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!

Decorating

We’ve finally finished decorating Verona’s bedroom!

She choose an ocean theme and her walls and  ceiling are painted in blue. She chose all her own accessories including a clock, some lovely pictures, duvet cover, rug and lampshade.

Her friend sent her a lovely fish mobile for her room too. I need to dig out some before and after pictures to put up, but as you can see from this one, Verona was determined to have a go at painting herself!

The painting and decorator setting to work to cover the old colour

Quest Seekers

You might remember Verona mentioning she was a Quest Seeker. It’s a challenge from the library to read six books during the summer holiday.

Well, that wasn’t difficult, as she usually reads about 12 books in one week!

However, she has completed her challenge and got a gold medal for all her work. She will also get a certificate at the end of the holidays.

Here you can see her with the names of all the other children who are taking part in our local library. For such a small library, it’s a great number of children!

One of many Quest seekers

Entomologist

I think we have a natural entomologist on our hands! So far, Verona has nursed a sick bee and moth, which you might have read about.

Over the past 2 weeks, she has taken care of a couple of butterflies, some flies, dung beetles, more moths and I have to be honest, I don’t remember what else as I’ve lost count.

Interestingly, all the creatures she rescues seem to have a damaged wing of some sort and they invariably live for about 3 days or so.

They all get given names and we go through our books identifying the type of insect she has, along with its requirements for food.

She thinks they come to her so that they can die feeling cared for and loved. What compassionate work she is doing; I’m so proud of the amount of love and care she gives these animals.

I’m going to get Gerald Durrell’s ‘my family and other animals’ to read to her; I think she will love it!

One of the many rescued insects this summer!

Blackberries!

Our first crop of blackberries

We’ve been out blackberry picking twice now and got about 1 1/2lbs. We made blackberry muffins and tomorrow we’re going to make a pie. Verona wants to learn how to make pastry. To go blackberrying was her challenge from last week’s Nature Detectives programme.

and some yummy blackberry muffins

Cat lover

We have a neighbour who’s wife died from cancer at the end of last year. His wife was mad about cats and he’s been left with two Siamese cats to take care of.

Being more of a dog person, he doesn’t much care for the cats, so Verona has been going there to feed them and give them some cuddles.

it’s great because our friend is a bit lonely, so she provides company for him too. They sit in companionable silence watching tv together while the cats purr on her lap!

Verona and Emmy

Potatoes

We took part in the potato council’s grow your own challenge this year.

Believe it or not, underneath all these pumpkins and weeds is Verona’s final crop of Vale Emerald potatoes!

I know they're in here somewhere!

In the end she found them, dug them up and we had a bumper crop of 884grams!

She enjoyed them cooked in her favourite way; boiled with butter and served with a tin of fish and some carrots, broccoli and sweetcorn.

I need to find all the weights from the four plants and put up the grand total.

A bumper crop of vale emerald

Plum cobbler

In addition to blackberrying and making muffins and pies, Verona made plum cobbler. I prepared the plums while she made the topping.

She and her Dad loved eating it and Verona was particularly taken with the topping. Her comment next time was to leave out the fruit and and just serve the cobbler part LOL!

Beautiful pink plum cobbler made from local Blaisdon Red plums

A budding musician

After a couple of terms of piano and flute lessons and another 18 months or so of showing no interest at all, Verona suddenly decided to play the piano again!

Her Dad was in there so showed her the c-major scale and she wanted to know the names of things like stave, crochets and minims and how much each beat was worth.

She loves listening to music and dancing and this week we bought her a new mp4 player. This is the only ‘21 century gadget’ she has and her last one ended up in the washing machine. We were going to wait to Christmas to get her another one, but she gets so much enjoyment from having music - also the player ending up in the wash was a genuine accident.

I decided making her wait was a bit cruel and likened it to me being without a computer - unheard of and terrifying!

This new player stores photos, takes pictures, shows videos and she can download books onto it as well as music. It also has a couple of benign games on it, so she’s pretending it’s a DS. By the time a couple of hours had past she new how to use all the functions, while I am still figuring out how to turn the thing off and on!

Learning all about minims and crochets

Just like her Dad

Verona is hands on and practical, just like her Daddy.

The area in the house, apart from her bedroom, that she has to take care of is the porch.

Being a ’shoes girl’ this is no hassle for her! This week we decided to try and keep it tidier by buying a shoe rack. Verona’s job was to make the rack.

In typical Strauss fashion, without reading the instructions, she figured it all out in no time. Dad hung around for moral support trying to look busy, but I wasn’t fooled.

And I have to say, the porch looks MUCH tidier!

Nearly done!

Water experiments

I think the bottle holds more - which do you think?

Verona wondered whether her toothbrush beaker or a small bottle held more water, so set up her own experiment to find out. She thought the bottle would hold more.

After filling both containers at the same time, she looked at me with a sheepish smile and realised she needed to rethink her experiment.

Next she filled up the beaker and poured it into the bottle, expecting the bottle to hold all the water.

Well, the bottle overflowed, showing her that the beaker held more.

A great lesson in perception, assumptions and not judging a book by its cover!

It's the beaker!

Phew! I’ve only scratched the surface of everything we’ve been up to.

We’ve been learning more about the Victorians, with plans to cover the sort of food they ate this week.

We’ll be starting our family tree at the end of the month.

And so far this week I have all sorts of questions lined up from Verona that we need to explore such as:

• What temperatures does it get down to in the South pole?
• How many cms is it to China?
• Why are pandas becoming extinct?
• How deep is the deepest part of the ocean and what is the tallest thing on the earth - if that thing went into the ocean would it touch the bottom?
• What is the chemical in sugar and vinegar that preserves things?

I think that’s enough to keep me on my toes!

I hope you enjoyed catching up with some of the things Verona has been doing lately