Yoga Babe

Emily went to her first yoga class today, and she absolutely loved it. She was supposed to be in the 4-7 class, but they've put her in the 8-12 years class which will be fantastic for her as it will really stretch her abilities. She's by far the youngest there, the others are all in year 6 or in senior school, but her teacher said she did really, really well so she's very chuffed! Straight in at the deep end with lots of sanskrit names to learn and meditations to get used to as well as the poses. Emily will be working towards level one for the next ten weeks, but it's excellent that she's in the higher level class as she has to join in with what they're doing (even though she doesn't have to memorise it all) so she'll already have had lots of practice in the more advanced work by the time she gets there.

She's come home bouncing, with a list of the poses she has to learn and detailed instructions for practice. At the end of each lesson they have a lucky dip bag where they get things like incense cones, wooden fragrancers or candles to help with the meditation, so she's going to decorate up a pretty box to keep her bits and bobs in. The studio is absolutely gorgeous! It's an alternative treatment centre as well as a studio and the waiting/reception area is beautiful with subdued lighting, incense and lots of yoga and zen books to read. It looks (like most of the rest of Gainsborough, lol) like a dump from the outside, so I was even more impressed when we got in there.

Earlier on today Emily and Jon went for a ramble in the woods near the church - they were gone for ages, and found lots of interesting "stuff" to collect. Sadly, they did also see (and get very close to, they'd almost stumbled onto it since the poor thing was blinded with swollen eyes) a rabbit with the late stages of myxomatosis, which was upsetting.

Education wise today we spent a long time looking at our local ordnance survey map, spotting symbols, finding familiar places, our house and friends' homes, measuring the distances between points and searching on the map for evidence of historical settlements (found quite a lot of those). Emily took to the map work with great enthusiasm and was rather cross when time ran out, so I daresay we'll look into that in greater detail soon. At this rate, if she's that keen, I may yet feel inspired to do something about local history and local geography after all. The Ordnance Survey/ education section seems to have a lot of ideas, must investigate further.

Off the opticians, library and swimming tomorrow. Assuming I can remember to get us up in time to pick up Emily's glasses - memory like a seive at the moment. Jon's reminded me three times at least today, and I'd still forgotten about it until he mentioned it again a minute ago!