Mega Snow!

We've had  some EXTREME weather here in Lincolnshire (England) with temperatures  at -16 and 18 inches of snow.

The old folks are saying  it has not been this bad since the legendary winter of 1947, so I am  expecting to talk about this winter well into my dotage.

For us this is a time of rare beauty; we even caught some diamond dust clouds last night! It's also a time of growing inconvenience as side  roads and pavements are covered in thick ice, schools are closed for  days at a time, and the Lincoln Christmas Market is cancelled for the first  time in 28 years; a major event that should have brought 150,000 people (and their purses) into the city.

But let's go back to the beauty.  Here are some photographs taken this weekend:

OK, they cheated and knelt down... but still

This is what 18 inches looks like!

Nice day for a picnic

Deep and Crisp  and Even, don't you think?

The best igloo in the World - EVA!

Twitter's Favourite Christmas Films

So I asked the good people of Twitter to help me compile a list of Favourite Christmas Films for my film club, so we could pick one for the Christmas get together. 

Here's the response (in order of appearance). And do please Follow these lovely people if their Tweets take your fancy:

vahva Bryony Taylor

Has to be Home Alone for me! 

Itxi_Itx (^_-)

A recent one that might appeal: The Holiday > romantic comedy set over x-mas, half in UK, half in LA... ;) 

AgentFergie Hannah Ferguson

Home Alone! Or if you fancy more of a romcom I love While You Were Sleeping. Not overtly Christmassy, but takes place over Xmas+NY. 

MissPinks Beth Pinkerton

I love The Holiday too. Perfect rom-com for Christmas. Also adore Serendipity, which starts with Christmas shopping scene 

vahva Bryony Taylor

another favourite is The Snowman as well. Bad Santa is hilarious but better watched outside the xmas season as it's so cynical! 

mikebfd Mike

Not exactly the target demo, but...Gremlins would be my pick. I never liked "It's a Wonderful Life" or "A Christmas Story". 

karenbrand Karen Brand

Muppets Christmas Carol?

QueenofScots67 Jackie D
Home Alone 1 and 2

Itxi_Itx (^_-)

Christmas Carol, the new one with Jim Carrey (saw it in LA, it's pretty intense!) 

AgentFergie Hannah Ferguson

Also, have you seen Raymond Briggs' The Bear. It's beautiful...and Christmassy. 

Itxi_Itx (^_-)

It's a Wonderful Life...x-mas classic... ;) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/ 

vahva Bryony Taylor 

My fave Christmas film is Richard Curtis' 'Bernard and the Genie' but it's v hard to get hold of: http://trunc.it/cvtap 

shanethehat Shane Auckland

I second your mum's idea, Die Hard is the best Christmas film ever! 

vahva Bryony Taylor

oh, and Nativity! with @alancarr and Martin Freeman which came out on dvd today is hilarious: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242447/ 

mikebfd Mike

Also, The Nightmare Before Christmas; such a great film. 

Serenaf66 Serena FitzGerald

White Christmasx

Dalevich Dale

if you can help it, avoid 'Ghosts of Girlfriends Past' by a very wide margin, it's massive plopsies. 

mikebfd Mike

More unconventional, Die Hard-esque picks: The Ref, Batman Returns, Lethal Weapon, Rambo: First Blood, MST3K has two Xmas films. 

mikebfd Mike

I really want to say The Ice Storm, as well- one of my absolute favorite films...but it's set @ Thanksgiving. Close enough, I say! 

keewa Oliver Kealey

Die Hard is a Christmas classic! 

CyberDiva2 Liz Roebuck

hope I'm not too late to chip in with wonderful life? Pure jimmy Stewart magic which never fails to induce a lump in throat! 

Dalevich Dale

not really christmassy, just uplifting. Nightmare Before Christmas and Scrooged are the two best...and Muppets of course 

edenapplet Daniela

Elf is brilliant, for all ages.

Dalevich Dale

have you seen Amelie (most people have so that's probably a silly question)

Wordless Wednesday #28 by Angpang

Making a Jam Jar Treasure Hunt

As it's half term, I thought I'd do a blog on creating a Treasure Hunt in a Jam Jar. It's very easy to do, generating 40 odd minutes of fun in the making, and when you're done you have a game to play over and over again. Other ideas (including more educational treasure) at the end of the blog.

You need a large storage jar and lots of cheap rice. Depending on the age or clumsiness or naughtiness of your kids, you may want to make the jar plastic

Add rice to the jar and don't forget to run it through your fingers for the tickle

Leave a gap at the top, so that when you lay the jar down you have a large, rice landscape to discover your treasure in

Set off in all directions finding items that are about the size of a penny, and pile them up in a bowl. My box of  broken jewellery was thoroughly raided. At this point the grown-up involved can enjoy a cup of tea.

Give a plate to each child, and ask them to select the best ten-or-so items each. Aim for variety, and a few very tiny treasures that will be very hard to find. Grown-ups should add some traditional stuff too like paper clips, buttons, beads, thimbles and a black peppercorn, so your finished jar looks suitably middle class

Here's the items we decided would be our treasure, I think there are about 30 of them. Taking a photo like this is a good idea, so you know what you are hunting for, though we opted for writing the items down too.

Pick and item and drop it in the jar, creating a list in best-handwriting as you go

Where there's fun, there's education, when you are a sneaky parent

In goes the spider, bigger than a penny we know, but who could resist adding Horace?

In goes the Eiffel Tower, bonus points for writing it down in French

Lists were taken very seriously

Once you've added everything, close the lid tight and give the jar a good shake. If you have very curious children, you can glue the lid shut for obvious reasons.

You are now ready to embark on the hunt. Armed with your list or photo, shake and roll. Items will magically appear on the surface and pressed up against the glass. Strangely, some will pop up every time, others will seldom be seen!

See how long it takes you to find everything on your list, see how many treasures you can find in three minutes, or see who is first to spot the elusive pink paperclip!

So that's the basic treasure hunt, but those of you wishing to crank-up the educational angle, can add treasures with a more pedagogical purpose. 

Other ideas

A wonderful idea came in from mikebfd on Twitter. He suggests adding treasure randomly, in secret, for the children to discover. Thank you Mike, this is a great way to keep the game interesting.  You can also...


Help their reading by making the treasure high-frequency words written on brighly coloured card.

Help with shape recognition by putting in 2D and 3D shapes for them to find and name. 

Use a full set of coins to meet at least one numeracy target.

Get funky, and mix the educational treasure with the fun items, appealing to what you know the children are into, such as tiny action figures or sparkly princess jewellery.

Use plastic animals if you want to increase their natural history knowledge. 

Create a travel version: smaller jars with smaller treasure.

Any other ideas? Let me know with a comment.

If you make your own Jam Jar Treasure Hunt, do let me know how you got on!

UPDATE!


The lovely @michlan and her family have sent me these fantastic photographs of their jam jar hunt, lovely spider guys...

Wordless Wednesday #28 by Angpang

click to enlarge

Wordless Wednesday #28 by Angpang

Wordless Wednesday #27 by Angpang

Wordless Wednesday #26 by Angpang

Wordless Wednesday #25 by Angpang

Wordless Wednesday #24 by Angpang

Who were the original 'Movers and Shakers' ?

We love to call ourselves 'movers and shakers'. Perhaps you've been called one. It sounds very modern, doesn't it? The phrase that encapsulates these fast moving times. But did you know where it came from? 


An ode by British poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy - written in 1874 -  is the origin.

I first came across the poem reading The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as a teenager - my favourite companion through nights of insomnia, brought about by getting up at 1pm. But many people discover it through the original Willy Wonka film, where Gene Wilder's Wonker quotes the first two lines to uber brat Veruca Salt. So, let's begin...

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamer of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties,
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration,
Is the life of each generation.
A wondrous thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly, impossible seeming-
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising.
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broke,
A light that doth not depart
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.

And therefore today is thrilling,
With a past day's late fulfilling.
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for it's joy or it's sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing;
O men! It must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry-
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the corners
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers,
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamt not before;
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

From From Music and Moonlight (1874)
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy
(14 March 1844 – 30 January 1881)

Wordless Wednesday #24 by @dwese

Photograph taken by my sister, @dwese

Wordless Wednesday #23 by Angpang

Glastonbury 2010 by @Dwese

All photos and captions by my sister Louise, a diary post to follow soon...

Click on a photograph to see a larger version. Let her know if you enjoyed them with a comment on here, or through Twitter, she's @dwese

The field for The Other Stage

To give you some idea of the SIZE of Glastonbury

Gateway to the Stone Circle

The Greenpeace Field had excellent stuff for kids: pirate ship, skate ramp, climbing wall.

The Hula Hoop Tent - you worked that out, didn't you?

Fantastic costumes, and very brave in the heat

I like big butts...

Arcadia (you could not get near this a night)

Oh dear. The rubbish was phenomenal and all picked up by hand and sorted into cans/bottles/paper by the amazing army of 1500 litter pickers

 Pet Shop Boys finale, my favourite set, my era really!

Gormley's "Field" Glasto style

I know this is supposed to be portrait, but I liked it better this way!

Kids look so cute in their ear protectors

The essential crowd / stage shot

West (or East?) Dance Tent. Amazing lights, music... everything!

Rave Henge - the cubes changed with the music different colours

Don't go out tonight, 'cos it's bound to change your life

Enjoying a peach schnapps at sunset