“Crackers!” said Dumbledore enthusiastically, offering the end of a large silver noisemaker to Snape, who took it reluctantly.”

Home ed has gone out the window a little this week, and we've decided to focus the week on Christmas craft. If I'm honest we were in the Christmas wind down zone a couple of weeks back and it seems like all our other Home Ed buddies are feeling the same. With a list of things that Opeie wants to make he decided to kick off the week with home made Christmas crackers for the tree. I disappeared upstairs looking for patterned paper to use and while rummaging I found some Doctor who magazines that had the perfect pages in to make Christmas crackers fit for a Timelord.

Becci had brought Opeie a selection of cardboard tubes round over the last few weeks (that boy loves a cardboard tube). So we cut one of the tubes down so that we could support the main body of the crackers, folded the ends of the paper and cut in diamonds into the fold for where the ribbon would be tied. Then we unfolded and rolled the paper around the tube (nice and easy).

We had picked up a roll of Harry Potter wrapping paper a few days back that Opeie had spotted in a shop and as soon as we started making the crackers he told me that he wanted to make the hats with that, So much better than the hats that you usually get in crackers.

Opeie had the time of his life writing the jokes (which obviously I wasn't allowed to see) so I'll be looking forward to hearing those on Christmas Day. All that was left to do was to find something fun to put inside them and we came up with a pretty lovely idea, but I can't reveal it on here because our Christmas guest will be reading.

The crackers were a nice easy activity to kickstart a week of Christmas fun and its already making us  feel a little more festive. 

“Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.”

I love a good themed book day. It was Roald Dahl day a few weeks ago, world book day is always fully embraced in our house each year and now October 10th is apparently Star Wars reading day! With the force awakens release closing in on us the shops are filled with all sorts of products to coincide with the movie. It's great to see that aside from all the toys and games there is a great selection of themed reading material for the boys to get stuck in to. When I was younger there was nothing like the selection you get these and i would rely on getting annuals for Christmas each year.

My favourite books Star Wars themed that have been released are the recent Disney Scholastic Star Wars Work books. If I had have had theses when I was younger I'd have been in my element. Each book contains a huge amount of Numeracy and Literacy activities with each one being aimed at a specific age group. The activities and illustrations are really cute and even Jar Jar Binks is bearable in these books.

 Opeie loves the work books and has ploughed through most of them, the books don't really appeal to Seth though and he is definitely more interested in 'Grown up reading' these days. Dk books have released some amazing books over the years documenting all the things I loved growing up, especially Super heroes and Star Wars. We have the Star Wars character encyclopedia from a few years back so the recent releases, Star Wars in 100 Scenes and Star Wars Absolutely everything you need to know have been a well received addition to our ever growing home library for the boys.

 Now, Its a well known fact in Shropshire that Seth is possibly the worst joke teller in the county (possibly the country). Yesterdays joke was 'what do you call an egg that just keeps going?"..."Eggain!". I think the puzzled look on my face said it all. As you can imagine he was pretty excited (and we were relieved) when he started reading the Star Wars Joke Book.

I'm not saying Jabba's heavy but the last time he stepped on the scales it said, "to be continued".

or Seth's favourite, Why did the Ewok fall out of the tree? It was dead! I think the humour has been restored in our house.

And for me a bit of light reading with Jason Fry's The weapon of a Jedi, which as of yet Ive not started because I was too engrossed reading the DK books with the boys but I am looking forward to getting in to soon. Star Wars reading day was a blast and has continued over the last few weeks. Disney's merchandising for this movie so far has been amazing (but I expected nothing less from Disney) and there are lots of items we'd like to get our hands on over the coming months. I think there maybe a few things on Santa's list Star wars themed too this year.

And the reading awards for Star Wars reading day are as follows...

Of course I would have to be the Fishiest! “Laugh it up, fuzzball!”

As we all patiently await the release of the force awakens all this reading material has been an awesome distraction and the work books especially have been a great extra for Opeie's home educating. Now were off for a star Battle, guess who has to be Darth!

“Only at the end do you realize the power of the Dark Side.”

The End