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.

Mothering Sunday

On Saturday afternoon we headed down to my parents', partly for Mothering Sunday and partly because A was doing a korfball refereeing thing on Sunday afternoon!

The girls and I went to church with Granny on Sunday morning, with Big Grandad singing in the choir.  Then we met A and my little brother, M who had driven Great Grandma (the girls' Great Grandma, that is, not mine!) at a local pub where we had a very nice lunch together.

4 generations of the maternal line.

After lunch M took Grandma home and then walked down to meet us with Emily, a dog who he sort of shares with a couple of friends of his, and the girls and I went for a walk through the local nature reserve with them and Granny to a playground.  On the way we spotted a couple of buzzards and a couple long-tailed tits and M told us that he's also seen kingfishers on the river there.  Then it was back for tea before heading home, all in all a lovely Mothering Sunday.

Flags and food.

We've had quite a quiet day today, although we've still got plenty done.  This morning M decided that the time had come to continue with learning flags and capital cities.  Despite not having done any of this for several weeks, she could still correctly name 100% of the European countries and capital cities when shown their flags.  Today we worked on the 12 South American countries and although not completely confident on all of them, she has managed to get all of them correct the majority of the time.  While we were doing this, K was continuing to work on her letter in response to one of the penfriend requests in Aquila. 

This afternoon we continued with both Roman Britain (which tied in nicely to some building work we're about to have done, which includes replaces rather old lead pipes, as it mentions that Romans used them too) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 

Finally, K & M, cooked tea for the family.  Under instruction and with some demonstration and a bit of help from me, they made bolognaise sauce and cooked pasta and prepared and cooked some veg to go with it.  I had to help with draining the spaghetti and veg, because they haven't got strong enough wrists to manage on their own and K in particular needs to move a bit faster at times, but all in all it was a very successful enterprise and one that I think we can build on.

A variety of literacy and other stuff.

We've had quite a lot of variety over the past couple of days of what would mostly come under the heading of literacy.  Yesterday morning the girls and I made a list of things to do for the rest of the week, before we head down to spend the weekend at my parents'.  It included quite a lot of reading of varying sorts.  M wanted 'Charlie Bone' to go on the list, as that's what she's reading to herself at the moment (she's started book 3 now).  K, unusually, hadn't got anything on the go, so I suggested a trip to the library for her and she came home with a Daisy book and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Atkin (I recognised the title and picked it up, although I'm not completely sure if I've actually read it!).  We also had on the list me reading to the girls, both starting a new fiction book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and starting on the next book of a boxed set of The Usborne History of Britain, Roman Britain (we read Prehistoric Britain a while back and then stalled somewhat).  Also on the list was letter writing, M decided to write letters to people during lent and K thought she might too, along with various chores and K & M cooking a meal and a few other things. 

Over yesterday and today, we've made quite a lot of headway with the list.  Yesterday, after our library trip, we came home and after lunch made a start of some of the reading.  I read several double pages of the Roman Britain book curled up on the sofa with the girls and then read the first three chapters of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, while K did some colouring and M played with Lego.  We looked briefly at when the book was first published, which was 1876 and related that to it being the Victorian period in this country.  We also talked briefly about slavery and the American Civil War and while K & M carried on with what they were doing (I did invite them to join me, but they were too busy), I did a bit of finding out on the computer.  I discovered that although the book was published post-Civil War, it was set (in the South) before it took place.  The girls had their weekly swimming lesson and I phoned up a local French horn teacher and arranged for M & me to go and see him next Monday.

Although neither of my girls write particularly regularly, they do occasionally and when they do it's usually for a specific reason that they see the point in, such as thank you letters or a script for a play, as K did recently.  Despite not doing very much writing, I have noticed that both girls' writing has improved in terms of their handwriting in particular, getting smaller and neater.  As far as spelling is concerned, both girls will ask occasionally me to spell a word they're not sure about and K will use a dictionary to check, if they show me what they've written they are often able to correct mistakes if I point them out.  Today, M did the longest piece of writing that she has ever done, I think.  She wrote over a side of a typical exercise book sized piece of paper in quite small, closely spaced lines in a letter to her Great Aunt M.  Rather frustratingly for me, I wasn't allowed to see it, but it's lovely to see her doing this.  She had decided to write letters to various people, mostly older relatives, during lent and this was her second one.  I think the reason it was so much longer than her first one, to Nana, was that, having recently got back from holiday, she had plenty to say in this one!  K didn't write a letter, but she did plan one, I think in response to one of the requests for penfriends in Aquila magazine, she has also been doing some logic puzzles in a brain teaser pull out that Granny kept from The Times for us.

Apart from that, M & I popped out, to print off a photo to put in with the letter (our printers not working at the moment, so we went to Boots to do that), buy stamps, post the letter and pop into the library.  Even though we spoke to a librarian, while the lady we spoke to yesterday was nearby, nothing was said about the conversation we had yesterday about leaving children on their own in the library.  We got some books out about slavery and the American Civil War, so that we can put The Adventures of Tom Sawyer into the context of when it was set and when it was written, although we won't be looking at them until we've finished reading the book, because that is what K & M have said they'd rather do.  We read some more of both Roman Britain and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and all three of us did some housework chores too.  K had Scouts this evening, so I took her to that, as A wasn't home until quite late having been away overnight again (there has been lately and will continue to be for the next month or so quite a lot of that unfortunately).

Independence for pre-teens and younger children.

This morning the girls and I went out to the library, and, as I often do I asked them if they wanted to come with me to do a bit of shopping or stay in the library.  We have done this frequently before, and indeed the girls occasionally go on their own to the library, and nobody has ever said anything before.  I have never asked permission or said anything to the librarians; it's never occurred to me to do so.  I am not expecting them to keep an eye on the girls, since I wouldn't be leaving them to stay on their own if I didn't think they were ready for that.

Today, however, one of the librarians, an older man we've not seen very often, overheard me talking to K about her staying there and came over and said that he didn't think that was allowed and that he would check.  He checked with one of the women at the desk, who didn't know either, but who knew us and agreed that she could stay today, although they both seemed concerned that the library was closing 40 minutes later and I wouldn't be back before it closed, even though the shops are only a 2 minute walk away.  They said that they would check with the manager who was coming in later that day.  The thing that really surprised me though, was that they both thought that the lower age limit for leaving a child alone at the library was 14!!

Clearly the age at which children are ready to go out on their own or be left alone, whether at home or somewhere like a library will vary.  I asked for people's thoughts on this on Facebook, among both HE and school families and there was, understandably, quite a range of responses to the question about what age they would leave a child for a short time at the library alone.  The vast majority said somewhere between 7 and 11, which seems reasonable to me.  I also asked what lower age limit for being left alone they thought a library would be likely to have.  In Oxfordshire libraries they say 8 years old is the youngest a child can be left alone, and a few others agreed, while quite a few more said that they thought secondary age would be reasonable.  I really hope that the librarians today were mistaken in their thought that children have to be at least 14 years old to be left on their own in the library, although I'm not planning on changing what we do to be honest.  Whether my girls will still be comfortable staying on their own at the library now, if their age limit is 14, though remains to be seen, as sometimes they can be real sticklers for rules.

I am feeling more and more strongly that children need some freedom at a relatively young age, and it seems to be a lot harder to allow them that freedom and for them to get it than when I was a child.  I grew up in a rural area, on the edge of a small town and had a lot of freedom to disappear off with one or both of my brothers for, not all day as some people my age and older talk about, but certainly a couple of hours at a time, at the age my girls are now, 8 & 10.  My girls are allowed to the shops, the library or the park on their own or as a pair, my main safety concern is traffic and those places are accessible with just a few very quiet roads to cross or a zebra crossing.  I can't help but think that children who have little or no freedom until they are teenagers, when there surely inevitably must come a point that they fairly suddenly have an awful lot of it, will find it much more difficult to handle that freedom, than those who have gradually have got used to being responsible for themselves at a younger age.  Society seems to have become so risk averse regarding children, that for those of us trying to give our children what they want and need (expressly and vocally so in the case of my younger daughter just under a year ago), it can be really quite tricky, whether due to restrictions imposed by places they may wish to go, by our concerns about what others may think or due to increased concerns about the dangers younger children face when out and about alone, whether those concerns are real or perceived.  I for one, however, think that the welfare of my children is about much more than protecting them from risks, I think it is about helping them learn how to deal with these risks on their own and allowing them the opportunity to do so.

A poorly day and some catch up.

I forgot to mention as well as the preparation for their production of Pyramus and Thisbe, K, M & C also found time to put on another little play.  They used the face paints that C had brought with her to paint the characters on their hands and made up a story about a girl, a spider and four aliens.  The green alien was a baddy who was trying to take over the universe and had two of the other aliens under an enchantment, unfortunately for him, him was scared of spiders, so it all worked out in the end, the enchantment was broken, the girl married an alien, with the spider for a bridesmaid and an alien for a priest!

The caption.

 After a very busy holiday, the excitement of the sleepover and the business of putting on a play, I thought that M was just overtired when told me she wasn't feeling very well.  It seems that C wasn't feeling too well either and both of them had a sore throat and grottiness, so it more than just being exhausted.  M spent the vast majority of the day snuggled up on the sofa, either reading to herself, with me reading to her and K (we've finally finished the Gemma series by Noel Streatfeild) or watching telly or dvds (David Attenborough and Bagpuss - separately!). 

On book 2 of the Charlie Bone series.

I popped out to take K to her piano lesson and do a bit of shopping while she was there, while M watched David Attenborough.  By this evening, M was feeling better enough to want to go to korfball, but still grotty enough to moan only half-heartedly at not getting to go.

A sleepover and a play.

After we got back from our holiday on Saturday afternoon, K spent quite a lot of time shut away with a t-shirt and fabric paint and she continued on Sunday.  On Sunday afternoon, C arrived for the girls' first proper sleepover.  From that point on, we hardly saw the three girls apart from for meals!  As I understand it they spent much of the time continuing the preparation that had started a fortnight ago at the Asfordby HE group.  We had an agreement that a not-midnight feast was allowed, as long as teeth were brushed again afterwards and they had it at quarter to ten.  They didn't settle down ridiculously late, thanks mostly to C, I think.

After an early lunch we headed over to Asfordby, where M in particular was very impatient to find out if Z was going to be there.  The secret planning that was begun at the last one between K, M, C & Z was ready to be revealed.  They had written the script, cast the play, learned their parts, decided on and in some cases designed the costumes for their version of Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within a play in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Z was Pyramus, C was Thisbe, M played the wall and the moon and K was the narrator and operated the lion (a lion blanket).

There is a stage in the hall, so with help from others we cleared a space on it and put out some chairs.  At K's request I asked people to be quiet and warned them that there were some deaths in the play, so if they minded they might want to leave.  It was a bit noisy (there are quiet a lot of toddlers and younger children), so a bit tricky to hear, but all four of them had clearly learned their parts really well.  It finished with the line "And they all lived happily ever after, except Pyramus and Thisbe.  The End." and then they took their bow.

Thisbe (C), Pyramus (Z), the Wall and Moon (M) and the narrator (K) with lion.

The 'wall' t-shirt that K spent hours painting.

There have been times in the past when there has been a lot of talking about putting on plays (usually the whole of the Harry Potter series!), so it's been really good to see them coming up with an idea, working on it in lots of different ways and getting all the way through to the production and performing it.