Sea tractors

Isla is very excited when she receives post, especially stickers!

Isla reading some stories to Evie:

Starting a leaf collage:

Isla's snail friend:

We went to Devon for holiday last week. Here we are at Bigbury on Sea, where we watched the sea tractor and then walked across to Burgh Island when the tide went out:

We went swimming every day!

At Plymouth aquarium:

At South Sands beach, where there was another sea tractor who beeped at us when we waved!

Up the steep hill to Overbeck's house and gardens:

Isla looking for Fred the friendly ghost after going through a secret door!

At Salcombe, we had some treats and bought some crabbing gear.

 Catching shrimps at north sands beach:

Catching blennies at bigbury:

We went crabbing at Dartmouth:

At Dartmouth Castle:

Isla on an adventure to see a lighthouse:

Back at home, Evie has been up to mischief with the washing machine! She has also been enjoying looking at books and playing with animal toys and cars. She likes making a woofing sound for a dog and pointing out any dogs she sees out and about. 

Isla went for an adventure at pre-school this week. When I picked her up, she ran out the door to see me and jumped up and down saying: "we went to see some chickens and got some eggs and saw apples and pears!!!!" so she had been on a brilliant walk with her friends. She'd also been dancing and singing at pre-school and enjoyed a bouncy castle at the toddler group autumn party. Evie had a good bounce too. Today they both had a fun swim at the local pool and made lots of safari animals out of lego.

Campfire and thunderstorms

We were woken up on Thursday night to huge booms and crashes. There was a massive thunderstorm over us that woke Isla, but not Evie. We watched some of the lightning out the window and saw some impressive fork shapes and eventually the storm passed and we all went to sleep. Then Evie woke up of course......!

Isla and Evie did some crafty art yesterday afternoon. Evie did some crayoning (first with her right hand crayon, then with her left hand crayon) and has finally stopped putting them in her mouth all the time. She seemed to enjoy it so I think we'll be getting the crayons out a bit more in future. They both like using the magic water drawing kits too. Isla made a pasta and lentil collage of a thunder cloud with lightning. She also added some gold glitter for extra lightning effect.

Evie has been investigating things a lot recently. She spent a little while checking everything in my wallet after excitedly finding it in my bag. She enjoys the kitchen cupboards, particularly carrying either a potato or the cling film roll around with her. She managed to empty out a box of lentils on the floor - this inspired the thundercloud collage, which was probably her intention of course. Evie mainly walks around now, with her hands up in the air. She gets a lot of enjoyment out of one of their Bizzy Bear books which always makes her laugh. Her other main pastimes are posting things out of the cat flap and fiddling with the washing machine buttons.

We had a brilliant time at our outdoor playgroup this week. We learnt about starting a campfire and being safe around it. Isla mixed some flour and water and then we all put it onto green sticks and cooked our damper bread over the flames. After a story, we all tapped the bread to check it was cooked and ate it with jam. It was delicious. The little ones then learnt about how to put the fire out safely and to check it was out by poking it about. I hope we'll be having lots more camp fires over the autumn as the smell of the burning wood and the warmth was really nice.