Month: September 2014

After a busy Thursday in the Big Smoke, Friday had a relaxed start and then went on to be a day of normals (Maths, English, Music then take your pick) apart from a violin lesson for Lfish with her new teacher. He’s very different to her last teacher and will take some getting used to, but I think it could be a Good Thing for her in the end, if she manages to adjust enough to cope.
L was happy to stay at home with Jfish, Kfish and Afish, under strict instructions to keep busy playing a game or similarly occupying themselves. The house seemed to be intact when we returned so presumably they managed 😉 Next week choir and other activities will have started so Fridays will have a rather different shape. We’re enjoying the peace and free time while it lasts!

TheBabs is a useful friend to have when it comes to the Natural History Museum 😉 We were already planning to go to London to see Stomp! so the offer of free guest passes to an exhibition at the NHM was impossible to pass up, especially when combined with the chance to meet up with friends 🙂
When we booked Stomp! many moons ago, we didn’t know whether Kfish would be here or in France, so we booked 6 tickets anyway on the assumption that we could either take another child with us (if Kfish was in France) or I could stay at home (if we’d gained a French child). In the event, Jfish was asked if he’d like to spend the day with Jbiff, whose school term hadn’t yet started, so we dropped him off first and then travelled to London from the nearest station to there.
Finding ourselves passing through Tower Bridge on the underground we seized the moment to see how the poppies were progressing. We visited a few weeks ago with French J and found it quite breathtaking so it was good to be able to show Bob as well and to see how many more poppies there were now.
We opted for the exhibition on Mammoths and caught up with TheBabs and B and the Beans there. It was very good, with short videos and interactive exhibits to keep the children’s attention engaged. We saw Lyuba – the most complete woolly mammoth ever found, but only a baby having died at just one month old 🙁 The children also had a go at manipulating a trunk to perform a task, fighting with tusks and working out where best to attach ligaments to avoid having their (mammoth) head pulled down by the weight of tusks.
TheBabs was also kind enough to take us with her to the member’s room (complete with misplaced apostrophe, unless she really is the only member!) where we had a comfortable lunch break, complete with tea (but no milk – tsk tsk!) and then decided to whizz through the earthquakes and volcanoes section to experience the newly refurbished Kobe earthquake experience. I think L would have liked rather longer there, so have noted his interest in volcanoes for future reference 😉 Unfortunately with a matinee to get to time was not on our side.
A brisk walk and a trip on the Tube and we were at Leicester Square, ready to hunt for the Ambassadors Theatre. We got sidetracked briefly by a proper old-fashioned sweetshop where Bob and I decided quite uncharacteristically to treat the children to a bag of sweets for the performance. The lovely assistant very helpfully gave us a mixture of all the old favourites, most of which the children had never tried (we’re quite abstemious sweetie-wise normally 😉 ) and working our way through a few of them helped to pass the time once we had collected tickets and were waiting to go in and then again waiting for the show to start.
The wait may have been tedious, but the show was well worth it. Bob and I saw Stomp years ago when we were both students, as far as we can remember, and they were excellent then. If anything they’re even better now. There were touches of humour, well orchestrated rhythms and musicality, fantastically choreographed dances with dustbin lids, large sticks and even shopping trolleys and even a whole set performed in the dark with lighters. Excellent stuff 😀

Wednesday and the start of a new term meant Wed Ed – hoorah!

We took along some Zentangles ® for Art. I hadn’t realised until I researched it that Zentangle is actually a copyrighted term for a particular and very specific form of art method invented by a monk and a calligrapher as a form of meditation, where the process is more important than the product, but the product is often surprisingly intricate and beautiful.

HH did some Science based on respiration (which is why we had been looking through the powerpoint earlier in the week) and we learned that Jfish has the largest lung capacity of the children there – not surprising given he is the oldest, the largest (not by much – SB is almost as tall!) and plays the trombone. L has the second largest, which is good news for a saxophonist 🙂

TheBabs had some Maths activities to share too, which kept all of the children busy for some time and some of them for a considerable time. Others moved on to Minecraft; they have a project underway apparently and were very happy that we didn’t have to dash off for choir, since it doesn’t start until next week. I also did some French with Jfish and SB, something I hope to fit in each week if we can.

There was a big gap, though, as Em and co. were not there 🙁 which as well as missing them meant no music.

It’s been a busy few weeks, with hardly any time for work between music courses, trips away, visitors and all the other things we’ve had going on. Monday felt like a good day to get things going again, first of the month, first day of term and so on. We started with some EFL worksheets for L (I’m planning to print off a whole folder for him to work through at his own pace, alongside the everyday English he’s learning) and then Maths for everybody. Lfish and Afish are both on Singapore Maths (rubbing out previous children’s work as they go – I’m such a mean (impoverished) Mummy!), L and Kfish working through Galore Park books 2 and 3 respectively and Jfish has a GCSE textbook and some practice papers to play with, when he gets round to it – NMYBB and HO have caught up with him for the moment and he’s suffering a severe bout of man flu.
A quick bounce on the trampoline and then we got out the History books and went right back to Prehistoric Britain for the beginning of the History project we’re planning to use as our topic-based learning for the next term or two. Music practices and an archaeology game filled the rest of the afternoon, and the after-dinner slot had just enough time for an extra slice of GBBO before bed 🙂
Yesterday evening I spotted an event taking place today at our local nature reserve, so today we cut bookwork short and made our way there. Jfish was sound asleep, having been woken in the night by a nosebleed, so we woke him enough to ask if he wanted to come and then left him to it. He was still asleep when we got back, so that was obviously what he needed.
The reserve proved to be a fairly long way down a little road near us, so I was glad we had taken the car. We parked and walked along the track, encouraged on our way by little signs with information and suggestions of things to look out for on our way. These included dewberries, which I’d not knowingly eaten before, but which Afish and I enjoyed (the others all turned their noses up *sigh*), blackberries and elderberries as well as various insects, birds and animals. When we finally arrived we found a very friendly warden and a group of helpful and chatty volunteers. There was one other family there, but they were about to leave, which meant the four children had an adult each and I could let them get on with learning while I watched and listened too 🙂 We started with pond dipping, which yielded a multitude of tiny snails, leeches, water boatmen in various stages of life, diving beetles with their bubbles of air for scuba, zebra mussels, bloodworms, mayfly, damselfly and caddis larvae and even a couple of water scorpions.
Moving on to bug hunting the children were determined to catch a butterfly – and indeed L managed to catch two, one with the help of a volunteer adult and the other with Lfish. As with the pond dipping, we had identification charts and magnifying pots to help us work out what we’d found, as well as the knowledgeable warden and volunteers. We gave up on the spiders though; they’re just too hard to differentiate!
The morning was rounded off with birdwatching, using binoculars to look across the water to the island where a multitude of waterfowl congregate. We managed to spot greater crested grebe, Canada geese, mute swans (although the one which was huffing and snorting disgustedly at the excess of people and lack of biscuits while we pond dipped seemed to be grossly misnamed!), coots, moorhens, teal, a pair of buzzards (overhead, not in the water ;)), a cormorant and others too far away to be certain.
It was a really good morning – lots of fun, lovely weather, wonderful people and lots of learning taking place. Sadly the reserve may not be there much longer; there are plans to build a road right through the middle of it and the various protests and petitions raised so far seem to be having little effect 🙁

We came back and had lunch, looking through a powerpoint on respiration at the same time (ready for Science tomorrow), then out came the Maths again. I had planned to do other things this afternoon, but after such a productive morning it felt as though maths and music might be enough. Various games happened, L and Afish made a marble run, we found some video clips of pop songs transposed from minor to major keys and vice versa and talked about how that changed the feel of the music… Your usual kind of HE afternoon really 😉