Books (both fiction and non-fiction) and bookshops.

One thing I forgot to mention about our trip to Berlin, was the book that we took for me to read to them while we were there.  It was one that M had been given for her birthday back in June, but had decided that she wanted it to be one for me to read to the two of them: Wonder, which we would all thoroughly recommend.  It is a very thought provoking book, which led to discussions on various issues, which were all dealt with well in the book.

Since getting home, we haven't really been up to doing much, especially K, who's still getting over the sickness bug and not yet eating properly.  As a result of this we've continued with the Usborne History of Britain series and yesterday I read the whole of The Victorians and this afternoon all of The First World War.

This morning we went to the cinema to see How To Train Your Dragon 2, as part of the Into Film Festival.  Afterwards we popped into town to Waterstones, who are quite frankly brilliant.  K had been given Mary Poppins, the book, for her birthday and not only had she already read it, but indeed had a copy.  We didn't have a receipt (and indeed I'm pretty sure the book wasn't bought from them) but they do stock the edition that she'd been given and they were perfectly happy to take it back as a return and give credit for it.  Not only that but one of the assistants in the children's department spent quite a while talking to K and giving suggestions for what she might like instead.  Clearly the shop benefits too, as while we were there M decided to buy a book (a Daisy and the Trouble with one) and I bought a birthday present for a 12 year old boy (The Lord of the Flies - having talked to his mum about it) as well as getting a different book for K, The Fire Within the first in a series that does sound like something K will really enjoy, but you really can't beat a good bookshop with knowledgeable staff.

Back from Berlin - part two.

On Friday afternoon, we went to the girls' choice of the Natural History museum and it was a good one!  The dinosaur hall in particular is very well done and happily all the information was in English as well as German as both K & M spent a long time reading the vast majority of it!  We saw:

The world recording holding tallest mounted dinosaur, a very impressive brachiosaurus

Possibly the most famous fossil in the world, an archaeopteryx.

K & M were also very happy to find a fossil, which they said was Half Tooth, the smilodon (sabre toothed cat) that is the main character featured in one of the Walking With Beasts episodes (a series that followed Walking With Dinosaurs). 

Half Tooth.

We also spent time finding out about plate tectonics, watching a video that went from the Big Bang to present day and then from 'here' zooming out until they talked about the billions of galaxies each with billions of stars.

Our final day we went out to Potsdam.  It wasn't the best time of year to visit the huge Sanssouci park, as even the statues had been covered by rather sinister looking grey hut like constructions, presumably to protect them over winter.  We did go into Sanssouci palace, which was rather impressive though.  In the afternoon we went somewhere for the girls, a hands-on science museum for children, called Extavium, which had some really good things.  Among other things we did an experiment on probability and talked about bell curves, K lifted a car and both girls loved the darkroom where you waited for the flash to make shapes on the light sensitive wall.

K lifting a 'Trabbie', 'the' East German car.

Making their moves!

For the evening of our last day we'd booked to visit the dome of the Reichstag, which was quite interesting and reinforced quite a lot of what we'd learned about earlier in the week.  They have guides in various languages and a children's one but only in German.  A got one in English and I got the children's German one with the plan to translate for the girls, but it was so bizarre and sort of aurally cartoony and nonsensical a lot of the time that it didn't really work, but the girls found it hilarious to listen to the silly voices and funny music, so they enjoyed it anyway!

The Reichstag.

The Brandenburg Gate from the dome of the Reichstag.

We had a packed lunch each day (taking bread rolls with cheese from the enormous breakfast buffet at the hotel) and ate out each evening.  K & M are getting much better at trying new things, so we were able to eat in German restaurants a couple of evenings and they each ate schnitzel, as well as trying some of my spatzle, which M liked but K didn't.  We did have Italian the rest of the time though.

Something else that was very noticeable was just how confident and independent K & M can be.  This was particularly apparent when it came to going to the loo.  It didn't bother them in the slightest that they speak pretty much no German, they would happily go off to find it on their own.  I, on the other hand, found it slightly nerve-wracking when they did this!

Unfortunately the end of the holiday was pretty awful as K was sick.  Not just a bit, but copiously and repeatedly from 10pm pretty much all night to the point that we thought she and I might not be able to fly home and we had my parents on stand by to look after M.  Happily we managed to get home, but the journey did involve more vomit both in Berlin and Luton and was pretty horrendous.  Both K & M, who was very upset and unsettled by not knowing where she was going to end up that night, were absolute troopers, because without their efforts we might not have managed.

Back from Berlin - part one.

Last Tuesday the girls and I joined A on a work trip (which he extended so he could spend time with us too) for the first time.  Despite having lived in Germany twice, first for a gap year as an au pair in Dusseldorf (and then briefly Dortmund when the family moved house), and then in Tubingen for a term at university as part of my degree, I had never visited Berlin and it's somewhere I've wanted to go for a while but had never got round to.

We left home at 9.30am and got to the hotel about 6.30pm, via bus, train, bus, plane, local train and underground, all having gone pretty smoothly. We had a special guest with us for this trip, as K had asked if we could take her Scout troop's mascot Phileas Frogg.

K with Phileas Frogg and Arnaud on the train.

A's work meetings were on Thursday from lunchtime and all day Friday, so we had the whole day together on the Wednesday.  First we went to The Story of Berlin (although not the bunker), which was pretty good.  The girls were interested enough that we ended up having a very late lunch!  Both girls are at an age now where (depending on subject matter of course and the amount of written material) they are either happy to read information or have it read to them an awful lot more than they used to, so it's more interesting for me too!

At the Story of Berlin K, Phileas & M.

Later we explored a bit and headed in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate but before we got that far we decided to go up the Fernsehturm and although conditions weren't ideal we got a reasonable view of the city (certainly better than it would have been later in the week, when we couldn't see the viewing and restaurant area at all!)

Up the Fernsehturm...

....and in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

On Thursday we went to the zoo all together before A had to go off for his meeting.  The zoo sparked some discussion about the merits of zoos, since the enclosures of the big cats in particular looked really inadequate, versus the difficulties of protecting animals from poachers in their natural habitat.  We've been to Chester Zoo a few times and have sometimes not seen the big cats there because their enclosures are much bigger and have plenty of plants and rocks which means that the cats can frequently be hidden, which we all agreed is much better than the guarantee of seeing them in a small enclosure.  In the afternoon the girls and I went to the aquarium too and then to the Lego shop on the Kurfurstendamm, which was a 5 minutes walk from the hotel, for the second time (they have several areas where you can just sit and build things!).

A very unobliging blue-tongued skink that stopped sticking its tongue out when I got the camera out!

Phileas with some new friends at the Aquarium.

Friday A had to work all day, so it was just me and girls.  After a final visit to the Lego shop, where each of the girls chose the parts to make and then buy their own Lego figure, we went to the museum at Checkpoint Charlie, which the girls weren't too keen on.  They found parts interesting, such as the different way that people escaped to the West, like hiding in a converted petrol tank and hiding in two suitcases that were pushed together with holes cut in the sides, and they found it interesting to see a very small scale model of a section of the wall, with a fence, barbed wire, a big space with watch towers and search lights and a ditch on the east side and nothing on the west side of the wall itself.  The presentation is very heavy on written material, and after the part about the wall, there was a lot about what went on on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, which was too much for the girls.  We all certainly learned a lot before we moved on though.

At the Checkpoint Charlie museum.

To be continued...

More maths and making things.

It was Asfordby today and the children were making shoe box houses/rooms.  K & M really enjoyed this activity and spent most of the session on their shoe boxes.  They were each pleased with their results, although M is apparently planning a loft conversion (more extension than conversion though, I think).

K went for a room - with wallfeathers rather than wallpaper!

M has four rooms in her house, so far.

After having something of a struggle yesterday to get K to finish a maths worksheet, today she did two!  They were rather easier though being on bar charts and pie charts.  In each case she had some questions to answer about a chart and then some data to present using one.  There's only one page left in Basher Maths, which I'm half way through making a worksheet for, but K spotted that we managed to miss out a couple, so has requested that I go back and do one for each of those.  I'm not quite sure I can get a whole worksheet out of zero or infinity though!

M went to Brownies for the first time in a while, having missed quite a lot lately due to her 'under-the-weather-ness' from which she finally seems to be getting better.  She has been saying for a while that she's not really enjoying Brownies much lately, as she was finding it boring and everyone who she was particularly friendly with has now moved on.  We had previously spoken to Brown Owl about her probably stopping at Christmas (although she still can go on the Pantomime trip in January, which I've already paid for).  I wasn't happy about M just stopping, so we agreed that she would go this evening to give it one last chance and she could decide at the end whether she wanted to continue or not.  If she decided to stop, she'd be able to let them know herself and say thank you, and that is what she decided to do, so M will be having a break now, until she can start Scouts in September.

A little bit of History, English and Maths.

Having taken about 4 1/2 months to get through the Tudors and Stuarts book in the Usborne History of Britain, we finally moved onto The Georgians and I read the whole book in one afternoon on Friday!  We also had a visit from a friend, K, who at the girls' request brought a game with her for us to borrow again; The Settlers of Catan, which we had a game of in the evening.

K and I had a discussion about this and how it could mean different things if you added punctuation to it.

I wrote two possibilities:

Bless this house with friends' laughter and love.

Bless this house with friends, laughter and love.

and K correctly identified the difference in meaning between the two and then giggled about the difference between 'Let's eat Granny!' and 'Let's eat, Granny!', which we'd talked about previously.

K has also done another worksheet that I made for her to go with the Basher Maths book, this time on Per Cent.  The worksheet went a bit further than the info in the book, which was very basic - pretty much just turning fractions into percentages and how this is helpful to compare things.  She did this part of the worksheet very easily but then went off and eventually we got back to it this evening at my insistence.  The worksheet also covered increasing and decreasing by percentages, for example if something that costs £20 is 25% off in a sale, how much does it cost.  This initially caused a bit of a problem, because K worked it out quickly intuitively and when I tried to encourage her to work out how she had got to the answer we both ended up quite stressed.  With a couple of questions that were a bit trickier in terms of the numbers, we talked things through together and I think by the end she'd got the hang of it.  

We did have words somewhat when K wanted to leave it and finish it another time, but with only a couple of questions left I insisted we complete it before watching Strictly Come Dancing results.  She was somewhat grumpy, but after she'd finished I reminded her that she had asked me to insist on getting on with things sometimes, like I had done here.  When I asked her again if I had been right and she did want me to do this she said yes, so all ended well.

Baking, baking, more baking and Brum.

On Monday K spent the vast majority of the day in the kitchen.  She was doing a practice run for this evening's 'Great British Decorate Off' at Scouts on the theme of 'the movies'.  So in the morning, she made three different shapes of cake, using the standard recipe provided, then in the afternoon cut them up and assembled and decorated this...

Lord Farquaad's castle with Shrek's swamp and Donkey.

Granny came to stay for a few days and Big Grandad brought her in time for lunch, for which he joined us before heading back home. 

At this point I perhaps should mention that since M spent Saturday night in her own bed (rather than in with me) by necessity, as since we had visitors A couldn't sleep in the spare room (three in a bed hasn't worked for us for a long time), she has continued sleeping there on her own by choice.  Before she moved back in with me when she broke her arm, her habitual sleeping place of choice was in with K, which K was fine with, but just as happy to sleep on her own.  We have on previous occasions had brief bouts of M choosing to sleep alone, but they haven't ever lasted very long, but this time really does feel different.  I'm sure there'll be times when she feels the need to come back in with me, but this may actually be the beginning of the end of co-sleeping!

One thing that seems to be the case with M sleeping in her own room, is that she is tending to get up earlier and on Tuesday she appeared by my bed at 7.30am, asking if she could do some baking.  I told her to go away, have breakfast, get dressed, brush her teeth and make her packed lunch for later and then come back and we'd see.  She was back having done all of the above by shortly after 8 o'clock, so I sent her downstairs to start getting things ready and hauled myself out of bed.  To say I'm not a morning person is playing things down somewhat and she was not only expecting me to help her with the little bits that she couldn't manage alone, she was also expecting conversation!  She didn't get much of that, but did however, make some very nice chocobanana and raisin cookies, most of which she took to Fun Club as this month is was the annual table-top sale.  We also took quite a few things that we'd sorted out as having grown out of or no longer needing in various ways, including the girls' dolls' house, although this was slightly reluctantly in K's case.  She decided it was okay, as long as the baby could still be called Lucy.

As well as the sale, we had an outside provider come in this time, a "Curious objects man" called Stephen (unfortunately I forgot my phone, so don't have any pictures, which is slightly annoying as there were some very interesting ones).  The children were split into 7 and under and 8 and over, and while the younger ones had a look at some curious objects, the older ones (including K & M) went upstairs and tried to identify objects in bags by feel alone.  Then they had a look at some curious objects, which included:

A clockwork roasting jack

A 300 year old knife used for blood letting.

A tonsil guillotine!

A strigil

A beetle-shaped boot jack

With the help of some clues for most of the objects the children guessed, came close or not in different degrees, but they all seemed to enjoy it, and the adults found it interesting too.

After Fun Club we went home and left Granny to have a rest while we went to have a play and tea with friends and then the girls had korfball, so a really rather full day!  While K & M were playing with their friends, I had a good catch up with my friend S and also had a look at First News, which is a weekly newspaper for young people and we've borrowed a copy to have a look at (chosen because it has an interview with a woman who worked at Bletchley Park during the war) and if K & M are interested then I think we'll probably subscribe, as it looks really good.

On Wednesday morning M wasn't up quite so early, but still much easier to get up than she has been recently, for her French horn lesson.  She even had time to play for Granny before leaving for her lesson at 9.15am.  After her lesson we came home and then K, M, Granny and I got the bus into town for some shopping (Granny needed some things and we also got M some new slippers) and lunch.  Then it was back home for K to bake the cakes that she needed for tonight.  She just about managed that before it was time for K & M's swimming lesson.

Today we were up even earlier, as we were supposed to be getting a train to Birmingham at 8.12am.  Unfortunately things didn't go too smoothly to start with, as we missed one bus by about a minute and then the one we did catch, which should have still got us to the station in time, sat at a stop for nigh on five minutes, so we missed the 8.12 and had to get the next one.  In addition to that I also forgot to take the memory sticks that we needed for one of the workshops, so had to buy some en route.  However, we just about managed to get there in time for the first session at 10.30am (although did take a taxi from the station, not something we'd usually do, which the girls found very exciting!) and after that it was all fine.

The reason for our trip to Birmingham was Thinktank's home educator day, this was our second time at one of these and we'd all really enjoyed the last one.  K & M had chosen (and fortunately were in agreement as you need to have an adult for each activity) their three activities, Gassy Explosions, Smarty Plants and So You Think You're Game Enough.

Gassy Explosions was a hands-on lab workshop about acids and alkalis.  After some information about lab safety, and some questions and talking about acids and alkalis in general, the children got to use universal indicator to test various chemicals.  They chose an acid and an alkali to mix and 'caught' the gas that was given off in a balloon.  They got to show what happens if you make a reaction that produces a gas and trap that gas (mixing an acid and alkali in a film canister - it goes pop quite spectacularly).  Next they dropped some mints into bottles of lemonade, which although it seems to be a similar reaction isn't, which was pointed out briefly.  Finally, to end the session with a bang, we all stood well back while the session leader set fire to a hydrogen filled balloon.

In the lab!

There wasn't that much in the session that we couldn't do (and indeed haven't done) at home, but K & M still enjoyed it and got something out of it.

We then had a couple of hours to have our lunch and having met various friends there, we spent some time inside and out.  The outside area is particularly good.

Exploring pulleys.

On the big hamster wheel!

The next session was in the theatre, Smarty Plants.  It was fairly basic, but again still interesting.  First volunteers were asked to decide whether various things came from plants or not and while most of them were straightforward there was a silk tie included along with coffee, chocolate, wool, leather, wood, metal and more.  Then we moved on to how to classify things (very simply), what plants need to grow and reproduction.  There was a nice demonstration of pollination using an inflatable paddling pool with a bucket of 'nectar' (red balls) at the end, but the 'bee' (girl wearing a fleece on her legs) had to wade through the 'pollen' (other coloured balls which had something sticky, double-sided tape or velcro, I'm not sure) before she could collect the nectar.

Finally we went to So You Think You're Smart Enough, which was basically an introduction to coding using Scratch.  The children were talked through how to make the basis of a very simple game of a shark eating a fish, although both K and M decided they didn't like that and had the fish eating the shark.  I think that they will want to follow this up, as they both said that this was the session they enjoyed most.

We didn't hang around for long after our final session, even though we could have stayed another hour.  I did spend some money in the shop on various science kits that will be Christmas presents before we left though.  The trip home was less stressy in terms of timing, but ridiculously crowded on the train for the first few stops.  Unusually A was home before us and had started tea, which was good, because K needed to get ready for Scouts and M had a friend, I, (whose older brother also goes to Scouts) coming so they could bake, as they were both a bit envious of the activity at Scouts.  They had fun making and decorating cupcakes.

The decorating.

The end results.

Rather disappointingly the special guest judge, Jordan, one of the contestants from this year's Great British Bake Off, didn't turn up (not sure why, there was the suggestion that he was stuck in traffic), but K enjoyed herself very much, which is the main thing.

A bits and pieces sort of catch up.

We've been pottering along in a pretty laid-back fashion recently.  
K has finished writing her thank yous, still putting in lots of thought, time and effort into the designs.  She has also done a bit more maths, doing a worksheet about ratios, which we then followed up looking at a couple of maps which were to different scales. 
We've continued with the final Wombles book and both girls have been reading to themselves quite a lot lately.  K was given David Walliams' latest book Awful Auntie, which she really enjoyed.  Both girls have been getting Helen Moss' Adventure Island books out of the library and devouring them.  We have also finished the Tudors and Stuarts book of the Usborne History of Britain set.  

It's half term for schools round here this week and K & M spent a day doing gymnastics, which they really enjoyed.  I wasn't entirely sure whether it was a good idea for M in particular, but she was so adamant that she wanted to do it, having missed out on two of the days she was supposed to do during the summer because of her broken wrist, that I agreed and she did really enjoy it, although she was pretty wiped out afterwards.

This weekend we have had a busy one with a Halloween party for the girls on Friday, which they dressed up for in their own unique way.  M & I spent quite a lot of time painting a t-shirt for her costume, which we were rather pleased with. 

K & M, the vampire giraffe and the vampire polar bear!

We had friends visiting this weekend and met them at Calke Abbey for the day on Saturday, which we all enjoyed.  We explored the house and gardens and some of the grounds and watched the deer for a while, which was particularly interesting as the rut is in progress.  Although there were no major clashing, we did see one of the stags in particular seeing off some of the others very effectively.  

In the grounds of Calke Abbey.

K got very upset at one point and was in tears, after a couple had a go at her and M, because she passed them without saying 'Excuse me'.  I'm aware that, although according to K & M (who were round a corner out of sight at the time, so I didn't witness it) there was 'loads of room' to get passed and K 'didn't even touch her', children's (including K & M) judgement of how much space they need to leave people isn't always what an adult would consider appropriate, you do not teach children manners by being rude to them! 

K & M particularly enjoyed a game that C had brought with her, that she used as an ice-breaker with students at university.  It's based on the idea that there's been a drought and survivors have to hunt and gather to survive, there are food cards and at the end of each round you need to 'eat' one of your cards.  Each round you draw a card that tells if you have succeeded in finding food, which means to receive 1-3 cards, lost some or just not managed to find any.  If you run out of food you will starve to death unless one of your group can and will help you by giving one of their food cards.  The aim being to survive for 'two weeks' (each round is a day) but also to keep as many of the group alive as possible.  There were tears the first time they played when K 'died' and M had a spare card and initally chose not to give it to K, but after they had settled down (M changed her mind), they wanted to play repeatedly.  K rarely survived because she would always save others if she had a spare card, as would M the vast majority of the time, whereas some of the grown ups were somewhat more pragmatic!

Today we all went to Green's Mill for a visit this afternoon, visiting both the windmill and the science and discovery centre. 

The windmill.

C found it particularly interesting because, as a professor of material science, she occasionally uses Green's function in her work, but knew nothing of the man who had discovered it.  We spent some time in the mathematically themed playground, there are various maths signs either on the equipment or the equipment itself is a maths sign, for example the see-saw is a division sign.

This evening we had a bit of unwanted excitement! The girls spotted a small fire out of the bathroom window by the neighbour's backdoor. Standing on the loo, I could see our neighbour sitting at the kitchen table oblivious, so bellowed his name repeatedly as loudly as I could (that's pretty loud!). His wife had smelled smoke at about the same time and was also shouting. Happily it was quite easy to put out, although a bike will probably need a new back tyre. M was really upset this point though and worried that another fire would start, so I popped round to find out what had happened so I could reassure her. The wife had accidentally set fire to a tea towel in the kitchen and had thrown it outside, thinking it was out and it must have still been smoldering and it caught the edge of some cardboard. Both girls were reassured and were soon happily listening to Daddy reading a William story.  Phew!