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:

Human Microbiome

We've been talking about bacteria again (seriously, Cosmo is obsessed)!

So if you have a little one who'd like to understand more about the human microbiome, we found this video which is a great overview.

Making Candy

We made our own 'pulled taffy' the other week using pure honey and just adding a few essential oils for flavour and it was so fun! I'll be honest, my kids did not particularly like how it felt on their hands, but I had a lot of fun and they were so proud of their finished products.

If you want to have a go it is super easy. Just boil some honey with a candy thermometer until it reaches 140c for at least five minutes. Then tip it out on a non-stick sheet and use spatulas to move it around until it's cool enough to touch.

At this stage you need to grease your hands with butter and then you just pull and fold, incorporating as much air as you can. When it's only barely warm add a few drops of your favourite essential oils (we used, peppermint in one batch, lemon in another, orange in a third and left one plain). Essential oils are volatile, so it's best to add them as cool as you can get away with if you want the flavour to last.

When you've twisted and pulled as much as you can and the candy is pretty hard, you can cut it into shapes, wrap it in waxed paper and store in the fridge.

Even though they didn't like getting messy (there were tears over butter on hands) the kids enjoyed watching the process and learning how candy was made.

The second time we made some honeycomb. I adapted this recipe I found, but boiling the honey again, but I added a mix of 50:50 bicarbonate of soda and ascorbic acid (vitamin C powder). The acid in the vitamin C ensured we got a good reaction from the baking soda and we had a slightly chewier than I'd have liked honeycomb. I think next time I need to boil the honey a little longer.

Still, the kids really liked this one. 

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!

Every Single Thing is a Learning Opportunity

I've heard that phrase so many times in the Home educating community, how there is a lesson in everything, and simply having your children 'do life' with you, and answering their many 'why' questions is all the education they need.

This week we all got a horrible bug. Think vomiting, temperature, and snot so bad that I had to change the little ones bed linen because she wok up with it everywhere. If I'd known it was going to be like this I would have bought shares in kleenex ultrabalm.

However, as I said, there is a learning opportunity in here somewhere. As I was burning some tissues, my son asked me why I was making fire when we were already feeling hot (I was actually feeling quite shivery, but his assumption was that if he felt hot I must be too). I explained that we didn't want the viruses in the tissues to be sat around the house.

'Viruses like streptococcus?' (his current favourite strain of bacteria - do schooled children have those?)
'Well streptococcus is a bacteria.' I explained. 'A virus is a little bit different. Remember?' We did a lap book on this quite recently.
'Oh, well what's this virus called?'

I said I wasn't sure, but that I suspected it to be influenza. I don't feel like that was too misleading. After all, it's not like we have a lab I could check our snot in and actually find out, and flu symptoms fit. Obviously, you can't just say something like that to a four year old without more questions arising though.

I pulled google up on the iPad (gosh  I love it!) and we searched for images of influenza. First we looked at actual photos, then we looked at some diagrams.

Diagram of the Flu Virus

Actually, he had some really intelligent questions, and I started explaining what each part of the virus was for (thankfully I had google open on my iphone too), what a 'lipid' is and why hemagglutinin is like the spikes on the stickle bricks.

So even a 'sick day' turns into an educational day at home, which makes it pretty hard to fill out our registers for our homeschool co-op. When would you ever use an 'Absent' or 'Illness' code?

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On a completely unrelated note, Cosmo swam five metres on his back in his swimming lesson today! exciting times!

What's in the Bible discount

In case I haven't made it clear enough in the past, we LOVE 'What's in the Bible?' DVDs from JellyTelly.

JellyTelly actually have a tonne of free videos that you can watch, including some episodes of 'Adventures in Odyssey' and, my children's personal favourites, 'Clive and Ian's Wonderblimp of Knowledge' (how do they come up with this stuff?). My personal favourite's are Dr Von Schniffenhausen's science lessons.

Anyway, as much fun as the freebies are, the 'What's in The Bible?' DVDs are out of this world great. They bring together short, funny clips on a theme and introduce children to concepts such as 'salvation' and early church history in easy, manageable ways. My children have learnt loads and we've really enjoyed it too.

They make an excellent addition to any christian home, and right now JellyTelly are offering 20% off through a referral scheme. You get 20% off, I get a $10 gift certificate. Win, Win.

Click here for 20% off

And just to whet your appetites, here's a clip of one of my favourite songs from one of the DVDs. 

Bubble hunting

I love that pretty much anything counts as educational when you home school. Today we are mostly working hand eye co-ordination by bubble hunting.

Cosmo had a question he wanted answered yesterday; what happens if you shoot a bubble with your water gun? Does it get bigger, become lots of small bubbles, or disappear?

Obviously I wanted to conduct a scientific experiment (plus it was sunny and sounded like fun) so we invented bubble hunting.

I make bubbles, Cosmo shoots them.

Actually it's surprising how quickly his accuracy improved. He can now hit a bubble from a fair distance.

Lychee is chasing them down too, although she is just smacking them with her gun.

Mostly she is just playing on the slide though.

Centre of the cell

Its taken me ages to get around to writing this, but in half term we went to a vicious venoms and poisonous parasites workshop at centre of the cell in London.

The day began with a train journey into London, or should I say Luton, where I got kicked off the train for having a cheap ticket. Turns out I'm not allowed to ride on virgin trains if I have an FCC ticket, much to my sisters amusement.

Anyway, we made it to centre of the cell, which was fantastic. They really do cater to all ages, with questions simple enough for a four year old to understand and knowledge deep enough to hit GCSE requirements and more.

The first section was called a 'pod show' and you get inside a pod which is shaped like an 8 day old embryo.

There are huge screens on the ceiling where they show videos at various points through the show. In the centre of the pod is a 'nucleus' which contains tons of touch screen interactive games. They're done simply enough that Will was easily able to identify a gene for deafness, raise a colony of bacteria, treat severe burns and even watch a simulation of himself from birth to now.

I was worried that the lights and sound might be too much for him, but they whole place (including lighting) has been specially designed to be an optimum learning environment and epilepsy safe. It was incredible to see Will's ability to concentrate and focus improve so dramatically being in a low stimulation environment. It's definitely made me more sympathetic to him wanting the curtains closed during the day when he is doing copywork. The light is just too bright for him to focus.

We then moved on to a lecture room where we got to see an experiment of what happens to blood when venom is added, and learn a bit about different venomous animals. Did you know that a jellyfish has 24 eyes? Me neither, but I do now!

We were also amazed to find out that slow loris's are one of the most deadly animals. They lick their elbows (where they secrete poisons) just before they bite you, which makes their saliva deadly toxic. Poison arrow frogs on the other hand are not actually poisonous at all. They eat poisonous insects, then excrete the poisons through their skin, so they are only ever as dangerous as the prey they have recently found.

There were some craft activities and interactive learning packs for older children, but the toddlers were happy just pottering about looking at everything and making bracelets out of 'DNA' beads.

Then as we headed home we stopped in a bakery at St Pancras and bought some really extravagant cupcakes.

We brought them home and had just enough time for a tea party with all the teddies before bed.

A fantastic day out which I hope to repeat again soon.

To see all of our photos, check out our 'travels' blog.

Our Top 10 Things to do in the Snow

Okay, so yesterday I told you we took the day off to play in the snow.

We are doing pretty much the same thing today, but it's still pretty educational, so here is our list of fun, but productive, things to do on a snow day.

1. Talk about precipitation - obvious, but I thought I'd get it out of the way first. We talked about different types of precipitation and a little on the water cycle.
2. Talk about the structure of ice and how it behaves under pressure - this was a recap for us as we looked at it only a short time ago during our rock candy experiments. Skating on ice is a fantastic visual example of ice under pressure.
3. Talk about freezing points/melting points - and temperature in general. Cosmo is very excited to be able to tell people it must be warmer than 0c because he can see that the ice is melting into puddles.
4. Sledge - but use lots of different things to sledge on. Discuss which are best and what materials/properties make them good for sledging. If your kids are a little older you could do some physics experiments, timing them, measuring the distance, working out velocity etc... but mine are still a little young for that.
5. Run around and throw snow at each other - it's good exercise and improves hand eye co-ordination as well as helping with judging distances.
6. Build an igloo and/or snow cave - We didn't have enough snow to do it this time, but next time we definitely will. It's the perfect opportunity to talk about another culture and about the insulating properties of the snow.
7. Make Snow Ice-Cream - there's some great recipes here. I'm pretty sure following a recipe counts as educational.
8. Make Snow Candy - Get yourself some maple syrup (approximately one cup) add some sugar (half a cup-ish) and boil it. Pour it over some (clean) snow and you have made little snow candies. Kids love them, but be careful, super hot, super sticky, syrup and kids is not a great combo. The candies however, YUMMY! I'm not entirely sure about the educational value aside from minor measuring, but it's still fun to do.
9. Look at snow flakes close up - preferably with a microscope. Talk about their individuality and design.
10. Track Animals - this was by far and away Cosmo's favourite activity for the snow. We looked at animal footprints and tried to guess what animals could have made them. We found; rabbits, dogs, birds, people, deer and cats.

So what did you get up to in the snow?

This post is linked up at No Ordinary Blog Hop

Mr Bloom's Nursery

As we are studying plants and trees in honour of Tu Bishvat, we have started looking out for all things gardening related.

Yesterday we went to the garden centre to buy pots and compost for our new fruit trees which will arrive at some point next week. We are getting two apples (braeburn and golden delicious), a plum, a pear and a cherry, with a blackcurrant and a redcurrant bush too. Cosmo chose which pots we wanted and worked out which compost was the cheapest (not by weight, just by packet - but there wasn't much in it so I let it slide).

Then we came home and it was time for everyone to nap. Cosmo has been a little unwell recently (in large part down to the fact that he hates swimming and the stress of the lessons is wearing him out for the next few days - we are evaluating whether to continue) so we have been having more 'cuddle time' in a blanket on the sofa whilst Lychee naps. He doesn't like to admit to needing a nap, but often drifts off if I put something on iPlayer.

That's when I discovered Mr Blooms Nursery.

We've seen it before, but only ever one episode (weirdly iplayer just had one about ladybugs that was on all the time and nothing else) but when we clicked on to it yesterday, there were LOADS of episodes, and they're pretty educational too, especially for someone studying plants and trees.

Cosmo learned how to make 'nettle tea' as a treat for his plants, and that horse manure helps give them the nutrients to grow properly, as well as that they need sunlight for energy. None of these are entirely new concepts, but it helps with reinforcement of learning, and repetition at this age is key to absorbing information.

So if you want to watch a couple too, in no particular order, here are our favourites:

Grand Veggie Fete

Secret friends

Thank You Compo

A Space Party!

Cosmo loves to prepare for guests, much more than he enjoys having them. Take thanksgiving for example - if you spoke to him anytime from august to November you would have assumed it was his favourite time of year. He was desperate to help make a pumpkin pie and decorate the house, but when our guests arrived he spent most of the dinner in his room by himself asking to be left alone.



So when he wanted a birthday party, you can understand me having concerns. Having spent the weeks running up to his dinosaur party excited and preparing, he spent the hours before in tears because he was scared. It was all fun in the end though.



So this year he wanted a 'Space Party'. Despite spending much of the morning balancing between tears and giggling manically he managed to stay downstairs for the entire party. There were some tears and I was sad that he refused to be part of a group photo at the end, but overall I'm glad we did it.



As with the dinosaur party, Cosmo was involved in all of the preparation, from making the pinata's and wall decorations, to baking his own birthday cake. We learnt loads during the process and spent hours on youtube watching astronauts in zero gravity training and space shuttle launches. He even made a playlist that he wanted to have on in the background of the party.



If you want to see a video of the party it's here:

Rock Candy!

We've really been enjoying watching the Frozen Planet series on BBC iplayer as a family on Sunday afternoon's. Lychee pretty much sleeps through it, but Cosmo is fascinated. So much so that the other week he clicked 'more like this' and found 'The Secret Life of Ice' and begged to be allowed to watch. It looked educational so I figured 'why not'? In fact, it looked a little too educational. I didn't think he'd last more than a few minutes.

I was wrong.

Not only did we end up watching the entire episode, he asked LOADS of relevant questions. I was amazed. The bit he found most amazing was how ice crystals formed under pressure (hot ice) and how supercooled water could form crystals instantly. In fact he though crystals in general were amazing and so we decided to look at them a bit more closely.

We made Rock Candy lollies.

If you want to have a go, the basic instructions are here. We made it a bit more exciting by doing jars with different coloured food dyes and flavourings in them, and put them in our boiler room to speed up the process. The most interesting part was that some of the colours/flavourings behaved differently and the crystals came out all different shapes and sizes, so we were able to talk about large crystals forming more slowly than small crystals etc...

I'd really encourage you to have a go with this experiment. It was great fun. Even a three year old (properly supervised with the hob) is able to carefully measure out the correct amounts of the ingredients and stir until they are completely dissolved.

I wish we'd taken photos, but we didn't, so here are some I stole from google, but they look pretty much the same.

Sex Education

Who'd have thought I'd be starting sex education with my three year old?

 

But after listening to Mary Flo Ridley on FamilyLife today I thought I'd put some feelers out. We started off watching an episode of 'Mr Roger's Neighbourhood' on YouTube, which was thoroughly enjoyed by both kids, then we sang the 'Every body's fancy' song for a few days. After a while I asked if he knew what we were singing about and he said no. I told him we were singing about private parts.



From then on he couldn't get enough of singing the fancy song. He quickly grasped that boys were 'fancy on the outside' and girls were 'fancy on the inside', but really wanted to see what a girls fancy parts on the inside looked like. We took a trip to the library, but it was actually not helpful at all. Every children's book devoted to the human body either;

a) didn't mention the reproductive system or

b) talked about being gay/straight/bisexual and/or how to have safe sex (different types of contraception etc) which I didn't feel was appropriate for a three year old.

 

But Granny came to the rescue, having kidnapped the plastic model from the biology department at her school, she came over and let us take it apart and put it back together. It even has a tiny baby which fits inside the uterus, he loved that and was fascinated that it wasn't in the stomach. We chatted about where wee comes from and he had a look inside the heart. It was a great way to have a look inside and she showed him which of the girl parts came out to make space for the boy parts so that he could see we were mostly the same inside with just a few changes.

 

What a great resource it is to have a biology teacher for a grandma!



For those who are interested, Mr Roger's 'Every body's fancy' song goes like this:

 

Some of us are fancy on the outside

Some of us are fancy on the inside

Everybody's fancy, Everybody's fine

Your Body's fancy and so is mine

 

Boys they are boys from the beginning

Girls they are girls right from the start

Everybody's fancy, Everybody's fine

Your Body's fancy and so is mine

 

Only the boys can be the daddies

Only the girls can be the mommies

Everybody's fancy, Everybody's fine

Your Body's fancy and so is mine

 

I think you're a special person

And I like your insides and outsides

Everybody's fancy, Everybody's fine

Your Body's special and so is mine
You can see it at 3:40 in this clip.

 

Not the royal wedding...

It's hard enough to get my kids to sit through a real wedding, of people they actually know. Let alone one on TV.

 

My sister's kids, now they are a different breed. They were so excited that the princess (?) was going to marry the prince. They wanted to watch the entire thing in absolute awe.

 

The thing is, we suspect Cosmo is ASD and he thinks everything he sees on TV is real anyway at the moment, even if it's just a cartoon. As far as he's concerned, it's just another prince marrying another princess which is really something that happens every time he's at his cousins house (they enjoy watching disney).

 

So we decided to take advantage of the fact that everyone else would be otherwise engaged, and spend the morning at the somewhat empty museum of natural history and the pitt rivers museum in oxford. I'd never been, but my sisters kids have and they absolutely adored it. The best part? It's free.

 

Cosmo was super excited because we got to ride on a train and he really loves trains. What I hadn't banked on was how much Lychee would love trains too. I have never seen her as excited as she was grinning out the window and flapping her arms madly. They really are like two peas in a pod!

 

So we got to the museum of natural history and it was brilliant. Giant dinosaur skeletons, glow in the dark mineral caves and bugs galore. Cosmo's favourite was a giant Katydid which he went back to over and over again.

and kept telling us 'I like bugs!!' which is the title of a book he got out of the library last week. It's obviously done the trick, because he has gone from being super scared of them to thinking they are really 'cute', so definitely worth looking for if you have a toddler who has a little phobia.

 



The crocodile was also a big hit.

 

Now remember how I said my sisters children were of a different breed? And how they loved the Pitt Rivers museum? Well, those two statements couldn't have been truer as we entered the exhibition.

 

Not only was it too dark and crowded for his liking, he thought all the ceremonial masks and shrunken heads were terrifying. So we didn't end up staying very long at all! Instead we met up with his aunty Caitlin who is studying at the university and went for dinner and a walk around some of the colleges with her instead.

 

It was a lovely family day out but summed up well when we got home and I asked Cosmo what he had learned today. His reply:

'When there are two bits of road together it's called a dual carriageway and you can drive on it really fast'.

 

So much for educational objectives!!

Children's Catechism

I used to think 'what's the point?' and considered children's catechism a form of brainwashing. More and more though, I'm realising that someone else is brainwashing our children. Even the small children's section in our library consistently puts forward the idea that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and that we evolved from monkeys.

The fact is, that if I don't give my son a biblical account of creation, Cbeebies will ensure he gets a non-biblical one. How do I ensure that my son grows up with a basic idea of God the creator? Catechism.

Children learn through repetition, and I apply this to everything else (reading/flashcards/numbers), so why am I afraid to apply it to our faith? Because I know that judgemental atheists will slate me for it. So the question becomes 'do I care more about what they think of me than my sons relationship with his creator'? Even voicing the question makes me feel ridiculous for worrying about it. I know what I need to do.

That said I came across this website http://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/cc.htm which has a basic catechism for little ones. I think we will break down the lessons to be a little shorter (Cosmo is only 2 after all!) but I look forward to working through them with him. As he gets older, hopefully he will ask more questions and we will be able to explain more fully the theology and apologetics behind them. But we have to start somewhere, and a 2 year old really doesn't need advanced scientific explanations.

When he is a bit older I will probably introduce Kids 4 truth (http://clubs.kids4truth.com/) which I believe caters for 4 year olds through until 6th grade.

It's so hard as an adult to initially get your head around the fact that your teachers were not infallible, and that some of what they taught you might not be completely true. I hope that I can instil in my children the ability to question what is being taught to them by adults and the media, and come to their own conclusions regarding their beliefs. I hope this will include questioning me, but I want them to have heard both sides of the argument in a fair and balanced way, rather just having atheism and evolution drip fed with no alternatives offered.

Making Butter

As we are using the www.letteroftheweek.com preparatory curriculum to give us topics/ideas, we are looking at cows this week. Cosmo thinks this is great, but the most exciting part for him is that he had no idea butter, yoghurt and cheese were made out of milk.
Wierd isn't it?
I felt sure that the fact that cows make milk would be revolutionary, but he wasn't in the slightest bit bothered. The idea that milk can turn into other thinks has fascinated him. He made me watch a video on how to make butter four times today already!
This afternoon we are going to the local farm shop to buy some cream so we can have a go at making some. Not sure if I'm brave enough to make cheese with a toddler, but butter is pretty easy.
If you want to have a go, there are some simple directions here:
http://www.makingyourown.co.uk/make-your-own-butter.html