What are we doing tomorrow?

cat(s) among the...mallards

2012-02-02T11:01:00.001Z

Yesterday we went to the follow up session from our visit to the Chen Hangfeng exhibition that we went to last month (blogged about here)
The exhibition is largely a comment on consumerism but, without just reproducing the work, and having largely un-logo-ed lives, our responses to the exhibition were mixed and largely based on technique over content.
There was paper cutting going on and making stencils and playing with mirrors.
I asked Chi before we went to have a look around his room and see what logos he could find, and most of the logos of any significance to his life were publishers logos on the spines his books, so we talked a bit about that and came to the conclusion that actually, who published the book wasn't important, it was the books themselves that he valued, which pretty much sums up our take on the whole branding, 'label' thing!
So while I was playing with mirrors, he worked on some stencils (which he is going to finish off today) and then played around with J R R Tolkien's monogram...

...and once all the children had finished working on their individual projects we went out into the park with our response to Chen Hangfeng's The Last Supper:Fast Food (video below)

Chen Hangfeng's The Last Supper(Fast Food)...

Home Ed batik workshop

2012-01-27T19:04:00.000Z

At one of our monthly home ed groups we have a craft session running alongside (well in a different room) free play/chat etc It's a nice opportunity to share, and try out new, skills.

I have done batik with very small groups of children I know well, but have to say I was a bit unsure about doing it with a larger group of children, some of whom I'd never met or worked with before - 19 (split into two groups) ages 2 -14 - it went well though and they all created some very beautiful silk (and vegan cotton!) paintings
☺☻☺☻☺

Pretty awesome huh :-)

Day trip to China

2012-01-11T18:43:00.001Z

Thanks to people being kind enough to give us lifts, we were able to get to our home ed group today
:-)

This one is actually quite close to where we live, about 1 1/2 miles walk (ish...I'm never very good at gauging distance!) It's a steep hill, but it's an easy enough walk usually, not with a silly toe though, and there is no bus service from here to there without having to go all the way into town first...which is just ridiculous and I refuse to do it on principle!...so only having to put a boot on to walk from my door to a car and from a car into the hall (and in reverse again later) was very welcome :-)

The theme for today was 'China', and it was quite a busy session - 12 families I think, about 25 children,

and lots of activities on offer.
We took along Chi's Chinese calligraphy set that we got when we were doing our Around The World stuff...

...there was also food to taste...

...mah jong, Chinese zodiac activities, lantern making, dressing up, Great Wall building, words and books and stories, and even pandas...

;-)

not going out

2012-01-10T17:17:00.001Z

Yesterday we were supposed to be over Bradford way, helping to put up a window display of Bright Side related stuff at The Kirkgate Centre where we do pottery (which we also supposed to be getting back to yesterday).

And today, we were supposed to be at book group discussing the 'Wintry' themed books we had chosen to read over the last month.

We read Hogfather by Terry Pratchett which we both enjoyed. The more I read of Terry Pratchett, the more impressed I am by his stuff. I think I have had a tendency to dismiss it as 'light reading' in the past (not that there's anything wrong with a bit of light reading) but actually there are some really lovely and interesting and thought and discussion provoking ideas in the books of his that we have read. Hogfather, as well as being funny and entertaining, deals a lot with the ideas of beliefs and why we as humans 'need' to believe in things and with the nature of what it is to 'be human'. My favourite part in it is where Death underlines the subtle, but quite huge, difference between 'The sun rising' and 'a mere ball of flaming gas illuminating the world'. Clever stuff.

It's a lovely book, definitely recommend it, and the film is pretty good too.

This is Chi's review of the book...

HOGFATHER

Terry Pratchett

The Hogfather is gone and Death has taken over his job. He has left his granddaughter Susan with the job of bringing the Hogfather back.

I loved this book for its humour and is one of the best books Terry Pratchet has written.

My favourite part of the book was when Death was talking to Susan about how humans need to believe the little lies in order to believe the bigger ones later in life*

My favourite character in the book was probably Teatime because of his madness.

I didn’t have a least favourite part of the book.

I would rate this book ten out of ten and recommend it to people who don’t believe in Santa.

* "YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES."

"So we can believe the big ones?"

"YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING."

"They're not the same at all!"

"YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET- Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED."

"Yes, but people have got to believe that or what's the point-"

"MY POINT EXACTLY."

While I have been reading it aloud, Chi has been doing lots of this...

☺☻☺☻☺

...and when I haven't been reading it, I have been breaking toes (hence the 'not going out' and 'supposed to be at's) and consequently doing quite a bit of this...

...and quite a bit of this...

Chen Hangfeng exhibition

2012-01-04T21:55:00.001Z

Today we went to Bradford to check out the Unnatural Selection exhibition by Chen Hangfeng in preparation for a practical art session next month.
I hadn't come across the artist before, but I was quite taken with his Logomania stuff - snowflakes and papercuts and christmas trees made up out of logos and 'things' as a comment on the consumerism that is Christmas for so many people...

I love kaleidoscopes, so these in particular grabbed my attention...

...but the papercuts were quite stunning too, and very clever...

..How many logos can you spot?..

...and perhaps more significantly, how many can you name?
As a largely logo free group, we struggled with a few of them!

Death

2012-01-02T18:48:00.000Z

the results of all that painstakingly patient painting

☺☻☺☻☺

The Versatile Blogger Award

2012-01-02T14:19:00.001Z

thanks to Lisa over at An ordinary life? this blog has been nominated for a versatile blogger award :-)

I'm a bit rubbish at taking part in these sort of things usually as they generally require you to answer questions about yourself or, as is the case with this one, tell 'everyone' a specific number of things about yourself. One thing I can tell you about myself is that I hate that sort of thing, it is like the blogging equivalent of playing 'name games' you know the sort of thing where you have to sit in a circle and introduce yourself and do a crappy action to describe yourself... *shudder*

I'm also a bit rubbish at following rules to the letter but...

...anyway...

The rules of this award are:

* Thank the person that nominated you with a link back to them. (check)

* Tell everyone seven things about yourself. (Pah!)

* Pass this award on to 15 newly discovered blogs and let them know that they've received an award!

(well 15 blogs I like anyway but I don't think any of them are 'newly discovered' and I probably won't get around to telling them they've been nominated but they're all worth checking out ;-)...)

Seven Things About Me

1. I hate this sort of thing! (see above!)...

15 Blogs Worth Checking Out

(some fall into the 'Home Ed' category, some 'arty/crafty', some 'other', but they are all ones that I follow and like to see new posts from ;-))

1. A Life Worth Living

2. Almost Unschoolers

3. Classroom Free

4. Desultory Compulsion

5. Fordie Fresh

6. grit's day

7. Home Baked

8. Hyperbole and a Half

9. It Belongs To Turtle

10. LiliPopo

11. my so called life {and other lies}

12. Rosa Lily

13. sunnydaytodaymama

14. The Raggy Rat

15. UPCYCLIST

2011

2011-12-29T15:28:00.001Z

I can't pretend that 2011 isn't a year that I shall be bloody glad to see the back of, in fact, while I have kept most of it off here, it was quite difficult looking back through this blog to put this post together. It is hard sometimes when there have been so many downs, to remember and appreciate the ups, but there have been plenty of those too.

Sometimes it was case of making damned sure there would be, other times it was more a case of taking time to appreciate some of the simple things in life that often get eclipsed by 'bigger' things and often times this year, they have come about through the timely words, thoughts and actions of friends :)

So anyway, here are some of the good bits in posts and pictures...

January...

...saw arrival of the very gorgeous Squishy to make us smile...

☺☻☺☻☺

February...

...took us for a blast of icy sea air with friends...

☺☻☺☻☺

March...

...brought a very welcome Spring after such a long, dark Winter...

April...

...introduced us to Jaume Plensa...

May...

...we took ourselves and my mum off to Filey for a few days...

...and managed to make our way back to the East coast in...

...June...

...too...

☺☻☺☻☺

in July...

...we made feegles, borrowed dogs and learned nothing ;-) ...

August...

...was mostly filled with blue sky days and an awesome trip down South...

☺☻☺☻☺

September...

...brought The British Science Festival to Bradford...

October...

...was always going to be difficult, so we took ourselves off to Liverpool for a few days and made some new and happier memories...

November...

...and my beautiful boy turned 14...

☺☻☺☻☺

and...December...

...which gave us the brightest of Solstice sunrises we've seen for a few years...

...and hopefully a sign of a brighter year to come :-)

Origami snowflakes

2011-12-23T11:24:00.000Z

While I was making some little origami animals yesterday to go in some crackers, I came across some instructions for a couple of origami snowflakes, and in the absence of any of the real stuff, thought I'd have a go...

...the first one is fairly straight forward and easy to follow, but I wouldn't recommend the second one unless you've got a lot of time to kill!

It's trickier than it looks, especially if you're making it small, and I had to replay some of the instructions a few times to work out what she was doing. It does make for quite a sweet tree decoration though I think :)

instructions for both below and there is a link to a video for cutting an easy regular hexagon which both are folded from

☼.☺.☼.☺.☼

2011-12-22T09:30:00.001Z

Look to this Day! For it is Life, The very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the Varieties And Realities of your Existence;
  The Bliss of Growth,
  The Glory of Action,
  The Splendour of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And Tomorrow is only a Vision;
But Today well lived
Makes every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn.

☼.☻.☼.☻.☼

More Midwinteryness

2011-12-21T18:27:00.000Z

As we don't have a fire to burn a Yule log in, each year we buy a candle to decorate and burn through Yule. We've gone purple this year :o)

Chi decorated it this afternoon, marking it off into twelve parts to burn down over the twelve days.

We light it when the sun goes down each day and Chi gets to open a gift from the basket under the tree and we read and chat and spend time together while it burns.

It is my most favourite thing about this time of year :-)

I know there will be some debate this year about when Yule starts with the Solstice proper falling tomorrow morning, but in my book that makes this the longest night and the one which needs lightening most, so it started today here. ;o)

Tomorrow we will get up early to walk up and the hill and welcome the sun back...or possibly welcome the drizzle back, given the weather we've been having lately.

Love and light to all and especially to those whose lives are touched by darkness right now.

x x x x x x x

To tree, or not to tree...

2011-12-21T18:25:00.000Z

...that was the question...

...and here is the answer ;o)...

...decorated with memories of Winters past...

...the year we made sparkly fimo, the one where we got a packet of sparkly pipe cleaners, the one we played with beading, the one we cut a gazillion snowflakes...

...the ceramic ornaments we made last year and the beeswax stars from this...

...and the best bogroll fairy in the world ever!...

☺☺☺☺☺

At the risk of losing my crown of great humbugginess...

2011-12-20T18:42:00.003Z

...we have finished off lanterns...

...added the finishing touches to some gifts...

...brought greenery in...

...and put fresh food out for our Winter visitors...

...filled the house with the smell of spicy orangeyness...

...made pomanders...

...while watching 'Life of Brian' (which in the world according to Chi is a festive film so it counts! ;o))...

...found more fairy lights...

...and ...look what's setting in the fridge...

(recipe from Hannah at Home Baked)

☺☻☺☻☺

Sunflowers in December...

2011-12-17T21:02:00.001Z

'Blessed' never feels like quite the right word from an atheist, but 'thankful' or 'lucky' never feel quite right or quite enough either but...

...glitter in my carpets...

...and sunflowers in December..

...boxes of lemons...

...and the promise of light...

...make me smile out loud...

☺☻☺
Thank you

busy...

2011-12-16T18:55:00.000Z

...making lanterns...

...stringing up stars...

**inspired by the lovely Miri over at Here We Are Together**

...being impressed by the patience and concentration going into painting miniatures...

...taking bad photos of the soaps we made today...

...and enjoying candlelit evenings...

☺☻☺

in case you were wondering...

2011-12-13T15:53:00.001Z

...we are still here..

...in a smelly painting...

...hat embellishing...

...book sharing...

...dragon building...

...movie watching...

...dog borrowing...

...doodle doing...

...light untangling...

...hunkering down and hibernating kind of way...

14

2011-11-26T07:34:00.000Z

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Get up!

2011-11-17T18:27:00.001Z

Easy to bemoan the shorter days when it's dark at four p.m., but perhaps also a good time to appreciate the glimpses of sunshine, when we get them, all the more...

...if you can get your teenager out of bed while it is still actually daylight that is! ;-)

Let's talk about school, maybe...

2011-11-15T14:49:00.000Z

Let's talk about all the things we learned there and how useful they have been in our lives, how much of it we have actually retained because it genuinely interested us or because we use it for day to day living or for the jobs we are doing now...and let's talk about how much of it we have left behind...

Let's talk about what we wanted to be when we were aged thirteen and what we wanted to do with our lives, the subjects we studied, the exams we sat, the hoops we jumped through in order to get there...and let's talk about how many of us are actually doing now what we thought we would be doing back then and how well those pieces of paper that we got at age sixteen have actually served us. let's talk about how many of us have chosen different routes since then, routes that we've chosen, and been able, to re-train for and re-educate ourselves for in our adult lives...

actually...let's not bother eh?...

...Let's talk about freedom, and choice and about treating children with respect and letting them enjoy their childhoods. Let's talk about involving them in the decisions that affect them. Let's talk about appreciating and supporting them in the wonderful things they do and the wonderful people they are. Let's talk about not forgetting that they are people too, with feelings, thoughts and ideas of their own. Let's not talk about trying to mould them into the shapes that we choose for them, or into replicas of ourselves, but about letting them grow as freely as possible into the shapes they were born to be.

I am not a perfect parent and I don't pretend to be and nor am I going to pretend that every day of our home educating lives is perfect and happy and faultless, and I'm not really up for criticising anyone's decision to send their children to school, but...

...before you criticise our choice to home educate, please go down to your local school and ask every child there if they consider their school life to be perfect and happy and faultless...

...before you criticise our choice to home educate, please ask your own schooled child when you have to wake them up in the morning if they really want to go to school today...

...before you criticise our choice to home educate, please make sure that ALL your memories of school are so unbelievably amazing that you wish your time to leave had never come and that everything you learnt there has stuck with you forever and that you use it all regularly, that all the qualifications you have are the ones you need to be doing the job you are doing today and that you have never deviated from the path you chose then...

....before you decide to test a thirteen year old home educated child on his ability to solve A-level maths problems in order to prove the point that he should really be at school(???), please go down to your local high school and see how many thirteen year olds there can do it!...

...before you criticise our choice to home educate...think.

My son is an amazing human being, and I have absolutely no doubts at all that he will find ways of achieving what he wants to achieve in his life, even if it is does not mean taking the quickest or most conventional of routes. He will learn what he needs to learn if he needs to learn it, but oh so much more than that, he will also learn what he wants to learn because he wants to learn it.

...nuff said.

Welcome to "The Bright Side"

2011-11-02T10:53:00.000Z

Yay! They made it :-)

This is the magazine that this group of HE kids (including Chi) have been working on putting together and

*****issue 1 is out now for the bargain introductory offer price of just 50p#*****

Copies will normally cost £1 and will be issued bi-monthly, but you can get a years subscription of magazines (6 issues) for the bargain price of £5 (incl. p&p)

The first issue is on the theme of 'Egypt' and each issue will have a different theme - the next issue is on the theme of 'Doctor Who' and there is a competition in this first issue to design a Doctor Who themed cover page for the next issue :)
As well as articles on the theme and competitions, there are fun pages, 'How to..' pages, reviews, interviews, comic strips, gardening diary....

...ah go on, you know you want one ;-)
We will be bringing some copies along to our local HE groups for people to buy (you have been warned! ;-)) but if you're not local but still fancy supporting these guys by buying one or subscribing then please let me know
☺☻☺☻☺

# Yes I know it says £1 on the front, it's a printing error ;-)

2011-10-31T17:41:00.000Z

In Liverpool...

2011-10-21T12:24:00.000+01:00

So, having done Tate Liverpool and Crosby Beach, on Tuesday we went to the World Museum. It's not quite as big as I was expecting it to be, but you can easily spend a day there, and we pretty much did. The top floor houses the Space and Time exhibitions and also the museum's Planetarium which has free shows throughout the day, so we slotted in the rest of the floors between shows...

Floor 4 - Dinosaurs and Natural World stuff...

Floor 3 - Ancient World and World Cultures...

Floor 2 - Bug House and Natural History Centre...

Floor 1 - Aquarium

There were a few too many interactive exhibits 'out of order' to make it a 10/10 experience, but it is a very good museum which we both enjoyed, and the World Cultures display is fantastic. Well worth a visit :)

...

On Wednesday, we decided to take a look at the Museum of Liverpool. To be fair, the museum isn't finished yet, and I would go back again for another look when it is, but I have to say I wasn't very impressed - not by it's unfinishedness, but by the bits that are finished. I found the layout confusing and there seemed to be a lack of any logical progression through what appeared to be completely randomly placed displays. Chi quite liked the fact that there were lots of interactive elements to it, but personally I thought it was all a bit overkill and found that side of it quite distracting, especially the number and volume of audio displays all playing at the same time in one space. It's a cool building though and I contented myself somewhat with taking photos of the ceiling and exterior ;) ...

In complete contrast, the Merseyside Maritime Museum that we went to afterwards was ace.

Chi quite likes boats and ships and nautical stuff, but for me, having done Portsmouth so recently and, apart from quite liking all the ropes and rigging and stuff from an aesthetic point of view, not really being all that interested in ships and models of ships and other shippy type stuff, I wasn't really expecting to like this one that much.

I was wrong.

It is a really interesting museum and has a surprisingly diverse range of exhibits, and also houses within it Seized - a customs and excise museum, and the International Slavery Museum

There is also currently an exhibition of amazing, and very moving, photographs of apartheid by Ian Berry.

I think in terms of education, out of all the museums, exhibitions and gallerys we visited, Chi probably got most out of this one. Definitely one to visit, but be prepared for a very thought provoking and emotional ride - most definitely not just ships in bottles and battleships.

...

On Thursday, we had time to have a look round St Georges Hall before going on to the Walker Art Gallery. I think one of the things I like about this gallery is the chronological layout of the rooms. I don't think I've come across that in an art gallery before, but it's an interesting way of exploring it (even if you do happen to go through the rooms in reverse order ;-))

We were both slightly puzzled to see this here though...

...because we are very used to seeing it here!

(apparently he made three of them though so we'll let them off!)

...

It was hard to pick a highlight of the trip, but I asked Chi, if someone only had time to do one of the things we did in Liverpool, what would he recommend? - and he said the Tate. Me? - if you've got time for a trip out to Another Place then it would be that, but in the city centre, probably the Maritime Museum.

Oh, and with the exception of the Magritte exhibition, all the museums and galleries we visited were free :-)

Another Place

2011-10-20T20:58:00.000+01:00

Last year, my birthday was just so bloody awful that I decided that I really needed to do something different this year to go some way towards eclipsing it, and some of the other crappiness that is October... and so we went to another place...

....Liverpool, to be more precise ;-)...
...and were lucky enough on Sunday to catch the very last day - in fact the very last hours (last admission was at 4.00pm and we got there at 3.30!!) - of the Magritte exhibition at the Tate, which was beyond cool :-D

...
On Monday, we took the train to Blundellsands...

...and spent the morning at Crosby Beach, seeing something I've been wanting to see for a looong time...

... Anthony Gormley's "Another Place"...

...which, in my opinion, is an incredible installation, and, for me, was the main reason for choosing to go to Liverpool.
...
I haven't been to Liverpool for years, I think the last time I was there was about 17, 18, years ago, and I must confess that most of my previous visits probably centred themselves around Quiggins and possibly the odd pub or club or few, so it was nice to go back and see the city with different eyes.

On Monday afternoon, we finished looking at the rest of Tate Liverpool that we didn't get time to see on Sunday, and being generall awe inspired by so much of Liverpool's architecture - old and new...

...
We spent the rest off our stay checking out Liverpool's museums and galleries, but I'll do a separate post for those later (when I've sorted out the rest of the photos!) ;-)

The rest of the week looked something like this...

2011-10-14T20:21:00.001+01:00

...

on Wednesday we went to our 'Autumn Festivals' themed home ed group where we did our Day of the Dead sugar skulls (see here for recipe) and lots of other activities relating to lots of other festivals which I failed to take any photos of whatsoever and think someone else who probably did take pictures should blog about *ahemhelen* so that I can just point ;o)

...and teaspoons - also Wednesday - because they made me smile x

...

Yesterday we stayed home and did worky stuff

...

and today, we went to see Banksy's film about Thierry Guetta, Exit Through The Gift Shop, as part of National Schools Film Week

Brilliant film. Very funny and thought/conversation provoking. Watch it if you get the chance.
Then we went on from there to a magazine meeting, the first edition is now ready for printing! :-) They've done a great job of it. We are trying to back off and leave it as much to them as possible and as well as being important in terms of getting the work done, the meetings are also proving useful I think as exercises in teamwork and learning how to both listen and to be heard.
...
Today also brought with it this lovely little bundle of inspiration for me

...and flowers on the doorstep when we came home...

... ☺I do have some very lovely friends☺...

Nothing is set in stone...

2011-10-11T17:57:00.001+01:00

I was tempted to get back to pottery yesterday. We haven't been since it closed for refurbishment over the Summer, and I am missing it a bit, but decided instead that a couple of quiet stay-at-home days was probably the more sensible option, so yesterday, Chi did some research on Dia de los Muertas and then we watched the 2008 Journey to the Centre of the Earth film together, and I downloaded the accompanying education pack that goes with it from here for Chi to work through.

This morning I had a go at decorating one of the sugar skulls with pens instead of icing, and Chi decided he would like to have a go too, so he did this...

...and then had a go at one of the mandalas I've been doing...

...while I read some of this...

...and some of this...

It feels like it's been a while since we did any reading together but it's always a nice way to spend time and I really should make more effort to make the time for it.

...

After lunch, we were supposed to go to book group, but for one reason and another, getting out of the house didn't happen so we had a look at some of the stuff we were going to take there, here.

Last month, we read A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, but as not everyone had finished it, and there was a lot of scope for extra activities from it, we decided to carry it over to this month too.

Chi has always been interested in Geology and we've kind of 'done' it to death a bit in this house - from the moment he could pick anything up, stones are what he picked up - hundreds of them!! He has refined his collecting of them somewhat now and has a very nice collection of rocks, minerals and fossils.

When he was about eight or nine (I'm useless at remembering to put dates on things, but it was pre us having reliable internet and printer!) we did a BIG geology project come lapbook thing, and it was nice to spend some time today looking back at it...

and when I say 'BIG' and 'done it to death', I do mean both those things!
We looked at the birth of the earth...

...and what was inside it...

...with a pinwheel showing the different layers in different quarters...

...made jigsaws of the tectonic plates and of pangea and how the land masses have moved...

...we made our own seismograph and did about a gazillion experiments from various sources, but the best home ed resource ever EVER is this book...

...we built our own mountain...

...and sliced it up to discover contours...

...and made a pop up book of the different types of volcanoes...

...and on the back was an extra folder with lots of rocks and mineral related stuff that we did...

Unfortunately, apart from the Geology Crafts for Kids, I can't remember all the resources and books we used when we did the project, but this series of books is very good and this site is quite good too.
...
One of the things we somehow managed not to cover back then - although I'm not sure how we missed it as it's one of my favourite things! - was the rock cycle. So, this afternoon, we played a Ride the Rock Cycle game that we made from here...

..where you start off at a 'station' on the rock cycle and then throw dice to decide the progress of your rock around the rock cycle and 'watch' it change form.
...
Nothing is set in stone - not even stone!...and I like that :-)

Exploding head syndrome

2011-10-09T14:34:00.000+01:00

My head has felt a bit like this on occasions this week!

Luckily, I had thought enough in advance to deliberately keep this week free of too many things that needed committing to and so apart from needing to go to Bradford on Tuesday for book group and a magazine meeting, we have mostly had an at home week, doing workbooky and computery stuff (Chi) and making sugar skulls, badly (me)

This is how not to do it...

There are so many different recipes and instructions available for making sugar skulls, but after a ~~bit~~ lot of trial an error, I adapted the basic egg white and sugar combination that most of them use to about 350grams of icing sugar to one egg white and didn't add anything else.

Unless you live somewhere very warm and dry with virtually no humidity, air drying them is probably going to be a problem - ours just didn't really at all! - so DON'T beat your egg whites before adding them to the icing sugar, you want as little air in the mixture as possible or you will end up with exploding skulls like those above. You need to knead your mix till it's smooth and keep adding the sugar until it stops being too sticky to work with.

Take a small ball of the mixture and dust it with sugar.

Flatten slightly and pinch one end...

...then roll it out and shape it...

...and add features.

Lay to rest with friends...

...and cremate in a slow oven (as low as your oven will go) for about an hour.

When they're ready they will be hard and sound kind of glassy when you tap them.
They still don't stay completely perfect, even without beating the egg whites, but I think it adds a bit of character to them (that's what I'll be telling the children anyway!)
These are for decorating at our home ed group on Wednesday. The theme this month is 'Autumn Festivals' and so I opted, perhaps unwisely, to do Día de los Muerto.
For an inedible version, I think decorating them with pens might be an easier and more effective version than icing them...

...also using fine brushes and food colouring to paint the designs on? I think I'll probably take both options on Wednesday.

Human

2011-10-06T18:03:00.000+01:00

...or some slightly more objective reflections on a year...

and I'm putting this here because I'm not always in a place to be able to see things quite so lucidly, but I am getting to a place where that is ok too

For a lot of this year my head has looked something like this...

...at other times it has looked more like this...

...or like this...

...and I'm also getting to a place where that is ok too..

I can't, and won't, pretend that this year has not been a very difficult one. I can't even begin to describe quite how much impact it has had on so many areas of life.

Alive, my father had so very little to do with our lives - dead, there have been times when my life has been almost completely consumed by him.

But as with previous difficult times, and there have been a few (!), there are ALWAYS positives to be found...

One of those positives is that people care, and they are not always the people you expect to care. Help and support has come from some pretty unexpected places this year, and I have some stronger relationships and friendships with people for it.

Thank you if you're one of them :)

There have also been some less pleasant surprises from people along the way, but I'm getting to a place where that's ok too...

Yesterday, I received some very timely advice from a lovely and very wise friend (of which I am lucky enough to have several :) ). As well as reminding me of some of the things I do do, and can do, which so often get lost when you're feeling overwhelmed and helpless underneath the things that you can't, also reminded me to STOP! and just breeeeeathe and that self preservation isn't necessarily the same as being selfish and that's it's okay to switch off and look the other way for a while. In fact it's not just ok to do that, it's quite important.

These things make a difference.

Sometimes I expect too much of myself.

Sometimes this is a reflection of other people's expectations of me.

There are people who thought that I should have been 'over it' in November last year, there are people who certainly think I should be over it by now...I am getting to a place where that is ok too and where I can see that that says more about where they're at, than about where I'm at.

I wouldn't expect anyone else to be anywhere except where they're at with something like this, so I should accept that of myself too.

I was going to title this post 'only human', but actually there is no 'only' about it.

To be human is to feel and I should make no apologies for that.

one year...

2011-10-04T22:57:00.001+01:00

...

of knowing and of not knowing

...

grief is a cruel emotion

one that allows you to patch yourself up so you think you're doing okay, just to strip you down again at each trigger turn and anniversary

...

5th October - the date I still don't have the words for.
so many thing I still don't have word for
so many things still unresolved

...

8th October - the day I signed a life away

...

22nd October - funeral for whoever

...

Did I mention I bloody hate October?

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

...

Sunhats in October...

2011-10-02T12:36:00.000+01:00

...days in the sunshine and warm evening walks? ... well go on then, if you insist ;-) ...

This week we have mostly been taking photos...

2011-09-29T12:39:00.002+01:00

...of everything and anything!

Okay , so some of you might be thinking - 'So what's new!'

Well, what's new is that I, perhaps somewhat rashly, decided that it would be a good idea to start an OU course in digital photography, and also, also perhaps somewhat rashly, decided that bringing all my dad's 'camera' stuff over to my house so that I could sort through it was a good plan! The word 'camera' is in inverted commas for the very good reason that it is not all camera stuff at all, but could perhaps be more accurately defined as 'camera stuff and associated gadgets and unassociated gadgets and a gazillion random cables which might or might not be vitally important and other shit and don't forget the random bags full of little bits of useless plastic' - I just thought that would be a bit long to type every time I mentioned the camera stuff ;-)

So this was what most of my weekend looked like...

...well a teeny tiny tidy bit of it anyway!...

...I think I thought it would be easy just say I'll keep this because it will be useful, sell that, give that away, throw that...but actually even the random bags full of little bits of useless plastic are hard to throw away ...

...they are as much a part of who he was as this, the manual SLR that he had for so many years was...

...the one he took so, so, many pictures with...

It's funny, I can't remember the picture being taken, or even where it was taken, but I can remember the camera it was taken with.

∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙

Anyway, the plus side to having a cupboard full of 'camera' stuff, is that Chi now has his own compact camera to use and I get the chance to play with a DSLR and various lenses - which, considering that, apart from the macro setting, I only use my compact on automatic, is going to be quite some learning curve ;-)

∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙

Apparently Wilson Greatbatch died on Tuesday...someone just asked if was related.

The short answer is, "Yes, probably."

The long answer is, "My dad would know."

∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙ ∙∙∙∙

Be a hummingbird

2011-09-26T19:23:00.002+01:00

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, and I did have another post planned for today, but then I heard that environmentalist, political activist, campaigner for women's rights and hummingbird, Wangari Maathai, died yesterday, and this seemed more appropriate.
sad news
take a little time to be a hummingbird in her memory

Trying not to hate Autumn

2011-09-21T20:34:00.000+01:00

We spent a couple of days down at my Gran's this week, she's not been well recently and we don't get down to see her nearly as often as we should - five hours, two buses and three trains does go some way to excusing this, but I should still make more effort, more often.

We got a lift down there and, watching out of the windows on the journey, it was hard not to notice that the leaves are turning...

yellow orange brown

my sister hates the autumn.

Driving up and down to Sussex all those times last year...leafy Sussex and it's claustrophobic tree lined corridors shoving their annual death dance in our faces...pfft!

She never liked it much before, I can't see her ever making peace with it now.

Today we went over to...guess where??...

...Bradford!...

The boys had a board meeting for the magazine they are going to be producing....it's all looking good and coming along well :-)

...and we stopped in the park on the way home to fill our pockets and bags with conkers...

...I think we might have close to a gazillion! Not sure what we're going to do with them all...maybe just look at them...maybe just hope that Autumn is just pockets full of conkers this year.

water water everywhere

2011-09-17T21:20:00.000+01:00

well, not quite 'everywhere'... mostly soaking into my socks via a puddle from in front of the washing machine to be more precise, but as locating the source of the puddle seems to have taken up most of my day and add to that that it has been raining in a consistantly wet kind of way all day, 'everywhere' doesn't feel like too much of an exaggeration ;-)

I'm not too bad at DIY stuff, more through necessity than choice, but generally I'm more inclined to assume that I can do it myself than to assume that I need someone to do it for me, (even if the DIY option just means using copious amounts of gaffer tape ;-))

So, having established that the water was definitely coming from the washing machine 'somewhere' and not just spillage/splashage/drippage from boy/dog/ceiling, and after ruling out the easy stuff like the soap dispenser, door and the filter on the drain, I resigned myself to the idea of needing to pull the machine out from under the counter to check if it was coming from the pipes at the back. Unfortunately, there is no way of getting the washing machine out without moving the cooker first! I don't think I've moved the cooker out since we were given it about seven or eight years ago and so the washing machine can't have been out in all that time either...it's quite amazing just quite how much dust, grime and spiders webs can accumalate in such a small place over that period of time! Not to mention runaway trains, wayward motorbikes and Norwegian Krones...

I remember both the bike and the train somehow both making the same beeline for that very small, and only, gap in the kitchen that could make them so irretrievable for so many years, so it was quite sweet to find them again...I have no idea how the Krone got there!
The pipes at the back of the machine were absolutely fine and there was no obvious sign of where the water was leaking from, and without unplumbing it, I can't get it out far enough from under the counter to tip it up and look underneath, so I decided to run it again while it was out to see if I could spot anything...it's the seal on the door! How I failed to see that that was where it was coming from in the first place I don't know...time for an eye test I think!
Anyway it's all good, I think it's beyond the capabilities of gaffer tape, but it's not such an urgent or costly job as it might have been, the machine is still usable (with towels in front of the door) until I can fix it and my washing machine and cooker are at least both now sparkly shiny clean!

Following on from yesterday's look at water usage, it was also quite a useful reminder of how much we take for granted. Our washing machine gets a lot of use, not just for our laundry, but I need it for work too - to be honest I'm surprised it doesn't complain more often! But as we have both been filling in water diaries today, it did make me more aware of the water I was 'wasting' while I was running the extra cycle to test it :-/
I'm quite glad to say that, extra unexpected usage aside, we are both coming in under the U.K. average, but it's still proving to be an interesting exercise :)

Being human

2011-09-16T19:37:00.000+01:00

This may come as a surprise/shock to some people reading this, but I actually have a lot of admiration for teachers...good teachers anyway. Those that have both the passion and the communication skills to be able to explain an idea or a method not just to one child, but to thirty odd of them. To get all those unique individuals with their own unique brains and learning styles and ways of interpreting the world to understand the same thing...that's quite something if you can pull it off, and I take my hat off to anyone who can.

I'd like to think that I know my own son pretty well, it's quite hard not to when you spend so much time together, but some days I'm convinced he has some kind of internal translation device that converts what I say into something completely different... I'm also quite sure that this cuts both ways, and that my verbal communication skills (or lack thereof) are at least partly to blame! ;-)
Most often it happens when I'm trying to explain something to him that comes quite naturally to me. Quite often it's been Maths - times tables, for example, are something that I never really had to work at to learn, to me the patterns are just so clear and obvious that I find it hard not to see them. For Chi, they are not obvious, which has meant I have had to learn how to look for them, instead of just seeing them plainly, in order to show him where they are and how to find them. On a one to one basis, while I'll admit it can be frustrating at times, it is not too much of a problem. We can go over and over the same thing in as many different ways as it takes for him to get it. We can leave it and come back to it later, whether that be the same day, or the maybe the next week/month/year. Fair play to anyone who can manage it with thirty different children at once in a prescribed amount of time!
Of course a lot of the time they don't manage it, it would be ridiculous really to consistantly expect that of anyone wouldn't it? I've seen it not working with my own eyes when Chi was in school - it's just one of a number of reasons why he's not there now.
Anyway, today it was 'art' and trying to tie up the Cubism stuff that we started far too long ago now! And again I think it has a lot to do with it being something that I can just 'see' and don't have to 'look for'. We've spent ages talking about cubism, looking at cubist pictures, discussing what makes them 'cubist', doing various exercises to reinforce all those ideas and concepts, and then just when I'm absolutely confident that he 'gets' it and knows what I'm asking him to do, he'll produce something really fab, but not at all relevant to anything we've talked about! I guess what it comes down to is, that for all our similarities and common make up, we all see the world through different eyes and process it with different brains. And of course in the bigger scheme of things, what's actually important is that he's pleased with what he's produced and if it doesn't 'answer the question', then really - So What!? - Art really shouldn't have to. ;-)
From past experience I think we've both learned that chipping away at the same vein with the same blunt tools over and over gets us nowhere very fast and justs ends up with us being frustrated and impatient with other. Much better to walk away for a while and come back with a fresh approach to the problem later.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

In other news today (;-)) Chi got on with some Maths and English this morning while I made phonecalls and pottered and generally didn't get much done! Then, this afternoon, we had a look at some stuff I've downloaded from WaterAid's 'Learn Zone'. They have quite a lot of resources for both Primary and Secondary age children that you can download for free, and we're starting off with a module on 'The Work of WaterAid'. Today we had a think about all the different things water is used for,

watched a film and a slideshow about WaterAid and what they do, and compared water consumption of developing countries with that of the U.K. and the U.S...
in the developing world the average person uses just 10 litres of water a day, which we were able to measure out in one of my dying buckets...

...in the U.K., the average person apparently uses 180 litres of water a day...

...and in the U.S. it's apparently 400 litres!!...

Tomorrow we're filling in a water diary to see how much water we use in a day - I'm hoping we come in as below average because we both found those figures quite shocking.

Oops I forgot about Europe...

2011-09-15T20:51:00.003+01:00

...which is quite a feat considering the size of it!

'Europe' was the theme for our home ed group yesterday, but as I was late getting to it I guess being late posting about it is kind of apt. I did send Chi on ahead of me with another family though so one of us was on time (possibly?!;-))

At the start of the day, everyone was given a European country to compile a factfile on by the end of the day. Chi got Romania which he alleges he had never even heard of before! I'm not sure if that's 100% true or not, but it did make me question slightly whether there is a huge gaping geography shaped hole in his education?? :-/ But given the number of documentaries he's watches on all manner of subjects and also that the last really full on project that we did was a virtual trip around the world, I think the hole was probably actually more 'Romania shaped' and has now been filled(ish)!

Other activities on offer were jigsaws, quizzes, cheese tasting/guessing...

...and I took along some examples of different Euro designs to match up with their countries and then asked them to think about what sort of design a British Euro might have on it if it was our currency...

...Doctor Who featured quite strongly in a couple of the designs along with Mario, (the tower that houses) Big Ben and sheep ;-)

And just because she's incredibly cute and has a way of wrapping me round her very little finger, here's what happens when you lend a two year old your camera...

;-)

The British Science Festival redeems itself

2011-09-15T17:07:00.000+01:00

You know when you go to something and you're worried it might be pants because the last thing you went to was and it actually turns out to be bloody brilliant...

Today, was our final trip over to Bradford for the British Science Festival and, mostly thanks to this guy, Richard Robinson, and his ace presentation on Sense and Sensibility about perception and optical illusions, it was a pretty good experience :-) He was funny, intelligent, engaging, and also very in tune with Home Ed (we've never been, but anyone who's been to HESFES might recognise him as he does some of the science shows there), I would definitely go and see him again and would definitely recommend that others do too if they get the chance :) (website here)

The second lecture we went to was on Science and Magic - partly about how magic tricks are done, but with a wider message of believing in finding ways to make the 'impossible' possible and why it's important to keep asking questions. It wasn't really in the same league as the first lecture, but was still good. The last thing we did was go to the hands on exhibition, which personally I found a bit disappointing in terms of the hands on bit of it, but it was still good to see science being presented with some passion and enthusiasm.

I was quite glad to get out of the hall by the end though as it was very hot and crowded and noisy, and it was a bit of a relief to escape back out into some fresh air and sunshine and spend a bit of time with friends and to catch up with people we've not seen in a while.

We've only seen a tiny fragment of what was on offer, but all in all, our experience of the Science Festival has been a good one, and well worth checking out if it comes to a city near you (Aberdeen next year I think)

grumblegrumblegrouchmooch

2011-09-13T19:04:00.003+01:00

You know when something looks really good on paper and then you get there and it's pants...

Take, for the want of an example, something that calls itself

the

Doctor Who Science Show

sounds pretty neat huh, come on, anything that has the words 'Doctor Who' and 'Science' in the title has got to be worth checking out right?

even more so when you read some of the blurb that goes with it...

"invited to journey through time and relative dimension in space at a special Dr Who Science Show"..."The show will demonstrate space discoveries, computing and robots and the question of evolution and genetics."

"evolution and genetics"?? - Oh that'll be the slide of Charles Darwin in a party hat that they flashed up then! - no. really. it was that poor!

Apparently the guys that were presenting it were from a tv show, Space Hoppers - we haven't seen it, but if it's as dumbed down as this was, I don't think we've been missing much.

Chi did win a book written by, and signed, by one of them

which looks to have slightly more substance.

I hope it does anyway, something good needs to be salvaged from the experience! And yes, I know I'm beginning to sound like a complete grouch, but while I'm in grump mode I might as well air another of my pet gripes....namely, what is the point of shit like this...

'Don't forget your goody bag on the way out!'...translation: 'We've got a load of stickers and crap left over from the Summer Reading Scheme that we want rid of, please take a bag full of it home for us and put it in your own bin, because we're trying to reduce waste.'

...hrrumphh!

On a more pleasant note, the day wasn't completely wasted. We went from there to our book group to discuss Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and even though we were the only ones to have finished the book (yesterday!), everyone had read enough of it to be able to play a comprehension game on it, and everyone seems to be enjoying it.

We all did a bit of wowing over J's kindle while we were there too - which I have to say, much as we all love paper books, we were all quite impressed by ;-)

And, as none of the children had had time to do any reviews of it yet, and as there is so much scope to go off from the book and explore other things, we've decided to come back to it again next month as well, instead of picking a new book to read, and for the children to share some reviews of things they've read recently and enjoyed.

Not Back To School Picnic

2011-09-12T18:49:00.001+01:00

I hate being late.- Unfortunately it seems to be something I am more and more often lately. Today was our (very blustery) Not Back To School Picnic, I'd already allowed for people working on HET* and posted it as being from 11'ish' to whenever, but even when it's an event that 'belongs' to everybody, if I'm the one who started the conversation and posted the reminders, I do have tendency to feel some sort of obligation to be the one who actually gets there on time. Which I shouldn't, because it's no more my responsibility really than anyone elses.

We weren't on time, but then neither was anyone else! ;-)

I think last week has caught up with me a bit - On Tuesday we were at Bradford for our reading group, Wednesday we were back to Bradford for an art workshop, on Thursday we went over to see my mum and then to see my sister and to move my dad's cameras and photographic stuff from her house to mine (which seemed like a good plan at the time, but...), on Friday we were back to Bradford again for the Lego Tower Bridge team build, and then on Saturday we were back to Bradford for the fourth time for Bang Goes The Theory complete with two girly nieces, and much as I really enjoy spending time with them and taking them out, I do always forget how much extra energy it takes to watch and engage with three (or more) children when you are used to just one! So we didn't really stop until yesterday...and it showed...

Today, even though I was awake very early, my head just wasn't up for getting it together at all, and as we also had to go to the library in town and pick up a parcel before going to the picnic, not to mention actually getting food for the picnic, eleven o'clock was just never realistically going to happen!

This week is not much better - tomorrow we have an event in Bradford and our local book group, Wednesday we have our local monthly home ed group, Thursday we are back in Bradford again for more Science Festival stuff, and then on Sunday we're going down to see my Gran as she hasn't been so well recently. Which leaves me Friday and Saturday to fit work and everything else in to :-/

...Think we need to slow down a bit.

* HET - Home Ed Time.

eg...

Home Edder A: That sounds interesting, what time does it start?

Home Edder B: 10.30.

Home Edder A: Is that 10.30 real time, or home ed time (ie. 11ish)?

or...

HE A: When will you be ready?

HE B: About five minutes.

HE A: Is that five real minutes or five HE minutes (ie. anything up to an hour)?

or...

HE A: What time do we need to leave?

HE B: 10.00 a.m.

HE A: See you at 11.00 then.

...and if you can't identify with any of this you haven't been home edding long enough yet ;o)

The British Science Festival...

2011-09-10T21:01:00.000+01:00

...is in Bradford this year.

It started today and so we borrowed the two oldest girlie nieces and headed over to see Bang Goes The Theory Live! which was very cool (and FREE!!) and then went and did some of the hands on stuff in the square which was also pretty cool (and also FREE!!)

Jem's vacuum elevator

extracting DNA from strawberries

looking at bugs

devolution of Chi

...and Did's highlight of the day - getting stuff signed because she's never had anything signed before and she can't wait to show all her friends ;-)

It's one of those month's when I wonder why we don't just move to Bradford. This is the fourth time we've been there this week, and we're back again two days next week for more Science Festival events!

Tower Bridge Team Build

2011-09-09T19:39:00.001+01:00

...complete with last minute disasters...

...and emergency repairs...

...and what three and a half hours straight lego will do your eyes if you're not careful...

uninspiredinspired

2011-09-07T21:39:00.000+01:00

Today's 'getting back into the swing of things' thing was an art workshop over at Bradford. I'm trying very hard to come up with something positive to say about it, but it keeps coming out as 'it was crap.'...it was crap. Which is a shame because I really like the person who was running it, but I just don't know how you can have a pretty amazing exhibition like this on...

..and deliver a mixed age workshop on 'sculpture' which amounted to a preschool discussion on materials, showing the children some of the pretty amazing sculptures in the grounds of the gallery and then coming back in and have them make completely unrelated cardboard slot sculptures which we could have made out of cereal packets ourselves at home :-/
Anyway, nuff moaning, for one reason and another it's been a bit stressy here for the past few days so it was at least nice to get out and catch up with people... and Marcus Levine's exhibition was worth seeing so not a complete waste of a day ;-)

B is for...

2011-09-06T22:05:00.000+01:00

...books, brainstorming, Banksy, Blackadder and borrowed dogs...

It was nice to get back to our reading group today, after not having managed to get to the July one...or the June one...and there not being one in August...it felt like it had been a long time! The children shared reviews of books they had been reading and did some brainstorming for this story writing competition and

we temporarily swapped this book (which Chi finished on the bus on the way over!) for this one :-) We are going to see Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop as part of National Schools Film Week this year :-)

After the group we stuck around for a bit to sound out some ideas the children have for putting together a magazine. They have some great ideas to work on and we're going to get together again in a couple of weeks for them to move it on some more.

Chi has just discovered Blackadder, ☺so we came home and watched a couple episodes of that before taking borrowed dog for a wet walk. It's not making me want a dog of my own again, but I have to admit that I am quite liking the fact that it means we still have to go out, even if the weather isn't ideal...and he does have his cute moments too...

...even if he is smelly scruffbag ;-)

trending : Not Back To School

2011-09-05T17:39:00.000+01:00

Seem to be a lot of blogposts in my reader today with those words in the title for some reason...can't think why...perhaps I need to broaden my horizons a little ;-) In the meantime, we didn't go back to school today, but then again neither did the schools! I think most of them go back on Wednesday or Thursday here?

We did sort of get back to Home Ed in a more conscious sort of way here today. By that I mean that I am a firm believer in the always-learning-education-doesn't-stop-when-the-holidays-start thing, but that we did make a proactive effort to learn some stuff today as oppose to it just happening by accident as we go along - It's September, I can't help myself ;-)

So Chi did one of his Little Arthur Maths assignments, found the cover for his Science assignment and did some English, while I got on with some work and tried to get a bit further with making the arrangements for Chi and some others to do the CREST Bronze Award. Chi read a chapter of The Philosphy Files, and then I read several chapters of Journey to the Centre of the Earth while Chi finished off a 'kind of cubist' painting that he started a while ago...

'kind of cubist' because he's taken some of the elements of cubism that we looked at before the Summer to produce it, thinking about what a violin is and represents, rather than just painting a picture of a violin. There's one more thing I want to cover with cubism, and then Chi wants to move on and look at celtic art and how to draw celtic designs.

While he was finishing off, I pootled on the computer for a bit to try and find some composer study type stuff. Chi quite likes classical music, but I'm afraid it's the thing-that-I-know-absolutely-nothing-about thing! Any way, I found this site, and we listened to a bit of Bach and a short radio broadcast about his life. I think we might tag along with their composer of the month idea for a bit and see how it goes.

On the subject of music, I read this blog post this morning and thought I'd point it out to a few more people too - it's there...the bit that says 'this blog post' in underlined letters...you can click on it and it takes you there...like magic... ;-)

Then we took the furball for a walk...

...under a sky that looked like it should have been full of rainbows...

...but was mostly just full of rain and clouds of great awesomeness...

...and grey spots apparently too - there seems to be something on my camera lens, but I've tried cleaning it and it won't go away... not sure what to do about that :-/

And now Chi has taken it upon himself to try and finish this book , that he bought on Saturday, before tomorrow, so that he can pass it on to his friend to read :)

Anyway, happy anything you did or didn't do today day to anyone who did or didn't do it ;-)

101 in 1001?

2011-09-03T18:50:00.003+01:00

Following on from this post here and other random musings and a-ponderings, I came to looking at this site the other day and discovered that making a list of 101 things you would like to do/see/acheive by the end of 1001 days is actually harder than it initially appears.

The 1001 days thing is quite significant, because by the end of 1001 days (from now), Chi will be sixteen and at the point where, if he were in school, would be doing his GCSE's and plotting, planning, spreading his wings, making choices that will shape his own life away from home and from me. Which of course got me to thinking, what haven't I done with Chi that I still want to do? What do I want to share with him? pass on to him? teach him? show him?

The other main thing that I got to thinking, was how many of my personal 'goals' have 'measurable' results? Many of the ways in which we can improve ourselves, feed our souls, enrich our lives, don't come down to things that can be ticked off in boxes I don't think. I could easily have filled up 101 spaces just by looking through other peoples lists and saying 'Oh yeah, I could do that.' or 'Yeah, I'd quite like to have a go at that.', but unless I was really inspired by them, they wouldn't be my goals, they would just be space fillers for the sake of filling spaces.

So, actually, my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days doesn't actually contain 101 things at all! By the end of 1001 days it might do, I'm kind of hoping it will because I will be adding to it in those 'Wow! I'd like to do that!' moments and also in those 'Oh I'd forgotten about that idea!' ones ;-)

Some of the things on my list are things I have done before and wish to do again.

Some are childhood dreams.

Some are things I want to do with Chi.

Some are more personal goals.

Some are BIG. Others are just for fun and just because.

Some are already in the pipeline.

Some can be planned to the nth degree.

Others will be down to luck and to being in the right place at the right time.

Not everything on my list is measurable by anyone other than me.

Not everything on my list is on my list.

If you want some inspiration on fulfilling your dreams, then Randy Pausch's Last Lecture is worth listening too/watching. It's quite long, but if you want a snapshot of why it's worth taking the time, then the shorter speech below is a good place to start :-)

not swearing at the computer...

2011-09-02T18:22:00.001+01:00

nope.not never.not me.not at all...not much anyway ;-)

We're not really very technogeeky in this house. I get hand me down phones from my brother, our (hand me down) television is smaller (and a lot older) than my (hand me down) computer monitor and I only have an i-pod because a dead man doesn't have a lot of use for one..
I do however (mostly) appreciate that we are lucky enough to have the technology that we do have and that (mostly) it works and really I shouldn't moan about it at all. But occasionally I do...;-)

My to-upload-stuff-from-the-camera-to-the-computer cable decided to die last night. It been suffering from selective memory loss for the last few weeks and intermittantly failing to recognise my camera until I've pointed it out to it several times in a but it's THERE! LOOK! right THERE in front of you! kind of way. Anyway last night it was having none of it and, even though I spoke veryvery nicely to it this morning, it was still refusing to see what was quite plainly right under it's nose, so I admitted defeat and plugged in a card reader instead.

Unfortunately, the card reader automatically selects an old software program to open the pictures on, which I don't like, and hiding the uploaded pictures in really random folders, so I then spent ~~some time~~ hours trying to work out firstly which folder it had actually decided to store the new pictures in, and secondly how to open them with the other editing software I have, all of which was slowed down greatly by the fact that I need more memory on my computer and it needing to tell me this and to try to find more while I was in the middle of other things, and secondly by the fact that the editing software that I actually like choosing to throw a tantrum and refusing to open...

Anyway, I've now downloaded an updated version of it and it seems to be working again. ish. We saw a really gorgeous Elephant Hawk Moth Caterpillar, munching it way through some willowherb, on our way into town this morning. Got a couple of great shots of it, trimmed them up a bit, saved them and - **POOF** - vanished - can't find them anywhere?? :-(

So I won't share those with you, but these are some from yesterday,
skipping stones...

...admiring nature's death/life cycle...

...in all its glory...

...and sharing it, and more, with friends...

☺☻☺☻☺☻☺☻☺

Rainy days and Sundays...

2011-08-28T19:23:00.001+01:00

Not the best shot but it was very much a 'quick snap and get the camera back into something waterproof before it gets drenched' kind of moment. Given some of the beautiful blue sky days we've had this week I felt a bit sorry for these guys sat all along the canal today, especially as it wasn't forecast. Still they all seemed pretty well kitted out for spending a day sat in the rain, which is more than could be said for us!

Walking five miles in rain that wasn't forecast does have it's uses though. I now know, for example, that one of my walking boots is waterproof. I also now know that the other one isn't, but hey ho, one out of two's not bad! We also now know that our waterproof jackets really aren't and that we both need new ones - I am figuring though that it is better to find this sort of thing out now and close to home, than in the middle of nowhere next year, one mile into an eleven mile day, with no outdoor clothing type shops anywhere on the horizon for several more days.

It was also nice, cold and wet though we were by the end of it, to hear Chi proclaim, quite confidently, that never mind Hadrian's Wall, The Great Wall of China was not beyond our capabilities...if it wasn't so difficult to get to...;-)

How green is our valley...how blue are our skies

2011-08-27T17:09:00.002+01:00

I'm quite a fan of walking and of making and taking the time to walk...it is rarely time wasted.

Sometimes we have a destination. Sometimes we don't.

Sometimes we walk in silence, each of us enjoying the opportunity to spend time with our own thoughts. Sometimes we walk and talk.

A lot of our best conversations, thoughts and ideas have come about while walking.

Today, we were pondering whether dogs are self aware? Whether, given that some dogs are more 'intelligent' than others, some dogs might be and some might not? That 'intelligence' itself is very much a human term and viewed from a human perspective because actually we aren't 'intelligent' enough to be able to truly view it from any other perspective. And we talked about there being different degrees of self awareness within the animal kingdom, that some humans might argue that humans are more self aware than monkeys for example, but that some monkeys might argue, if they could bothered to bring themselves down to our level to communicate with us, that actually they are far more self aware than humans and that they choose to live their lives the way they do because they have more respect for the planet and the bigger picture than we do and wish to tread more lightly on it than we do...

I feel lucky that we have a lifestyle that means we can take the time to walk - that we are not restricted to too-tired evenings and overloaded weekends to share those times together.

We are gearing up (gradually) for doing this next year☺...

...because one of us needs to be a fair bit fitter that they are now before we do! ;-)
...and again I am glad that this is something we can 'just do', that I don't have to go down the route of persuading someone else with a different viewpoint on education to me that it is absolutely one hundred percent ok to be doing it in 'termtime' and that Chi will not be 'missing education' to do it, because the world is not just our playground, it is our classroom too.
☺☻☺☻☺☻☺☻☺

Finally...facepainting... ;-)

2011-08-26T18:17:00.000+01:00

As a certain someone has been waiting "ages" - ever since Chester in fact - for me to paint his face, face painting was on the agenda for our Home Ed group today. It was a pretty quiet group today, but that worked quite well with the activity as it meant everyone got to have a go without too much waiting around (excluding the two months since Chester obviously ;-))
I painted a couple of them...

...a couple of them painted themselves...

...and some of them painted each other...

^^^ 'very sad because of a head injury' face ^^^

☺☻☺☻☺☻☺☻☺

"Bruce"

2011-08-25T18:31:00.000+01:00

I love my friends.

They send us texts that say things like "we're on field 2 trying 2 fly airship. r u around?" :-)

This was the second mission attempt, we did go for launch once before, but the instructions said that you couldn't do it if there was even the slightest bit of breeze so we put it away again...well, what can I say, we live in Yorkshire! Sunny day, no breeze, not likely.....so we ignored that bit of advice this time!

I think the pictures speak for themselves...

☺☻☺

Still learning something new every day...

2011-08-25T17:42:00.001+01:00

So, the sun was shining, and what with blogger insisting that I didn't 'currently follow any blogs', my work for the day being at the can't be hurried drying stage and Chi opting for socialisation over education (again!), I had pretty much run out of excuses not to tackle the garden!

In theory, I absolutely love gardening and all that growing stuff and being able to eat the stuff you've grown, in fact I can't remember a year before now where we haven't at least grown a couple of things from seed, but last years efforts were just so demoralising - some nifty teamwork between the slugs and the neighbours cats destroyed pretty much everything we planted and the stuff that survived either bolted or didn't get enough sun to ripen :-(

Then, what with everything that's happened this year and all the extra stuff to deal with/sort out and the fact that I don't want this garden anyway...I want to move and have a garden that actually gets more than two hours of sun a year, is bigger than big enough to swing next doors cats in if I'm ever quick enough to catch hold of the bloody things (*joke*! - before any cat lovers out there freak!), and, call me fussy, but I also want a garden that I can sit out in/work in/play in without having to listen to other people's music, shouting, swearing, screaming, t.v.....hmm...not much gardening got done this year. For 'not much', read 'none'!

I have mostly avoided going out there and looking at the depressing tangle of weeds and brambles that have taken over, but this afternoon I braved it and managed to get it down to this...

Should have done a 'before and after' really but it was a lot messier and overgrown before! ;o)

And I even managed to find some of last years refugees hiding in amongst all the weeds - a few not wormy potatoes, and almost onion sized onion, a.couple of sticks of rhubarb...

...and, perhaps best of all, these...

...not garlic (which is what I thought at first)...and not onions either...

Leek bulbs! I know leeks are part of the alium family, but I'd never heard of them producing bulbs before, however, a quick online check with knowledgeable friends (I love facebook! ;-)) and I now know that they do, and that they are edible and that I can replant them and grow new leeks from them - result! So, even though this time next year I hope to have a happier garden elsewhere, back in the ground they shall go :-)

On our own doorstep again...

2011-08-22T19:34:00.000+01:00

...and actually, even though it's not littered with white horses and awesome standing stones, we don't have it so bad really ;-)

This is our walk into town along one of the less picturesque bits of the canal, but still pretty neat, especially on blue sky days like today :-)

The "Ooh look, it's nearly 'not back to school' time again" giveaway!

2011-08-21T19:10:00.000+01:00

Over there >>> ☺

Word of the week - Awesome!!...

2011-08-20T19:00:00.000+01:00

...which sums up Avebury perfectly. I challenge anyone not to be impressed and inspired by these standing stones...

...also worth visiting while your in the area are the two museums run by the National Trust in Avebury, especially the one in the Barn and the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes.

Slightly less awesome, but still pretty impressive, our final trip of the week was to the Roman Baths in Bath.

While the museum is really well set out and the audio guide is very good I didn't feel the ticket price was really justified...the baths are still pretty cool though and I'm glad we went...

Salisbury, Stonehenge and Old Sarum

2011-08-20T18:17:00.001+01:00

My primary reason for choosing Salisbury as our base for this holiday was because it's easy to visit Stonehenge from. There are various tours and services from othe nearby(ish) towns and cities, but you are limited in the amount of time you can spend there by most of them. The Stonehenge Tour bus goes every half hour from Salisbury and you can get on and off as and when you please. It's a bit pricey but for us worked out to be the best, and easiest, option.

I was a bit worried that, having gone in peak tourist season, it would have been too busy to enjoy, especially when one of the first thing you notice about it from the bus is the coloured band around the bottom of people...

..but actually it wasn't nearly as madly busy as I thought it would be, especially if you have time to hang around a whileand catch the lulls between the tour parties, as we did. Of course it would have beeen nice to get right up to the stones and into the middle of them, but I guess the flipside of that is that it would make it even harder to get decent photos without other people in shot...

The weather even behaved providing us both with photogenic skies and dry grass to picnic on...

...before escaping the crowds for a bit and walking down to the cursus barrows,..

...and enjoyed some of the views...

...and wildlife...

After Stonehenge, we caught one of the tour buses round on to Old Sarum and had a walk round the hill...

...before heading back in to New Sarum (Salisbury)...

The white horses of Wiltshire and the one that isn't...

2011-08-20T16:31:00.000+01:00

As a child we used to frequently pass by the Fovant badges cut in the chalk hillside on the way to visit my Nan, but depite being in the area quite often, I don't remember ever going to see any of the Wiltshire white horses. They're not ever so easy to do on public transport, but out of the eight in Wiltshire that can still be seen, we managed to see three of them on route to other places by bus and train.

The Westbury White Horse is clearly visible from the train between Bristol and Salisbury. We were able to see the Devizes Millenium Horse from the bus between Devizes and Avebury (Swindon route), and the Pewsey White Horse can be seen on the Salisbury-Swindon bus route.

The one we both really wanted to see though, which actually isn't in Wiltshire at all but just over the border into Oxfordshire, was the Uffington White Horse.

If you want to go and see the Uffington White Horse by public transport, you need to really REALLY want to go see it! We did, and this is how you do it...having been assured by the Tourist Information office in Devizes that you can get a bus from Swindon, make the ridiculously long journey by bus from Salisbury to Swindon the next day. There is no rail link between Salisbury and Swindon, and the bus takes TWO HOURS!!! Look at it on a map if you're wondering why the capitals and exclamation marks - they're practically next to each other!

On arriving at Swindon, ask which bus you need to get for Uffington.

Don't accept the first "You can't get to Uffington by bus." response, hold out for the second "You can't get to Uffington by bus." response that comes with added "...except on a Saturday."

It isn't Saturday, but having just spent two hours on a bus from Salisbury to get to see this bloody horse, don't give up. Loiter with intent at the counter until you get the "The closest you can get on a week day is Ashbury" response.

Ask for a timetable for this bus.

There will be no timetable for this bus, bus station 'information' woman will not even look for one for you but will tell you that it is a two hourly service that leaves at twenty-five to on the even hour. Don't even hope for a response to "And what time are they coming back?"- go outside and look at every bus stand until you find the bus to Ashbury that goes at twenty-five to the odd hour.

Get on the bus when it eventually comes and ask the driver the "What time are the buses coming back?" question. Ask the driver to elaborate a little on his "There are loads" response to this question and ask him if he could perhaps be a little more precise, you know with times and stuff - there are actually only two buses two hours apart that you will be able to get back to Swindon in time for the last bus back to Salisbury.

Get off the bus at Ashbury which on your guide to the white horses looks to be just as close as Uffington anyway.

Start walking and then walk a bit more and then some...You will pass a signpost about 1/4 mile out of Ashbury that tells you that White Horse Hill is 3 miles away...

...(bizarrely the one coming the other way at White Horse Hill tells you that Ashbury is two miles away, on the same road you walked along for three and a quarter miles (at least) from Ashbury getting there??!!)

Whatever you do, do not make a note of what time you left Ashbury so you know how long it will take you to get back again in order to be there in time for one of the two buses you can get back to Swindon...

It is not until you are almost there that you will get your first glimpse of the White Horse...

Even if it's raining and even if it has taken you several hours to get to and even if you can't really see the whole of it at one time from the ground - it is still pretty awesome :-)...

Obviously, having visited the white horse you should make your way back along the same road you came down, timing it so that you get back to very charming but very tiny, in a no amenities at all kind of way, village of Ashbury about five minutes after the first of the two buses you can get has been and gone.

Amuse yourself while waiting nearly two hours for the next bus...

You will be compensated however, for getting this later bus, by some awesome skies on the way back to Salisbury...

:-)

Journeys...

2011-08-20T14:34:00.003+01:00

Life this year, for the good or the bad, has definitely been, and still is largely, about the journey.

We are just back from a holiday in Salisbury. I hadn't realised quite how far South it was, but thinking on it, it wouldn't make sense for it to be any further North - we used to visit Salisbry on the way to my Nan's house when she lived in Dorset for a while, from my Dad's house when he was living in the Southampton area. Memory is a fickle thing, in spite of having been to Salisbury several times I didn't remember anything of the city at all! What I do remember is the drive by the Fovant badges, and I remember NOT seeing white horses, and NOT being taken to Stonehenge, even though it was so very very close...

Anyway, having realised how far South we actually were, being bombarded by place names from my childhood on the train journey being the eventual giveaway, visiting Portsmouth kind of needed to be done.

This a journey that I didn't make a hundred times over at least before.
My dad worked in Portsmouth for the last fifteen years of his life, and from all accounts spent a good deal of his time outside of work there too and, according to his University Staff profile, was "often to be seen wandering around Portsmouth, camera in hand." Up until the end of July last year, five days a week he travelled by train from his home in West Sussex to Portsmouth Harbour station.

So we trod in his footsteps and looked at his sky.
I don't know what I hoped or expected to find there, if anything. Perhaps I was just hoping to find some beauty there to oust some of the lurking monsters. Perhaps I just needed to go because of all the times I didn't. Perhaps I just needed to get it out of my system.

I'm afraid I found Portsmouth Harbour to be something of a soulless place, seemingly dedicated to money and consumerism on one side and the lessons of history not learned on the other.

As for beauty amongst the monsters I didn't think I'd found that either, but looking back through the photos today, perhaps there were some tiny glimpses of it...

My father retired at the end of July last year, and a month later he was dead.

He was a fairly well travelled man, in his life he had seen parts of America and Africa, India, Turkey, Greece, I'm sure much more of Europe too and more recently had taken to spending his winter's in Madeira, but I can't help but wonder if he had plans to see/do/experience more.

I have an overwhelming urge at the moment to simplify, to pare life down to it's core.

consume less . experience more

and I think if I take anything 'positive' from this sorry place it will be to live now

that living and dying are inextricably interwined
that 'bucket lists' should not be the preserve of the terminally ill
that the future cannot be relied on to be there when you want it to be

to grab every opportunity to make memories you'll want to keep

and to say to, "so we did..."

carrot and stick

2011-08-11T18:49:00.000+01:00

The theme for our home ed group this month was 'Food through the ages' or 'Historical Food' or something like that anyway...you get the idea. Different families chose different time periods to represent and brought different food/recipes/activities relating to their time period. So we had Ancient Egyptian sweets, Roman honeyed cucumber, Anglo Saxon bread, 17th century (k)not biscuits - which were actually biscuits afterall but you can see where I might have got confused, British Empire G&T's (no, really!), lots of Victorian sugary sweetness, and some WW2 non sugary sweetness...

I love this picture, but also the idea that a raw carrot needed to made more enticing to eat by making it resemble a lolly, when most of our kids wouldn't think twice about snacking on one...

...in fact I think our lot were actually more bemused by the stick than by the carrot...they sussed it out eventually though...

the 'Yes...but why does it need to be on a stick??!' moment...

...followed by the 'Ah! That's why!' moment...

;-)

We were here...

2011-08-05T22:36:00.000+01:00

We made a return trip to the Sculpture Park today to have another look at the Jaume Plensa exhibition that we didn't really do justice to back in April.

Thankfully, getting there was less of a hassle than it usually is by public transport, as they put on a special bus twice a week during the Summer holiday. I don't know why they don't at least do one at weekends the rest of the year, I'm sure it would get used...well...we'd use it anyway ;-)

We had a bit of time to spare before our friends arrived from a different direction, so spent it being wowed in the Underground Gallery...

...before meeting up and spending some time enjoying some of the outdoor installations, both manmade...

...and natural...

...enjoying blue skies...

...and time with friends...

...and finding out that even though we don't manage to get there quite as often as we would like to, there is a part of us that stubbornly refuses to leave...

;-)

Transistance is futile

2011-08-03T19:16:00.000+01:00

In Chi's science assignment today, there was some stuff on electricity and circuits. Nothing very complicated, but we haven't done any electronics for a while and it needed a bit of revising, so we ended up getting the electronics kit out to play with.

Several years ago, someone bought Chi an electronics kit, but it was over complicated and fiddly, had difficult to understand instructions and some of the experiments didn't work, but neither of us had enough technical knowhow to know whether the parts were faulty or if we had done something wrong. That put him off a bit, but then Home Bargains had these sets in a little while ago, at a very reduced price (☺) and we got one, and up till now I've been quite impressed with it.

The set comes with an experiment booklet, which has proper circuit diagrams along side their own diagrams of the different components, starting off with very basic stuff and getting progressively more complicated and adding in new components. There are explanations of what the different components are, and what they do, and so far we have been able to see the effect they have in the circuit and predict the effects they will have in different circuits.

Chi and I are both reasonably scientifically minded. Chi probably a bit more so than me, but I always liked, and did well at, Science in school, have two Science GCSE's and a Certificate of Contemporary Science from the OU. None of these unfortunately, have ever required me to know what a transistor is, what it does and why and how it works! :-/ That's okay, I thought, I'll just learn it alongside Chi now...or perhaps not...because when it comes to explaining transistors, the booklet is crap...in fact it is beyond crap...AND so are all the other Physics books we've got. ...AND so are all the sites that searching the internet has brought up :-/

I quite often find it useful to be able to relate scientific concepts and processes to different, unrelated, things, for example...and any physics purists should probably stop reading now, or prepare to raise their arms/eyebrows/voices in horror...when we were talking about resistors, we likened it to a game of dodgeball, the higher the resistance being demonstrated by more balls being thrown at you as you try to cross the pitch.

I also like pictures and diagrams.

Unfortunately, most of the explanations I found were either way too wordy and assumed lots of prior technical knowledge to decipher, or were massively oversimplified and actually didn't really explain anything at all. This was the best one I could find, but I'm not convinced by his diagram, it was however quite a relief to read this in his opening paragraph....

"Thousands of textbooks have been written to explain electronics and I haven't found a single one that can explain the operation of a transistor. They all make it seem so complicated."

Not just me then! Phew! ;-) Anyway, it's given me enough of a picture for now to be able to go back to the experiments and see if as well as making them work, we can also make them make sense too - perhaps I'm too fussy, but I do kinda think that's what science should be about. Anyone can copy the diagram and make the buzzer go off, but isn't it important to know why it goes off and why you're putting the different components in?

Anyway, enough moany ranting. I did come across this site - Science for Kids - while I was searching for answers - it didn't actually give me the answers I was looking for, but it looked interesting enough to make me bookmark it for later so might be worth checking out if you're looking for sciency stuff :-)

Crivens!!

2011-08-02T21:33:00.000+01:00

Book group today, it's feels like it's taken a while to come round to discussing The Wee Free Men, but I think that's just because Chi actually finished reading it ages ago and because I've already blogged bits of the stuff we've done about it. Some of the group only got a copy just over a week ago so had only just finished reading it. I was little bit preoccupied with borrowed girly nieces, but I think everyone enjoyed it, adults included. Our group ranges from ages six (I think?!) up to thirteen, so it's hard sometimes to find a book that will suit everybody, but we seem to have done pretty well with the last few books :)

This one certainly seemed to have inspired lots of creativity, including these very fab wee free rag dolls...

...and the cutest and wee-est wee free men (and toad!) ever, which the children used as counters for their game today too, and also a very cool Tiffany complete with frying pan :) (and I really HAVE to apologise for the very poor photographing of them because it really doesn't do them justice at all - sorry C, M and J!)

All the children had also done reviews and our board was looking very full by the end of it :)

I think the book had also sparked lots of interesting discussions in different households, from the Pendle Witches and how 'witches' have been treated/mistreated through history, to how stories, rumours etc can kill, and in our house, last night's dinner table topic of conversation of 'assisted deaths', after Chi came across this documentary while researching for his biography of Terry Pratchett. Interesting stuff...and lots of cries of 'Crivens!!!'

...oh and we came across this little gem too while we looking for all things feegle...

:-)

Mischief managed

2011-07-30T21:48:00.000+01:00

In case you couldn't guess from the title, we went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 2) this afternoon. It was good, not completely faithful to the book, but it doesn't veer so very far away from it that you spend most of your time picking fault with it instead of watching it! Chi gave it nine out of ten. Not ten, because he didn't like the Kings Cross dead ghosty bit, which is quite interesting because, even though it's probably one of my favourite books in the series, I didn't feel that bit of the book quite worked and it always irritates me a bit when I read it. It is however redeemed somewhat by the 'Of course it is happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?' line, which I reckon is probably one of the best lines in the book ;-)

We got back just in time for the electricity to go off for a couple of hours. I like power cuts, I think it is good to lose these 'lifelines' every now and then as a reminder of how reliant we are on them. It does always make me wish that I had the sort of garden you could have a fire in though. I think a kelly kettle is the answer for the time being and that I should stop just saying that and actually do something about getting one ;-) Anyway, in the absence of fire, we amused ourselves instead by painting and reading a couple more chapters of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and making a start on Shadowmancer by G P Taylor as well, which we've been meaning to start since we got back from visiting Whitby. Then we took the dog for a walk and decided what to have cold for tea before the hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm of electricity broke the peace and quiet. It's funny how you don't really notice some things until they are gone isn't it. I quite like silence myself, but find it interesting how some people need to always find something to fill it up with.

pictsies and monsters and balls of fluff

2011-07-29T20:50:00.000+01:00

So, we have cooked the Feegles and sewn them kilts each ready for book group next week - bet you can't guess which book we're discussing ;-) Chi actually finished reading it ages ago so I'm not sure how well he's going to remember the finer details, but he's going to write a biography of Terry Pratchett to take a long too, seeing as how he is his favourite author and all that ;-)

"In a good fight, a Feegle will take on all comers, including his fellow Feegles"

More sewing today at one of our home ed groups. This group meets once a month and we have a craft session in the morning led by one of the group and free for all social kind of thing going on the afternoon which mostly involves the kids playing outside and the adults drinking tea and chatting inside which works well. We also have a resource swap table out at this one for people to ~~dump~~ donate workbooks/resources that they haven't used or no longer need.

Today's craft activity was glove monster making, where you take a glove/some gloves and basically cut bits off them and sew them back on different places and add bits till you have grown a monster out of them :)

simple but effective :)

And when we haven't been doing stuff like that, we've been entertaining/being entertained by this...

...which is harder than it looks...honest ;-)

Playing and reading and stuff...

2011-07-26T21:34:00.000+01:00

I'm uninspired for a title today, can you tell?! ;-) Not that we haven't been doing stuff, but it's been the stuff type of stuff that doesn't make for witty or interesting titles.

Yesterday was mostly a buying stuff to do other stuff with kind of day, more paintbrushes for painting(surprisingly enough!) because something eats all the decent paintbrushes in this house on a regular basis. Actually, one of the things that eats the decent paintbrushes is my wax pot so we should probably move on...;-)

I also bought pink stuff for making spiders because someone wants me to make a pink and a black spider puppet for a wedding present which I think is just so cool!

And we also bought some blue stuff for feegle making, which so far look like this...

..we also have tartan stuff for their kilts and orange fluffy stuff for their hair, but they still need to be cooked yet.

Today we mostly spent with friends walking and eating and playing and chatting and stuff which was lovely, and then we came home and finished reading 'Now' by Morris Gleitzman which is an ace book which you should all read. Now! It's written very much in the same style as 'Once' and 'Then' (first person, present tense) but this time instead of being the voice of the ten year old Felix in Poland during the war, this part of the story is told seventy years later through the voice of his eleven year old granddaughter, Zelda.

Not quite as harrowing and tearjerking as the other two books in the series, but still very moving in it's own way, and brilliantly written. Can't recommend them enough really.

Learn Nothing Day 2011....doh!!

2011-07-24T21:52:00.001+01:00

***CAUTION***

If you're trying to learn nothing today, you might want to skip this post until tomorrow, cos we messed up and learned some stuff and I might accidentally be about to share some of it, so look away now!

***************

Today was Learn Nothing Day 2011. Unfortunately, I didn't learn that fact until today so there's a big fat fail to kick off on! ;-) For those that don't know and haven't clicked on the link above, Learn Nothing Day is a kind of tongue in cheek demonstration of how unschooling works. I don't know why, but I hate the label 'unschooling' - not the principle, but the label sets my teeth on edge for some reason....actually it might just be that I hate labels full stop, thinking about it, most labels have a tendency to make me grumpy! Anyway, the point has nothing to do whether I like the term 'unschooling' or not, and everything to do with the way people learn, regardless of whether they set out with the intention of learning, and that in fact it is even really hard not to learn anything when that is your intention.

Initially, I thought it might not be so hard really, it was a Sunday after all - no treacherous home ed groups to try not to learn anything from, just a quiet, learning free day at home...
We tried, we really did, well I did anyway.... This morning, having learned that it was Learn Nothing Day, I said to Chi,
"It's Learn Nothing Day today, so you're not allowed to learn anything okay?
"Okay," he says, "I'll go and do my Science assignment then!"...

To be fair, the Science assignment was mostly based on year 7 geology, which, being the avid rockhound that he is, he probably has covered before, several times over, and in a lot more depth, since the age of about four and so probably didn't learn anything new! Phew! I was beginning to suspect however that the boy might not be taking it all very seriously...

His second response to the idea came after an "I'm going to play on Roblox for an hour if that's ok". Yes, I said, so long as you don't learn how to do anything new on it on account of it being Learn Nothing Day. This was met with a "Really?!" and a somewhat derisory snigger...hmmm

I let it go. Really of course I should not have let him play on it. Practice on anything even fairly innocent looking computer games can of course lead to a person learning how to get better at said games, not to mention the social element, learning to interact with other players, typing practice.....aaarggghhh the more I think about the more I realise just how risky this activity was *shudder* Anyway, I allowed it to happen, so on my head be it.

The first thing I did, to prevent myself from learning anything was to close down the tab that I usually have facebook open in when I'm using the computer. Yes, I'm afraid I am one of those people! In my defence, I can't really help it - I have too many interesting friends on there who just post too much interesting stuff, but today that made them just plain dangerous, so off they went. In fact off went all of the internet, what with the temptation of Google and Wikipedia, coupled with people emailing me and posting blogposts with information and stuff in, I felt it really couldn't be trusted.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at 'doing' nothing either, but I resisted the temptation to look at the new National geographic and I did a bit of work instead...and accidentally learned that Starworld Organic cotton t-shirts shrink by just over a cm all round when subjected to the various applications of boiling water I put them through, but that Humbugz t-shirts don't shrink at all.....oops...sorry...although, that little snippet of information is probably more important for me to know than anyone else reading this and you should be able to erase it from your brains instantly...almost like it never happened even...

So, I abandoned work and we took the dog for a walk, and Chi made the mistake of actually asking what Learn Nothing Day was all about and so we had a conversation about it, and about how we learn things, and about how we never really stop learning things and that living and learning kind of go hand in hand etc etc blah blah blah blah learn learn learn tsshh tsshh tsshh! Oh and with the dog not actually being our dog, and still being quite young, and not having been here very long, I guess we're still on quite a learning curve at the moment with that too and really shouldn't have walked him at all today...or played with him...or interacted with him...

After lunch, Chi did some work on his 'cubist' painting, while I read out loud from 'Now' by Morris Gleitzman. I thought we'd be safe with a fiction book, and luckily the main thing we learned from it was that even though it's quite different from 'Once' and 'Then', it's still equally well written and we are not disappointed in the slightest...but then Chi went and spoilt it all by, despite making a really good start on it, needing to research some more where he was going with his 'cubist' painting, and so the computer went back on and we ended up looking at pictures and videos and stuff until he had a clearer idea of where he wanted to take it.... *sigh*

And then I decided to upload some photos for work...and accidentally went on Scrabble and found out 'purr' can also be written 'pur', and that 'teer' means 'smear' or 'daub'...and then while I was cooking tea, I accidentally watched bits of Michael Palin's Full Circle and ended up finding out about tunnels in Vietnam and that young women are one of the Phillipines biggest exports (:-() and that there is a mode of transport called a 'jeepney'...and worse than that, afterwards I watched 'Around the World in 60 Minutes' and learned all sorts of stuff that I didn't know before...luckily the boy was absent for most of that as he had retired to his room to play Roblox again, but I'm sad to report that he has since taken a pencil and paper up there and is busy working on a logo design for his Roblox team which he created (learnt how to make) today...oh and I'm just about to learn whether or not the bread dough I froze the other day is going to make decent bread now I've defrosted it :-(

What are we doing tomorrow? getting back to 'normal' that's what, this not learning stuff is hard work!

We've got the Verne travel bug again...

2011-07-19T19:43:00.000+01:00

This time it's Journey to the Centre of the Earth...

...which is actually our Book Group book for next month, but as we've already finished this month's one (The Wee Free Men), and as we do like a bit of Verne in this house ;-) we decided to make an early start on it.

The first few chapters (well 15 actually, but they are very short chapters!) are quite good for a little bit of geography knowledge and I made Chi a short quiz to do today based on the details of the journey from Germany to Iceland, which ended up being as much of an exercise in IT as Geography and in particular in using Google and Wikipedia to find the information you want ;-)

While I was looking for other resources to use alongside reading the book, I came across this neat site yesterday, which plots the routes of twenty-three famous journeys (some real, some fictional) on a world map with extra snippets of information included along the routes.

Coincidentally, Julia Bradbury's Icelandic Walk was on BBC Four this week, so we watched that on iPlayer yesterday which, even though it's not in quite the same region, does link in quite well with some of the descriptions of the Icelandic landscape in the book as they travel across it to reach 'Sneffels' (Snæfellsjökull).

Also, coincidentally, a very sweet friend brought us back this, very sweet, 1926 version of the book from France earlier this year...

..which, although my French is not really fluent enough to read easily, is nice to have to look at alongside the English translation :)

I'm not planning on doing the book in quite as much depth as we did Around the World in Eighty Days but geology, geography and science fiction/fantasy all in one book...well...it's just too good an opportunity to miss really isn't it? ;-)

Cubism study (3) : more guitars! ;-)

2011-07-17T20:14:00.000+01:00

Picasso being famously famous for his sketchbooks, or so I thought (??), I went in search of some today (online obviously, I wasn't expecting to find them loitering in, or littering, the streets where we live! ;-)) to see if we could get a better idea of some of the thinking behind the pictures. I didn't really find what I was looking for (although as I wasn't really sure what I was looking for, perhaps I did?), but I did find this fab collection of some of his 'Guitars' dating from 1912-1914 :)

Yesterday, we watched this 'How to Draw Cubism Art' video, which was quite good in some respects, mostly in the showing of various shading techniques, but I wasn't 100% convinced that the guy really knew what he was talking about with regards to Cubism. Not that I do either, but despite saying that 'Cubism's really all about seeing the object from as many sides as possible' and trying to 'really get around an object', the object he chose as his subject was a water bottle, which, firstly, doesn't look all that different from different angles, and secondly, in spite of drawing different bits of it in different places on the page, he maintained the same perspective of it throughout and didn't seem to try and 'get around it' at all. The end result is quite cool though and does have a Cubist feel to it, and I wanted to do something a bit similar with Chi, but focusing more on the 'different aspects of an object' bit of Cubism, as well as the breaking up of the object.
What we ended up doing was taking this charcoal on paper 'Guitar' of Picasso's...

...as our starting point, and then working into it using some of the shading techniques from the video, and some of the other 'Guitar' pictures as inspiration, to come up with these...

...Chi's pencil 'guitar'...and his collage 'guitar'...

...and my pencil 'guitar'...

I think we're going to move onto some painting next and maybe also some Picasso faces (because you can't really *do* Cubism and not do them can you. ;-))

Cubism study (2) : essence of guitar

2011-07-16T21:31:00.000+01:00

Following on from yesterday, today, we discussed in a bit more depth some of the different ideas about what Cubism is represents.While trawling the net for all things Cubist, it has been interesting (and slightly amusing) to see how passionately some people defend their opinions of what Cubism 'is', what it means, how it 'should' be defined. When I said yesterday that it was a style I was 'familiar with', I meant that in the loosest possible sense! - I like it and as such I'm 'familiar' with the styles of some of it's most famous proponents and I've read a couple of articles here and there at some time or other about it because I was interested - I don't have any formal art 'training' (unless you count a 'C' at A Level!), and I have never studied Art History - I'm winging it, like with so many other things we do, so, when I say we are 'studying' Cubism at the moment, I mean we are looking at the cubist style and wondering what it might or might not all mean, and experimenting and playing with it ourselves to see if it gives us a different insight on it :)
Having said that, it's also a subject I'm fairly confident about 'winging it' on, mainly because I don't think there are too many absolute 'rights' or 'wrongs' when it comes to art or art appreciation :-)

What the cubists were, or weren't, trying to acheive is mostly speculation really as it seems they were quite closed on the subject themselves at the time. The main schools of thought are that...
* Cubism was a reaction to rapid advances in technology and industry of the time and a recognition that 'art' needed to change/advance dramatically as well in order not to be left behind.
* The traditonal format of applying perspective to painting was rejected to make way for a more 'real' interpretation of the way we see things. ie:that when we view an object, we rarely see it from one fixed point as you would in a traditional painting or photograph. When we look at something we look at it from different angles, we focus more on some parts of it than on others, and we also have memories and feelings associated with the object, these are represented in cubist art by the multiple views of the subject and the emphasis on some parts of the subject more than on others. They were also more 'real' in the sense that they were embracing the painting as something two dimensional and not trying to pretend it had three dimensions by trying to draw/paint them in. It seems a little odd to talk of what are predominantly very abstract works in terms of realism, but it kind of comes down to this - Who is more realistic, the artist who trys to give a flat painting 'depth' or the artist who trys to keep a flat painting 'flat'?!
* There is also an interesting school of thought that suggests that Cubism was inspired by, and possibly trying to compete with, advances in cinematography of the time. That the ability of the camera to now produce moving images as well as still ones, was something for the art world to aspire to too and that the multiple images present in cubist pictures are perhaps representative of seeing/trying to represent the subject in motion. This does not to me seem as far out as some people suggest, I don't think it is such a huge leap from moving yourself around an object to see it from different angles, to it moving past you and you seeing different angles of it. (There is an interesting activity you can do based on this idea, but unfortunately, our gerbil moves too much and borrowed dog doesn't move enough, for us to try it out! ;-))

Personally, I thing all these ideas are viable explanations for Cubism, I don't think any one particularly rules out any other.

Today, thinking mostly about different sides of the subject being visible at the same time, and putting more emphasis on particular parts of a subject, we used up the stupidly-useless-but-I-hate-wasting-anything amount of coloured ink left in the computer to print out some pictures of the guitar we used in the still life yesterday, taken from different angles and distances, and talked about what parts of a guitar most make a guitar, a guitar, and looked at the bits of pictures that we had highlighted yesterday and why we had highlighted those bits...

...then Chi cut up bits of the pictures and reassembled them on a board...

...before highlighting some of edges and angles and adding some extra details...

This is all preliminary work for some other activities around Cubism I want to do with Chi, but it all helps to fix some of the ideas of what cubism is about and the artists that championed it (We've been doing quite a lot of reading and looking at pictures too ;-))
And kind of, sort of, connected in a very loose sort of way, here's a view of a guitar you might not have seen before...

...Pretty cool huh! I wonder what Braque and Picasso would have made of today's advances in technology and what innovations they would have brought about in the art world to keep up with and challenge them?

Cubism study (1)

2011-07-15T14:42:00.000+01:00

Among the things Chi wants to do more of, 'art' features quite highly and that would be art in addition to the home ed art groups he goes to, here and also over in Bradford sometimes, and extra to the art for art sake drawing/painting/making etc that just happens whenever. In particular, he is interested in looking at some more art history type stuff, famous artists, style, movements etc

I was tempted to do something on a chronological base, but as Cubism is a style that appeals to us both, and one with which I am already reasonably familiar, it seemed as good a starting point as any.

I started off by setting up a still life, well actually I started off sweeping everything that was on the table off of it so that I could set up a still life! ;) It doesn't really matter too much what objects you include in your still life, but it is useful for this exercise to include some objects that look similar from different angles, and some that look quite different from different angles...

...so, for example, the basic shape of the bottle here doesn't change much (unless you were to view from above), but the outline shape of the guitar does.

We started off by drawing 'blind'...

...the purpose of this being that you focus on the objects you are drawing, rather than on what you want (expect) them to look like on the page. We only spent about ten minutes on this in total, drawing what we could see in front of us, before moving round the table and drawing the same things from the new angle on the same page, and then moving round and doing the same thing again...

These are the results of the 'blind' drawing...

We then repeated the exercise without the blinds on, but still trying to keep the focus more on what we were drawing than on whether it looked 'right' on the page...

...and then I asked Chi to think about which objects 'changed' when viewed from the different perspectives and which didn't, and we repeated the exercise again but focussing individually on the guitar and the book only this time, and trying to keep one point of the object in a fixed place for each of the three views (ie the hole on the guitar is in the same place each time, as is one particular corner of the book)...

The final thing we did with the pictures today was to simplify them using a pen and a no sketching rule (clean single lines only) picking out the lines that we felt most defined the shape of the object...

...later, we'll be simplifying and deconstructing some of the sketches a bit more.
We finished up with looking at some paintings by Braque and Picasso and discussing the idea of Cubism and what defines it - there are lots of useful guides to this on net of interwebbiness
- this one is quite a nicely concise and child friendly one
- I thought this one was also quite useful
- and I quite like this site too :)
The ideas for this activity also came from that last site and the link to discussing art/art appreciation with children on there is worth a look as well.
☺☻☺☻☺☻☺☻☺

resistant materials

2011-07-12T15:57:00.000+01:00

Chi has expressed an interest in doing woodwork and I'm ashamed to say that my automatic reaction to that was - "Oh no! If he was in school he'd be doing woodwork!" - which of course is a lot of twaddle. He might get a term/half term per year where he could learn how to make a box, and he wouldn't be calling it 'woodwork', he'd be calling it 'resistant materials' - I kid you not!

Considering that I made most of the bookshelves and tables in this house myself out of bits and pieces of wood from skips, I don't know why it occured to me to think that school would be the better option in this instance, and I'm sure that even if it does prove to be beyond my own capabilities there will be other options to look at. Besides, I think it's actually woodcarving that he is more interested in, and as far as I know, other than the carving of names into desks with compasses, I don't think a lot of that happens in the classroom. (Feel free to jump in and correct me if I'm wrong ;))

I feel we are at a bit of a crossroads/turning point with Chi's education at the moment, and I'm not 100% sure which way it is going to go. He is resistant in many ways to academic workbook type learning, but has outgrown some of the more hands on cross curricular project type stuff that we've done before. My gut instinct is to put the ball in his court for a while and let him take more responsibility for what and how he learns. I trust him to do this, but always at the back of my mind is the little nagging what if voice...what if he wants to do GCSE's and hasn't done enough of the basics for that to be a simple enough thing to do...what if he decides two/three/ten years down the line that actually he would have been better off if I had pushed him in a more academic direction...

The question of GCSE's arose recently in the form of, 'If you were in school you would (should?) be choosing your GCSE's now'. My general response to this sort of remark would be 'If your child were home educated, they might be doing this, this, this or this now', but I wasn't there, and Chi doesn't like confrontation and chose not to challenge it.

I don't generally do the anti-school bit, lots of my friends have children in school and I respect their decision to send their children to school, as much as they respect mine not to. But to those who are less respectful of my decison, let us not forget here that your choice to send your child/children to school is just that, a choice, and I sincerely hope that you put just as much thought and consideration into making that choice as I did into choosing to home educate, that you review and question your choice just as often as I review mine, that you constantly look at ways to improve upon the choice you have made, and that your child's education, well being and happiness are always at the heart of that choice.

If Chi were in school, he would not be starting GCSE's for another year yet. It is unlikely that he will choose to go to school to do GCSE's (although if he did really want to, I would support him in that decision) therefore the question of choosing what subjects he wants to do in a year and half's time is immaterial at this point. If he decides he wants to do a GCSE in a particular subject, then we will find a way for him to do that then. Likewise if he decides at some point in his life that he wants to do a particular job/course that requires him to jump through the 'you need x number of GCSE's' hoop, why can't he choose to do them then? Why do all the decisions about what he wants to do with his life have to rest with choices he makes age 13? Did you know what you wanted to be when you were 13? Are you the person you thought you would be back then? Are you doing what you thought you would be doing? I'm not, and I don't think I know anyone who is!

Personally, and purely from the jumping hoops perspective, I can see that having GCSE's in Maths and English is useful because there are so few courses that will take you without them. Chi and I have discussed this at length, and he can see the benefit in at least studying to that level so that if he does want to go on to further education, it won't be so difficult for him.

I am constantly aware that Chi is growing up fast, and that my time as his 'educator' is limited. I am also aware however that learning is a lifelong thing and that if he really wants to do something then he will cross the bridges of how to get there as they arise, if he doesn't already have the means to do so. I also am aware that coercive education, forcing children to learn things which are of no interest to them and that will be of no benefit to them in the future, is counterproductive. Learning becomes a chore and something to react to and rebel against, rather than something to embrace and enjoy. And I am also, also, aware that we all have options when it comes to education and life and that we all have choices that we can make that best suit ourselves and our children, that there are paths that we can skip down happily, and paths that we can choose to turn our backs on, and that there are very rarely any true dead ends and that is no such thing as a no u-turns sign.

Live and Learn.

☺☻☺☻☺☻☺

Treasure and books and stuff, well actually not much stuff, mostly just treasure and books really ;-)

2011-07-05T20:04:00.002+01:00

Book group today, but we had to pop into town first so I could drop a few things off with a friend on the market, to save me carrying it all later this week. And town of course also means shops of the charity variety :) So we spent a little while being quite loudly shocked and appalled at the prices of the books in the Oxfam book shop - seriously, I don't understand the thinking behind charging £3 for a tatty paperback, that you can buy on Amazon (including postage) for a lot less. Much as I like a bargain, I don't actually like seeing charity shops undercharging for things and getting ripped off by traders, but I don't like being ripped off myself either and I'm sure they'd do a lot more business if they were a little more realistic and consistent with their pricing.
Anyway, we managed to grumble our way out of that shop and up to the main Oxfam, where Chi found himself some treasure to spend his pocket money on, in the shape of this...

...three player chess! :)

On to book group and treasure of a different kind.

The book group we are part of has been going for about six years now I think (?), and we have been a part of it for all that time. Today, while we getting a game for the children to play out of the folder we keep at the library, we came across some of the drawings the children had done over time of the books we had read :) It was quite interesting trying to match some of the pictures to books - some of the children were really very young when we first started out! These are some of Chi's early pictures (aged about seven probably ;))

'Stig of the Dump' and 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'

'Harry the Poisonous Centipede', 'Alice in Wonderland', and probably 'Heidi'

;o)

This month's book was Coraline, which both Chi and I really enjoyed reading, as did most of the group, although some of them found it a little scary. The children read out their reviews and discussed the book and then played a 'snakes and ladders' type game where they each put five comprehension type questions about the book into a hat, and then have to answer one when they land on a snake/ladder square to determine whether they go up or down the board.

Next up is The Wee Free Men, which, being a Pratchett, Chi has almost finished already!

Afterwards, most of the children experimented with the three player chess for a bit, while the adults chatted about what to do next and other stuff...see there was some 'stuff' after all...which reminds me, I'm off to google circular chess now......;o)

Sand in our shoes and sunshine on our faces...

2011-06-30T16:42:00.002+01:00

...digging holes...

...and losing bits of ourselves...

...enjoying the things that other people...

...take the time to do...

...for other people...

...taking boat trips round the bay and seeing puffins and porpoises and jellyfish galore :) ...

...making our English Heritage membership pay for itself...

...visiting Scarborough Castle...

...and Whitby Abbey...

...and taking a gazillion photos...

...because the sun was shining...

...and blue skies and sandstone are perfect companions (even if they don't see each other very often ;))...

...and ice cream and baby jellyfish 'marbles' (like these) and walking and talking and plotting and planning our next adventures...
☺☻☺☻☺☻☺

On the mend...

2011-06-17T18:04:00.000+01:00

What with camping and various other out and aboutness, I've been hit by a bout of 'donetoomuchitis' and have been glad of a couple of days at home just catching up on work and stuff.

the 'stuff' bit including helping this guy get himself back together again...

I know the pictures aren't great, but I can't move him to a better location for photos until the glue has had more time to set...

...but look what he does...

;o)

Not leading horses to grape juice or something like that...

2011-06-15T21:31:00.000+01:00

After a weekend catching up with ourselves a bit after camping (ie. doing not very much!) We are back to another busy week again this week

On Monday, we went to pottery. The centre is going to be closed from the middle-ish of July over the summer for some refurbishment, so this was really the last chance to get anything started in order for it to have time to be finished before then.

Chi decided to have a go at some slipware and came up with this fab aboriginal style lizard

I had hoped that the dish I'd put for firing before we went away would have been ready for glazing, but unfortunately it accidentally got damaged between the shelves and the kiln and instead I had to make some repairs to it, and then got on with making another one in a similar style.

We also brought home the dragon! But he is currently awaiting a visit from the goddess Araldite, so pictures to follow soon when he's all (hopefully) back in one piece :)

Yesterday, we actually got to book group, which we haven't managed to do for a couple of months. At the previous session the children had elected as the theme 'a non fiction animal book'. Usually at this book group, we all read the same book and come back and share reviews and responses to it, so it was something a bit different and it worked well, with a good mix of choices.
We had read Last Chance To See, which is the account of a journey, or several journeys, that Douglas Adams undertook with zoologist*, Mark Carwardine, to track down some of the most endangered species of animal and to see what was being done about protecting/saving them. We also listened to some of the original radio episodes, as well as watching Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine retracing the journey to see what had become of the animals since.
It was a really interesting read, thought (and conversation) provoking and sad too in many respects, particularly in the cases of the Yangtze River Dolphin and the Northern White Rhino, the former of which has now been declared functionally extinct and the latter whose entire hopes for the species now rest with just four animals, recently relocated from a zoo in the Czech Republic to a protected reserve in Africa, and the very dedicated handful of people who devote their lives to saving them.
*I'm sure zoologist should have more o's than that - I may have to start a campaign to add the extra one and have it spelt like this instead - 'zooologist' ;)

This month's book is Coraline by Neil Gaiman, which has been on Chi's 'to read' list for a while, so hopefully another good one :)

After book group, we came home to prepare lots of Roman food to bring with us to our Roman themed Home Ed group today.
I say 'we', I actually mean 'I' - Chi's interest in the Romans amounts to him finding Life of Brian funny but you can keep the rest of it ;)
Anyway, this was our mostly 'Roman' spread...

This is a boiled egg with pine nut sauce recipe that I got from here

On the left (below) is some spelt flour and honey bread that someone else made, and on the right is the streptikos artos bread that I made from a recipe here - I should say that mine didn't look remotely like hers, it ended up as more of spread out blob than a neat and well risen plait, but it did taste fine ;)

And below we have Libum (cheesecakes) again from here, and walnut stuffed dates cooked in honey from this book (one of my favourite ever charity shop buys :))

It was quite a small group today, but there were still a number of activities on offer during the day, mosaic making, roman numeral challenges, stories, games etc and, after stumbling across this site at the weekend, I took Tali (knucklebones) to play and to make...

It was a good day, but I think we'll be leaving Romans there, for now anyway, as the saying goes, you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink - it will however drink the carton of grape juice in the fridge, that you didn't lead it too, before you have time to make it into spiced 'wine' for your home ed group!

Nuff said.
;o)

What are we doing tomorrow?

cat(s) among the...mallards

Home Ed batik workshop

Day trip to China

not going out

Chen Hangfeng exhibition

Death

The Versatile Blogger Award

2011

Origami snowflakes

☼.☺.☼.☺.☼

More Midwinteryness

To tree, or not to tree...

At the risk of losing my crown of great humbugginess...

Sunflowers in December...

busy...

in case you were wondering...

**** 14 ****

Get up!

Let's talk about school, maybe...

Welcome to "The Bright Side"

In Liverpool...

Another Place

The rest of the week looked something like this...

Nothing is set in stone...

Exploding head syndrome

Human

one year...

Sunhats in October...

This week we have mostly been taking photos...

Be a hummingbird

Trying not to hate Autumn

water water everywhere

Being human

Oops I forgot about Europe...

The British Science Festival redeems itself

grumblegrumblegrouchmooch

Not Back To School Picnic

The British Science Festival...

Tower Bridge Team Build

uninspiredinspired

B is for...

trending : Not Back To School

101 in 1001?

not swearing at the computer...

Rainy days and Sundays...

How green is our valley...how blue are our skies

Finally...facepainting... ;-)

"Bruce"

Still learning something new every day...

On our own doorstep again...

The "Ooh look, it's nearly 'not back to school' time again" giveaway!

Word of the week - Awesome!!...

Salisbury, Stonehenge and Old Sarum

The white horses of Wiltshire and the one that isn't...

Journeys...

carrot and stick

We were here...

Transistance is futile

Crivens!!

Mischief managed

pictsies and monsters and balls of fluff

Playing and reading and stuff...

Learn Nothing Day 2011....doh!!

We've got the Verne travel bug again...

Cubism study (3) : more guitars! ;-)

Cubism study (2) : essence of guitar

Cubism study (1)

resistant materials

Treasure and books and stuff, well actually not much stuff, mostly just treasure and books really ;-)

Sand in our shoes and sunshine on our faces...

On the mend...

Not leading horses to grape juice or something like that...

14