Has anyone seen Munchkin?

"You know mum, writing in Japanese is much easier than English because you write in symbols not letters", said my thirteen year old son.

"How do you know?" I asked him ,

"Well I've been teaching myself Japanese.Look here are the words I've written down,"

And he proceeded to explain how different symbols were different sounds, and that there were three classes of Japanese language.

I shouldn't be surprised at how he stumbles across knowledge without being taught after all these years, but it still fascinates me. He struggles with the physical act of writing and we took the decision early on to encourage the use of a key board because his spelling and vocabulary are well ahead of his peers and his struggle with forming letters was getting in the way of his imagination. 

His fingers now fly over the keyboard without a thought. But his comment that Japanese was 'easy' to write made me once again question why. I came to the conclusion that it is writing in patterns and shapes - something which, as a visual learner, he is good at.

Since then the family has been bombarded by apparently fluent Japanese phrases such as birthday cake, birthday card- important subjects when you officially become a teenager next week.

So whilst her twin brother has been learning Japanese my daughter decided to turn to the more mundane and practical task of actually making a cake, a chocolate cake , which her brother happily devoured  at teatime.

Then we got down to the business of designing a wind  chime for the garden. A project inspired by a photo on pin interest. This is what we ended up with and  was just as therapeutic as cooking in the kitchen!

Then it was off to our local horticultural show. The show,which is in it's 134th year is a wonderful show case of the talent and creativity in the village and there were some very inspiring ideas for using vegetables such as this.....

or this.....

or making creations from old wellies like dogs.....

and swans..........

or the more demure craft of floral arrangements

As with any village show there is always time for a chat and a gossip and as my daughter and I left together with our visitor we were asked,

"Can you keep your eye out for Munchkin when you are walking through the village. He disappeared 5 days ago when we were on holiday"

" What does he look like?" I asked, assuming I was keeping a look out for the family pet. "Oh you can't miss him," came the reply - "he's brown and quite large.He's a cow you see."