LIKED AND LOVED: September 2018

This month has been well and truly steeped in adventure from exploring France to starting pre-school. It began with our annual trip to France where we explored the Loire Valley and met up with family.

Our Annual Trip to France

In France we spent half the time visiting places in the Loire Valley including many châteaux and the other half staying with family and visiting Rouen. We soon got used to temperatures which remained around the 30s, So imagine our shock as soon as we got back from our annual trip to France and found ourselves well and truly in the grips of Autumn. The cold wet weather had us desiring our comforts of blankets, hot drinks and cosy socks. These little comforts being a few of my favourite things in these cooler months.

Home Exteriors

Coming home from France the weather was not the only change to note. Our shed had been taken down in our garden and the porch had been further worked on. We are truly blessed to have family help us out on these big projects.

The Girls Starting Pre-School 

We got back around midnight on a Sunday and were up early on the Monday morning getting our girls ready for the first day of pre-school. After months of talking about going eldest got her wish and joining her was her little sister. I'm so proud of them and are pleased they've began their educational journey together.

Just as they love going it is clear that they also miss us for the girls rush out of pre-school excited to see us and straight into our arms.  As my husband works shifts we have worked together to get the girls to and from school. I of course have had my worries about the girls attending being that you hear things on the news occasionally that are a worry. However, every morning they get stuck into the activities that surround them and they don't make a fuss as we disappear from their sight. My girls have become less reliant of us over time and are always growing their little wings something I'm proud of but I do love those cuddles and sweeping them into my arms when I see them again.

Tot Schooling

Despite my questions of what exactly do the children get up to at pre-school. Is it all play and no learning of colours and shapes for instance. I've still felt at a loss to know what they get up to.. So I've taken it upon myself to look into what I can do at home to help support my girls especially as my eldest will be heading into the first year of school at the end of this academic year.

My answer has come in watching a number of  Youtube videos that have led me to things like Tot Schooling which has fantastic resources for shapes, colours, phonics and more.So we've been looking at 'all about me' and the autumn sections at home together. I've also got myself a laminator for some of the things appear to require it such as the lacing cards. Other learning resources in our house are The Orchard Toy games and some work books that eldest seems to love. The girls have free reign over the kallax unit but boy can they make a mess!

Decorating For Autumn

Of course to accompany our learning I've been coming up with some arts and crafts to do with the girls and these have gone down well with them. We especially enjoyed creating our Spring suncatcher so I thought we could do with an Autumn equivalent. The colours of Autumn are certainly a highlight for me in their rich reds, greens and yellows.

Autumn Book Basket

We've also updated our seasonal book basket but sometimes it's a little hard to separate the Halloween books from the Autumn ones especially where pumpkins are concerned. We read these as and when we want and they are in the living room next to our handmade fireplace. We've also been able to access the pre-school bookshelves and their story bags but sometimes the girls forget to update them.

So our September has been somewhat of a whirlwind it seems and full of change as we adventure further into learning about the world around us.

What have you been up to this month? I do hope it's been a good one for you.