Science and stuff.

 Today we took advantage of A having the week off work to have a family day out and went to Woolsthorpe Manor, home of Isaac Newton.  The manor itself wasn't open today, but the main attraction was the science centre, so we'd decided to go anyway.  The girls and I had been before just over 12 months ago but it was A's first time. 

Despite being half term, it wasn't too busy and we all enjoyed playing/experimenting with the various things to do there.

There was this, where you tried to move the paddle to track the red line on the graph.  There were three tasks.  The first had time and distance on the graph and a straight line, so you had to move the paddle at a constant speed of 5cm/sec.  The second was again time and distance, but it started still for the first 3 seconds and then accelerated over the remaining time.  The final graph plotted time against speed, with a straight diagonal line, so you had to accelerate at a constant rate.  Very tricky indeed!

K having a go.

As you would expect, there were plenty of experiments to have a go at to do with light.  There was one with prisms, first to separate white light into the visible spectrum and then you could block all but the red light and show that it can't be separated further.  Another one you could first separate white light into the rainbow and then converge them back into white light.

In another area there were various different shapes of lenses and mirrors with which to bend and reflect light.

Like this!

I had an interesting conversation with K about this display. 

It talks about whether light is a particle or a wave and explains that current thinking is that it is neither but sometimes behaves like a particle and other times like a wave.  K's response to this was 'Like a non-Newtonian fluid', meaning that it sometimes behaves like a solid, sometimes like a liquid, but is neither.

In other news, we finished The Wee Free Men and have started reading Five Children on the Western Front, which is a recently written sequel by Kate Saunders to E Nesbit's The Five Children and It books, set at the start of the First World War.

K is still going with the FutureLearn course that she is doing, Start Writing Fiction and has also been on Khan Academy quite a lot, particularly looking at the maths doodling videos, which she loves.  She has also been making her own hexaflexagons.

Finally, I'm going away for a few days!  It's the first time I'll have left the girls for more than one night and the first time leaving the country without them.  I'm going to Norway with my choir, which I'm both excited and a bit nervous about.  The girls have lots planned with A and will be absolutely fine, although they aren't too keen on my going. 

A weird weekend.

The weekend before we went to London, I had a weekend away at a meeting in Manchester.  It was apparently weird and wrong without me at home, although everyone seemed to get through it fine.  This weekend was once again weird, according to M, but this time it was because K was away on Scout camp.  As anticipated M missed K quite a lot, particularly when she wasn't occupied, but fortunately there was plenty to do.

We dropped K off on Friday in the rain and then M had gymnastics as usual, so that was fine.  Saturday was Nottingham University's Mayfest and M and I took a packed lunch and spent pretty much the whole day there.  There was lots to see and do and we also managed to meet up with friends for part of the time.  As is often the case with both K & M, M wanted to return to certain things that she'd done previously, so we did do that, but also coincidentally started off with one of five activities that were part of a trail, which you could get stickers to go on a page in the guidebook, so worked our way through those too.  The event is also a fundraiser, raising money for the university's research into dementia, which is something that is relevant to our family anyway, but particularly at the moment, as my father-in-law, who suffers from Alzheimer's, is moving into permanent residential care next week. 

Some things we did include:
Taking part in an experiment about the effect language can have on financial risk taking.
Taking part in an activity that demonstrated the effects of overfishing.
M went on an exercise bike for about 8 minutes, contributing to the target (I can't remember what!) that had been set for the day.
Various quizzes and puzzles on different topics.
Looked at a tiny fly using my phone as a microscope, on a stand with just a small lens.

The fly!

I really liked this freebie postcard we picked up.

In the evening it was just M and me, until A got home from playing cricket and at M's request we had pizza, profiteroles, hot chocolate and the Dad's Army film in the evening.

Sunday morning, A & M cleaned the rats' cage out and after lunch she and I cycled to Funky Pots, where she painted what will be a name plaque for her door and a very slightly chipped penguin from the seconds shelf and I painted a spoon rest. It wasn't much longer after this to wait until it was time to collect K, who had had a really good time at camp.

On Sunday evening, we watched a dvd of an adaptation of Carrie's War, having finished reading the book.  We've since started on and are now about half way through Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men, which we are very much enjoying.

In other news, M has made me a maths workbook.  She used one that she finished a while back to make up her own puzzles and exercises to give me.  It is now my turn to do the same for her.

K is currently doing another FutureLearn course, this time on her own rather than with me.  It is called Start Writing Fiction.  As ever she's very reticent on the subject, so although she has said that she's enjoying it, she hasn't shared much information about it and I don't know if she has started writing any fiction as a result!

Both girls have been doing some writing though: letters.  M has written and sent one and K has nearly finished hers to their respective penfriends.

K has also been doing some maths.  At her request, I have done a couple more worksheets, although this time as part of one of them, I have set her some work on Khan Academy.  So she has been watching videos and doing exercises on multiplying fractions, so far I think she has done multiplying them by whole numbers, but will be moving on to multiplying fractions together next.  She told me that she thought the computer had got something wrong and proceeded to explain that she thought that 3/4 x 3 was 2 1/4, but that the computer had said that was wrong, so she'd got cross and stopped.  She did then go on to say that it was possible that she'd typed it in wrongly though!

Talking politics

Unless you are living in a complete bubble it's pretty difficult to avoid noticing that there's an election happening very soon.  K & M get First News each week and there has been some coverage in there and we quite often have Radio 4 on, so there has been quite a bit of politics talk lately.  It quite tricky, I think, to get the balance right of giving information about the different parties and their policies and explaining your own opinions when asked, while still encouraging children to think about and make their own minds up about things.

Yesterday over tea, we talked about the electoral system itself.  I explained the first past the post (FPTP) system that we currently have and then introduced the idea of the single transferable vote (STV) and finally proportional representation (PR) and attempted to explain them to the best of my understanding.  It was an interesting discussion to say the least, which didn't go entirely to plan!  In order to explain, I introduced the idea of four different candidates and gave them names.  This was a mistake, because they started to ask me about the candidates' view on various issues, particularly home education and the environment, and this detracted somewhat from the point of the conversation.  Ho hum!  K did come back to it though and asked me to remind her of some of the terms, so something is clearly going in.

In other news, M has decided that she really wants another maths workbook in the series of which she completed the final one a while ago.  Since this isn't possible, she is currently making up her own workbook to give me, with the idea that it will show me what she wants me to make for her!  She has done three puzzles for me so far apparently.  K has suggested going back to Basher Maths, which we went through and I made up a worksheet for each of the characters that introduced various mathematical concepts, but with more complicated or harder worksheets this time.

We've also started and are well on our way to finishing Carrie's War by Nina Bawden and have a dvd adaptation waiting for us to watch when we're done.

Finally, tomorrow we are all going on a Bluebell Walk, which I've organised.  It's a fundraiser for La Leche League GB, who I volunteer with as a Leader (breastfeeding counsellor).  Fingers crossed the weather will be kind!