Review of Janurary things to do

Things to do in January

• Get back in to the swing of term time activities

Girls are back swimming, dancing, doing gym and attending Rangers, Guides, Brownies and Rainbows

• Celebrate chinese new year

We ate fortune cookies and made stirfry!

Chinese New Year

Today we thought about Chinese New Year by watching the story in the CBeebies website. P then made dinner by cooking chicken chow mein.

Ingredients:

• thumb sized piece of fresh ginger
• 2 garlic cloves
• 3 tablespoons of tomato ketchup
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 red pepper
• 5 spring onions
• 200g beansprouts
• 2 chicken breasts
• 3 nests of egg noodles

Method

1. Peal and grate the ginger. Put into a bowl with ketchup, oyster sauce, soy sauce with 3 tablespoons of water. Crush the garlic cloves and add. Mix together.
2. Cut the pepper and spring onion into strips.
3. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces.
   
   
   
4. Follow the instructions on the noodles and cook them.
5. Heat some oil in a wok and fry the chicken. Once it is cooked add the pepper and cook for a minute.
6. Add the sauce. Once it has thickened add the cooked noddles, spinng onions and bean sprouts.
7. Stir to coat everything and then serve!  
   

New Year in Sweden

We have just come back from a fantastic week in Sweden where we enjoyed catching up with old friends, ice-skating, playing in the snow and a couple of sight seeing trips! Stockholm, although expensive, is really easy to get around and has the benefit of everyone speaking amazing English.  We bought our own ice skates and so enjoyed skating for free both in the centre of Stockholm and then at an ice-hockey pitch - often powered by Pepperkacka. I was the worst and E was the most confident! All the girls really came on with their skating ability.

 We went to Junnibacken which is a children’s museum dedicated to Swedish children’s literature with lots of places for children to play. We loved the Story Train which takes you on an amazing journey through the stories of Astrid Lindgren.

 We enjoyed wondering round the beautiful city!

 We also went to Skansen which is an open-air museum and zoo.  We loved the Scandinavian animals where we saw bison, moose, grey seals, lynxes, otters, red foxes, reindeer, wolves, and wolverines as well as rare breeds of farm animals.

 There is also a full replica of a 19th-century town, where craftsmen, such as glass-blowers and bakers, demonstrate their skills.

 We played in various parks.

 The last day we had plenty of snow and the girls loved using our friends' sled.

Review of December

On our to do list was

• Enjoy our advent activity calender

We did 24 activities.  The baked bin tin Christmas cakes were delicious and I loved all our days out!  P said her best activity was the Father Christmas visit, E liked going to Chatsworth (in the wind and rain :) ). 

• Celebrate E turning 9

E got lots of lego and enjoyed ice-skating. She hasn't had her party yet as she keeps reminding me.

• Celebrate Christmas and New Year

We loved seeing our family and going to Sweden ... not looking forward to the girls going back to school.