Beautiful Angouleme and a bit of scouts.. oh and we found a little beach... and it was warm... and....

The woman we are staying with, Petra, is a scouts leader here in France. She is very passionate about scouting and does a lot of work locally for families. She has her own scouts room and we were looking forward to joining in. Except Caden changed his mind and didn't want to join in. So Miles seized the opportunity and got all the beaver scouts gear on. He felt so 'growed up!'.  

Petra's very awesome scouts room. The boys went a bit crazy with excitement so we didn't stay anyway, we cleared off and found something else to do so that Petra had space for her troupe that afternoon. Miles was fine, all he wanted to do was wear the clothes... All the gear and no idea!!

I thought I would share with you this beautiful iron work on the old windows on part of the farm buildings where we are staying. 

Caden and his George dog. 

Caden, Miles and Marc play on an old plough that is on the farm grounds. 

We drove off and found a local man-made beach. They had such a good afternoon. It hit 14 degrees this day and they just mucked about. Here is Miles burying his dinosaurs that he later couldn't find and went running about saying, 'I've lost the dinosaurs I buried.... errrr', it was pretty funny! We found all but one in the end. They were given to him from a friendly English woman at the local lake another day. 

The boys harvested ICE from the lake... it was still pretty cold at 14 right, and it had gone up by 15 degrees in one week!  Caden and I did a little experiment and watched the ice go from a solid to a liquid in about a minute in the sun! It was pretty cool to watch!

Then they ate the ice, to my disgust.. the lake was a bit gross! They are still alive though! 

MILES PADDLED!!!!!!!  THE MENTALIST!

More ice to watch melt.... 

We looked at and talked about the weir at Chabanais on the River Vienne.

It has got so warm that we split Caden's two way coat and he wore just the underneath, light coat. He saw this picture and felt really awesome that the zipper reflected! He really loves this coat!

We sat on a terrace (Caden had asked, what is a terrace) and did what they do on the continent! 

Miles sips his hot chocolate with finesse... Caden adds his twelfth sugar cube.... 

I took them to a Patisserie to choose anything they wanted.... :) I love doing this for them! 

Miles chose a lemon meringue tart and Caden a flan... I rather fancied the flan myself.

We went around to the Cathedral to find the local museum and discovered this gorgeous view from the fort wall. Angouleme (we discovered) is an ancient town with loads of history, it was an ancient fortified town on a hill. We all really loved the view, especially since there was a train line with a tunnel right under us and we could see the trains going underneath us. 

Complete Tarts! 

Enjoyment!

 So many streets were wonderful to turn down and just enjoy the architecture of. I personally really enjoyed this. It was beautiful to be in! 

Then we visited the museum. There were dinosaurs... relics from the Bronze age, the Stone age and more recent artefacts... Lots of the writing was in French but there were hand held cards with English descriptions on so we read some that were interesting. 

Caden pointed out the Rhinoceros teeth, herbivorous! 

We marvelled at how Stone age man could chip away stone to such sharp and precise points for spears and cutting tools. 

We saw some more wood print on the concrete walls. We thought about how this could have happened. Would the wood patterns be easy to carve or would it be easier to simply press a piece of wood into the concrete to print the pattern on it. 

We read a card with information about what dolls and masks mean in Africa (generally). 

There were some incredible looking masks.  

We guessed that these little baskets might be for catching fish. 

Slightly sinister looking masks... used in all sorts of initiation rituals and for making contact with the ethereal apparently. 

We went up to the fine arts floor. This was something that I loved so much.... I had to share it. 

Caden enjoyed sitting and looking at some (but not all) the works of art. This was of a local River Charente scene. 

They thought it was funny to lay down and look at this one. I try to get them to tell me what is happening in each piece of art, where the light is coming from (the sun) by looking at the shadows and the lights. Little things they might miss like what is the season and what is happening behind the big, obvious stuff. Whether they like it or not....

I bought them a token from the shop. Caden chose a fossil, a polished ammonite. It was pretty cheap so I didn't mind. 6 Euros. Miles chose a piece of sparkly quartz rock for 4 Euros. I rarely buy them things from places like this so it was a special treat. 

We laughed at the enormous waiter... Caden took a wonky photo of us for his blog too. 

Swimming and coding

There is no doubt about it, Caden is a fully, fledged swimmer now! I am so chuffed for him. He wants to go swimming all the time to practise his new skill. At La Rochelle, we visited the water park. It was very good. Miles had loads of fun on the water slides (the fast one haha) sat on Mum's knee and Caden was brave enough to try the slow one all by himself (the minimum age is 6) and he loved it too, even the splash at the end, because he can swim now. So he was able to do the slides on his own. This is the first time I have been able to take them properly on water slides together, all these little milestones are making our lives that little bit easier, one step at a time. 

Miles was the amazing Shark Boy, half boy, half shark!! Caden didn't need any floats, he swam all over the place. He seems to have developed a little butterfly stroke all of his own, he swims under water, comes up for air, then swims under again... he can even do it completely out of his depth, deeper than I can stand up in. It's awesome! Now I have to get Miles swimming properly and I will be feeling a lot more confident with them around the canal. I still plan to take them swimming a lot so they practise and get stronger at it. 

We went for a nice walk one afternoon on a beautiful sunny day, they found two socks again who they are now calling Deux Chausettes..... Their spoken French is coming on, bit by bit... 

Caden is now doing one French lesson on Duolingo every day with me. He also got back onto his coding again today. Here are the boys having a play with 'Scratch Jr'. Even Miles can do this very basic programme, Caden got to grips with it immediately and has produced several 'films' already. I have bought him a game called Robot School. This is slightly more advanced programming than Scratch and it looks pretty accessibly in that the operator has to get the robot to a certain point by using the directions each time. These are like games to the kids but they are teaching really important introductory coding skills that I hope the boys will continue to build on.  We also played about on the 'Barefoot Atlas', I bought them some 'puzzle packs' which are quizzes about things like 'animals of the world', cities of the world' and 'famous worldwide art'. We have been having fun with that. The barefoot atlas is a very high quality app. I highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in geography and global natural history, we have learned about Edmund Hillary, what a Buddhist Monk is, that Japan has 1000 earthquakes a year and loads, loads more. 

One more nice thing that continues to happen throughout everything that Caden is doing is that his spelling, typing and English improve in the meaningful context of his daily life rather than some abstract textbook. 

We are continuing to have a nice time in France and we are looking forward to visiting Paris in two weeks. We already know we will be visiting the River Seine and seeing the Eiffel tower. The boys don't want to eat snails or frog's legs though. 

La Rochelle

I took the boys away for a weekend to La Rochelle which is on the Western French coast about 2.5 hours away from the farm we are staying on. It was a gorgeous drive across the country. There were vineyards the whole journey across. 

We have discovered that almost every fast food outlet, KFC, Macdonalds, has a children's play gym area. This is great for us as I am enjoying the espressos and the kids get to let off some steam....

We arrived at La Rochelle. The kids were both so excited about the aquarium, especially Caden.  

Selfie when we arrived. 

The harbour. 

The aquarium. 

The boys 'inside' the fish tank.... this is really an excellent aquarium, possibly the best I have been to. It puts our Sea Life centres to shame... the tanks are vast here and they are beautifully arranged... so colourful. All the fish and tanks look really well taken care of. There was enough information in English for us to learn about things. In particular Caden and I read about zooplankton and phytoplankton... there were some great jellyfish facts that we all enjoyed too. 

They are having a disco here in the shimmering lights..

Caden's favourite fish, a black flying gurnard.

Miles' fish.... almost as big as him. 

When we got to the shark tank, Caden was mesmerised.... the sharks were very impressive.... 

Us looking at shark jaws and teeth.. 

And this was Caden lost for about ten minutes... he sat there and just watched them swimming, he was so absorbed in it, the great whites swam over his head. You could see all their teeth, there was a saw fish too, he was in Caden heaven.... 

Then we found the pirahna section haha

Miles' favourite bit. He said he liked the jungle best. 

Outside there was a massive ship with Maritime Museum written on it, but the museum appeared to be closed so we took a walk around the harbour to look at the castle... 

...before stopping for an eclair and a meringue... 

I found an English pub and we went in for the obligatory 'pint'. They made moustaches with the straws and generally had fun! haha!

The next day we went out early to a local park and play area. The best thing about it all was the climbing tree we found. We all climbed it. 

I am taking them to a massive local water park this afternoon but we wont be able to take photos of course. http://www.palmilud.com/ this is where we are going. 

We saw some people doing Tai Chi in the park in their Winter gear. Very dedicated. 

Miles and his chewing leaf. 

We also found this bridge which looked like it was made of trunks but on closer inspection it was made of stone which had been shaped to look like wood. Caden ran off to touch a real tree trunk to compare the properties. It was interesting. The scuplting was very realistic.