A brass face, science and more.

This morning, M and I, before K was properly awake and up, left to go and see a man about a French horn and more specifically about teaching M to play one.  He was very friendly and chatty and happy that she hadn't picked up any bad habits by having a go on the various instruments that she has tried.  We talked about embouchure (from the French bouche - mouth) and he got M doing various things before giving her a horn and repeating them.  She can apparently make the right shape with her mouth and he told her that she has a 'brass face', which is clearly a good thing in this context.  We spent rather longer with him than I'd anticipated, about 3/4 hour, and K was just starting to get slightly concerned at how long we'd been, but very sensibly called my mobile to see where we were.  About 30 seconds from the front door as it happened!

As our visit to the brass teacher took a bit longer than anticipated, we were a bit later setting off to meet up with our friends than planned too.  We went to Woolsthorpe Manor, the birthplace and home of Isaac Newton.  It's not a particularly big place, so it was easy enough to find our friends, E, C, L & J who were in the Science Discovery Centre.  The Science Discovery Centre is not particularly big, but they manage to fit plenty into it, including the cafe, without it feeling cramped at all.  There are plenty of hands-on things to try and the volunteers in there were very good, both knowledgeable and approachable.  We spent time there both before and after going into the house.

We looked at the experiments that Isaac Newton had carried out about light.

Seeing the colours that make up white light in a film of soap.

The instructions and explanation!

We did a project about rainbows, but that was almost 2 years ago, so by now we can revisit some of the things we talked about then at a higher level.  There was interactive display, with buttons to press to shine white light through various prisms.

Shining white light through a prism.

The first part, explained that before Newton, people believed that white light was 'pure' light and that by passing it through a prism it was contaminated in some way. 

Shining red light through a second prism.

By shining light through a prism, then blocking out all but the red light and shining the red light through a second prism, he showed that the light was not contaminated, as only red light came out there too.

Shining white light through a prism and then through a lens.

Finally, by splitting white light with a prism and then passing the resulting rainbow through a lens, Newton showed that white light is made up of all the colours.

The guide gave us magnifying glasses and we saw that holding them at arms length the thing you are looking at is turned upside down.

Looking at the upside down farmhouse.

Projecting the image through the lens onto paper.

 We talked about the camera obscura we'd been into at Kentwell and how it is the same idea.

Reflecting the image onto the paper with a mirror.

E, C, L & J had watched the short video about Isaac Newton when they'd arrived, but C came and watched it again when K, M & I went to watch.

We also dropped balls that were the same size but different weights from a height and discovered that they hit the ground at the same time.  When we tried a feather and a ball at the same time though they didn't, so we talked about air resistance.

After a picnic lunch, we had a look in the orchard and then went into the house.  Second word of the day that we have come across that we have borrowed from the French, the parlour, in a house, gets its name from the French parler to talk.

The famous apple tree, with the house Newton was born in behind.

We had a look round and found that even though Newton was almost a century after Shakespeare, not much had changed when we compared the way they cooked with what we've seen at Mary Arden's Farm.

The fireplace in the Hall.

We went for a lovely walk afterwards, having asked and been given a map with a local short walk marked on it.  K used the map and decided which way to go to get where we wanted to go successfully and the children all particularly enjoyed the of the two playgrounds we stopped in en route.

K, L, C & M

By the time we got home it was pretty much time to get tea, as M has Brownies on a Monday, so they need to eat quite early.  While the girls were eating we had a look at a pull-out from The Times that my Mum had given me about grammar and punctuation.  K told me she had already looked at it and worked through the sections on passive and active sentences, conditional sentences and formal language and got most of the exercises correct.  That does seem to be K's way lately and she does seem to have a good grasp of things that she's looked at like this, although I think it probably helps to consolidate them if we go through them afterwards together.