just another morning here

As usual, home education leads me to realise that I don’t know anything about anything (and to think I trained as a ‘professional’ teacher, supposedly so much better than a parent at educating children – er I don’t think so!).

Joe chose a science kit to do this morning, and it was all about forces. Gravity, friction etc. demonstrated by the standard ‘toy car down a ramp’ experiment, etc., which he really enjoyed. Then we got onto centrifugal force, spinning things around his head and in bottles, etc. At which point I had some vague recollection of there being centripetal force as well, and went to look up the difference between the two, thinking that centrifugal was an outwards circular force and centripetal being the opposite but now I’m completely confused, because this article says centrifugal force is not really a force at all!

Anyway it must be time for coffee! Hopefully by the time I get back someone might have educated me …

Weather still fab, can’t remember an Easter holiday quite as good as this one!

Yesterday the children and I joined Rog, Caitlin & Riona on a cycle ride down the canal to the Turf Locks which was very pleasant – Anna rode all the way there and got a lift halfway back, while Abbie did the opposite. Joe and I did a shorter ride from the Quay to the Turf, but still a decent ride. They all enjoyed digging up various things in the estuary and were well educated by Roger on sexing crabs and how crabs grow out of their shells (as was I!). I have managed to get rid of the bag of foil-wrapped crabs and pottery that somehow had to come home with me though, ahem!!

Later on we BBQed with friends – a great idea at the time but it did get a bit chilly! Some people moaned far too much though, it wasn’t *that* cold! Watched Brick afterwards, which was just too weird for me, I couldn’t follow the story or stay awake!

Today after some room tidying and music playing, I took the children swimming. Felt very happy to have done some decent swimming myself while they were mucking around in the pool, but then followed it up by eating chocolate, which sort of defeated the object but there we go.

After lunch they all watched Narnia, joined by Riona. Meanwhile I cleaned out the guinea pigs … then they all played outside for a while. Later on Joe played more Sonic and the girls got the beads out to make necklaces and bracelets etc. And a new mobile phone decoration for me since the last one broke.

We’re off out to play poker tonight, must run and get changed!

Food Festival was great fun as always – I love tasting everything from jam to chutney to cheese to … the duck sausages we had for lunch – Duck Dogs with plum sauce, mmm!

Joe bought himself a strawberry, doughnut and marshmallow kebab from the chocolate fountain stall – which was supposed to keep him quiet while Becca & I watched Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall do a demo in the cookery theatre but it was packed to overflowing by the time we got there so we didn’t bother after all!

He managed all bar the last marshmallow of it – no mean feat, it was huge! The rain held off and it was nice enough to have lunch outside, then we went back to Becca’s for a cup of tea.

As I write, Anna is out playing with a friend from school. Meanwhile Abbie is creating culinary delights in the form of a jelly sweet kit that she’s had since Christmas. Joe did some more maths and music workbooks this morning and we’ve set a goal of finishing them both off before Easter, which should be manageable, only a few pages left in each one.

Forgot we did a science kit the other day, which just happened all about the solar system, good consolidation/revision for Joe. He quite enjoyed making this poster using pastels on black paper, and cut up a planet factsheet to label each planet.

We’ve had a return to the Space theme here over the past couple of days since Josiah started on the latest science kit which was all about stars. He made a mini-book all about stars from muddled up factsheets in the kit (ie you had to put the right answers with the questions), and I was pleased that he pretty much knew all the facts anyway.

The rest of the kit was making a telescope but we decided not to carry on with it, as the magnifying glasses they’d sent to be used as lenses were so rubbish that I thought it would be a waste of time, especially as Roger lives down the road. (Rog, when the extension and Ten Tors are over, perhaps Joe could come and have a look through your telescope and you can show him how to interpret the constellation map he’s got from our kit?)

This morning the girls got in on the act as well. This was mainly due to Steve and my threats of getting rid of pocket money if school mornings didn’t start to be a bit more organised/less stressful … so they pulled all the stops out today. We had cups of tea brought up at 7am, by which time I’d already heard Joe doing his music practice. The girls were completely done by 8am, leaving them half an hour to do Space Activity Sheets (I brought them some home from Dynamic Earth!) when Josiah got his folder of space stuff out, and draw space pictures on black paper. Joe didn’t fancy drawing, but he read all his space books again and did a couple of ‘fill in the blank’ activity sheets.

We have also done some more puzzles – Joe especially liked this sudoku puzzle which was divided by rows/columns/colour blocks. And we have both played far too much more Sonic. Josiah has overtaken me and is now at a higher level, and it’s taken him half the time it took me to get that far. No comment. I’m sure it is teaching him *something* … if only that practice makes perfect, and that dogged perseverance is important in some situations

Then finally this afternoon after clearing out a cupboard we found a book of Easter activities, so thought we’d look through it for some ideas. Nothing in the craft/painting/card-making sections appealed to Joe, but he decided he did fancy decorating an egg, especially as he’d remembered about some competition or other that he could enter.

We decided to make a dalek egg – Dal-egg? Egg-sterminate? and other eggy jokes … thought it was an original enough idea but then found another one on the net, but there we go, couldn’t think of anything better by that point! So the latter part of the afternoon saw us printing instructions from here and adapting them slightly to fit the egg in. I said I’d build the dalek body if he decorates it, so I’ve done my bit – and he has a project for tomorrow!

Anna had a cello lesson after school, and Abbie went along for the ride. She wanted to pay a visit to the charity shop with Steve because they’re having a Viking Day at school next week so she needed to pick up some fabric for making a viking tunic. They managed to find something suitable for £1 so that was good. Any more than £1 would have been too much Photos will follow next week I’m sure.