We've been away on holiday. Beautiful, marvelous, magnificent holiday. I was very spoilt. We went to visit our family in Cape Town, South Africa. We ate too much, laughed a lot, bought too much yarn, ate far too much cake, enjoyed every minute of our time there, and cried a little when we left. The children adored spending time with all of their relatives - it can be so hard growing up far away from "home," and being surrounded by all that love must have been simply wonderful to my two littles. I'm so pleased that they had an opportunity to get to know everyone.


We also had a birthday! Isla turned 3 and we celebrated with cake cake cake cake cake and a bit of trampolining, running around, swimming, hugs and squeals of delight.


I learnt a lot there too. There's a severe water crisis in South Africa, and you have to be hyper aware of every drop of water. Washing and cleaning take on a whole new significance, and small things that we take for granted - flushing the toilet, brushing our teeth, washing out dishes after every use - become big things. Water used for washing is then used for flushing the toilet or watering the garden. Every drop is accounted for.  I have become so aware (and so ashamed) of how much water we waste every day, and we are making such an effort to continue to preserve water even though we left the crisis behind when we returned to the UK.

And so, we've come back to winter. It''s freezing cold here! The temperature has been dropping very low this week and we've had thermals on and the radiators turned up. I had to dig out socks from my winter clothes stash, and put blankets on the beds. Brrr. It's really very cold outside.

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas with the festive songs playing in all the shops and the lights twinkling on store displays. We've already started selling soaps at Christmas Markets (another excuse to get the tinsel out) so it's jingle all the way here. There's also a lot of festivity at our house as we prepare for a family visit, a packed festive season of local markets to attend, and lots of DIY - this weekend we're lifting up the carpets in the lounge to see if the floorboards can be sanded down and used as flooring. It's all very exciting.

• make slime
• bake biscuits
• painting
• playdoh pizzas
• painting
• go to the aquarium
• stickers
• painting

Clearly she has her priorities straight. We did try out some slime (I'll post about that later) but it has since been acquired by her younger brother and she wants some more. Blue, mama. Blue is my favourite colour. Five minutes ago her favourite colour was pink,

The folks from Education.com got in touch and asked if I'd be interested in trying out one of their kids' activities during the holidays so I figured why not? It's a fun crafty activity looking at alphabet letters which is just up Isla's street.



She's started singing her very favourite song, The ABC Song as she calls it, and I can't stop laughing when she gets to the end. Instead of "now I know my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me?" she has her own version. It goes like this: ... x y z, Now I know my ABCs, d e f g h i ... ". It's a loop, she misses out the "next time won't you sing with me" and launches straight back into another recitation of the alphabet. It can go on for about fifteen minutes before she realises what she's done. It is probably the best thing ever.

This is what crafting during the school holidays is supposed to look like. Credit to Education.com for sending me this pic as guidance for our Z is for Zebra Activity.

So back to "Z" is for Zebra! You can download the activity here if you want to try it out too. Here's what they say:

Don't let alphabet practice turn into catching zzz's. Paint up a zany Z zebra and inject a little excitement into learning letters. Little kids love the hands-on fun of painting, and it's great exercise for small hand muscles, helping to strengthen them for writing. Paint up a stripy zebra and let the alphabet fun begin.

What You Need:

• Books containing photographs or illustrations of zebras
• White construction paper
• Black tempera paint
• Thin paint brush
• Scissors
• Clear drying, non-toxic glue or glue stick

What You Do:

1. Begin by researching zebras. Look at the photos or illustrations of zebras in the books with your child and talk about what they see. Encourage them to describe the zebra's shape, size, and appearance to you.
2. Place the construction paper in front of them. Help them cut out large shapes to form a zebra. Ask them to choose shapes for the head, neck, body, legs, and tail. Cut out ears and facial feature shapes as well.
3. Glue the shapes onto a new sheet of construction paper. Encourage them to assemble the shapes into the form of a zebra first before adding any glue. Putting the zebra together is kind of like a puzzle!
4. Once the zebra's body is glued down, paint on the stripes. Squeeze out a little black tempera paint and have him paint stripes on the zebra's body.
5. While they paint, talk about the letter Z. What sound does Z make? Look at the zebras in the books again. Do they see how the stripes zigzag across the zebra's body similar to the letter Z?
6. After they paint all the stripes, help them paint a large letter Z at the top of the page.
7. Set the painting aside to dry.
8. Hang the zany zebra on the wall to keep them company as they learn the other letters of the alphabet.

This made me chuckle a bit. It's a lovely activity, but can you imagine doing this kind of focused - and neat - painting activity with an I-know-better-than-you-mum almost-three-year-old?  No. We changed it a little, and used a colouring-in zebra (this one here) and crayons instead.