It's Christmas!

Yesterday we went delivering presents to our friend C, who is also the girls' piano teacher.  But first we went out to the shops to get some dairy-free chocolate to make some just for her and we also made some origami boxes to put them in and decorated them.  As you can see I kept it simple and the girls went with a Christmas potato theme (it's a running joke that we have, since C's diet is rather restricted, but fortunately can eat potatoes that she likes - we gave her a home grown one for her birthday!).

Today we finally got round to tidying up the front room enough to put the Christmas tree up.  I put the lights on and started with the tinsel and then K & M took over.

Sophisticated it aint, but we love it. :-)

There was a plan though, so just in case it's not obvious, the top too arrows are pointing to the eyes, that red bell is the nose and that big blog of tinsel is the mouth.  The inspiration for this came from the fact that right at the top there, we don't have a star, fairy or angel, but a little Father Christmas' hat.

Christmas party!

Today was the Christmas party, with many thanks to the two lovely Michelles for organising.  There was lots of food, plenty of games and craft activities that my girls really enjoyed.  There's also a good outside space that was well utilised even when it began to get dark!

Each family brought along some food, both sweet and savoury, an activity of some sort (either a game or craft) and something to put in the party bags.  We all chipped in to cover the hall costs and the Michelles pulled it all together.

My girls each enjoyed it in their own way.  K made several Christmas cards and had a discussion with Michelle A about the craft activity that she'd brought along, sticking to her own way of doing things and holding her own when Michelle (knowing K well) gently teased her about not following the example.  Meanwhile M joined in the group activities with gusto.  I was particularly impressed with her and her team mate Z in the quiz, which they did really well on.  M was the scribe and here's their answer sheet:

Question 1 was name two of Father Christmas' reindeer!

Question 8 was name two ingredients in Christmas pudding.  That's brandy which was the one M immediately came up with having seen me make ours earlier this month!

And finally I just wanted to share something that M has been talking about lately.  She hasn't been happy with the amount of time I've been spending Christmas shopping, particularly at the weekend, when I went out on my own both Saturday and Sunday and told me she'd rather have no presents and me around, when I pointed out that if I didn't do the shopping there wouldn't be presents.  This evening she was looking at the, admittedly rather large, pile of presents in our front room and said that there were an awful lot.  I teased her that I could always save some for birthdays next year and she said that they were wrapped in Christmas paper, so that wouldn't work.  Later though she repeated her concern and said very seriously she thought we should save some for next year.  Then she asked Daddy to have a serious word with me on the topic, which he duely did.  I later had a cuddle in bed with her and we talked about it and she told me she was worried that it was a bit of a waste of money!  I have reassured her that we don't spend what we can't afford and that actually some of the presents are things that they need anyway, but I'm not sure that she's completely convinced that we shouldn't save some for next year!  Of course I can't know that it's being home educated that has led to this sort of conversation, but I'm sure that the culture of having 'stuff' that is so prevalent in our society generally is probably more unavoidable in schools.

Tasty Christmas fun!

Today we have mostly been making Christmas chocolates!  I regularly buy a very large bag of cooks chocolate drops from Barry Colenso, who comes to our local Farmers' Market (although admittedly I might not use *all* of it in cooking).  This year, I also bought some Christmas chocolate moulds so clearly we needed to put the two together!

K's work in progress

And M's finished product

With some origami boxes (watch this space) that's some really lovely presents sorted for various friends or family, either as a little extra or just a little something for folks we don't necessarily exchange presents with as a matter of course.

A good question!

Last Friday M was feeling rather under the weather, not a good day to be needing to go out to get various jobs sorted, as it was pouring with rain all day.  Still we put on our wellies (well M and I did, K apparently didn't want to splash in the puddles) and off we went.  As we were walking along getting rather wet, M asked 'Why is the sea salty and rain isn't?'  So when we got home, we started off an experiment to answer the second half of the question.

First, we dissolved some salt in some water.

Then we left it on the window sill, just above a radiator

So that in just a couple of days we had this.

So we had evidence that when you have salty water, it is only the water evaporates and the salt is left behind, which is why rain isn't salty.  We've also talked about why the sea is, but will probably come back to this as so far we've only had A's theories on the matter.

In other news, M is reading the Faraway Tree books at the moment.  Today she showed her playmobil Saucepan Man!

And finally, I mentioned a couple of posts back that we have what turned out to be two rather large bones in our fridge, courtesy of one of the stalls at our local farmers' market.  While it was a good idea to have some bones to look at to back up what we've been looking at in theory, as it turns out in practice neither K nor M wanted to look closely in reality.  Still, our next door neighbours' dogs (one each side) have done well out of it!

Puffin Post: Good and bad.

When we got back from visiting Nana and Little Grandad among the post waiting for us was a rather lumpy envelope addressed to M.  After some discussion about whether she should open it, as it might have contained a Christmas present and we don't open them until Christmas, she did and found this...

and this!

She had entered a competition to win a Lego Harry Potter figure (it's not clear on the photo, but there is a scar on his head!), because she wanted to give it to Daddy for his birthday.  Well it was about a month late, but we knew it would be so that didn't really matter, but she did indeed do so.  As I mentioned here, to enter the competition you had to make a model out of Lego and send in a photo, I wasn't allowed to post the photo on blog at the time in case people stole her idea, but have now been given permission.

It's a giraffe on rollerskates!

The very bad news about Puffin Post is that it is no more.  We are all very sad about this, although from that link it's not entirely clear whether it will continue in some form from a different source.  I really do hope so, because the delight of K & M at the arrival of the magazine and the decision about which book to choose has been lovely to see.

In other news, I went to bed at about quarter to midnight last night to find K still awake and playing Trivial Pursuit with herself on her bedroom floor!  Unsurprisingly she woke rather late this morning and has looked rather tired all day, although given the 2 hours of gymnastics and half an hour of swimming, she's held up remarkably well.  Her bedroom light was off when I had a look at just gone half nine tonight, which is when she's 'supposed' to turn her light off, although in practice it's rarely before ten as she's usually engrossed in a book.  Fortunately we don't have to worry about getting up for the school run really!

Back from a long weekend away.

Early December is a time of year we always go and spend a long weekend with Nana and Little Grandad, as rather than seeing them over Christmas we go up for Little Grandad's birthday.

On the way to pick M up from ballet (we were going straight on from there) we had an interesting physics conversation with K about aerodynamics, when A noticed a lorry that had the front part of the trailer that sticks up above the cab missing.  After talking about air resistance and the effect of it on moving objects and how it increases with speed, K worked about that an important reason for using aerodynamic shapes on vehicles was because it means that they will need to use less fuel (and A added, in order to go the same speed).

Also on the way, when we had rather a long wait when we stopped for lunch, K got out her 50 Brain Game cards and had a go at various puzzles and riddles.  One of them, about a 'magic number' led to some algebra.  I can't remember the exact numbers but it was something like:
Think of a number and double it
Add 6
Take away 3
Add 11
Divide by two
Take away the number you first thought of.
What's the answer?
Now try it with a different number.
Apart from the mistake she made on her first attempt when K took away double the number she'd first thought of, all was well.  I suggested trying it with 0 as the starting point and of course the answer was still 7 and K realised that it always would be.  So I suggested doing it again, but with 'n' as the starting point, so we had (there was a space to write you answer after each step):
n   (x2)
2n   (+6)
2n+6   (-3)
2n+3   (+11)
2n+14  (/2)
n+7  (-n)
= 7
I think this helped K see clearly how the 'trick' works.

While we were there, M enjoyed having a go with the Mirror experiment kit that I mentioned previously.  Mostly she was just having fun making her own patterns, but she did also have a go at one of the pattern cards that come with it (with added bits for good measure).

A also went digging about under the roof and came out with Monopoly, which the girls are keen to have a go at (once we've found and printed out the rules as they've gone missing and neither A nor I are familiar enough with them to be completely confident of getting them spot on with help) and a real brain puzzler.

For quite sometime we had a Mini Mastermind, borrowed from a friend, which the girls really liked although mostly they liked setting the code rather than trying to break it!  The game that A found though was Grand Mastermind, which is similar but instead of choosing a code with 4 pegs from a choice of 6 colours, you set a code of 4 colours and 4 shapes from a choice of 5 of each.  Both girls liked setting the codes and actually marking each attempt can be quite tricky (you give a black peg for a correct colour/shape pair in the correct place, white for a correct pair in the wrong place and blue for a correct single colour or shape in the correct place) particularly if you have a repeated colour or shape.  K also had a couple of goes at breaking the code (we simplified slightly by saying no repeated colours or shapes) and was successful on both attempts.  It's really does make you think, and is particularly difficult if you have not only repeated colours and/or shapes but identical pairs.

While we were there an occupational therapist came to talk about Little Grandad's needs and sadly we're having to have conversations about how not only do people's bodies get worn out and not work so well, but also that it can happen to people's brains, as he is suffering from Alzheimers.  It's very sad to see but fortunately the disease is not so far advanced that he doesn't know us all, but it is very hard work for Nana, who is his sole carer.

In other news, we have the most enormous bone in our fridge, since A asked one of the stall holders at the farmers' market if they might have one we could look at for a human body project and they happily obliged and on Saturday, shortly before we left for our visit, came home with a cow's femur!!

Just a quick post.

Over the past few days K has decided that she wants to re-learn how to knit.  She has also been having a go with a Mirror experiment box, that I got from the scrap store (for a small donation).  M has also been doing some more knitting, at the moment she is working on a (second) scarf for her toy dog.  She's also submitted an entry to a Puffin Post competition, which asks for a photo plus a poem about the photo.  I think her poem is really lovely and will post the whole things later if she agrees, but it starts: I have a dog, he is a toy, but he is real to me. 
A arrived home from Hong Kong this afternoon, the 3rd and final big trip in the last four weeks, which is definitely a good thing, as M in particular has struggled with this.  He's now home pretty much until Christmas (apart from a short trip to Brussels).  Tomorrow Granny is off home and we're off to see Nana and Little Grandad, for his birthday, so there has been (and I'm anticipating there may be more) making of cards and presents for him before we go.

Keeping on keeping on.

I haven't blogged for a few days for a number of reasons.  Granny has arrived for the week, while A has departed for the third and final big trip in 4 weeks, to Hong Kong this time by far the furthest he's been for work.  I dread to think how exhausted he'll be flying half way round the world and back in the space of 4.5 days!

So what have we been up to?  Well K & M are still very pleased with their video purchases and have watched them several times over the past week.  We're also still having fun with Christmas preparations, with both K & M finding, planning and making presents for folks.

The body is still featuring quite strongly.  Each of the girls had a go at adding the names of the bones from to our skeleton print out, using the labels that came with the felt one we borrowed from friends, plus some extra ones that I added. 

Granny also brought a folder with a few more bits and pieces about the body, including a couple of posters that we looked at and managed to identify most bones and most of the major internal organs or viscera as the poster called them!

Today was the final Fun Club of the year, which is always a Christmas concert.  This involves turns by anybody or wants to perform something, from singing, playing, acting, poetry reading.  As usual there were some lovely performances.  M played three Christmas songs on the piano, I was particularly proud of the fact that when she went quite badly wrong on one of them, she didn't panic, get upset or bothered, but calmly stopped, started again and played it perfectly on her second attempt.

Could this be the start of a change of heart?

I have, on a number of occasions, talked with my girls about the necessity of some tragedy in fiction and how without it many, many stories would be much less interesting.  They are both reasonably comfortable with the idea of death in fiction within certain parameters, usually either it's a 'baddie' (their word) who dies or a character that they're not emotionally invested in (my words not theirs), preferably before the start of the story.  Examples that haven't caused any upset despite containing death and, in some cases, violence include The Secret Garden and The Little Princess (both by Frances Hodgeson Burnett) and some of C S Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia  We had a conversation this evening when K informed me that her new favourite film is The Lion King and M agreed that she liked it very much too.  Given their reaction when we first watched it together (M in floods of tears asking me 'Mummy, why did you get this film?' and K with her eyes closed at a particularly sad and scary part), this is something of a surprise.  We're still nowhere near considering Hamlet or Macbeth (both of which were inspiration for The Lion King), but I'm hopeful that it won't be too long before I can share one of my favourite's with them: Anne of Green Gables.  In the meantime, we're still going with Just William, where death and violence really aren't an issue!

In other news, we also talked about anthropomorphism regarding The Lion King, when K correctly deduced the meaning, despite saying she didn't know the word, and on that topic, we've started watching The Aristocats that K & M bought earlier this week.  Both K & M have been making more Christmas cards and are planning on continuing with them tomorrow.

Getting Christmas crafty.

K, M & I had a pyjama day today, something we haven't done for ages, since we have something on most days!

The oven was on for most of the day, as I made:

Mincemeat and...

...The Christmas cake

While I was making the cake, K & M were curled up on the sofa watching videos.  Either side of the videos, we got crafty!  I got the Christmas books and craft things down, so that we could start making cards etc.  K did some more work on her pasta bead creation, she's still at the preparing the pasta stage at the moment.  M and I had a go at making one of these:

 K has started making Christmas cards, using the Christmas shape punchers:

 The girls have also started putting together a push-out-stick-together Christmas mouse house, that we were given last year or maybe even the year before, but I neglected to give them!



A bit of a break from bodies.

Yesterday was jam-packed from mid-day onwards.  Both K & M got crafty in the morning, with M in the kitchen working on a Christmas present for K, a decoration with beads.  K was in the playroom painting some pasta to use as beads among other things.

We had a quick lunch, which K & M finished off in the car on the way to Asfordby.  The theme was Christmas decorations and both girls coloured a wooden decoration and K did a stencil picture of a Christmas tree and made a heart out of a sparkly pipe cleaner and beads.  After that M joined in with a group of children starring in a film trailer, using an app on the ipad belonging to one of them, who directed it, K was involved too, although I'm not sure how.  They had a whale of a time, both inside and out (getting rather muddy!) making this trailer and there are plans for making another one next time and K is considering taking part as a performer next time.

After Asfordby, we went for play and tea to friends', where all five children headed outside to play on the trampoline, zip-wire and more, not in the slightest bit put off by the mud, cold or indeed increasing darkness!  There were a couple of sibling squabbles (mostly between my two!), but mostly they all got on fine.

We'd just finished tea, when we had to dash off to get back in time for Brownies for K & M and speech therapy (post laryngitis, still not got my voice back properly nearly 4 months on) for me.  There was more Christmas decoration making at Brownies.  A has just told me, that when he dropped the girls off, the parents had to hang around for a while for insurance reasons, because of the two 'Owls', of whom one always needs to be there, one was running late and the other wasn't well.  During this time, they played a ball throwing and catching game and then 'wink murder', A said that K sat out for that game, she didn't make a fuss, but didn't want to take part.  Clearly her principles of avoiding tragedy extend to this sort of parlour game too!

Today, we had a much more relaxed day, with K & M playing with playmobil this morning.  This afternoon we headed out to the library, where they had a couple more Secret Seven books in for M, who is enjoying working her way through them. 

We then shopping, making a tour of the numerous charity shops, bumping into another HE family, who I recognised but don't really know, on several occasions, as they were doing the same!  The girls pooled their resources and bought 3 videos between them for £1, 101 Dalmations, The Lion King (despite having been very upset when we watched in the first time when we had it from lovefilm and I had been severely chastised for having got it!) and The Aristocats.  M also bought a couple of Dick King Smith books, and K bought a Christmas present for Great Grandma, a little lavendar doll with a bar of lavendar soap.  I also bought a few more Horrible Histories books (we were given a load a while back, the girls won't touch them, but I'm quite enjoying them at the moment and they might change their minds!), plus The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Tom's Midnight Garden.

When we got home, the girls watched their new 101 Dalmations video, while I started making Christmas mincemeat and put the dried fruit to soak in brandy ready for Christmas cake making tomorrow, and then later they had korfball. After watching the film, M came and questioned me.  She asked: If you were a dalmation and you already had 15 puppies, would you adopt another..(pause while she worked it out, bearing in mind there are, I believe, 3 adult dalmations in the film)..83 dalmation puppies?  I said I thought not, as that would be rather too many in my view.

Finally, I have decided that I am going to start reading to the girls again, but have an absolute limit of one chapter per day (and not necessarily every day).  So today we started Just William, which they loved.  I've really missed reading to my girls and they've really missed it too. 

Moving on to muscles and more.

We haven't finished with bones yet, but this afternoon we got some tins of beans out, got A to take off his shirt and talked about muscles.  K & M felt their own and Daddy's biceps and triceps as they were lifting and lowering the tins of beans.  We used our encyclopedia and talked mostly about skeletal and how they often come in pairs and can only contract and they need a partner to pull them back to their relaxed, longer state.  We talked about where the muscles that we had just used must be attached to the bones, talking about the bicep M said that it's attached to the humerus at one end and K worked out that the other end must be attached to the raduis or ulna.  We looked at the pictures and saw just how much of our body is covered in muscle (a lot of it!) and talked about how the muscles are attached to the bones with tendons, such as the Achilles tendon (we haven't ventured into Greek mythology yet though).  Previously we'd discussed the fact that paeleontologists work out how dinosaurs moved and looked because they can see where muscles were attached to fossil bones.  We also talked briefly about the two other types of muscle; cardiac muscle (that never gets tired) and smooth muscle (that forms part of organs such as the stomach). 

Speaking of the stomach we also had a lovely talk over lunch about the digestion process, with M correctly identifying the start of it as taking place in the mouth and then we talked about where our stew would be (still in the stomach) and where it would be going next and of course ending up!

In other news we got Carcassonne out for the first time in ages.  It was a really good game with M & A, who were a team, narrowly winning.  I have also played Phase 10 with M again a couple of times after a long gap because M went off it seemed that I really was winning all the time, fortunately she has won on both of these occasions, so now we have proof that I don't in fact win all the time and she's much happier about playing with me!

Making edible model bones.

Last night K & M requested that A & I have a lie-in this morning, because the two of them wanted to do secret things on their own first thing.  I'm never going to argue against that sort of suggestion, so A and I had a time for a nice chat, while K & M were doing 'secret things' which included practising Christmas songs on the piano, but other than that I am still in the dark.

Once we did get up, K & I had a look at the body that we'd been lent along with the felt skeleton.  There are various bones (or collections of bones), a brain, muscles of the arm and leg, trachea & oesophagus, heart, lungs, diaphram, liver, stomach, intestines, kidneys and bladder.

I think that's it! We'd come across most of these before in our chats, except the diaphram.  So K & I did some breathing using inter-costal muscles and then using our diaphrams instead, M was busy on the computer at this time, but she and I did the same later.  K did a pretty good job of putting everything back where it came from.

Fitting the rib cage on after everything else had fitted in!

We also looked at our body encyclopedia again and this time, looked at the stomach a bit.  This covered a different sort of muscle, sphincters, so we talked about the obvious one, the anus, and then the pyloric sphincter.  We have a particular interest in this particular muscle as K had a pyloric stenosis as a baby and needed an operation at just five and a half weeks old.  We also discovered that the diaphram is involved with vomiting as well as breathing, as the diaphram and the abdominal muscles contract forcing the stomach contents back up when the stomach lining is irritated by something bad we've eaten.  We found that accidents can occasionally be very useful in making medical progress, as the encyclopedia told us about a man who accidentally shot himself in the side, causing a fistula (permanent hole) in his stomach, which allowed a doctor called William Beaumont to conduct experiments into digestion. 

Last night we talked about the composition of bones: tough outer membrane, compact bone, spongy bone with the red bone marrow in its spaces, yellow bone marrow and blood vessels.  Today, inspired by this blog we made edible bones!  Here is the result.

 

 

You can see the blue arrows pointing, from the top, to:

the tough outer membrane - a wrap

yellow bone marrow - plum jam

blood vessels - strawberry laces

spongy bone with red bone marrow in its spaces - brioche

compact bone - shortbread fingers

In a couple of weeks time, we will hopefully have a good sized bone (or part of one at least) to have a good look at, as A asked one of the stall holders at the Farmers' Market if they might have one we could have, and, since they usually just bin them, they were happy to oblige.

An extra body.

Daddy is home!  He's been away with work a lot for the last couple of weeks, in fact more than he's been here, which is very unusual, but we've got him for 10 days now before yet another trip to Hong Kong this time.  He got back yesterday evening, after M was asleep, and was out before we were awake this morning, so the girls didn't get to see him properly until he got home from work for tea this evening.

K & M had a bit of a break from bodies for most of the day, prefering instead to get the lego out and build houses for most of the morning.  We returned to the human body when I showed them another website I'd found, with games about the human body and under instruction from them I had a go at all of the ones relating to the skeleton, they helped with the word search and we talked about the answers to the crossword.

Over tea we talked about some of the things we'd been finding out about bones and skeletons and then again later, when Mr Fox (a puppet that A plays with with the girls) was being a doctor.  Then using this book  again we talked about various things including the different type of joints and also what a bone is made up of, while Dr Fox took an x-ray of M's leg, which she claimed was broken!

Very busy bodies!

I was woken this morning by M reminding me that I had *promised* we could go to the park with friends after the 2 hours of gymnastics this afternoon and she was very unhappy when I reminded her that I had indeed said that we could *if* it wasn't raining. 

Before we got to that point though, K discovered the felt skeleton that I had left out in the front room and wanted to dive straight in and put it together before breakfast.  However, since she wasn't up until not far off 10 o'clock and we needed to have an early lunch to make it to gymnastics for 1 o'clock, I insisted that she have breakfast first.  While she was having breakfast, M, who is a much earlier riser than her sister or me, got busy sticking down the paper skeleton from yesterday.



K managed to finish breakfast and get herself half dressed before she got going with the felt skeleton.  She did pretty well assembling it, only needing a bit of help getting some of the pieces the right way round on the correct side and with the shoulder blades and collar bones.  She needed a bit more help with the labels, which come in 'English' and 'Latin', for example skull and cranium, although there is also 'ribs' and 'Ribs'! 

M came along and, once I'd taken it all to pieces again, had a go too.  She had seen K doing the last little bit of the labelling, which I think helped a bit. 

We have agreed that we're all finding this subject interesting, so we're going to carry on with it, concentrating on different aspects as we go along.  For the moment we're going to stick with the bones and then add the muscles.

After lunch we went of to gymnastics, which they are both still enjoying immensely and both have completed British Proficiency Core Gymnastics Level 8.  After the two hours of gymnastics, it was not raining fortunately, so we did go to the park with friends for half an hour or so, before coming home for a cup of tea and some bread and jam before heading off for their swimming lesson.  I usually have a sit down and read for half an hour while they swim, but today had to dash back home because I'd managed to forget to pick up the bag with their towels in!  Not the first time I've done that, but fortunately the nice lady at reception lent them swimming hats, because you're not allowed to swim without them, and the girls' were in the bag with the towels.  I just about managed to get back in time for the end of their lesson.  Phew!

Still going with the human body.

Sometimes I get rather down about the amount of mess and clutter that there is in our house, when A is away (as he has been quite a lot lately - he's home tomorrow after 4 nights away) it tends to be worse, since his mess tolerance threshold is lower than mine.  Other times, if it's the right sort of 'stuff' that's spread over the kitchen table, books about the human body for example, it does seem that it can be very conducive to learning.  And it's that sort of mess at the moment!

K has been looking at the books again, including our Human Body - A Children's Encyclopedia.  We've also got a small child-sized skeleton print out in pieces on the floor, which M has put together but we haven't got round to sticking it on to the big card I have got ready yet.

We also had a look at this website, which we all found really interesting, particularly the sections on the heart.  While looking at the part about the digestive tract and reading bits aloud to the girls, K announced (correctly!) that the alimentary canal is about 4 times as long as we are, as she'd read that in one of the books on the table earlier on.

Other than the body, K & M had a friend, Z, round to play for a while this afternoon.  Among other things they played The Game of Life and the only problem (apart from a fairly easily resolved hiccough when M didn't want to play that, but decided she would if she could be on Z's team, which Z was happy with) was when Z's mum came to pick her up and K & M didn't want her to go!

This evening I had to go out for a meeting and happened to mention to S (who we saw on Monday) that we were looking at the human body at the moment and, having given her a lift home, came home myself with a felt skeleton with labels and a small perspex body with innards that you can remove and replace for us to borrow!  And speaking of felt, I'm wondering if K and/or M might fancy the idea of making their own version of this, or I might just do it myself!

A little bit organised!

Yesterday, on the way to meeting friends from school, we talked about the idea of doing a bit of a project on the human body.  Often when we have conversations like this, I think something along the lines of 'I must dig out the books we've got on the topic this evening', but things happen, bedtime comes and I've forgotten about it and when I remind the girls about the conversation they've made other plans for their time or the moment has gone.  Last night, however, just before I went to bed, I actually remembered and found 4 books from our 'non-fiction section' and left them on the kitchen table for the girls to find in the morning. 

I found a couple of sheets to print out - one with the human skeleton and one of the heart - which we looked at together.  K and I in particular looked at the one on the skeleton, she didn't want to have a go herself, but was happy to talk about it and check whether I got things right when I had a go! 

We also talked about various bodily functions, including the circulatory one and about how our arteries and veins have valves in them to keep our body flowing in one direction, and I demonstated this using my wrist and K & M were able to identify which way the blood was flowing in this particular case.

Blood filled vein.

Valve stopping section of vein filling up again.

We also had another look at The Happy Scientist site, this time looking at videos specific to the human body:  Foot circles (draw clockwise circles with your right foot, draw a 6 in the air with your right hand and see what happens), Just a suggestion (which is about the power of suggestion and is making me want to scratch my nose right now!) and The Stroop Effect (how it takes longer to say a list of colours that words are written in if the words themselves say are a different colour e.g. blue green yellow).  K was also very keen an watching the video on how to make a laser projection microscope, so we've ordered a green laser pen from ebay, so we can make our own. 

In addition to this, K in particular spent some time looking at the books I'd left out (mostly whilst eating, which is a slight bone of contention as she takes an inordinately long time eating when she isn't distracted!), mostly a very old copy of the Usborne book, The Flip Flap Body Book. 

This afternoon was a complete change of topic, as we went to see A Mid-Summer Night's Dream at Lakeside.  It was set in the Second World War, with Bottom et al as an air-raid warden and the home guard for example.  K showed just how strongly she feels about tragedies as she was completely unwilling to watch even Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within the play which is ostensibly a tragedy, but which was farcical to point of hilarity.  Sitting where we were she could just lean back and not be able to see, but didn't cover her ears at least, which is progress!  We all enjoyed the production in any case, which is the main thing!

Some Happy Science.

M and K are really rather different in their needs for company/alone time.  M, although perfectly capable of and happy spending time on her own when she wants to, more often wants to be with and play with others.  K is much more likely to want to spend time on her own, not necessarily physically but just doing her own thing and she is very good at tuning out what is going on around her.  So two play dates in two days is great as far as M is concerned and K's happy with it too, as she still has plenty of time for herself should she feel the need.

Sunday afternoon a friend, I, from a couple of doors down came to play and then when we walked her home K & M stayed there for another hour as they hadn't finished!  Today we met friends, S, A & J, from school (it gave them a bit longer together!) and went back to their house for play (or tea and chat for S & me) and tea, before Brownies. 

This morning I reminded K & M about The Happy Scientist.  You can watch some of the videos for free, but it's definitely worth the $20/year subscription to be able to watch them all, I think.  We watched a few videos together, including one about attracting a woodpecker, one about friction (with an experiment with two books like the one we did), another about lighting a bulb with a balloon and two about light, which K wants to follow up but we need to get some polarised sunglasses first in order to do so.

Gentle exercise today - for a good cause!

This morning both K & M did some more discovering with the electronics kit and M, with just a little bit of help baked some chocobanana cookies.

She had a particular reason for wanting to bake, as this afternoon was a Children in Need three-legged fancy dress walk around the lake at the university, along with a cake sale, organised by some of the older local HE girls.  M threw herself whole-heartedly into the event, she dressed up as a dog (I forgot my camera, so unfortunately no pics) did the walk round the lake with S (who is about 11 I think, who we first met when A & I were first considering HE and his mum kindly agreed to meet up with me at a local soft play place to talk about it).  K decided she didn't want to do the three-legged part, but I paired up with another M (same name as my M), and my M and S went together because they were somewhat better suited in size.  They must have got on well, because a bit later they went round again and now M considers him her friend.  The whole event went very well and with donations for taking part and the cake sale both to the HE families there and passers-by we raised over £175!

Electronics experimentations.

As I mentioned previously, we have borrowed an electronics kit for a month or two and as a thank you I'm replacing a couple of bulbs and a blown fuse - a bargain!  While we were in town for ice-skating on Wednesday we got the things we needed (more in the case of the fuse as they come in packs of 10!)

K has been enjoying finding out what various components do and we will be continuing with this and hopefully finding some answers to some of the questions she had (with a trip to the dentist this mornin and 2 hours of gymnastics and a swimming lesson this afternoon we didn't have that long to play with it today).

M liked it too, but she mainly concentrating on making the fan fly as high as possible.

Quite high this time!

While M was having her go, K had a look at the booklet with me and on the first page there were 10 'revision' questions: 10 pictures of circuits mostly with one bulb, but a couple with two, and you had to decide whether the bulb or bulbs would light up in each one.  Most of them were quite straight forward, as there was a gap or the battery missing, but she was confident and correct in all her answers, even the slightly more tricky ones at the end.  Afterwards I recreated each of the circuits to show that she was right.

We're not quite so busy tomorrow in theory, so will probably get this out again and have another go!

What to do on a lovely autumn afternoon?

This of course!

 Lots of times!  K wanted this one in particular to go on blog.

M discovered yesterday that she can now do this.  My guess is that gymnastics has helped improve her strength, and I said as much to K, who thought she might try it sometime soon.

And of course she likes to climb this tree.  Can you spot her?

She's about here.

You can just about make out her head in this close up take immediately afterwards.

 

Then we headed home with hot chocolate and Fantastia on dvd.  K & M both loved it (except the last part, which they weren't so keen on), I must admit that I fell asleep (I'm fighting a chest infection, so will plead that as an excuse). 

Before all that though, it was the monthly ice-skating meet.  For the first time I didn't skate with the girls (see above), but they clearly didn't need me.  M was concentrating on increasing her speed and doing a pretty good job.  K decided today was the day to try skating backwards and again was doing really well.  She tends to wait until she thinks she's ready to try new things, whether physical or otherwise, before giving them a go.  Occasionally a nudge will encourage her to try something, but more often than not it results in digging on heels, so I've learned that it's usually best to wait for her to make the decision.

Why go to groups.

Twice a month we go to a HE group, which the girls and I really like, and there's another monthly one we all like too.  In some ways it's a bit of a pain to go, because it's nearly a half an hour drive away and it starts at 12.30, which is a really awkward time for lunch.  It is definitely worth going though for various reasons.  K & M really like it because they get to see their friend C (or she might be a K, I'm not sure!) and there's lots of outside space.  I like it because I get to chat to other HE mums.  The two groups that we go to regularly that aren't for a specific activity (such as ice-skating or gymnastics) usually have a particular theme each time.  Invariably there's at least one thing, usually several that K and/or M are interested in and engage with, since there is generally a variety of activities related to the topic to choose from.  Today was one of those rare times that both K & M only found one thing that wanted to do (this time it happened to be a wordsearch), but they still got plenty out of going.  Sometimes they want to do the activities, sometimes, like me, they just want to spend time with people they enjoy spending time with.

In other news, I am currently reading Michael Morpurgo books, because M has really enjoyed The Butterfly Lion, which she really enjoyed, but some of his books are what K & M would consider 'tragedies' because a 'goodie' dies.  So far I have read This Morning I Met a Whale and The Dancing Bear, both of which have been ruled out as readable by M for just that reason.  

Not your average Sunday evening!

Firstly the very important question of the lemon meringue birthday pie - it was good, but I think I might try a different version if (okay - when) I make another one, as the lemon part could have been better in my opinion.  Everyone liked it though, which is the important thing!

This evening we had a trip out which started with a bit of physics, when we spotted a dog walking about the parcel shelf of the car in front, which lead to a conversation about car safety generally and specifically  momentum.  We then talked about how if there are no other forces acting on a moving body it will keep going forever and about how it is friction that generally slows things down, for example for something on wheels there is both 'rolling resistance' (the friction between the wheels and the ground) and 'air resistance'.  A and I could remember that this was pretty much one of Newton's laws of motion (although not which one!), we moved on to Isaac Newton generally.  I think we may soon be paying a visit to Woolsthorpe Manor, as both girls were quite interested in the idea.

The destination of our trip was East Midlands airport for a visit of a maintenance hanger, with a HE dad, D, who works there.  We got to see a couple of aeroplanes (Airbus A321), inside and out, at different stages of refurbishment and we found out rather a lot about aeroplanes in general and how they work.

An almost completely stripped out inside.

M up close and personal with an engine!

K examining the rubbery pointy bit - rubbery so that it wobbles about so that ice can't form on it.

My turn at K & M's insistence.

The outside of one of the aeroplanes we went in.

M in the pilot's seat

What an engine looks like without the cover - it's attached to the plane with just 3 bolts!!

It was a really interesting visit and on the way home we talked about how, in macro terms (as A put it), an aeroplane stays up in the air in the same way that a piece of paper stays up underneath an up-turned half full glass of water, the shape of the wing means the air has to travel faster further and therefore faster over the top, therefore lowering the pressure above the wing because of the shape, which lifts the aeroplane and the engines are 'just' to move the plane forwards.  Pretty amazing stuff!