do with a wondrous box arriving and everything wanting what's in it!

A star to steer her by

So after a year's break, I've been lured back to the world of blogging.

In the end, my solution to the problem of old pictures that now older boys didn't want out there anymore was just to start a new blog. In many ways this is a new voyage with the younger four. The eldest three are out in the world of work, college and secondary school now (by choice!) and in a way it's a little like starting over with a new set of eager little sailors... sort of!

I'm glad I've taken a year off. It got too much, trying to keep everything updated and adjust, at the same time, to all the changes in the family... so this is like a new era, a new voyage, although I might repost old posts from the old blog from time to time if relevant.