That's a Wrap

This has been a lovely process and an even lovelier 2 years. Thank you to anyone who has read my ramblings; Google stats tells me it is in the thousands and I'm very touched.

I'm not sure K&W will realise how unusual their life has been until they're a little older so I've turned this into a book for them to keep. I'm proud of what we've done and this blog is a wrap.

As the kids slot back into 'normal' life I realise I've been way down my own priority list for 2 years and I need to start climbing back up. There are books to read, a gym membership with feelings of abandonment, a bizarre urge to get my wetsuit on and quinoa recipes I want to try - even if no one but me eats it (because "it's grass seed?!").

Life is illogical, preposterous and incredible. It's absurdly good.

Fresh Start

There was no dramatic ping, like a microwave or my dishwasher finishing its cycle; no fanfare or parade. It happened without ceremony - our two years is officially up.

Two years was an arbitrary measure. Just the right length for a pause in our lives. Enough time to stop, hit the reset button, recover some ground, travel, regroup, say 'to hell with it', have some adventures.

Mission accomplished.

Now it's time for W to head back to school and I feel like a parent sending their first born into reception; I'm nervous, I'm sending my baby into the hands of strangers. I don't know how he'll cope but I know he'll be fine.

W was only in school for 2 and a half years before being home educated for the following 2 years. We agonised over schools. We've learnt to be brave, to be bold and to try new things - so we lived what we had learned and settled on a new school for W where there were no ghosts, no history and a golden opportunity for him to start from a blank slate. Going back to somewhere is still going back. These days we only go forwards.

I've watched him grow from a sweet, clever, cheeky boy into a sweet, clever, cheeky boy who can cope with helmets and harnesses, new situations, being lost, wellington boots (sometimes full of mud), difficult questions, singing, short sleeves, splinters, unexpected changes, 3 legged frogs. He has faith in his abilities and so do we.

Not many people get to spend 700+ days straight with their 7 (and then 8, then 9) year old. It's lucky I like him.

K will be off to secondary school in September and W needs the time, space and independence to make friends in his year group and he's ready for the comparison, feedback and assessment of a school environment to challenge him. To enter him at the tail end of the year gives him a gentle introduction back into the system and a chance to get to know his classmates, with not long to go until the welcome break of the summer holiday before year 5 (and the 11+ ramp up <shudder>) begins.

To say I was emotional on his first day would be an understatement but he loved it. He came out smiling and he'd made a friend. S asked how it compared to home school; W's verdict : the work is easy and the waiting is boring.

Edit: Day 4, the work is now hard. But the waiting is still boring...

At home our pace is changing. With only K at home my days feel longer and quieter; my stress has halved in line with my responsibility.

It's not an end. It's just another beginning.

Bonjour Paris

My very modest attempts at French lessons had hit a wall. I'm not a natural linguist and find French hard to teach when K loves it and W doesn't. We did the basics but I was out of steam. We happened across £6 kids tickets to Paris in the budget airline sales last year (it was more expensive to get back to the UK than to leave sadly but still a bargain) so we decided on a day trip to Paris to soak up some French culture and practice the basics.

We pre-booked tickets to the Tour Eiffel which are good value although Storm Doris meant we couldn't visit the summit. A quick marvel at the engineering and the views and we were happy to tick it off the bucket list and head out for more exploring. We missed the Catacombs (I tried to pre-book tickets but was 3 minutes too late the night before - you have to book before 10pm for the next day if you're being spontaneous/disorganised like me!) but stood outside, next to the (3 hour+) queue, and showed the boys some images on my phone. We didn't get to see the bones of 6 million people, but there were roughly 6 million people in the queue so we imagined them all as skeletons and then headed off for lunch.

We ate in a lovely little cafe down a side street, managed our order, pleases and thank yous (with a bit of showing off from Mum with a very passable 'Can I pay by card' - thanks google translate). We experienced the Metro and RER and figured out signs. We walked along the river, outwitted a pick pocket (but only just) and found a play park and free toilets behind Notre Dame.

We had got up at 4am, and arrived home at midnight, as storm Doris caused yet more trouble. We were beyond tired but it had been a fabulous day.

I'd go so far as to say it was fantastique.

Off Grid

As we're nearing the end of our adventure we needed a suitably adventurous send-off and headed off for a short stay in a tree house in North Wales.

Built 30ft above the floor, with wooden spiral steps, rope bridge, no electricity, composting toilet, wood burner and a gravity powered shower (situated underneath the tree house) it's the perfect off-grid location for top quality, back-to-nature family time.

I'm still habitually observing learning opportunities so it would be remiss not to mention the links to the history curriculum - how people lived, washed and cooked before electric lights, toilets and ovens etc - as well as practical PE and DT skills with all the usual log chopping, rope swinging, climbing and walking.

When I holler 'Pack your bags, kids - we're leaving in 20 minutes!' up the stairs, the only question I'm asked is 'How many nights?' As a by-product of our various adventures (mostly to much loved Youth Hostels) they have learnt the +1 rule : 2 nights away means pack 3 of everything. In the spirit of learning through doing I never check their bags : the boys learnt through trial and error the inconvenience of forgetting to pack pants, gloves, PJs or a book. A BOGOF lesson - first in the perils of careless packing and often swiftly followed by a bonus lesson in how to share with your brother or make do (socks make great emergency gloves, turn t-shirts back to front if they're filthy, a bin bag can stand in as a poncho...).

I love the ease with which we can head off on adventures these days. Practice has made (nearly) perfect.

Wales delivered the weather you'd expect at this time of year and we waded, jumped and squelched our way through 2 days of perfect family fun for our last term time adventure.

www.living-room.co

Dad Science

Sometimes I just need a morning off.

I've no idea whether this is on the Science curriculum but they had a great time...

Timberkits

I confess to being very lax on my D&T teaching. I always figured it wasn't really my thing and I don't have the patience or attention to detail required to design and build things which Ikea sell for under £1.

I've started to change though.

It began with throwing a pot (onto a wheel rather than at a wall) which is without doubt one of the most therapeutic ways to get your hands dirty and - if you're my age and remember Ghost - think happily of Patrick Swayze for 15 minutes. As if I needed an excuse.

We found a friendly pottery place which welcomes home ed children and learnt about clay, glazing and firing as we happily made and then decorated some wonky pots. Enthused by the pot making success I went on a hunt for our next D&T project and happened across Timbertech through a face book group.

The Timberkits are a genius little box of self-build automata mechanisms made by Timbertech. We opted for the 4 kit box so that the boys could make one and then in a nod to iterative development, make a second having learnt lessons from the first.

You can download lessons plans from the website and watch handy YouTube videos so we made use of those to learn about the components and backed it up with some Twinkl resources on Automata Animals to look at how animals move and design our machines. We had also visited the Mad Museum in Stratford which ties in perfectly.

It was a fabulous project - I could rave on about the process, the cutting and sanding and sticking but actually the upshot was the boys have some really cool little toys that they are proud of and they learnt lots about design, measuring, axles, cams, followers...

A spider which goes up and down and spins.

A helicopter which goes up and down with rotating blades.

A sheep that eats grass.

I'm a D&T convert. I'm saving up tin cans to make pencil holders.

Mind the Gap

I spent the first year of EHE making a really dumb mistake: I'd figure out what the curriculum wanted me to do and then plan to cover it.

I fretted that there was never enough time or attention span to get through the quantity of material (especially covering 2 different year groups) and so I ended up compromising constantly while carrying a heavy weight of guilt that I wasn't teaching what I was meant to.

And then... an epiphany.

I love a good epiphany and schedule them weekly. It's a wonderful process that starts with me saying 'Hold on a minute...', followed by chewing my lip for a bit and googling for things, then a cup of tea, a bit more head scratching and ending with me running off to find S to declare 'I've had an epiphany!'. This is inevitably followed by feedback ('Another one?' and 'Er ... that's obvious isn't it?') and then the whole process completes with calling myself an idiot for not having realised <insert obvious thing here> and having another cup of tea.

In this case the epiphany is a real gem:

IF MY CHILDREN ALREADY KNOW SOMETHING... 
I DO NOT NEED TO TEACH IT TO THEM.

Wow. Bombshell, right?

When you've picked yourself off the floor and had a cup of tea I'll be happy to elaborate on this achingly obvious statement.

The curriculum at school is a scatter gun approach. With a class of 30 (or more) and hugely varying abilities and attitudes you have no choice but to stick to a plan - the lovely NC - and teach it all, differentiating where you can at a pupil level. The difference at home is that my differentiation can be close to zero, as can my attitude to compromise. I have just two students. Ditch the scatter gun and pick up the laser beam.

The never-ending-to-do-list just got 90% shorter. I don't need to teach long multiplication - they already know it. Equivalent fractions? It's been ticked off. All I have to do is reassure myself that they understand and can apply concept and I can move on. I can be nimble. I can personalise. I can intervene - I watched K working through an exercise of 30 questions and when it was abundantly clear he had the topic mastered I stopped him and we diverted our attention to a new topic.

Schools are a best-fit system to get a lot of children to learn stuff in the (more or less) most efficient/cost effective way the government can muster. When you zoom in and only have to concern yourself with just one, or two, children your efficiency increases 10 fold and you shed all of the baggage of worrying about the big picture.

I spent a year staring at the 'by the end of KS2 all children should...' list until I had the confidence to put it down. When I glance back I'm astounded at how much we've achieved while we were too busy having adventures to follow it.

Billy Goats Gruff

Lasting about a week, W did a literacy unit based on the Three Billy Goats Gruff. We started by reading the story, then there was character analysis, a formal complaint letter to the council about harassment from the goats and an alternative ending. The big task which was to create a cardboard theatre and write a play script to perform.

W threw himself into the art aspect and created a background and bridge. A short diversion into perspective resulted in a river which flowed beautifully into the distance and loads of sheep in the fields. We used cutouts from Twinkl for the characters which we hot glued onto skewers.

Play script writing can be a challenge in KS2. The inclination, from years of reading and listening to stories, is to describe and explain. Play writing requires an abstract view; W had to step out of the story and recast himself from describer to director - delegating the job of story-telling to his characters and scenery.

The start point is identifying and understanding that plays happen in scenes not chapters (which are typically set out by time). For plays, the location takes priority and each location change will determine the scene. We have to identify:
1. Location of this scene
2. Characters in this scene

After that, we start the dialogue with a new speaker on each line. It was a challenge to convince W that we don't need to say 'he shouted' after the words as we're using direct speech (but confusingly, without the speech marks). Stage directions (shouting) can be added in brackets.

Writing plays is a specific skill. It feels clumsy and flat to strip a story down to only what is said and requires faith that what's on paper will spring into a magical masterpiece when it's brought to life on stage. Accents must be decided upon, lines and their expression practiced and entry/exit timings perfected.

None of those things happened in our play.

The stage doors fell off, the troll entered facing the wrong way, W dropped the script, I forgot my lines and the bridge collapsed.

It was a triumph. 5 stars.

Youth of Today

I'm a bore about youth hostels but I really love them.

We go away super-cheaply to interesting places, meet interesting people and the boys get the kind of freedom and independence that it's hard to replicate elsewhere. It's like a summer camp. The boys hang out in the lounge or games room, they have to do their own washing up and keep track of their things. They strip their beds and sweep up when we leave.

Our favourite one is in the New Forest. You can stay in a pod, camp on the field or stay in the house; there are walks on the doorstep and the coast only a short drive away. There's an amazing tree for climbing, a cat that lives a little way down the road and horses that are slightly over familiar. What's not to love?

It might be December but you only know for sure that you have home ed kids if they're bare foot in the depths of winter on a beach.

Down but Not Out

I don't want to jinx it but I'm declaring our tough run well and truly over.

No-one has died or had anything close to a proper crisis for at least 18 months. We are slowly returning to normal, or our quirky version of it.

It's been a long process and this is a hard post to write but I need a summing up. This is my clumsy way of drawing a line under a tough time.

The kids have dealt admirably not only with their own feelings but also seeing mine, S's and their Nana's up close. We all coped differently with each loss as it came; just as K&W would find their feet and some rhythm would be restored it felt like the rug would be pulled again.

The practicalities of terminal illness and old age mean that if you're not the one suffering, you're the one supporting which is a helpless suffering of its own. You have to drop things and be there without notice. Healthy people are the lowest priority. Dinner, bedtime stories and homework are abandoned without warning. You collect things. You make cups of tea. You drive places. You tiptoe. You make calls. You make bad jokes. You have the toughest conversations. You organise paperwork. You watch. You wait.

You are emotionally disconnected because to crack even a little will breach the dam and you can't afford to let it. There's simply too much to do and too many people needing you to keep it together.

We all had mood swings, good days and bad ones, dealing with the weight of arriving home not knowing what you'll find : whether there will be news, a to do list, smiles or tears to greet you.

It's confusing for adults, let alone children.

Of all the pros and cons we'd considered when we began to live as a 3-generation household, death was an abstract - always framed in the positive : if so-and-so dies we'll be here and can provide support. I had no appreciation of how tough it would be to deal with it close up, intensely, without respite. My mind is blown by the quiet dignity with which so many people I know carry the grief of losing loved ones.

W internalises. He won't talk about feelings, just assimilates information from people around him. He gets on and doesn't want to analyse anything; he's almost impossible to comfort as he prefers to deal with feelings alone. He never has 'big' questions but he'll absorb the answers to K's questions in the background.

At one of my lowest points, I snapped at W one evening. He was literally begging for attention in the style of a toddler - Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, I need a cuddle, I need water, I need my stars on, the duvet isn't straight.... I told him to wait. He carried on. I was dealing with the latest urgent need and the boys' bedtime had been abandoned midway. W kept pushing.

I snapped. "No, Will. Stop it. I'm not dealing with that now. THIS {I gestured wildly at whatever piece of paper or medicine was in front of me} is important."

He burst into tears and was inconsolable. My heart broke : I had told my boy he wasn't important. It wasn't what I meant but the words were out. They hurt deeply and I felt wretched. 

K wants to know everything. He coped with grief by investigation; he wanted to know what it was like to die, whether it hurts, what might happen to you, whether ghosts were real and if he had inherited cancer. He over-analyses then frets and worries. His upsets were circular, unsolvable; it sometimes all just got 'too much'.

Both boys had nightmares about monsters, losing things and death for a year. We used any techniques we could muster from our broken state. We were open about the death unfolding in front of them and how a body can break. We have different religious beliefs in the house so we talked about how a person's faith matters most to them and must be respected - if you believe it then it's true to you. 

We relied on the imagery of grief as a stone. The stone starts sharp in your hand but as time brings the tide in and out, back and forth, the edges soften and eventually we'll be able to tuck a smooth pebble in our pocket to keep close and touch it when we need to. When we had tears at bedtime we used the imagery of putting the sharp pebble back on the beach for a bit - let the tide take it away tonight and we'll pick it back up in the morning and see if the edges are a little smoother.

We have learnt a lot about each other, our capabilities, our philosophies. You see a person's true character in a crisis and you love people even more deeply as you watch them piece themselves back together. 

Now the storm is over we're floating gently - battered but not broken; tired but not desolate; sad but not depressed.

We're mending. We have adventures to go on, places to explore, timetables to abandon and we'll be appreciating every moment together this Christmas as we raise a toast to the people we miss.

Dad Time

While I was away for a few days there was some lovely science with dad (oobleck, orange lamps, lava cups, levitating matches..) and lots of woodland walks.

Boy time!

External Validation

So the 11+ is over, thank goodness.

I'd love to say it all turned out fine but I'm still bearing the emotional scars and I get a twitch when I think about it. K passed; he was over the moon and we were as amazed as we were delighted.

Why does it matter? He would achieve anywhere but like every child some environments make it easier than others. He's a smart, kind kid. He wants to please his teachers and is willing to work hard. He's a little awkward socially and takes time to build friendships which will be a challenge in any school but he'll overcome it. Passing gave him a wider choice of environments.

An unsettling thing about home-edding through the 11+ process was the lack of external validation. My check-and-measure-against-others security blanket evaporated when we left the playground.

I sat on my own late at night, coffee or wine in hand, trying to form plans and make arbitrary decisions on scant information. I scoured forums and trawled through council websites for guidance on exam format and the practicalities of how to book K in. I grasped desperately for tips and feedback from other mums and collared anyone foolish enough to pop in for a cup or tea or say hi on Facebook :

Which books did you buy? Is it all multiple choice? Should we pay for practice tests? Is tutoring a good idea? Is it worth the money? What are the percentage weightings by subject? Why are we putting our children through this? What might the pass mark be in raw marks? Which schools can we actually get in to? How many state kids pass? How hard is the official practice paper? Any exam tips?

I fretted about whether we were doing the right things, whether we'd started too late, whether we were doing enough in the first place and how hard to push (or not push). Trying to plan, teach, support and assess solo is hard and error-filled. The first book I bought for K to complete at the start of the summer turned out to be for the wrong exam and he had completed it before I realised my mistake. In a state of panic and shame, having wasted weeks on the wrong material, I didn't own up to anyone - I swallowed my guilt, bought the correct books and soldiered on.

I've spent time wondering how and if the home school decision impacted the 11+ outcome. At the end of year 2 K looked like a fair bet for a pass back in the days of assessment levels and progress predictions. By the time we left in year 4, he had lost academic ground and confidence in himself. Any feedback on his ability in relation to the 11+ was described as 'borderline' at best.

K has made brilliant progress in the past 19 months with his mental maths and problem solving skills and for that I'm taking HE credit as we went back to basics and played catch up. He's not a natural with numbers but it doesn't feel like wading through treacle any more. His literacy has been solid as he's an avid reader. The biggest change has been in his self-confidence : he's thrown himself into opportunities and his independence and maturity have blossomed as he's grown. Maybe that would have happened anyway.

As a structured, curriculum-based HE family it's natural to look for objective measures of progress - am I leaving gaps which will come back to bite later? Will I send the kids back to school and be called in the next week to explain to the headteacher why my sons have such glaring educational gaps / appalling social skills / terrible handwriting / no ability to speak French / all of the above? Put against the back drop of comments from acquaintances like : 'Aren't you worried he'll fall behind?' and 'But what about socialisation?' you're only human if you doubt yourself every now and then. Or daily.

Because of his interests and exacerbated by home school, K doesn't get external validation either. Normally kids get a metaphorical or literal pat-on-the-back from getting a part in the school play or being picked for the sports team or passing music exams or earning badges from Scouts. K's esteem relies on his own sense of self-worth and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the 11+ result gave him a much needed boost. We were proud of him irrespective of the outcome of some arbitrary, divisive test, but seeing him feel genuinely proud of himself was utterly heart warming.

Still, I'm glad it's over. Until W's turn in Sept 2018....


In case the 11+ is like childbirth and becomes a hazy memory, I'm recording for my sanity :

Things that were helpful for us 

• 10 minute tests
• Reading every day
• Small rewards that built up for effort (not results)
• Doing a little work every day
• Not thinking/talking about it until the July prior
• Exercise (for stress busting)
• Putting a massive 'we're proud of you' poster in his bedroom for the summer
• Doing 1 practice test in July for a 'start point' to find any glaring coverage issues
• Teaching to the gaps to begin with - going back to basics to teach topics, not answer tricks
• Finding out how bloody difficult it was to find the right car park on practice day
• Buying really good quality pencils and a lucky eraser
• Doing 2 practice tests a couple of weeks before to check exam technique
• Packing an awesome good-luck-themed snack for in between the exams
• Wine

Things that were not helpful for us

• Crying
• Comparing kids
• Suggestions of big rewards for hard work
• Nagging
• Hearing about opinions of schools instead of facts about schools
• Stressing about speed early on in the summer
• Getting angry
• Hearing how much work other mums/kids were doing
• Swearing (a lot) in front of eldest when I couldn't find the car park on practice day and then having to apologise (a lot)
• Discussing tutoring with anyone - always left with a residual feeling of guilt that we didn't have a tutor, shock at the cost, or both
• Losing the plot on a weekly basis
• Stressing about low marks instead of actually working out where the weak spots were
• Exam tips
• Neglecting younger siblings
• Panicing on the big day and forgetting to checklist the important points (make every mark count, guess ones you don't know, if you get stuck - guess and move on)
• Running out of wine

There's the Click

Active learning is a beautiful thing.

It happens whenever someone is engaged, interested and challenged. The holy grail of active learning is when it's self-driven - where no-one else dictated or controlled the activity. There's plenty of talk of spontaneous learning, where the stars align and suddenly - bang - there's a magical moment where a child just starts learning. How can I get this magic?

Being spontaneous takes planning. We spontaneously made a rope swing to entertain ourselves at a youth hostel last month - because I keep a rope in the car for emergency rope swing adventures (or towing).

You can spontaneously stop at a National Trust place to paddle in the river if you have already remembered to put your membership card, spare clothes and a towel in the car.

You can spontaneously do science experiments if you have food colouring, candles, bicarb, tums, sand, etc... in the cupboard.

You can spontaneously do art if you picked up air drying clay and acrylic paints last time you went past HobbyCraft.

You get the idea. Spontaneity is an illusion but I do embrace self-driven learning. As my confidence continues to grow so does my comfort level with flexibility. For two mornings this week I've stood back and let the boys get on with it, to see what they'd do. It was enlightening.

Day 1
The boys found a box of balloons and started blowing them up and letting them go. W googled balloon hacks on YouTube and they tried experiment after experiment : the fire-proof balloon was a favourite, as was the static water-bending trick. They added coins to the balloons and span them.

They filled them with water - but had to solve the issue of how to get the water in. Attaching to the tap resulted in split balloons and a large puddle in the kitchen. A revised system with a plastic bottle worked quite well but so did taking a mouthful of water and just blowing. When they had enough of being soaked they filled the balloons with rice to make stress balls.

I found a bag of balloon modelling balloons and dogs, hats, giraffes and a snake followed as they read the instructions for a dog and then went freestyle. They decorated some with sharpies.

Time spent : 4 hours. Intervention : virtually zero (I had to get towels for the floor and I dug out the modelling balloons)

Day 2 
The boys decide to start W's stamp collection. The boys read and followed the instructions for how to add stamps to an album, categorised some of the stamps, asked their Nana for more stamps, soaked them off the envelopes and dried them. One stamp was for 500 Zimbabwean dollars so thinking they'd hit the big time, checked how much it was worth in GBP. A disappointing £1.10 - however K added to the value of the other UK stamps and was delighted to find it totalled over £13.

After stamps they decided to do some Reading Eggspress challenges and did comprehensions to earn animal cards and then traded them, with a discussion about which category of animal they were each collecting. The peacock was listed in flying birds and W wasn't sure peacocks could fly so he looked up a video to check they could.

They moved on to HomeByMe and worked on their houses, W made a pod house with all amenities based on a tiny footprint. K worked on the interior design of his office.

Time spent : 5 hours. Intervention : Zero, except for being a willing audience as they showed me what they had created and how to do the stamps.

So what's the formula for engaged, interested children? Luck is a big part of it. They had slept well, eaten a good breakfast and were in a chipper mood. We've had a good week. This keeps brotherly bickering to a minimum and created an atmosphere conducive to getting on with stuff. Rules are vital. If there wasn't a rule that we don't play computer games til the end of our school day then I'd have been reporting 5 hours of Minecraft or CrossyRoad. Environment helps. The kitchen was (relatively) tidy for a change and I'd shuffled some activities they might have forgotten about into sight - like how the supermarket guys rotate the fruit so the oldest is at the front.

There's a knack too, to intervening and directing just a few moments before everything descends into chaos. The active learning utopia has a limited shelf life; being self-driven is tiring and after a while you need someone else to take the reins, or provide snacks, or both. Balance is the key; both days we did formal literacy and maths after lunch.

Most of the discussions I read about this type of spontaneous/ free/ self-driven learning are play based and sadly that tends to mean the discussion is restricted to the under 5s. What a shame. Play, at any age, presents some of the best opportunities for analysis, planning, resilience, creativity and team work.

When learning is deep, relevant and active you can't tell where play stops and learning begins.

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

The theme for our family this year has been bravery.

Facing up to fears. Carrying on. Grabbing opportunities. Carpe diem with bells on.

I push the boys to take risks but I'm a hypocrite : I play it safe. I hide under a duvet when it gets too much; I still get occasional bouts of anxiety around loud noises, crowds and heights. I'll happily watch and shout encouragement as the boys try new things but resist throwing myself in. I'm in a perpetual state of defcon 1 - I'm not just ready for if the sky falls down, I'm expecting it imminently.

Small steps were needed to reduce my alert state to something resembling normal. I'd accept a 3. I need to set a better example for the boys.

I played with the boys at the park instead of sitting on the bench. You haven't lived until you have to gets your kids to slide after you to 'give you a bit of a push' because your behind is too generous for the slide. I put my fingers in the shrimp tank at SeaLife and let the creepy little things nibble my nails. I joined in a session with the boys at Rush and even managed a front flip without permanent neck damage - it was a close run thing. I dropped myself down the vertical slide at the zoo (and swore I would never do it again). I let the lady at the reptile place hold a tarantula that shoots poisonous hairs from its body when it's angry right next to my face. I still hate spiders but at least Rosy was having a happy day. I took the dog for a walk with S and the boys instead of washing up, even though it was cold, dark and muddy in the woods.

Wow, what a go-getter. With minor successes under my belt I had to up the ante: time for a tandem skydive.

I am not a fan of heights and I have issues relinquishing control. I'm told that when coming round from a general anesthetic it took 4 nurses to hold me down as I was hell bent on getting up and off the bed.

However, a day on my own at an airfield with nothing to do but drink tea and read a book before being strapped to an action man sounded like a dream come true. Count me in.

15000 feet, 125mph with a full minute of free fall. It was, literally, awesome.

Next on my list is driving a segway, throwing a pot and swimming with sting rays. Plans are afoot for the first two. I haven't worked out how I'm going to make that last one happen but it doesn't sound like something I'd do, or ever have dreamed of doing, so I had better find a way to do it.

Day seized.

http://www.goskydive.com/

Acids and Bases

I fancied a science lesson and we had an opener : a boy at PGL said that water was more acidic than Coca Cola.

Didn't sound likely to me but the boys were insistent. The boy imparting this factoid was at least 12 years old and therefore probably a genius with very bad teeth; certainly cleverer than me as I am a mum and therefore know nothing. Apparently.

Insults aside I decided they could prove it to themselves. Theory was the place to start - we talked through characteristics of acids, bases and what the pH scale is. We briefly looked at hydrogen ions but I lost W so it was time to get practical and we followed the Stanford Uni experiment (link below).

I pre-made the cabbage water and the kitchen smelt horrendous; then we assembled a bunch of household objects :

• Bicarbonate of soda (dissolved in water)
• Distilled water
• Cola
• Lemon juice
• Apple juice
• Vinegar
• Bleach
• Shampoo
• Anti-bac hand gel

The boys predicted whether each liquid was going to be acidic or alkaline based on their characteristics (sliminess / bitterness / sourness). The boys tasted the lemon juice and bicarb just for my own entertainment. "Can we pleeease drink the Coke?" Only if it turns out to be less acidic than water.

With our cabbage water ready we started adding our various liquids, comparing the colour of the cabbage water to our chart to see what the approximate pH was and writing up our results as we went.

We got a really fantastic range of colours and the bleach finally overrode the kitchen cabbage smell which was a relief for everyone.

Most importantly we did indeed prove the hypothesis, that mum is always right Coke is worse for your teeth than water.


If you've got your own science lab the BBC has the experiment nicely explained here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/bang/bang_tp_red_cabbage_indicator.pdf

If you're a kitchen table scientist then take a look at this brilliant PDF from Stanford Uni:
http://web.stanford.edu/~ajspakow/downloads/outreach/ph-student-9-30-09.pdf

Autumn Craft

When there are hundreds of thousands of leaves falling into your garden it's a necessity find ways to reduce the pile. I thought I had it made - we can use some for craft, I thought.

Then discovered that apparently our leaves aren't good enough and the boys instead gathered a bag-full from the woods while walking the dog. Back-fire.

Three lovely little projects were born : leaf hedgehogs, clay leaf bowl and coaster, terrarium.

Birthday Zoo Trip

It's our last chance to take advantage of being able to celebrate birthdays on the actual day so we headed to the zoo - W's favourite place to be!

As usual for a weekday in winter there's hardly anyone there. We have the place more or less to ourselves and the animals act pleased to see you. I nearly left with a marmoset.

Birthday cake, monkeys, lorikeets, goats and boats and more. A perfect family day.

.. and by the end of the day we felt as worn out as this lemur!

Building Blocks

Simple things used to explore more complicated concepts.

Jenga blocks and wooden dominos are endlessly useful. In their usual form, you can explore structure, strength and stability. Making domino rallies helps with angles, design and the knock-on-effect of actions and energy transfer.

If you're feeling creative, there are loads of write-on-the-block ideas:

• sums (colour code by difficulty)
• emotions
• questions/conversation starters
• music notes (build a tune)
• word types (noun, adjective, verb etc)
• story ideas (build a story) 
• spellings (write a word on all 4 faces, 3 incorrect and 1 correct)