NotSheep

“Where did you leave your head?”

“How come you have three hands and he has none?”

“Go and look in the dining-room in case you left your foot in there.”

“This head looks too small to be yours.”

All these were said by me on Tuesday morning. I can explain though!

We were making life-size paper skeletons. We make them every year at Hallowe’en - they’re easy and cheap and fun and, well, kids love crafts that are as big as they are All you have to do is:
- cut white paper into strips (cheapo printer paper will do)
- make a paper-chain that reaches from the child’s neck to his feet
- make another paper-chain the length of his leg, and attach it to the first at his hip-height
- make two more paper-chains, each the length of his arms, and attach them just below the top of the first chain
- get the child to draw around his hands and feet and cut them out, and attach the hands to the ends of the arms and the feet to the ends of the legs
- get the child to lie down on his back with his head on a bit of paper and you draw around it - or if you’ve got a group, pair them up and have them do it for one another. Cut it out.
- decorate the “face” and attach it to the top of the “skeleton”

Dead easy (pun totally intended LOL) I sent Barney to take photos of everybody with their skeletons this afternoon, but he cut off Freddy’s head (in the photo, not his real or paper-chain head LOL) and made Henry and Jack all fuzzy, so I’ll have to redo the photos tomorrow.

We also made tissue-ghosts; these are even easier. Box of tissues. Take one tissue and crumple it into a ball. Take another tissue and drape it over the first, then tie it with a bit of thread so it contains the first tissue. Make two eyes with a marker and hang it up with the thread. If there’s even the slightest breeze in the room (even just people moving will do), these move about in a floaty, very ghosty kind of way and look great. They look even better if you make lots of them

Freddy and I got to do it all over again with Beavers on Tuesday evening. Meanwhile George went to St John Ambulance Badgers and Barney and Henry went to Cadets - Barney’s first time out since he went all poxy

On Wednesday… uh… er… well, you all know how bad I am at remembering what happened each day if I don’t blog it within 24 hours. I do remember promising a trip to the science centre for today if they tidied up the house and it was still tidy (or tidy again) by bedtime - but that didn’t happen. There was Cubs and Scouts in the evening though. And I do remember feeling very domesticated because we had stinky pizza for lunch and I had dinner going in the slow-cooker (unfortunately it was too slow and had to be finished off in the oven… oops!)

This morning started with me reading the riot act to everyone because of… well, the state of the house, people’s attitudes towards each other and a variety of other things really. Nobody escaped (except Toby, of course). I told them pocket-money would be suspended indefinitely if they didn’t shape up, which seemed to scare them all into making an effort - though I did move Freddy back into the bedroom with George and Jack after I found chocolate chips under his mattress (in a container, thankfully!) Then we sat down in the conservatory and did some schoolywork. Freddy has almost finished the first Minimus book, but Henry requested that I teach him Latin - so I went back to the beginning of it with him. Maybe I was born to be a Latin teacher? *thinks* Nah. Henry has come here in part to become fluent in English; how impressive would it be if he went back to France speaking Latin too?

In the afternoon they all had free time except for Barney, who had some writing to do. Henry complained of having too much time, so I offered to keep him studying for the school hours he’s used to (8.30-4.30), but he declined I did, with Barney’s help, find a pile of books in which the language is simple enough for him to read alone, but which aren’t so little-kid-ish that he won’t enjoy reading them.

I headed to the gym while dinner was being made - I am being so good about that, I wonder how long it will last - then came home so famished (as George would say) that I stuffed my face with two servings of dinner and two bits of apple-pie for dessert. They were only small bits of apple-pie though; Scratchy hasn’t yet come to terms with the number of people living here and continues to buy things like that one at a time - whereas I just assume that everything will need doubling, because leftovers never stay that way for long in a house with six growing boys!