Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade visit and a busy afternoon

We had a great time today visiting the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade. There were lots of models, pictures and memorabilia to look at going right back to 1864, when the Brigade was formed. We had a really engaging member of the Brigade talk to us about the shipwreck that led to the formation of the Brigade. He also showed us lots of the equipment they use - pulley system with a breeches buoy, throw ropes and vacuum splints. The children got to take part in this and they all really enjoyed it. We also went up to the watch tower to see the search light. 

Peter to the rescue! He wore this cliff rescue hat the whole time.

We brought home some activity booklets, which Harry and Peter started this afternoon. We had a nice peaceful afternoon and also did jigsaws, Hama beads and played the Lego magazine version of snakes and ladders. Peter finished his first Hama bead design with the maxi beads - he likes doing them but has never had the concentration span to finish one before.

Harry has been doing some old Reading Eggs worksheets this afternoon too. We used Reading Eggs for 2 years as his first reading teaching resource and it was great for him. I am planning to re-subscribe soon for Harry and also next year for Peter. The worksheets cover each lesson in the programme and are a good resource to use alongside for revising the reading skills and for writing too. 

Harry is finishing off this maths workbook this week (I am trying to use up all my resources that are sitting unfinished - can you tell!?) and today he did number bonds to 10 and adding/subtracting 10. These are all topics he is comfortable with so they are good revision and practise and he calls it 'fun maths', because he gets stickers! 

He also practised cello then we sat down together to watch Hero Squad on CBBC. It was really nice cuddled up on the sofa as the freezing rain battered the window! The topic of the programme today was water rescue and Harry was really excited that they were using the same throw rope equipment we had used at the Life Brigade. 

World Toilet Day and the water cycle

Today is World Toilet Day so we did water based topics at our group get-together today. This day is marked to raise awareness of the amount of people in the world who don't have toilets and clean water.

We set up different kinds of filter for dirty water to see how they performed. There was quite a difference in the colour of the 'clean' water that filtered through.

We watched some videos about water purification, composting toilets and why we need sanitation and hand washing.

We looked at the water cycle by adding labels to this background and talking about the words.

We are going to set up a condensation experiment at home to observe over a few days as well.

Visiting family

We have been visiting my family in Harrogate today. One of the benefits of home education for us is that we don't live near anyone so we can visit on convenient days instead of having to shoehorn it into weekends along with everything else. Harry and Peter love seeing their family and it is very important to us that they get chance to build relationships with them.

Harry did a cello practise this morning and then we set off, listening to The Horse and His Boy in the car. 

The boys had a great time playing at my mum's house, decorating her stairs with ribbon and fairy lights and we also played at the Valley Gardens playground for the afternoon when the rain stopped. Harry and Peter spent lots of time running circuits around various play equipment and timing each other, which I find to be a great way to tire them out! 

Both boys fell asleep on the way home, after having a bath and putting pyjamas on at my mum's, so I just delivered them into bed when we got home! I then prepared an activity for our Tuesday group on the water cycle, which I will include in a post tomorrow.

A boys only day out

We usually spend Sundays together as a family, as Saturdays are busy with music and swimming classes. Today, however, I needed to get some home education admin done and go to town, alone, to buy Christmas stocking presents. I also like the odd Sunday away from the children for a break. I find it quite intense after several weeks without time away in peace and everyone benefits from a more relaxed and revived me! 

I had a productive trip to town and did my filing at home. I store completed work and activities in a box file until it is full and then file it into various folders - general, art, French, scrapbooks etc. I also had a look at my winter/Christmas folder to see what we already have and started making notes of craft and other ideas. 

Stuart took the boys for an outdoor adventure to Wallington, a National Trust property and they had a great time. The 'climbing tree' at Wallington is featured as one of the best trees to climb in the National Trust's 50 things to do before you are 11 3/4. 

Harry was delighted to discover that I had brought home The Horse and His Boy on audio CD from the library - he took himself off to his bed to listen to the first disc while tea cooked. He has really enjoyed the Narnia series so far so I think we will have listened to them all within a few months.

This photo is a good reminder as to why my blog is called Dancing In The Mud!

Land art at the park

We had a really fun morning at the park creating some land art today. We were introduced to land art at our last National Trust workshop based on art in nature. Harry often creates land art at the beach by drawing in the sand.

We looked at some pictures on Land Art for Kids before we went for some inspiration and Harry decided he wanted to make a star. We took the acorns and conkers we have collected recently and a bag of pine cones from the garage. At the park we gathered sticks and leaves.

We set out the shape of the star with sticks and layered the other materials in stripes coming into the middle. Harry and Peter both loved doing this.

Harry also found some stones and used them as the basis for a dog picture.

We found a really big twiggy stick and attached leaves to it by tying the stems onto the sticks to make a mini 'tree'.

The boys had great fun playing in the amazing leaves today as well. They took turns to cover each other in leaves and be a 'leaf monster' waking up from hibernation. It still amazes me how they can play so co-operatively outdoors when they are often bickering and annoying each other at home at the moment. I definitely have outdoor children!

A resting day at home

We had a much needed day at home today. We have been really busy recently and we are all under the weather, especially me! 

We played theme alphabet this morning. I wrote out each letter of the alphabet with a space next to it. We each had a sheet and we decided on a theme together - food and drink. We had to think of a word for each letter based on the theme. Harry loved this. He scouted around the kitchen looking for clues and used food containers to help him with the spellings. He found nutmeg for the letter 'n' in the spice basket. We allowed ourselves leeway for the harder letters and used words containing them rather than starting with them, such as squash for the letter 'q'.

Harry also did a round of three ring words. I gave him this sheet and asked him to make different words from the start, middle and end circles. He found this quite hard but managed 15. 

We played a few games of cafe today, with tea set, cakes and visiting toys.

Harry and Peter found my empty washing basket (which is very rarely empty) and took the opportunity to have some boat rides in it, collecting things for their trip along the way! Harry's new Lego Club magazine came in the post too, so we read through that and he built some snowmobile designs as that is the competition challenge. There are some more activities for him to do another day too - this a free magazine we signed up for on the Lego Club website - he loves getting it in the post. 

We baked buns - a batch of chocolate and a batch of chocolate chip and orange. Peter proudly broke his own eggs and was still talking about this at bedtime tonight! We had several oranges to use up so Harry squeezed the rest (in the juicer attachment to the food processor) to drink. He is very competent in the kitchen. 

Peter had a nap at lunch time as he didn't sleep well with a bad cough so Harry helped me start making a curry for our tea and played Monster Physics on the iPad. This app gives a range of missions to complete by building machines to do different tasks. He loves it and it is really encouraging him to read too, as he has to read the mission to know what his machine should do. My mum phoned and we both spoke to her too. Harry has practised his cello and the boys watched the new episode of one of their favourite TV shows - Hero Squad on CBBC. It has been a lovely and peaceful day, hopefully we will all feel better for it tomorrow.

Group morning

We met up with our friends for our usual Tuesday morning group work yesterday. Stuart needed the car so we walked and took scooters to get there, which took 40 minutes but thankfully the weather was nice!

We did some weather based science - making a cloud by suspending a cup of warm orange water in a bigger jar of cold water - we saw the orange 'cloud' rise and collect at the top of the water jar as it was warmer.

We have been reading a library book about emergency vehicles recently and thinking about why some fires need foam instead of water to extinguish them. We did a demonstration to show this. We added oil to water and watched it separate, even after being shaken. The oil floats on the water as it is lighter, just as a fuel fire would float to the top of water and keep burning. We then added some salt - the salt floated to the bottom as it is heavier, taking some oil with it, but then the salt started to dissolve and the oil floated back up. We sprayed shaving foam on top of the oil, and this stayed on top, as fire-fighting foam would to smother the fire. These were the jars showing the final effect.

We also made butter from double cream, along the theme of separation of materials. The cream contains blobs of fat floating in a liquid and we separated these into butter and buttermilk by shaking the cream in jars (for around 20 minutes). The butter made this way is very tasty and we used it on bread and banana cake for a snack!

The Elephant Parade tour has been in Newcastle recently and all the children have seen it at some point - they decorated their own elephants yesterday. Harry designed Officer Elephant, a police themed elephant. 

There was a game of Magic Cauldron, by Orchard Toys.

They also made weather wheels, by decorating the different types of weather and an arrow. We will attach these together at home with a split pin and the arrow can be pointed at the correct weather for the day.