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. 

Simple things

We've been super busy the last few weeks, with surf school, ice skating, swimming lessons, parties and more; sometimes it's really nice just to slow down. 

A friend brought us a box of wooden counters that a school she works at were throwing out. The children love them. We are spending a morning making pictures whilst we listen to an audiobook. 

Cosmo is making a suspension bridge. Lychee is making people. 

They are so happy and chilled out. 

This is the side of home ed that I love most. Just quiet playing together. It's always the simplest toys that bring out the most inventive games and inspire the most creativity. 

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.

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.

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.