A Balancing Act

Rosie spent last Saturday at Cornerstones, to give her Mum a much needed break. We had originally talked about a day at the coast, but on arrival [after Grandad Bob cooked breakfast pancakes] she said she would rather stay inside and do something with playdough. But I didn't have any to hand - so we made some.

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup salt
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 2 tbsp cooking oil

Rosie measured and mixed, then I divided the mix into three and we added food colouring to each. [she's standing on my kitchen Dalek - she's not grown taller than me - yet] We stirred like mad as we heated the pans gently, then tipped the mix out onto a floured worktop to cool and firm up.

I suggested Rosie might like to do some science with our playdough. We prepared some "Balancing acrobats" from this brilliant little book.

We used a some of my business cards from Ferndown [now obsolete] to draw these little banana shaped people.

Then the sun was out, so we left the card acrobats on the side next to the cooling dough and went off to the sea as originally planned. The sun was still out when we arrived and while Bob wrestled with the Car Park machine, Ro and I went into Tesco and picked up meal-deals for lunch.

By the time we had walked to the Prom and sat down, the blue sky was grey, the sun had disappeared and the wind was so strong. Half a lettuce leaf covered in mayo blew out of my salad and stuck to my glasses like an eye patch. Rosie and I had blue fingers, it was so cold. It started to rain and at one point tried to snow! I dived into the bargain shop for some cheap gloves. We gave up on any ideas of paddling or sandcastles, and drove back to Cornerstones. Stopping to pick up milk in Morrisons, I saw the doughnuts reduced.

How much better you feel in a warm home with a jammy doughnut to eat! As we ate, we talked about gravity and falling over and falling down. Then we made little hemispheres of playdough with my mini scoop, and tried to unbalance the acrobats. But being bottom-heavy, they always flipped up again.[no jokes about being bottom- heavy please!]

Then Rosie did some more conventional playdough activity, cutting and shaping and rolling. And while she did that, I re-sewed the arm on Annabelle doll. 

Rosie was so excited to see that there are lots of children's books at Cornerstones now. And Grandad is never too busy to read her a story!

Our granddaughter is growing up fast - and her cousin George is one year old on Sunday. The weather was clearly better up North- he spent Saturday at a farm park looking at the animals.