Verona Strauss.comjust because life is fun! …

Verona hasn’t shown much interest in her blog for a week, so a proud mama is going to step up and update with things she has been doing recently.

Swimming

Everything Verona had to do to achieve her 5A swimming award

Verona has now achieved her stage 5A swimming badge.

She goes for weekly lessons at our local leisure centre and water is her element. She has always loved being in water and works really hard at her swimming.

The stages go up to level 10, but we think she is going to take a  break from lessons during the autumn term and we’re going to go as a family to a spa centre instead. This will give her opportunity to practise while her Dad and I lounge around in the jacuzzi! Read the rest of this entry »

Me, Daddy, ella and Dobby out for a picnic

This week’s Nature Detective challenge was to go for a picnic.

It rained all week, so yesterday we decided to go anyway!

We went to the stream and found a great big tree to sit under. We stayed nice and dry while everything else got wet. We think it was an elm tree because Mummy bought her book with her that tells us all about trees.

I wrote my picnic menu.

It was starter: salmon fish cakes

main course: cheese sandwich with fresh tomatoes, cucumber and pepper

pudding: jam tart, which I made myself

Drink: smoothie from mango and passionfruit.

After that I wrote a cd template of sounds I could hear and we made them into two lists of man made and natural sounds.

Natural sounds

• stream
• breathing
• birds - especially robins
• squirrel rustling the leaves
• rain
• voices
• sheep

Man made sounds

• cars
• tractor
• aeroplane
• helicopter

We heard lots more natural sounds than manmade ones and I think that is because we were in the country side. If we had been in the town I think we would have heard more manmade noises.

I made a placemat with all the things I saw on my walk to the picnic.

They were

• spider
• butterfly
• squirrel
• beetle
• wasp
• ant
• bird
• fly
• rain clouds

Even though it was a bit cold for a picnic I enjoyed it and Ella and Dobby came too!

At playrangers today we did bike agility.

The bicyle course was set up for us and one of the helpers told us how to use it and let us play on it.

I did it a few times - I had to go over thin planks of wood which were quite tricky to manage. After that I went with a friend to our den from last week; the one with the metal floor and slidey doors.

After lunch we used clay and I made a pot with a nice handle and woven decorations around it. 

Later on a Police car came and we were allowed to get in and press all the buttons. I wore the policemans helmet and he put the siren on, made the lights flash and turned the engine on. It was really fun and I’m looking forward to going again next week.

Many thanks to Poppy who runs it!