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!

Cracking on with the list and talking about 'stranger danger'.

We managed to cross off quite a few more things on our list today, including plenty more hugging.  This morning we started a game of Monopoly which all went well until we continued after lunch, when M got upset at having to break into her last £500 note and had something of a strop.  It wasn't so much that she minded losing in the end, but she really was not happy at having to give up her favourite property.  Still, we did plenty of maths while we were playing and by the end all was well again.

Apart from Monopoly, I managed to make the Christmas cakes (ours and a little one for my brother) and we got household jobs done and some tidying, although that one is a never-ending task, alas!

K had her ballet lesson at 5 o'clock.  During the lighter evenings, she has been walking to and from ballet on her own and indeed when I first suggested she could walk home on her own in the spring she was very keen on the idea.  Now though, she would rather be taken and picked up although doesn't mind walking on her own, it's generally not a problem to pick her up though and now it's dark I prefer to anyway.  Today, due to timing of cooking, I knew it was going to be tight, so having dropped her off I said that I would try to be there to pick her up but to start walking home if I wasn't.  Ballet usually is at least 5 minutes late finishing and I was just arriving at shortly after 10 past, when I walked in to find one of the two teachers about to phone me, to ask if was alright for her to drop K home, as a 'strange man' (as in nobody knew him) had been seen hanging around outside and she hadn't wanted to let K go on her own.  As a result of this, it seemed like the ideal time to talk about what to do in a situation where she was approached by a stranger.  I asked her what she would so if a stranger started talking to her when she was on her own and she didn't feel comfortable and she said she would ask them to leave her alone.  I said I thought that was a good idea and asked what about if they continued and K said she wasn't sure, so I suggested if it was, for example, when leaving ballet, she should quickly return to where she knew a grown up and ask them to phone me (she knows my mobile number by heart).  We also agreed that going somewhere light, with plenty of people and/or asking either an adult she knew (such as one of the ladies who work in the Co-op, who we see regularly) or a mummy with children for help was a good idea.  I also told her if anyone touched her or tried to get her to go somewhere with them, then it was absolutely fine for her to scream, yell, kick, hit, punch, bite or anything else she thought was necessary to get help or to run away.  She giggled a bit at this and said that she thought she would enjoy that!  I did point out that she might feel rather scared, which probably wouldn't be such fun and that the violence was a means to escape and that given the choice of another punch on the nose or running, she should choose running, and on reflection she took my point.  We did also agree that the likelihood of needing to use any of these strategies was very small.

M was feeling rather grotty this evening, to the point that she was in bed about an hour and a half earlier than usual, asking for a chapter of Pied Piper (which was also on our list).  It was a rather upsetting chapter, with German planes bombing and strafing a road with fleeing French civilians during the invasion of France in the early part of the war.  Although there were no graphic descriptions at all, it was interesting that K, who has a very vivid imagination, asked why the author had to describe it so much, but when I pointed out that there was very little of that, she did agree.  Although they were clearly uncomfortable, neither K nor M wanted me to stop reading the book, which I don't think would have been the case a year ago.  K did express a desire for something not about war for our next book though.

Some little ups and downs.

We didn't have the ideal start to the day, as I was woken by K & M arguing loudly and physically fighting on the stairs.  However after a short time apart, they were soon getting on fine and happily comparing their various bruises and marks they'd previously inflicted on each other!  So having moved on from that, we made a list of the things that we wanted or needed to get done over the two free days we have today and tomorrow, as the only thing on the calendar is K's ballet lesson tomorrow.  Under instruction I added 'hugs' to the list and M proceeded to add 'more hugs' five times.

We did manage some of the things on the list, I've made the Christmas mincemeat, for example and we have done plenty of hugging, as well as going to the library and doing the bit of shopping we needed.  We also did something that wasn't on the list, we had a go with a game that K received for her birthday for the first time; Shake Spell.  It's really rather good and the perfect size to fit in your handbag if you need something to do in a waiting room for example. 

Psychology and advertising.

After a very slow start this morning, we left the house at just before 12.30pm and didn't get home until nearly 7 o'clock, all three of us rather worn out.

This afternoon we went to Nottingham University for the first of two visits for each of the girls to take part in a research project about concentration at the School of Psychology.  We've been there on a number of occasions in the past, although most recently it's only been K taking part, M being outside of the desired age range and consequently extremely put out at not being allowed to join in.  K was happy to let M go first and have her turn in a couple of weeks' time when we return.  So while M disappeared with the researchers, K & I had a little room to ourselves and got out the games we'd brought with us.  We played The Game of Life and Phase 10 and K did some colouring from one of the books that were there.  I had a look at a poster about the history of experimental psychology that was on the wall and pointed out to K that it mentioned the Stroop Effect, something we've come across previously, when finding out about the senses if I recall correctly.  We got on to the topic of advertising and spent quite a long time talking about this.  It was mostly me talking, but K, who was colouring at the time, was clearly interested, as she kept prompting me to continue.  So when K said that she wouldn't buy something that has an annoying advert, I told her that advertising has two main aims, selling the product being one, but making people aware of the brand being the other and annoying adverts that get stuck in your head are very good at the latter.  We also talked about adverts 'selling a lifestyle' or creating a desire or need for a product, before giving the idea that you 'need' their product in order to have fulfil that desire or need or attain that lifestyle.  Using the example of a particular formula advert, I explained about how language is very important.  The advert in question talks about 'moving on' from breastfeeding, as opposed to 'giving up' or 'stopping' because that makes it sound like a positive choice rather than a negative one, it also makes it sound as though that's the normal thing to do.  The same advert has a breastfeeding mother in a gloomy room in winter when it talks about breastfeeding being the best start, then the room becomes bright and sunny when the picture changes to the mother, now having 'moved on', bottlefeeding in spring. 

We continued the conversation in the car on the way home, talking about how adverts for children are targeting two very different groups of people, the children and the parents, and how they might try to do this and why.  Parents are generally the ones who buy the products in question, but it's often because the children have been persuaded to ask or indeed pester their parents to make the purchase.  K in particular is very keen to find out more about advertising, so we'll have a look at some links I've found tomorrow and watch some television adverts and find some print ones to compare and analyse.

M seemed very happy with what she'd been up to, which from what she's told me, was various games, mostly on the computer with a load of sensors on a sort of hairnet on her head for most of the time.  I wasn't allowed to take a photo of her, which is a shame!

Having left the university, having had the foresight to take ballet and swimming things with us just in case we didn't have time to come home first, we went straight to take K to ballet, then M to swimming, then I dashed back to pick K up and then back again to get M before we all came home together for tea!  That's the last time we'll have to do that fortunately, as it's K's ballet exam a week on Saturday and we can't make it next Wednesday, so it'll just be her usual lesson on Friday next week.

Some information to digest.

This morning K & M played several rounds of The Game of Life (the original edition).  They told me that they played 'their version', which I don't think differs wildly from the standard rules, but does mean that they are quite likely to run out of money to use apparently.

This weekend K & I had talked about continuing with our body project and she had expressed interest in doing so.  I'd asked if there was anything in particular she wanted to find out about, suggesting the digestive system or the reproductive system as two possibilities and she had said digestion.  So I did a bit of planning and preparation, which involved finding a website we'd used before when we were looking at the skeleton and asking on a great Facebook group for any other suggestions, which was a very good idea!

First we watched The Magic School Bus - Digestive System feature, which K & M both absolutely loved and when we'd worked our way through the other links that had been suggested went back to watch it and a few more episodes.

We also watched this computer generated 3D animation of a trip through the digestive system, which K & M were a bit wary of initially but we all found it rather fascinating!

We worked our way through this Children's University of Manchester page and then did pretty well with the quiz at the end of it.  We will definitely come back to this site, it looks like a really good resource.

Although this BBC Bitesize link is GCSE level, K & M found it pretty straightforward to understand.

We had a look at this site, but it was definitely well beyond an 8 & 10 year old!

After watching the various videos K & M had a go at labelling this diagram and did pretty well getting 12 out of 15 on their first attempt, particularly considering we hadn't seen mention of the epiglottis up until that point.  They got full marks between them on the second attempt.

Finally we returned to this website that we'd used previously when we were finding out about the skeleton.  We went through the guided tour, zoomed in on the various organs of the digestive system and then each had a go at organising our organs.

I think that was a fairly comprehensive trip through the digestive system!  We're planning on getting our non-fiction books out to see if there's anything else we can find out about it later on this week.  We also had a slight detour to find out the current thinking on the purpose of the appendix.

Money and making.

This morning K & M were busy in the playroom and I clearly wasn't wanted there, so I baked a cake.  K & M later appeared with some work they'd produced.  M had been painting another of the giraffe reflection pictures that she had seen on Mister Maker and had a go at before and had sent to Uncle S & Auntie P.

Very effective!

 K had found something she wanted to try in a spirograph activity book she had been given a while back.  She explained that she had initially tried it with wax crayons, as per the instructions in the book, but that it hadn't worked very well, so she tried again this time using oil pastel crayons with better results.

She coloured patches of lots of different colours and then covered it all with black before using the spirograph to take off the top layer revealing the colour beneath.  She was quite pleased with the effect, but might have another go to try to make it more colourful.

M used the same technique but did a scribble on top rather than using the spirograph.

This afternoon K & M were looking on ebay at playmobil and lego advent calendars.  They had seen some in our local toyshop but they are rather expensive and not something that I would pay for, so the girls decided to see if they could find a more affordable one and share the cost.  While they were doing this, from another room, I heard a rather intriguing conversation.  I asked K about it later, when I took her to ballet and she explained that M has a 'savings account' with K.  This is to help M save up for some lego that she wants, K keeps some of her money and when she gives it back to her, she gives M some interest!  I'm not sure about the interest rates, nor how long M has to leave her money in the bank of K to get any interest, nor indeed if there's anything in it for K, other than helping her sister save up, but it was interesting!

Rushing around.

Yesterday, after a fairly relaxed morning, we went out to the library and to buy a birthday present for a friend and got home to find that my mobile phone had arrived back from being fixed.  It was only when I opened it, replaced the sim card and turned it on, to find a very recently send text that we realised that we'd completely forgotten that it was ice-skating!  So we bolted our already started lunch, dashed to the bus stop and managed to make it there for the last half an hour on the ice. 

Then, a fairly short time later, we had the rushing around that we already knew was going to happen, with dropping K at ballet for an extra lesson because of her up-coming exam, then taking M to swimming (which K usually goes to as well) and leaving her there to come back and pick K up, before dashing back to collect M.  It all went pretty smoothly, but I'm very glad we don't have this on a regular basis, just once more next week and then it's back to normal with both of them in the same swimming lesson and ballet just on Friday.

Today we were invited to L's birthday treat, a day out at Twinlakes Family Theme Park.  It's somewhere friends have recommended on various occasions, but we'd never got around to going.  We had a lovely time, both in the big indoor areas and outdoors too.  We all had a go on the obstacle course which caused much hilarity and the three mums had great fun on the zip wires, while the 7 children when on to play elsewhere with P, the birthday boy's dad who had managed to finish work early to join us.