Our first residential home ed trip - part 1.

On Monday, after the usual (on my part) stresses of last minute packing and making sure we had everything we needed, K, M & I set off, aided by Emily (our satnav), for Ironbridge.  My Mum has been saying that it's somewhere we must visit for ages, so when the lovely KL organised a trip, I jumped at the chance to take part.  I also discovered that my second cousin, who I last saw when we were both 10 (so almost 3 decades ago) has fairly recently become the senior curator there, so having got contact details of his mum from mine (they're first cousins) I got in touch and we arranged to meet up while we were there.

We were staying, along with over a dozen other HE families, for three nights at the (group bookings only) Coalbrookdale Youth Hostel.  As we couldn't check in until about 4pm, we and E, C, L & J had agreed to meet up at one of the 10 Ironbridge Museums, Enginuity.  We bought annual passes for all 10 museums for K and A & me, saving £1.75 because it was cheaper doing that than a family pass for 2 adults plus children, as M's Blue Peter badge got her in free!  We were all impressed with our the first of the museums.  Everything there has a hands-on element and all five children, aged nearly 6 to 10, were engaged the whole time we were there.

M about to test her structure for resistance to earthquakes.

Using struts to strengthen a structure.

K, C, L & J moving little balls round using various mechanical means.

At various points we all had a go at fitting 3d shapes together into cubes with varying degrees of success, but both the children and both mummies spent a considerable amount of time concentrating on this particular activity.

C & M concentrating hard.

M still going and E trying hard.

Success!

There were various 2d puzzles too, including this brilliant Pythagoras puzzle, which K & M looked at with me and we also talked briefly about 3, 4, 5 right-angled triangles and K worked out that it does indeed work, since (3x3)+(4x4) does indeed = 5x5.

The square on the hypotenuse....

...is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides!

 The thing that all 5 children spent most time on was the water area, which had various dams and an Archimedes screw among other things.

After about three and a half hours in Enginuity, we managed to tear the children away (mainly because it wasn't going to be open for much longer anyway) and headed to the youth hostel.  After settling in the children disappeared enjoying time making new friends and spending time with old ones.  A joined us, having got the train and bus from a meeting in London.  After some debate, we agreed that K & M could have a sleepover, which ended up with 5 girls squashed into a room with one set of bunk beds plus a mattress on the floor.  I'm sure they had fun, but not so sure how much sleep they had!