Star Wars Identities and Hyde Park

We took a trip to the Star Wars Identities exhibit at the O2 this week and it was AMAZING.

 Really educational as well as just having loads of awesome Star Wars memorabilia.

The kids were shocked by how small the ships were and couldn't believe that the real Millennium Falcon was not much bigger than the Lego one.

 The exhibit walks you through the lives of Anakin and Luke Sky-Walker, explaining how their identities were shaped by things like genetics, culture, parenting, beliefs and values, peer influence and more.

It also allows you to create your own character as you go.

It was really well done and definitely worth a visit if you are in London.

There's also a Nissan advertisement 'innovation centre' that we stopped for a play in. The kids loved the Virtual reality station and doing a quiz about the cars.

After that we went to the Diana Memorial for a play (it was a beautiful day) and got some juices from a market on Queensway.

All in all a really fun day out.

Rainforest Centre

Today we went to the rain forest centre in Newbury. It was amazing and we had a great tour from a lady about all the edible things. From coffee and vanilla to insects, rodents, birds and even turtles!

The fish were incredible, so big!

My favourite part was the Sloth.

We learned about the symbiotic relationship between agouti and the brazil nut tree (google it, it's cool) and how over hunting is causing problems. 

We learned a little about climate and the four different layers of the rainforest, as well as animal adaptations that allow them to live there. 

It's a great centre, with a wide range of work sheets to keep little ones interested. Well worth a visit if you are in the area. 

The children's favourite bird was a curacao called 'Luigi'

Water sports day

Cosmo had great fun at Caldecotte lake yesterday, building a raft and then canoeing with his friends from our home ed co-op. Lychee wasn't old enough to go (for insurance purposes) so I had to stay home with her, but some friends kindly sent me pictures. 

Not Back to School trip

This week is Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish new year, and generally when we would restart our homeschool after a loooooooong summer break hanging out with daddy. It's a fun day of starting out with fresh curriculum and books; and eating lots of sweet things (we have fruit, yoghurt and honey for lunch!) to remind ourselves of how sweet and good God is.

Our home-ed co-op. however, prefers to start a little earlier, and this year, we decided to join them on a trip to Prestatyn in Wales. It was so much fun to go with our cousins and the kids had a fantastic time.

We went to surf school at Surf Snowdonia, to great Orme copper mines and on a fossil hunt; we played on the beach, in an incredibly mild ocean; we went to Conwy castle and on an audio tour of an Edwardian house.

It was great fun to catch up with old friends, as one of Cosmo's favourite buddies who left our co-op last year made the effort to book in to the same resort and hang out with us all.

On the way home we stopped in at Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the MAD museum. It was incredible and the kids loved playing with all the exhibits, particularly a typewriter that was attached to fishing wires, which tapped glasses that had been tuned to different pitches.

You can see our video of what we did below:

Butterfly World

Today we went on a trip with our co-op to Butterfly world.

The kids had a great workshop where they got to hold different insects and even giant snails (both my kids refused to touch anything "Mummy! That's absolutely disgusting!") but really enjoyed the leaf cutter ant exhibit. 

  

They also loved being in the butterfly house with all the butterflies floating around. Lychee and her cousin Bon had a lot of fun seeing who could get closest without touching one.

 

The musical garden was a great play area too and inspired me to get some larger items for ours.



Everyone was exhausted on the way home, especially having spent the weekend at Alton Towers already, but we had a really fun time.

South Africa!

We've had an amazing Easter holiday in South Africa visiting family, but it's also been a crazy fun learning experience.

dissecting fruits and seeds

It turns out that Little Lychee had no idea lions and elephants were real animals (she had imagined them to be like dragons and fairies) so that was a big surprise; and it was the first trip that both children can remember flying on an aeroplane.

Some of my favourite home ed experiences though have to the children collecting and dissecting seed pods, just to see what was inside, and then googling to find out what they were (admittedly because they wanted to know if they were edible). They loved trying out all the new fruits that we hadn't really seen in England - even though several of them were the same, they just look different because of the climate they grow in. A green grapefruit that's three times the size of any grapefruit you've seen before is essentially a new fruit to a four year old and a seven year old.


Another favourite was recreating a game park with sticks and leaves, and then building a house for little animals like geckos, complete with a braii and benches outside of it.

Gecko shelter

Mini game park with watering hole

Excitingly Cosmo took it on himself to write a travel diary, journalling what we did each day, so that he could share it with his cousins when he got home. This is a great achievement for someone who generally dislikes written work. 

It was also really interesting to watch the children at a bird park we went to in Montecasino. Obviously Little Lychee loved all the pretty birds and wanted to collect their feathers for her collection. Cosmo on the other hand, barely gave them a glance. He wanted to read the signs at each enclosure carefully, more than once, to learn the facts about each bird, then he was ready to go. Personally I feel that he could have got that information from a book, so it seems an odd thing to do at the park, but he was happy and thought it was a great trip. Just goes to show, you never can tell what your child is going to find interesting until you let them decide for themselves!

You can click on the video below to see more photos of our adventures.

Flow Rider Fun

It's been a super busy weekend! Wiggles was in a boys brigade bowling competition down in Dunstable this weekend, and placed really well, and then on Sunday he was lucky enough to get the opportunity to have a go at climbing and learning to surf at Flow Rider this weekend.

Here's the video:

Lychee and I went to the park and made friends with another little girl and chatted to her mum about Home ed. Turns out she was interested in doing it, but didn't know there was anyone locally, so I was able to give her contact details for our co-op and Lychee looks forward to her new friend joining our sports class soon :-)

We also had some fun with Perler beads and she made a lovely horse which she has uploaded for a new DIY badge. 

Making Chocolates

 We had a great time making raw chocolates this morning and can't wait to taste them a little later on when they've set. We even made our own instructional video to share for Lychee to earn a DIY skill for her 'Chef' badge.  You can watch the video below:

Valentines Activity

 Looking for a fun activity for valentines day? How about learning to make genuinely healthy, organic and fairly traded chocolate? That's what we are going to be doing. I'm told it's easy enough for the kids to join in with too.

You could also do a study on fair trade, it's a little early (fair trade fortnight starts on the 23rd of February) but personally I think they've missed a trick because everyone will be marketed nasty commercial not fairly traded chocolate for valentines day without giving it a second though just nine days earlier.

The fair trade website has tonnes of free resources aimed at all age groups which look great and I will definitely be looking at these both with the teenagers I work with and my own two.

And if you are looking for links to buy the ingredients you need, you can find them at the bottom of yesterday's post on my other blog. :-)

Parkour

Cosmo has recently discovered his new favourite sport - Free running.

There's a club near us in Milton Keynes and a friend has set up a day time class for home educated kids and it is so much fun.

Two hours every Tuesday of this:

During which time Lychee and I get to go shopping together, which is nice. It's always fun to get some time 'just the girls' too.

Art Class

My children are so into art right now. Cosmo has been teaching Lychee about the art and crafts he does at boys brigade throughout the week. Last week it was blow painting fireworks (she liked that a lot).

This week we missed brigades :-( 

In lieu of her 'art class' from Cosmo, I decided to get out our sketch books (darn it, I lost mine) and follow some really cute lessons that I had found on pinterest (you can follow my homeschool art board here).

Today we started with exploring different types of lines.

I drew this:

Cosmo drew this:

And Lychee drew this:

Tomorrow's lesson: Shapes

Community Tree Trust

Lychee went for a play date with a friend today, and Cosmo went to an activity day with the community tree trust organised by our home ed co-op.

He's had so much fun, taking plant cuttings, building scarecrows, identifying nuts, pressing apple juice and so much more. He particularly enjoyed learning how the storm kettles work (like a chimnea with a water jacket).

Here's the video:

Ickwell Nature Reserve

Lychee woke up, now officially a four year old, and decided to commandeer one of my T-shirts as a dress. More and more she is wanting to wear my things, be it slippers or hair clips, she's just so desperate to grow up. When all the other children are playing she likes to have a cup of tea with the mummies. Sometimes I can't decide whether she really is shy or if she just really wants to be a grown up.

To be honest, she looked remarkably cute in the T-shirt/dress (more so than I did!) so I'm going to let her keep it.




The T-shirt was originally my little sisters (I got a massive new wardrobe when she emigrated -sad story) and I love it. The 'Beloved' logo is cute enough, but what you probably can't quite read underneath is the red script which says 'because you never looked more beautiful than in His eyes'. I really do love the One Truth brand clothing.

Lychee wore it to come on a fun day out with some friends at Ickwell nature reserve. Several people were camping for the whole weekend, sadly we had to leave because I had a wedding today.

Cosmo and Lychee had great fun climbing trees, catching insects with her new bug hunting kit and generally building dens and stick fighting with lots of new friends.

Cosmo's highlight was teaching other children how to use his fire steel to make little fires. He just loves it when he is confident in a skill that takes others a bit of practice. It's a great way of getting him to talk more easily when he is feeling shy.

Lychee's favourite part was catching crawdad (my kids love that song) and cooking them. She didn't eat them, but both kids loved running around checking the traps and seeing how many were there. We of course, did eat them and they were very delicious.

Here's the video:

Wicksteed Park

It's the end of the summer term and our home ed co-op decided to celebrate with a visit to wicksteed park.
It was awesome.

Easter Holidays and Pet Eggs

The Easter holidays were so much fun. We had beautiful weather and it was great to spend lots of time playing outdoors, digging in the garden and general enjoying the sun.

The children played their first ever game of cricket, watching the new baby tadpoles in our pond, and even took part in some of the planting out.

We started our 'Kitchen Chemistry' online course and they loved experimenting with molecule density using the toaster from the boy's kitchen and a bin bag, and experiment that was repeated with a hair dryer and a mini hot air balloon on a camping trip over the Easter weekend.

Heated molecules are less dense

The children also went to the energy show at the science museum in London with their dad and had a fantastic time as well as Cosmo going camping in the peak district with daddy to climb a 'mountain'.

We had a lovely time celebrating passover with my sister's family and some friends, and the children took great joy in the charoset (I used mango, pear and cinnamon with walnut) as well as joining in with some really fun songs.

 But the part the children have been most excited about this Easter is getting their 'pet eggs'.

We currently have ten eggs incubating in the school room and the children cannot wait to see them hatch. They've been very diligent in checking the temperature regularly and topping up the water and the eggs are due to hatch Thursday or Friday.

I'm sure I'll manage to film it, and will post it here after. The baby chicks will then live in our house 6-9 weeks (weather dependant) and then move out into the chicken coop and run that we have built for them in the orchard.

Exciting times!

DIY.org

Maybe this isn't news to some of you, but I have only recently discovered the awesomeness that is DIY.org.

From what I've gathered so far, it's kind of like the online answer to why I went to brownies - to earn badges. Only these badges are way cooler. They're chunky, hexagonal, embroidered patches, and you earn them for completing three tasks in a skill area. 

You simply upload a video or photo of yourself completing a task, someone reviews it and validates your reward. 

Badges are awarded for all kinds of stuff, my kids are keen for the backyard farmer, Lego master and minecrafter badges; but the range is as diverse as architect, bee keeper and dancer to mycologists, geneticist and sys admin!! 

Here's a video my kids made for one of their 'backyard farmer' skills.

The only downside to this whole thing is that it's based in the USA. Although their postage charges are very reasonable ($2 to ship to England) it obviously takes a while to get over here. Long enough that Cosmo is questioning me about whether there is a real badge or if it's just on the website (which incidentally, would still be fun to so if you didn't want to invest in the patches...) 

Each kid gets their own "stream" of activity which other people can follow, and they can follow others, either to keep up with what a friend is doing, or for inspiration. 

The best part is that as a parent, you get a log in too. The site emails me to approve everything my kids upload, so there is little to no chance of anything stupid being naievely posted online - unless you naievely thought it would be okay too, which you can't really blame your kid for... 

We think this is awesome, and it's a great boredom buster when you are scratching for ideas to do with the kids. A lot of the skills don't require much equipment and are pitched at several levels, so whilst my backyard farmers are planting celeriac, someone else might be caring for livestock. 

Definitely worth a poke around in your free time, and if you do sign up, message me your user name; the kids and I would like to follow you :0)

In unrelated news, lychee has enjoyed drawing cats this week.