Volcanoes on Venus experiment

Our studies into outer space have taken us to Venus. We soon learnt that the heat of the planet and the terrain made it a perfect planet for erupting volcanoes. We couldn't pass up on the opportunity to do a volcano experiment and there are quite a few to choose from. We settled on the flour experiment as I wanted to show the boys how the hot molten lava would cool and solidify.

Firstly we made our volcano by placing an empty ramekin upside down on a large plate and surrounded it with a mound of plain flour.

Next we melted some butter in a pan over a gentle heat and transferred it into a suitable pouring device...a trusty measuring jug. Slowly we took it in turns to pour our lava butter over the ramekin, allowing it to dribble and run onto the flour. 

Once all the butter had made it's own path through the flour we put it to one side and allowed the butter to cool. Once cooled the boys were allowed to touch the model and see how hard the butter had become. 

This was a very quick experiment and great for if you are short of time. I am still yet to make a fizzing painted model of a volcano but with a new baby in my arms I shall wait until nap times are more settled before I let the children loose with paints, paper mache and the bicarbonate of soda.

Technology visits the local library

The local library is normally a quiet place to go to with large comfy seats, plenty choice in books and a Costa Coffee for when you just fancy a lazy afternoon relaxing over the extra large pile of books your youngest has brought you to read. But last weekend it was transformed into a busy bustling centre for innovative technology and science related activities. We were greeted by 2 impressive robots that you may just recognise...

a friendly darlek?

R2D2

There was a display of Dr Who masks which Mr Smiley found to be fascinating. He may only be 2 but certainly not scared of the weird and wonderful display of strange heads.

Throughout the rest of the library there were tables showcasing various robots, drones, circuitry, astronomy, 3D printers, coding devices, and plenty more exciting things that the children could actually touch and explore. The coding room was Mr Social's favourite and he was introduced to a codebug, a small wearable programmable device that he made scroll a message across it's light system.

Mr Cheeky was eager to get involved and enjoyed playing with a small robot arm that could be manoeuvred to pick up small disks. 

The day was enjoyable and has reignited the boys' desire to code and the beginning of this week we logged on to Scratch and made a computer game where a fire breathing dragon was chasing a cat that we had to lead away with a doughnut.

I do look forward to my quiet library once again but I'm pleased it took a step out from the norm and put on a marvellously educational and fun event.

Apologia Science

For some time I have been following a programme for English, for Maths and for History and along with our Bible studies and extra choices of coding, Spanish, and baking we were all beginning to feel that it was time to add in some science since our routine was very settled and we could easily cope with the workload. I had done one off unit studies with the children on the human body and on animals so I decided to turn our attention to the sky and study the heavens. My previous approach was to gather information and suitable books myself and with the help of Pinterest and the many practical ideas and craft projects we were able to cover a large amount of information on these topics with very little expenditure. However as I started researching astronomy I kept coming across a problem that was seeming to be unavoidable. Nearly every website or book I came across would at some point go on to support the view of evolution, many millions of years ago and the Big Bang theory. I came to the conclusion that for the first time I was going to purchase a Christian curriculum for this topic.

 

I soon came across the apologia science range (a close second was the Answers in Genesis curriculum) for elementary age children.

 

I purchased the Exploring Creation with Astronomy textbook and on it's arrival spent a happy evening perusing it's content and thoroughly enjoying the read, I almost couldn't put it down.

It's a captivating read and has plenty of pictures and illustrations to draw young readers alongside and stimulate their interest. The chapters are quite detailed and would therefore be suitable for the older elementary aged child as well as the younger. The book is split up into 14 manageable lessons that can be spread throughout the year allowing for extra weeks to be given to topics that the children find most interesting. At the end of each chapter it is encouraged to complete some notebooking pages and there is an experiment suggestion which use mainly everyday household objects. Another positive is that their are online resources that can be accessed in addition to the textbook courtesy of Apologia that can be used to aid lessons.

 

We have just completed the first chapter and my 5 and 7 year old enjoyed and understood a lot of what was being said. My 7 year old was able to complete some notebooking pages on his own, with hand drawn pictures and his own writing. My 5 year old drew his own pictures and I assisted with his writing by asking him questions about what he had found most interesting and writing down his answers for him to copy.

 

We then had a go at the experiment suggestion which involved creating the solar system with balloons and trying to make them proportionate to their sizes. Here is our attempt,

Our yellow sun was never going to be big enough but it was the biggest we could blow the balloon up to.

 

On the way home from church last night I was delighted to hear my boys getting very excited pointing up at the sky shouting a satellite, a satellite! Wondering what they had seen I finally caught sight of the moon in the day sky and smiled...my boys were listening to our lessons and were eager to share their newfound information with anyone who could hear them in the vicinity.

 

Chapter 2 here we come!

 

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Telegraph Article Makes For An Interesting Read

Too many times I have come across comments and articles that put home educating families into a category all of their own and not in a good way. We can be accused of indoctrinating our children, not meeting their social needs and giving them a second rate education...just naming a few criticisms that I have faced.

 

In the past week 2 friends have pointed me too an article they found interesting, one a home educator and the other not. I tentatively started reading half expecting to be muttering under my breath and tutting at the wrongful assumptions and attitudes that I have been used to. But not this time. Here was an article where the writer had considered and wrote upon what she saw, a family in the home of mixed ages being educated to each child's level and interest.

 

The article also highlights the step increase in the number of home educating families being recorded in the UK. A huge 65% increase has occurred in the past 6 years, that brings the known total to around 37,000 children that are registered as being home educated. However current law states that families that chose to home educate from the very beginning of the child's education do not need to register their intention with the local authorities, my children are included in this category, so the total number of home educated children may well be considerably higher.

 

It is a well balanced article that looks at some reasons for parents choosing this course of education as well as examples of different approaches to home education. It touches upon safe guarding issues and overall I found it to be informative without judgement. This would be a great article to share with family and friends, especially if you feel the need to have a second voice to support the decisions you make as a family.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/family/hating-the-new-sats-meet-the-mums-who-chose-home-education-over/

 

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Fun and Games

What's you top 5 games to play with your little people? Here are mine...

1. Qwirkle

A vibrant game that is quick to grasp the rules and my 5 and 7 year old can play confidently. We have the travel version which comes in it's own storage bag and the only difference between the travel version and the large boxed version is the size of playing pieces. I was a little concerned about the size of space required to play this game so opted for the smaller pieces. In essence the aim of the game is to try and match shapes or colours in a line to gain points. If you finish a line of 6 then you get bonus points. Simply the person with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. There is an element of strategical thinking involved that isn't beyond my youngest player. A great game for all ages.

2. Labyrinth

This one is a classic from my childhood...labyrinth, the moving maze game. Each player is given a selection of picture cards that they need to find within the maze and on each turn the player gets to push a maze piece into the maze to create and destroy paths in order to get his playing piece to the desired object. The player to reach all his objects first wins the game. Simple, effective and fun.

3. Uno

Another classic but quick to play and became a firm favourite quickly. The aim of the game to get rid of all your cards in your hand by matching numbers or colours but beware of the special power cards that can either help or hinder. There are many different versions of the game, some that come with fun gadgets to give another twist to the game, all are fun but you can have just as much fun with the original set of cards. Our box looks quite worn now.

4. Animal upon Animal

A Christmas present for my 5 year old quickly became a firm favourite. It promotes dexterity as the aim is to stack animals on the backs of other animals to get rid of all the animals in your hand, sounds simple? Yes it is but simply enjoyable to see those little faces light up as the animals come tumbling down. The same company has also produced a game called Rhino Hero which we also have and has a similar tower building premise and is great fun. My 2 year old even has a go at joining in, although the towers never end up being towers for long he does enjoy it.

5. Bananagrams

This game is for readers but I have also used the tiles for my non readers as they learn their letters and sounds and begin spelling. This is one of my favourite games and is great for adult play as well as with children. Rules can be adapted to suit the players age and ability and it's a great educational resource too. The aim is to create a scrabble like word search individually but I have played it much more like scrabble too. The company has produced an apple version and a pear version of the game as well as a zip it block version which all have a different emphasis. Get your little people into this fun game and they don't even realise they are practicing their spelling.

 

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Baking at Home

Do you want to have a fun baking project with the children? Here is a fantastic idea for a project that is fun for all ages...3D biscuit structures. The Great British Bake Off has been inspiring us and biscuit week saw the contestants try to make a biscuit box. Most of the contestants made a box and lovely as they were it was a particular man's bake that caught our attention....a fire engine. My boys love anything with wheels and fire engines are Mr Cheeky's personal favourite so we just had to have a go.

I used a basic biscuit mixture of the following:

Mix 250g softened butter and 140g caster sugar in a large bowl with a wooden spoon, then add 1 egg yolk and 2 tsp vanilla extractand briefly beat to combine. Sift over 300g plain flour and stir until the mixture is well combined – you might need to get your hands in at the end to give everything a really good mix and press the dough together.

Once rolled out we used our precut templates that I had cut out of the remains of a cereal box over breakfast to put over the top of the dough and cut around. The shapes were put on a tray and put in the oven to bake at 160 degrees until a light golden colour then they were allowed to cool on a wire rack.

Once cooled we had fun decorating them with royal icing and using a thick buttercream to glue the sides together and this is what we created:

The fire engines looked great, they boys had such fun and were really proud of their creations and what's brilliant about this project is that it taught them mathematics through measuring and also making templates and not to mention we could eat our creations. Yum Yum!

Just a spoonful of sugar...

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down, the medicine go down...
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag, tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.
I could go on but I know you probably have your hands over your ears thinking that I would never get very far on X factor! Well that's what you would be thinking if you could hear me. So what has prompted my singing outburst? A delightful book by P L Travers captured my attention on the library bookshelf.

Growing up I had watched Mary Poppins on TV on numerous occasions and I had never once considered that it had started it's life as a book. When I did find out it was a book first I was slow to read it, and in time forgot about it until I recently watched this film.

It was an enlightening film and reawakened a quest to find the book and read it with my boys. So when I was at the library recently I was pleased to find this book and eagerly sat down with Mr Social and Mr Cheeky to read it. Reading a chapter a day and we were soon we'll on our way to finishing the book. I was surprised to read of a Mary Poppins that seemed to me to be more strict, more unusual and certainly less musical. There were no dancing penguins for a start and Mrs Banks was certainly not a suffragette. There were no rousy choruses and no bank crisis, all in all the book seemed to be quite different. On finishing the book I found myself feeling quite sorry for P L Travers who may have felt like her work was being pulled apart and developed in a way she hadn't intended. I wonder which version you prefer...book or film?
My boys are yet to see the film, they will be in for a surprise when they do. They may be disappointed at the lack of a night time zoo or a sweet lady putting stars in the sky, after all the thought of a magic compass inspired my boys to make up their own adventures and travel to mysterious parts of the world. For the time being I will let their imaginations flourish and hold off showing them the film.
We did take an opportunity to create some shadow paintings of Mary Poppins with a lovely sunset in the background and a Mary Poppins being taken by the east wind.

Mr Social and Mr Cheeky are still at abstract level when it comes to painting, they had great fun doing it and loved the red and orange tones.

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