Muddy play

The park is so soggy underfoot with all the rain that it was a slippery and muddy affair to go and play there this weekend but we ended up being there for 3 hours and only about 5 minutes of that was in the playground. A group of 4 older ones (3 and 4 year olds) spent ages in the climbing tree, climbing and role playing (there were cars and missions to get strawberries as well as firebombs and goodness knows what else). It was really lovely to watch them play. 

There used to be a tree stump by the climbing tree. It was a bit uncomfortable but a good height and a helpful perch for feeding smaller ones or just resting weary grown up legs. It's gone though - not sure why. So there was a lot of leaning on trees and attempts to play muddy football with the smaller ones.

This weekend was the Learning Trust - Trusting Learning conference in Surrey and it's been a great weekend to meet other home educating families (hi Jo) and for Matthew to explore a lot of the topics that I read up on in books and on various blogs and yahoo groups. Isaac went to play with a friend today so that I could go for the day and we took Isabel with us. She was lovely and patient and seemed to enjoy lots of time with both of us even if we were listening to speakers and talking to other grown ups. I don't think she's ever really spent time with us without Isaac being there.