Wednesday the 3rd of September was the date set for the next installment of Redwall!
For those who don’t know, a group of us have been reading through these books by Brian Jacques and having fun "book club" days. Up until now, they have been hosted by the Luptons. With their early departure to the USA (sob), The Bellmaker Day was rescheduled to September.
Our household had to "gear up" as I had offered to take over from Donna as the organiser of the day. The boys helped with the preparations in the week preceding. We made a Pinata in the shape of a bell.
Stephen made up some introductory words and we had people identify the characters from their pictures as a condition of door entry. The picture is not coming up on shutterfly right now so I will have to try and reload it…
Once we got to our friends’ house, her children and mine helped to fill water bombs for one of the games – even though it was …brrrr…cold….
We decorated the place with maps, posters and books from the series and everyone came dressed as their favourite character from the book.
Stephen was Rab Streambattle, Zac was Finnbarr Galedeep, Adam was Blaggut and Mark was Mousebabe.
Everyone else explained to the group why they had chosen their character. I must say that this is one of my favourite parts of the whole day as I hear why the children have liked the various characters. It was also great because this was the first time that Mark stood up and spoke up for himself – he seemed so grown up!
We had some colourful characters too. Urgan Nagru dressed with great style…
and one who chose her character because her mother told her to!!!
Maybe that’s because she couldn’t make up her mind which character to be…and now I can’t remember which one she said she actually was!!! Ummmm, can you tell I was laughing too hard at the time???
I could go through all the characters but it would take me too long, besides, the children are in other photos as well so you will see the costumes on the way through. Needless to say, we did have one Bellmaker so he needs to get a mention here:
After this introduction time, we played bingo with the character names and then divided into groups for a "who said what?" game. There were some intense expressions as the problem solving got under way…
Some had a more "laid back" approach…
although it didn’t help them solve it faster than anyone else!
After some good rousing (or should I say ear-piercing?) war cries, we were off outside to conquer an obstacle course. I was too busy making sure everyone was doing the obstacle course to take photos at this point. Each team member had to run down into the gorge, across the dry river bed, up to the rock hill, pick up a weapon, run back, jump through some hoops, dodge some water bombs and tag their next team member so they could run the next leg. Apart from a couple of scrapes and some over-eager water-bombers, this worked out okay.
The next activity was to use the words of the "Shrum Song" and staying in groups, come up with a nice tune to sing just before lunch. I thought this would be a good idea as most hadn’t managed to get the audiobook for this one and wouldn’t have heard the song before. Zac had typed it up for me beforehand and each group had ten minutes to try and sing the same tune as their team members. I made the parents the judges for this one. Here’s some photos of the groups in action:
Two Meldrums were in this group and their song was proclaimed the winner.
After a quick prayer, we started lunch. I was pulled up for being the rookie I am by Mother Liz, who works so hard in the "kitchens" – I had forgotten to let her introduce all the lovely foods which made up our feast for the day… I also didn’t get to photograph it all before everyone tucked in. Maybe that’s why it was easier when I was photographer for Donna because she was too busy to take some of the shots!!!
Anyway, here’s what I got:
We had such lovely offerings (and this was not all of them): Veggible quiches, Haversack crumble, Strawberry fizz, Autumn oat favourites, Damson wine, Hotroot soup, Harvest Vegetable Soup, Summer Salad, Cheese and onion hogbake, October Ale, Spiced Gatehouse Tea Bread,Apple Fizz, Spring Garden Salad Delight, Dibbuns’ Delights, Spring kiwi ale, Warriors’ Staples (aka sausage rolls made by one of the dads), Cheerful Churchmouse Berry Crisp, crusty bread and these beautiful hedgehog rolls made by one of the girls:
After the feast, it was time for the quiz, an animal match-up game and the pinata.
Of course, I should have blindfolded them all because it cracked after two people…at least they had fun chasing down all the sweets!
and even though this was the end, I think they all had fun. I know that our family did and we are hoping to get an earlier start on reading the next book!
So…watch this space because in November, we plan to have the next day forOutcast of Redwall.
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