Oh it’s been a busy Bank Holiday weekend, today we took the kids into central London to Tate Modern to their free Super Start event, a series of kid art activities. Girl Lacer likes Tate Modern anyway (and I think Boy Lacer likes the grating), so we thought it would be a good day out. Would have helped however if we’d checked our train line was running today (it wasn’t), so a bit of a detour later, a lovely walk along the South Bank (one of my favourite bits of London)
View of St. Pauls from the South Bank
We even saw a bunch of artists building a giant sofa and coffee table out of sand on the banks of the river (the river was low).
Once in Tate Modern, we discovered what had happened to ‘the crack’ that we saw last time we went to Tate Modern, you could still see it’s outline on the floor of the Turbine Hall, it just looked liked they’d filled it in with a giant pot of polyfilla!
At first glance the activities we’d set out for weren’t that successful, over crowded and not really suitable for Boy Lacer. But me and Girl Lacer squeezed into an activity making acetate pictures and then we all went and tried again at the big art activities down on the ground floor and we got in and both kids had a blast. The first one was collage making and rubbings, Boy Lacer actually learnt today how to use a Pritt Stick (glue stick), he even went as far as putting the lid back on when he finished with it! So he had a great time sticking bits of tissue paper and polystyrene on paper.
After the collage making we even had an even bigger break through than learning to use a Pritt Stick from Boy Lacer, there were a number of squishy, colourful cubes in the room and away from the art making a little girl was throwing them around and running around with them, Boy Lacer then goes and picks one up, starts throwing it around to and then picks up the cube and runs (read: walking very quickly for him) around the room after the little girl who clearly wants to play. That is honestly the first time I’ve ever seen him play spontaneously with another child that isn’t his sister 
.
After that we went on to do some drawing with oil pastels and some painting, which they both loved to, the staff there even made us folders to carry our paintings home with us! We also got some great freebies, I’m a ‘posh’ reusable bag freak and I got a great big green one with ‘The Bigger Picture’ in white capitals, perfect for the shopping!
Then when they called it the end of the day, we had a quick pop into the shop there (which I always think is worth membership to Tate Modern alone just for the 10% discount, not that I have membership but that’s more of a cost / time issue). The Tate Modern shop has such lovely stuff, particularly in their childrens section, the kids had some pocket money to spend from their Great Grandma so Girl Lacer brought a pack of make your own cards and some badges and Boy Lacer descended on a ‘Draw me a picture Louie’ book although it’s not really suitable for him yet, he’ll like looking at the pictures. I might ‘borrow’ it as I like Draw me a Picture Louie when it’s on TV, the character Louie tells you how to draw various things and it’s the only time I ever draw anything nice! There was lots of gorgeous stuff I liked in there to, I tried to ignore the nice canvas bags (although Mr. Lacer was teasing me with them) and I just drooled a little over a lovely set of alphabet stamps!
So now back home and glad we’re not doing anything more exotic than buying nappies tomorrow! I’ve just tried an old Jamie Oliver recipe which is basically crushed up maltesers over icecream, delicious as it obviously was (how could something like that go wrong) I now feel thoroughly over-sugared!
