Quiet day

Well, it didn't turn out to be such a great day weatherwise; the Major's horses had their coats back on after only one day, so I didn't get round to building the veg bed. Instead just had a quiet time pottering while the kids spent most of the day outside. They even ventured into the field opposite, as the Major wasn't around, and climbed on the huge fallen tree. It's nice that they can now venture outside of the garden. I don't think they're really allowed in the field, which is a shame because I can see it from the house. They also cycled quite a long way up and down the lane (with daddy), and Jem fell off twice, but got straight back on. Fugs spent ages on the swing by himself after everyone else had come in and told me he had seen some dragons while he was out there. Not pretend ones- real.

I decided to attack the mending basket, which was overflowing, so Fugs got some new jimjams (which had only a few tiny holes in- he's terrible with scissors), which he wore for the rest of the day, so had to have a bath later to wash the mud off his feet. He listened to 'Fergus Crane' on 'Go For It' on the radio in the bath (as usual, but daddy wasn't here tonight as he has gone to a gig in Manchester with the teenagers- something to do with Fat City? noone really told me what it was, so I don't really know). So I'm having a quiet evening, too, which is nice. The mending started as Fugs fell over on Friday and made a hole in the knee of his already tattered second-best trousers. I managed to satisfactorily patch these, and some dungarees for Allie. I still have some of Jem's trousers to turn up (considerably less than when they first went into the pile), and a couple of pairs of jeans...mmm, they may not get done tonight, at this rate.

After all that computer wingeing, guess what he's gone and bought now? A tablet and stylus, which they practically fight over turns on. Fugs did some amazing scribble pictures, but I can't find them now. I'm not sure what its doing for his pencil control, but I'm sure its a lot better than a mouse, for that. Thankfully, they were too excited by going outside to spend too much time on it.
Someone I spoke to about the computers-in-nursery-question in the Montessori school, and who had worked in the Montessori school, had some interesting views on it. When I said it had been left up to the parents to opt in or out of computer access she said she thought this was wrong, as it is supposed to be child-led, not parent led, and that the children got to choose their activity within the prepared environment , which was prepared by the teacher, and that the teacher is there to facilitate this. I suppose this is pretty obvious, but she put it so clearly that it gave me a greater insight into how it is possible to let you children have freedom to choose what they do, but still have some control over it, iyswim. I suppose this is how I dealt with the TV issue. I simply removed the TV from the environment so I didn't have to be constantly monitoring its use.