K played with the modelling clay, and made a model house based on Mary Poppins. H played with the playdoh because I flatly refuse to let him have the modelling clay after last time. B was on her puter, and also laid and lit a fire by herself. I had a sudden inspiration, and grabbed the jar of old abacus beads, the metal rods from the old abacus, a muffin tray and a dish, and involved H and K in a sorting, patterning activity. H helped sort all the beads into their colours in the tray, then K followed the patterns I made and reproduced them on the stick. First I made the patterns with beads, then I drew coloured dots on paper, and she had no problems with reproducing either. Except that I had foolishly not cleaned away the playdoh, and she decided to combine the two activities, and now all the beads have playdoh in their holes *sigh*

H went off and listened to B’s music on her computer, and K rang Grandmoogi for a chat. Then gradually we all ended up in front of the fire toasting marshmallows, which so did not help me in my attempt to figure out what to cook for dinner… Eventually I decided on reheating some leftover soup. K decided to turn the pattern game around and make patterns for me to follow. H got in on the act too and started threading all the blue beads on one of the rods. That turned into a conversation about who had more of which colour, and H said he had more blues than K had yellows (he was correct). I showed him how to pick them up using the end of the rod, but then we got sick of the whole thing and packed it away. After that we had a huge pillow fight, and then H watched his favourite YouTube nursery rhymes with Mr Bat, while K watched some more of B’s favourite YouTube videos before dinner. We also put a candle in her punched-tin lantern and took it outside to see what it looked like, which also involved watching the stars until we froze our toes and had to come inside. No time for Laura tonight…