Substitutiary locomotion

My smalls have been playing substitutiary locomotion for a few days now. It means 'giving life to things without' and they know about it thanks to "Bedknobs & Broomstick" by Mary Norton.

We first listened to the audio adaptation of the book on our gallivanting drive to Tuscany last year but it rather lost out to "The Magic City" by E Nesbit from which the deliverer and the destroyer totally captured them for days.

When I told the smalls that the Grandmother of a friend in our home ed group was the actual, real Mary Norton they were keen to listen again and so, on the beautiful countryside drive to Intech last week, we listened again. The book is very different to the film. Set in a different period in time, the children are not the cheeky voiced war evacuees as in the film but are the upper middle class children of a working mother. When we returned home we did have to watch the film version though as comparing books and films is a favoured topic of conversation for number one small.

The idea of giving life to things without has totally captured them. At frequent intervals I will hear a cry of "Treguna Mekoides and Tracorum Satis Dee." The scene in the film where the horses line up for battle being a particular favourite which inspired the painting at the top of the post by 6 year old small.

In the book the children bring home a man whose home in 17th century London is close to the origin of the Great Fire of London. So captured were the smalls by this that on Friday we included Pudding Lane and Monument in our walk from London Bridge to the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. It is amazing where a story book can take you.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have worried that for hours on end they have done very little but play, lost in a world of imagination, not any more. Now I know it is their raison d'etre.

Judging by the toys all over the floor I might be needing help from substitutiary locomotion myself with the clear-up.