Two different days out.

On Wednesday we were out and about in the car.  After M's French horn lesson we headed into the depths of the Derbyshire countryside to pay a visit to one of the country's top master chocolatiers.

Just over two years ago I had a lesson with him, possibly the best Christmas present ever from A and ever since then, I've been buying my chocolate from him.  Unfortunately he no longer comes to our local farmers' market, but has delivered to us when over in this direction, but this was the first time that we've been to his place.  It seems to have become a bit of tradition that M takes him something that she has baked, since his wife once commented, when filling in for him at the farmers' market, that nobody bakes for him because he's just so good at it (he's baked for royalty on more than one occasion!).  This time it was jammy dodgers.  Once we'd eventually found him, he made the girls a hot chocolate and us a cuppa and then showed us his office.  There we had an impromptu lesson on chocolate production, when he showed us in order:

• a dried cacao pod
• another one cut open preserved in formaldehyde
• a jar of what would be scooped off the forest floor with the beans along with assorted rubbish (this would be paid for by weight, so it's not in the interests of those collecting it to be too picky!)
• a jar with roasted cacao beans, still in their husks.  He gave us each one to break open and taste; it was quite bitter and not that 'chocolatey'
• a jar each of cocoa powder and cocoa butter, which was in little buttons.  He gave us each one of the little buttons of the cocoa butter and told us to rub in on our skin.  Cheap chocolate doesn't have such a high cocoa butter content, as it's replaced with the much cheaper vegetable oil.  And cocoa butter skin products don't have much of the stuff in either, because it's expensive!

Fascinating stuff!

We left his place with 10 kilos of chocolate, which should keep us going for a while, and strict instructions to get in touch when we're down to the last couple of kilos, so that we don't run out again!

We then called in at Ikea on the way home, to get lids for some of our 'doodle drawers' (aka trofast ones), so that the rats can't get into them.  Once home it was time to clean out the rats' cage before the girls' swimming lesson.

On Thursday it was a home educators' day at Thinktank in Birmingham.  We got the train down and spent the morning exploring the museum, some parts which we hadn't found on previous visits.  I think this was partly down to the fact that we weren't with friends as we had been on other occasions, when they tend to stick to a particular area where they like to play. 

So we found the natural history area, the human body area and the medical area and spent quite a bit of time in these parts, some of it together, some of it looking at and interacting with the various displays.

Barn owl skull on the left, sparrowhawk on the right.

In addition to access to the museums, as part of the day, each child can attend three sessions.  These can include a show in the planetarium, a workshop in one of the labs, or a talk or show in the theatre.  Fortunately K & M are generally in agreement as to which sessions they would most like to go to, as they need an adult to accompany them (I think this is the case until they're 12).  All of the sessions that we went to were in the afternoon in our case, and they were one after another, although this wasn't a problem as each session is around 45 minutes long and there are 15 minutes between sessions to allow people to get to the next one. 

The first session we went to was a show in the theatre which was about very small things to very large things.  It focused mostly on looking at the scale of those things and I certainly found it very interesting and I think the girls did too!

Looking at the make up on an atom.

If the nucleus (i.e. the protons and neutrons) of the atom were the size of a basketball, then the electrons whizzing around would be about the size of a moth and the space would be about the size of Wembley stadium.

The comparison.

In a similar vein, a 'parachute' that was 5 metres in diameter was used to represent the size of the sun and the children were asked to decide which of a number of different sized balls would be the right size to represent earth.  It was one of the sort you find in sort play places.

The next session that K & M had chosen, sounded as though it was going to be one that they had done at a previous Thinktank day and it was quite similar, but not identical and since the girls had chosen it because they'd really liked it last time, that wasn't a problem at all.  It was on the subject of forensics and the children had various pieces of evidence that they had to look at, including fingers prints, dna results, crime scene photos, a footprint, fibres and a hair.  Once they'd gathered all the information they could from this, they were then given profiles of various possible suspects and asked to deduce who they thought was the culprit, although at this point they were also told about how the importance of 'evidence' varied.  For example, the hair found at the scene of the crime an office at Thinktank, was found to belong to the secretary, who worked in that office every day, so hardly incriminating.

Recording where evidence was found and what it was.

Recording DNA and fingerprint results.

The final session was a talk with one of the museum enablers (I think that was his title), in fact it was he had run the forensics session, who before a career change, when he joined Thinktank, had been a paleontologist.  This session was aimed children 12 years and older, but when M had seen the list of options when we received the email about the day and had seen this one she had been very upset that it was for older children and very much wanted to go along to it.  I emailed to ask if it was possible and quickly got a reply to say that it was fine (they are rather stricter about ages for the lab sessions though).  It was quite a personal talk, including information about the route he took to get into paleontology, with quite a lot about the digs that he had been on and what was involved and really rather interesting.  I don't know if, after hearing about it, M is still interested in that as a career option, and she was getting rather tired by this point, but I think she and K both enjoyed the talk and afterwards it was time to head back to the station.

After two busy days out and about we really needed the Friday at home and since it was the end of the month, that meant it was bedroom cleaning and tidying time.

In other news, we've been continuing with The Star of Kazan, which we're all enjoying.  M finished her maths workbook and has moved onto a grammar one and K has done the opposite.  Finally, M was busy last weekend, but that deserves a post of its own, so more on that later.