December's Festive Home Ed Fun
On the 1st of December we proudly trekked to the Brewhouse Theatre with boxes of decorations for our England-themed tree in their ‘Global Forest’. The room Dion had arranged with the trees was really magical and we were thrilled to have not one but two trees to decorate (which was just as well as we had been pretty prolific in the decoration-making department). The Global Forest tied in with the Brewhouse’s amazing production of “Around the World in Eighty Days” which was running over Christmas.
Next it was time for some “North Pole Nonsense” . Mrs Santa pays us a visit every year to host a sort of Christmas Craft Fayre/Fandango. This year we made Sock Penguins, Giant Paper Snowflakes and of course, Reindeer Food to put out for Rudolph et al so they would know where to visit. Mrs Santa is always big on gift making and this year we revisited bath bombs (any excuse to do bath bombs I say and they are amazing for dry skin and eczema) and made cute little lavender bags. In the kitchen we made Pippa’s yummy, scrummy, Coconut Ice recipe, Christmas pies (mince, lemon curd or choccie) and of course Reindeer Cupcakes. Sensory play is always fun and luckily Mrs Santa arrived from the North Pole with a couple of buckets of ‘Genuine North Pole Snow’ which had a lovely coconutty/almondy aroma to it. The snow seemed to migrate around the house – it was like Santa had been through with snowy footprints. You could learn about different Christmas traditions around the world on the North Pole Nonsense Trail Quiz and we also made cute Christmas character photoframes with some fab kits from Baker Ross.
Taunton Fire Station welcomed home edders for two visits in December, organised by Kelly. They are an amazing bunch – you learn all about how to become a fireman, what’s involved in the job, about all the equipment they use and their uniforms, see inside the fire trucks and get to use the fire hose!
Nearer to Christmas we thought: “Wait a minute there has not been festive singing!!!” Lovely Emily Stringer who runs Songbirds for smalls at the Brewhouse volunteered to provide musical accompaniment so we put together a list of favourite Christmas songs. Emily said it would be great if any of the kids wanted to do an impromptu performance and luckily the very talented Sarah Stoppard agreed to bring her cornet. As our Christmas tree was at the Brewhouse we thought “hmmm….”. Dion Sears very kindly let us book the studio for our singalong. So we gathered there armed with mince pies and Christmas brownies, song sheets and good cheer and had a lovely, lovely time. Sarah’s solos were awesome – hopefully you can hear one of them on this page, the recording of the other sadly got eaten by a rogue mobile phone.
