What are London/SE mumsnetters doing with their children this half term - it's one day in, I have a cold and am ready to kill!

[Aloha]

Ds is five and dd is two. Have booked to take ds to see Flat Stanley at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon, we are going to a bookshop and toyshop today to spend dd's birthday money....we may do a daytrip to France on Friday (ds's idea!)...any other ideas? Please! Feel sure there is lots of exciting stuff out there that I can drive to and isn't too frighteningly expensive.

Aloha - Flat Stanley in Wimbledon - please give me more info. Its DS's all time favourite book and we are just down the road.

This half term we will mostly be doing chicken pox and I will be skulking in the office to escape.

Discover in Stratford is absolutely fab
www.discover.org.uk

lots of special things on during hols
well worth a visit

Next Saturday is Chinese New Year...trip to China town? Always great fun

We are doing swimming, a mini-beast hunt with local NCT, lunch with a similarly afflicted Mner, fobbing off on grandparents for one anxious will-they-all-kill-each-other unavoidable day (that's today, gibber), Wagamama and Hampton Court.

Well, ours isn't until next week but so far We're going to London Zoo on Friday (inset day and DS1s birthday). 19th, we're stuck indoors as w/machine, t/dryer and fridgefreezer are being picked up by rental people, hopefully another day that week we'll be stuck in waiting for the new stuff to be delivered. We'll probably go to the Horniman, look at the stuffed animals and the fish. Maybe put their bikes in the car and go up to Dulwich Park? I get paid on the 26th, so I might bundle them in the car drive to Brighton and we'll eat fish and chips and throw stones in the water.

science museum
Natural history museum
Greenwich Park,Maritime Museum(fab),Cutty Sark

Bocketts Farm in Leatherhead
NCT mates for lunch at Brent Cross - could be a huge mistake but it's equi-distant now i've moved back to London.

'spect Kew will feater - as ever!

might try Heathrow Gym as i've not been before.

maybe Syon as well

walking with beasts exhibition at wally-bum-bum

numbers exhibition at the Livesey museum on Old Kent Road

City farm

swimming at Jags

wth is wally-bum-bum?

oh marina, how annoying that your half term is this week. Hampton Court's not far from us at all!

We will be bog-snorkelling there at this rate FIS. Weather forecast is a shocker
Dh has the only not-tipping-it-down day this week from the look of it!

that's a shame marina - lots of lovely river walks darn these parts. The tickets are quite expensive for HC but don't think your little one has to pay. If you want to combine it with Wagamamas, there's one in Kingston.

i really want to know what wally-bum-bum is!!

Ooh, thanks for all the fab ideas. Yes, forgot the numbers exhibition at the Livesey! Flat Stanley is on at the Polka theatre - still seats available for morning performances. We are going next Sat at 10.30am.
Have been to Discover loads, but it is ds's favourite place in the world...might let my mum take him tomorrow while I work.
Forgot it was Chinese New Year. They like Chinatown, but are in Wimbledon in the morning...will ponder.
And yes, the Horniman will do doubt beckon at some point. My friend with three children says if she never sees the Horniman again in her life it will be too soon
London zoo is great. Ds had a school trip there at the end of term though, but he wants to go again. Is v v expensive though.
Paddlechick, Wally-Bum-Bum derives from a trip a while back with ds 5 and dd 2. The centrepiece of the Horniman Museum's collection of stuffed animals is an absolutely massive stuffed Walrus on a polystyrene iceberg. Ds was wandering around it, inspecting it, when he suddenly stopped, peered more closely and announced, loudly, 'Look Mummy, you can see right up the walrus's bottom', and indeed, there was the walrus's anus, lovingly preserved. Dd thought this was wonderful and jumped from foot to foot bellowing, 'Wally Bum Bum! Wally Bum Bum!' The Horniman is now known as 'The Wally Bum Bum' in our house, and on arrival ds and dd charge in at top speed yelling, 'We're going to see the Wally Bum Bum!' It's all very refined.

Without that interesting back (passage) story aloha, I somehow sensed this was going to be SE London's no 1 stalwart half-term venue, the Horniman

Mine - both, even the preschooler - are rampaging like wild beasts around the Inferiority Complex (why is it, I ask myself, that my children have inherited my ability to stomp around sounding like a 16stone truck driver?) accompanied by one of their mates, and being babysat by said mates' lovely 15 year old cousin. Tomorrow we go away for the night (must pack wellies). On Thursday they are under the tender care of mates' mother (I cannot help feeling she loses out on this deal as she gets both Inferiorettes for the price of her one) and well, Friday, I guess it's the walrus, don't you?

DD (turning 6 this week) is currently at Tate Britain with a pal. They set off with sketch pads, coloured pencils and enough money for a hot chocolate/piece of cake.

Tomorrow will be a trip to do errands - buy school shoes and visit the toy store to get ideas of how she'd like to spend her allowance. Think we might also go to the cinema to see Charlotte's web

Wednesday is Lion King matinee, Thursday is an art class and Friday is playdate with mates followed by Pizza Express.

Agree the weather forecast is shocking, so as fallback ideas for indoor activities might consider the Aquarium, or soft play or indoor ice skating in Bayswater or even the IMAX cinema near Waterloo. Of course, I haven't checked to see if any of these things are actually available during the day during this week....

This half term I will mainly be lurking in our spare room/office.

On Sunday I waved my mother off (trip to Australia for 6 weeks), wished good luck to our Czech cleaner and emergency babysitter as she is returning to the Czech Republic for exploratory surgery on her knee and then popped up at 6 o'clock to see our live-in nanny to check that she was OK to babysit for DH's birthday dinner that night (she'd had a migraine on Friday). Nanny clearly not alright at all; it wasn't a migraine, it was the first symptoms of full-blown flu. With half-term starting in a little over 12 hours, it was a childcare 'perfect storm'. DH and I had a surprising and heart-warmingly co-operative conversation about how we could each juggle meetings and commitments and somehow manage half-term between us, before I saw the light and hired sight-unseen a newly-arrived South African 26yo KS1 supply teacher looking for work over half term - thank you Gumtree.com.

She arrived at lunchtime, she seems absolutely lovely and she has already been teaching in Woking, but I think there may be a special place reserved in Hell for a mother who swans off to her office in London for a whole week leaving her children in the care of someone she found at the 11th hour on the internet and whose references she hasn't yet managed to check.

Earlybird - wow - I don't let DS1 go out with his friends at all yet, and he's 7.5!

As for what the DDs are going to do - I'm way past caring about a minor detail like that! The Spectrum Centre in Guildford (multiple pools and slides, skating, soft play and junior bowling) will undoubtedly feature largely.

Oh yes, the lurking. I'm lurking too. Apart from when they CHARGED into an interview I was conducting (by phone - fortunately with a childminder, for a piece I'm writing) with various loo-related queries.

I did escape to pay the paper bill this morning.

Oh dinosaur - hasten to add, they are not on their own! Chaperoned by a babysitter hired for the afternoon so I could get some work done today - and guess what? I'm stumped by something, so popped on here!

Aloha, thanks for pointer re Flat Stanley. I phoned them up this morning re tickets. DD is currently at the "scrofolous medieaval peasant" looking stage of chicken pox so we are trying to work out when it is safe to take her out in public without causing shrieks of alarm.