New year, new projects

Happy New Year! We had a wonderful Christmas, split between Stoke and Gloucester, and Harlan was thoroughly spoiled by all the family, as usual. Despite being ill with suspected IBS on Christmas Day, he coped very well with the whole caboodle and the excitement and lack of sleep only caught up with him on New Years Eve, when he had a huge meltdown but has been fine since. Obviously needed to get it out of his system.

He is still Mario obsessed, but to encourage imaginative play we got him Mario soft toys. I was excited about two of his presents in particular; a bug vacuum, which harmlessly catches insects so you can observe them, and a wormery. The vacuum will get a lot of use this summer when the bugs flock to eat our homegrown veg! I've found an idea in a book to make a little house to attract bugs too, so he can make that with me and I'll help him identify any insects we find.

Today I filled his wormery with layers of soil and sand, and turned over the soil in the garden to catch some worms. Harlan took great delight in carefully putting worms of all shapes and sizes into the wormery and adding some fallen leaves. We discussed how they prefer dark to bright light and gently led him through the reasoning of this being because they live underground. He knows they will eat the rotting leaves and I explained how they pull them down under the ground, which makes the soil good for flowers to grow in. He is quite pleased that worms will help make "beautiful flowers" for him. We have a well illustrated encyclopedia of animals so I will see if there is a page on worms to look through with him, and find a few bits online too.

The rest of our day today has been taken up with a rather cold walk to the village to go to the library. We played I-spy on the way, and I discovered that he is good at working out the word when given the first letter, but struggles to identify the first letter/sound of an unfamiliar word. A few more games of I-spy should help with that! We spent about an hour at the library, reading and doing floor puzzles. We found two (!!!) Winnie the Witch books that we haven't read before, and another book by the same author (Korky Paul). We've also borrowed a fourth book, one from the "Mr Bear" series. We already have "Mr Bear's New Baby" and I was attracted to this one as the cover shows Small Bear being carried in a sling on Mr Bear's back.