That old socialisation chestnut

My girls have been to a birthday party today, and both went to one last week and K is going to one tomorrow. Today's party was a HE friend, the other two are both schooled friends.
Today the birthday child was an 8 year old boy and there were about a dozen children, boys and girls, varying in age from M at not far off 7 years old, up to a 15 year old girl (who made the birthday cake).
Last weekend was a joint party between two 7 year olds, a boy and a girl, the girl, J, being M's best friend (in fact J & her older sister A and K & M are all very close). This was a balanced party in terms of gender (which, from my admittedly fairly limited experience, is very unusual at birthday parties of schooled children) but, apart from A & K, they were all the same age.
Tomorrow the birthday child is also 8 years old, but a girl and I imagine (although if I'm wrong I will happily come back here and admit it *) there will be 15-20 7-8 year old girls.
I know which I think is more like the social mix that K & M will encounter in the real world when they're all grown up!

*There were boys as well as girls at this party.

When the weather's this good...

...then really the only thing to be done is to go outside and top up that vitamin D!

We've now finished both of the Alice books, which are exceedingly peculiar in my view, but which had K in particular laughing like a drain! We've also now talked about the basics of chess, although neither K nor M was particularly taken with the idea.

One of the very few things that I think is a (very slight) downside of HE is that it is trickier, although by no means impossible, to try out different team/group activities, particularly with children like mine who would be generally reluctant to do so with a group of children they don't know, I'm thinking particularly of sport and music here. So when the birthday party they went to at the weekend turned out to be a 'running around' party, including some football and hockey (both indoor), I was quite pleased. In their party bags, there was a flier by the folks that ran it and who are also doing school holiday activity clubs, and both K & M decided they'd like to try one out. Having confered with the friend whose daughter's party it was and discovering that her two girls (two of K & M's best friends) are going for a day too, I've booked both of them in for a day of 'Active Multi Sports' in a couple of weeks time. What am I going to do with myself?!

The past two days we've spent quite a chunk of at the park, with K & M climbing (and today having their picnic up!) one of their favourite trees.

We've got a few books lined up to read now, all of which feature in this book, a couple of which I had already from my childhood and the third I happened to spot in a charity shop shortly after reading about it. So we started on The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler this afternoon in the park and then we'll move on to Peter Pan and Wendy and Emil and the Detectives.

However if this weather holds you're more likely to find K & M up a tree in the park or playing in the garden, as indeed they should be, and in fact we're off to a HE meet up and picnic in the brilliant local country park tomorrow.

Disneyland leads to outbreak of chess!

That's the headline here at the moment. Well indirectly anyway. As a result of our trip to Disneyland last week, we have now read Alice in Wonderland and have moved on to Through the Looking Glass, which has resulted in many questions about chess. After double checking how to set out a board (it's been a very long time since I've played as I've never really liked the game because my big brother always beat me!), I'm all set to introduce K & M to the basics.
In other news, we have started doing some writing again. A lack of much writing is something that A (aka Daddy) gets rather stressed about, so in a moment of inspiration I asked K if she'd like to write a story *with* me, taking turns to write a sentence of two. She like this idea so now we're writing a story together about 'Alfred the Red-bottomed Baboon', a character she and M had come up with fairly recently. M wanted in on the idea, so she and A have started something too.

We're back!

One of the many advantages of HEing is that you can go on holiday outside of the really busy holiday times and it's all a learning experience. Last week we had a fantastic time putting our French language learning into practice along with some wonderful experiences and meeting some family members for the first time.

First we spent a few days in Paris itself and did some of the tourist stuff that you really can't not do! We visited Notre Dame, went on a boat, saw (but didn't go into) the Sacré Coeur and wandered round Montmartre with ice-creams (the weather was amazing for March!) on our first full day.

The following day we went to the Musée d'Orsay in the morning (by the way if you are planning on going take a small child - we went to the end of the rather long queue but were told we could go in by a different queue-free door as we had children, who incidentally got in free!). On the suggestion of an acquaintance, which I would thorougly recommend, we went to the gift shop first where we had a look at the postcards and each chose our favourite. Having bought these we then went in search of them in the museum. We found mine and K's easily enough in the main Impressionism section and A's soon after but struggled to find M's, so went and asked at the information desk only to be told that it was en réserve but M quickly chose a postcard of a large polar bear sculpture we'd already seen and all was well again once we'd visited it again.

After lunch we went to the Eiffel Tower having pre-booked tickets with a time slot in order to avoid the queue. We went right to the top (the last people to do so that day before they closed it!) and talked about some of the famous visiters that there are pictures of up there and spotted some of the places we'd already visited in Paris.

Eating doughnuts up the Eiffel Tower was definitely a high-light for K & M!

We had been talking about our planned trip to Paris for several months before we went, but we had kept part of it as a surprise and on the 3rd full day we went on rather a longer ride on the RER than usual to 'a different part of Paris', which is to the east of the centre. It wasn't until we actually arrived that K clicked where we were and we had to tell M that we'd brought them to Disneyland! I had been a bit sceptical as to whether it really was a good idea to be honest, but despite an awful lot of walking and quite a bit of waiting (I really would hate to be there when it's really busy!) we had a really good time. M was a bit upset at being too small for some of the more 'vigorous' rollercoasters, but fortunately she was big enough for several that I found rather stomach turning (she declared a couple 'Quite relaxing!'). K surprised me by being willing to try the more adventurous rides, although she much prefered the more gentle ones. We talked about how many shops there were compared to the number of rides and how it's all about making money, but that we didn't need to in order to enjoy our stay and in fact we bought nothing apart from food the whole time we were there.

After two nights and two and a half days at Disneyland (which was plenty, there was a lot of walking involved and we were all shattered at the end of that, and we'd done pretty much everything we wanted to do that we could, although there were a few things closed for refurbishment that we would have liked to do), we had an evening visiting my cousin and her family. E and I hadn't seen each other for about 12 years and we had both got married and had children since then (2 on my side, 3 on hers), so we were all meeting relations for the first time. It was a shame that we could only manage an evening together, but I am sure it will not be 12 years until the next time we get together!

Finally we headed back for one more night in Paris and in the afternoon managed to squeeze in a trip to the Natural History Museum, where both girls were very pleased to see that they had a Smilodon (to the uninitiated among you that's the closest that actually existed to a sabre toothed tiger).

Before our late afternoon flight home we headed to the Musée de l'Orangerie to see the waterlillies and a look at the outside of the Centre Pompidou and a gauffre avec chocolat, when we had the only rain of the entire week.

We arrived home on Sunday extremely tired, but all in agreement that it had been a very successful trip. At the moment K has agreed that we should try to continue learning some French, so we don't forget it. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Who dunnit?

We've had the boardgame Cluedo for quite a long times, since we were given quite a few by a friend of my mum's. Cluedo had been firmly rejected from the start, however, because K does *not* like death, dying, killing or murder. Yesterday, though she decided it would be okay to give it a go on the condition that Dr Black is not 'murdered' by Mrs Peacock with the candlestick in the study (or whatever combination you happen to choose), but was 'tickled' by the person with the implement in that room. It has quickly become a favoured game. Both A and I have felt somewhat cheated when after having accused and looked in the little envelope, confident in our assertions it turns out that either K or M had one of the cards and had not noticed when we'd asked them previously, but with a bit of practise I'm sure it will improve. This afternoon M did the following sketch while we played and (I'm rather shocked by this) has said I can show you on blog! She showed me before she coloured and I could tell immediately who it was supposed to be.

Earlier this week, Thursday I think, K made the fairy below and asked me to share it on blog. She was given a book/kit for her birthday a couple of years ago and has made a few of them since. The one below was done entirely by her except for the top the fairy's wearing, which she asked me to do. I think it's rather cute.

Kitchen capers

Having left our naked egg in a glass of water with green food colouring overnight, we broke the membranes today to see whether our information was correct that the colouring would have moved through the membrane into the egg itself. As you can it is was! The colour was strongest on the membrance, then the outer albumen, which was very watery but the yolk had not been coloured as far as we could see.

We finally got around to using our red cabbage indicator today. As previously mentioned, we bought some distilled (de-ionised) water and boiled the chopped up outer leaves and stalk for about 10 minutes.

Then strained the water off to use as an indicator.

We tested (from left to right) bicarbonate of soda, lemon juice, malt vinegar and washing up liquid

The results (the middle one is our control), it was quite tricky to see the colour the liquid had changed to, so we put a bit of each on some kitchen roll.

We haven't as yet really talked much about what these results mean, because both K & M were both so keen to make some 'Marvellous Medicines' with these lovely coloured liquids plus anything else they could get their hands on! During the Dahlean obsession this was a favourite activity, but they haven't asked to do it for over a year. They're allowed access to pretty much everything (except real medicines, like George), but only a little of anything one ingredient and they must use a clean spoon when necessary. Other than this I encourage them to keep a list of everything that goes in. In the past they've put only edible things in and tried it, but mostly there's at least some liquid soap which rules out tasting.

Their Marvellous Medicines are, they tell me, medicine for Alfred, the red bottomed baboon, about whom they've recently started making stories up. He is from Russia, where he used to live in the tree tops, but now lives in a room in our house.

Such a busy day!

K & M set their alarms for 7.30 this morning, so they could have a meeting about a play that they have started writing, with the intention of producing and starring in at some point in the not too distant future. It's called The Secrets of the Wood and it's about a sprite and a fox who meet in the wood and become friends. So far they've decided on the main parts, K as the sprite and M as the fox, decided which friends they are going to invite to take part and started writing the story in picture format. We've also picked up some pretty netting with stars and some brown material from the scrapstore, which we can use for costumes. This afternoon we did some research and found some fox sounds on the internet.

The first Tuesday of the month is Fun Club, one of our earliest experiences of a HE group and one of our favourites. Some months we, the parents, come up with things to do, other times we have outside providers come in. This month was one of the best outside providers we've had in my opinion. We had a planetarium come, the man who brought it certainly pitched the level just right for the younger ones (we went in in two groups), when K, M & I went in, and the older ones sounded just as satisfied after their turn. We saw pictures of the planets, moon landings, the sun, with questions that had the children really engaged (including my very hard to engage K) and enough information for everyone to learn something without overwhelming anyone.

Afterwards we heading upstairs to do some related craft activities, including making planets out of scrunched up newspaper covered in foil or tissue paper, chalk space pictures on black paper and decorating paper plate flying saucers. M made a small planet and stuck bits of paper to make a bearded face (sadly she won't let me put a photo on blog), it was of course 'a dwarf planet'! This is K's space picture, it's a picture of Wiz, the alien who visits Earth in the Dick King-Smith book Harriet's Hare, after he's returned home to the planet Pars.

Once we were home, we had a look at our naked egg, which has been sitting in a glass of white vinegar for a couple of days now.

and poked it a bit

before transferring it to a glass of water with some green food colouring in, as suggested.

We also cracked open another egg and had a look at its anatomy, which was really rather fascinating. Tomorrow we'll break open our naked egg and hopefully see evidence that the membrane is permeable!

Experiments on the go

Having found some distilled (aka de-ionised) water in our fantastic local shop that you go to if you don't know where to get something from, Jayline, we were able to proceed with another experiment from our big science book. Having got a red cabbage in our veg box and cooked most of it, I kept the outer leaves and a bit more of the stalk than I would usually discard and boiled them up in the aforementioned water. After it had cooled down, I drained the water off through a sieve into a jug and it's now in a bottle in the fridge awaiting use as an indicator of pH.

We are also in the middle of undressing an egg, it's been sitting in a glass of white vinegar for about 33 hours now (renewed once this afternoon) and where we've carefully rubbed the remains of the shell away you can just see through to the yolk now. It should be naked by tomorrow afternoon (we're off in the morning to Fun Club and won't be home until mid-afternoon anyway) and then we can see if the membrane really is permeable with some food colouring.

If I'm allowed, as both K & M have taken against me putting photos 'on blog', I'll post some photos with the continuation and results of our kitchen science experiments.

The renewed interest with the Walking With... (Dinosaurs and Beasts) videos (yes, really, we still have videos here) is continuing and we watched two more episodes....again!

Finding maths.

Recently we've started giving K & M a monthly allowance in addition to their weekly pocket money. This was on the understanding that the things that we would usually give them extra money for, such as spending money on holiday, a couple of rides at the funfairs that occasionally come to town, money for birthday/Christmas presents for our 'little family', would no longer be forthcoming and they would be expected to pay for pretty much everything themselves. We would remind of birthdays or holidays that were coming up, so they could make sure they had notice to save up as necessary. This has lead to much adding up of money to see if they'd reached their target of holiday spending money (yes in M's case, nearly in K's but she will have done after next week's pocket money). Money is the most obvious way to get real maths into every day life, you'd be hard pressed to short change my girls these days!
Another obvious way is to get cooking, both K & M are pretty competent at weighing and measuring ingredients by volume and because we generally use 1/2 white, 1/2 wholemeal flour when baking they're pretty good at dividing by two.
Board games are something that we go through phases of playing an awful lot. The most popular games in recent times are Carcassonne, in which scoring is done in ones, twos and threes, and The Game of Life (both original and adventures edition), which involves money in tens and hundreds of thousands.
The things that has prompted me to post about this though is how percentages have cropped up. At the moment K is very keen on waving to thank drivers who stop for us at crossings and she likes to count how many acknowledge her wave. I'm happy to say it's the majority. The first time I became aware of her counting 3 out of 4 acknowledged her, so we talked about about how this is 3/4 which I commented was 75%. Her best score so far is 6/6, which is of course 100%, but apparently she can improve her score if she gets more people who all wave.

Back to the Bard

After rebuffing the offer of Shakespeare yesterday, today my girls did not allow me to get dressed until nearly lunch time today, due to demanding 'Another one!' each time I finished one of the 'Shakespeare stories' (mostly from inside the den that M had made out of chairs, clothes airers and blankets). So we've now read A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night, plus a Children's biography, which had come in a set of three that I bought to get the one about Roald Dahl during our prolonged Dahlian obsession a couple of years ago. It's a shame that we're going to be away when the RSC production of The Taming of the Shrew comes to Nottingham, otherwise I think K & M would both have been extremely keen to go and see it. As it is we've had a look at what the RSC is up to in Stratford this year and K & M have yet to agree what they'd rather see. M would prefer The Tempest but K wants to see Twelfth Night. We'll have to see when we can go and stay with Granny!

Et maintenant pour quelque chose de différent

The answer to yesterday's question about what we would do today, more Noel Streatfeild or a bit of Shakespeare? Neither! Although K & M did take it upon themselves to get Daddy's Complete Works of Shakespeare off the shelf and using the index go through their box set and categorise the books into Comedy, Tragedy and History, therefore deciding which ones were acceptable to be read at some point in the future (given K does not consider any book with death in it acceptable we are limited somewhat for now at least).
Instead we went to the shops and the library, talking en route un peu de français, although K for some reason known only to herself does not think that this is something that should be done outside, so we agreed we'd get back to it once we got home. It did lead on to a discussion of the etymology of the French word for library and similarities with some English words, in particular bible and bibliophile and bibliophobe, the latter two which are apparently very funny indeed!
The reason for the French (and my encouragement of it just at the moment), is that we are going on holiday to Paris soon, so there's a real reason for learning it, which always goes down well! As an ex-French & German teacher I find it rather difficult getting the approach to languages right with K & M, because a classroom style teaching is not what they're used to or indeed up for, but is what I know. So I try to use French every now and then and as much as they'll go for, so for example at the moment, I'm trying to remember to ask in French every time I offer them a drink. M is quite happy to dive in a give things a go, as is her style, although K insists on sounding as English as she possibly can when pronouncing French words but ho hum! We had a go at the soon to be retired BBC Schools Primary French site which K & M both enjoyed, so we'll have another go at that and I've added it to their book marked sites, so they can do so on their own when they have some computer time should they want to. We've also got about half a dozen books for learning French or about France from the library at the moment.