You Can't Build a Sandcastle with a Clipboard in your Hand

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This week we had a day out at the seaside with some other home educating friends.  The boys hunted for interesting rocks and shells; drew on the sea walls with the chalk from the beach; fished around in a rockpool, finding a crab (sadly, dead :-(); buried some treasure and marked with a cross and a circle of stones; had a game of crazy golf and of course, ate ice lollies!  While we were on the beach, a school trip of about 60 children and teachers arrived.  We gawped and eavesdropped :-P.  The children appeared to be looking for interesting items for an art class.  All had clipboards (colour coded for each class) and were instructed that they couldn't go on the tantalising rocks that our kids had just been gleefully leaping around, couldn't go too far this way or that way, shouldn't pick up anything that might be slimy or smelly and were each given just one small ziploc bag to put their finds into.  How to take the fun out of a trip to the seaside?!?

Art in the Garden

Yesterday I took the boys to a marvellous art exhibition called "Art in the Garden" which was held in a beautiful garden in the nearby village of Fincham.  Here's a selection of some of the installations/sculptures:



Of particular relevance to us (as a family opposing local plans to build a waste incinerator) was this installation:



Everything is made of plastic that cannot currently be recycled in Norfolk ie will sit for hundreds of years in landfill.  A beautiful, colourful piece of art but a sobering lesson.  Here's the text that the artist had posted alongside it, hopefully it will be readable:



After looking around the garden, the boys also used pencils provided to make their own pictures, which will be laminated and displayed in the artist's studio.  Here's Gman with his "volcanic ash cloud" picture:



Last week we had a few days break at Center Parcs.  One of the advantages of being a home educating family is being able to visit attractions during the less busy term time :-).  The boys loved being able to ride their bikes all around without any traffic, as well as playing in the wilder parts of the woods.  They also swam, played crazy golf, went bowling and had a go at painting some pottery:



All in all, a lovely week!

We have also had yet another visit to Dersingham Bog Nature Reserve - still our favourite place for a walk - and the boys practiced their balancing skills and cheesy grins:

A Car Boot Sale Education

Who says home education needs to be expensive?



At this morning's boot sale we picked up a vintage weaving loom, two primary science books, three books interviewing children's authors (Telling Tales series) a set of Oxford Learning Tree readers, a workbook on telling the time, a book of scary stories and Star Wars Monopoly.  OK, not sure of the educational value of the Monopoly but all the same :-)

So what have we been up to the last couple of weeks..?

More on the Aztecs as part of Gman's Mexico lapbook project.  The boys are quite taken with the somewhat gory nature of this particular period of ancient history.  I think it's the live human sacrifices that do it!  Gman patiently stuck down loads of little gummed squares to make this two headed-serpent (Waif started out helping but got fed up with the bits sticking to him so wandered off to do something else):



As you can see, Gman was rather pleased with the finished result!

Waif has been continuing making some more "quilt" patterns and has even had a go at a liberated house (see my sewing blog for what this means!)



We have also been to see a small but very lovely textile art exhibition at the Babylon Gallery in Ely.  While Gman was totally entranced by a piece entitled "The Power of Money" which comprised a kind of waterfall of £10 & £20 notes embroidered in between sheets of sheer material, Waif was more interested in having a go at the hands-on textile art activity, with a little help from Nana.  They had a table laid out with fabric, ribbons, buttons, beads, and various yummy trims for participants to make fabric flower corsages to go on a "tree" inside the gallery.  Waif hung his first flower up there, but was so taken with his second that he went home with it sewn to his jumper!

Continuing on an artistic theme, Gman has been designing a poster for his latest story, borrowing somewhat from all the sci-fi we have been watching and reading lately!

Mexican Hot Chocolate

How could I have forgotten the Mexican hot chocolate we made?  We adapted a milky recipe from book out the library and made ours using melted dark chocolate, rice milk, vanilla extract and a bit of cinnamon.  It was yummy, if slightly extravagant :-)

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Last few weeks

It's been a while since I posted, mainly because we have recently suffered 11 days without a broadband connection.  Yikes!  It has given us all a bit of a jolt as to how much we rely on the internet for learning, so we have been doing lots of stuff involving information from good old fashioned books.  This has been helped by the discovery of a home educator's perk (yes, really!) - I can get an extra library card from Norfolk Libraries!  And I can borrow up to 20 books at a time!  And 12 of these are allowed to be junior non fiction (usually limited to four)!!  Woohooo.  Now to get myself a bigger trolley to haul all the books home ;-)

So what have the boys been up to?  Readers of my sewing blog will know that I am into quilting and have recently discovered the Liberated Quiltmaking of Gwen Marston in this book.  It has such lovely pictures, that Waif has been inspired to design his own quilt pattern:



Gman's main thing has been learning about Mexico.  Buoyed by the success of the Impressionist lapbook, he is putting together a Mexico lapbook on the bits and pieces he has learned.  He has done a minibook on food in the shape of a chilli; music in the shape of a sombrero; fiestas in the shape of a papel picado...and so on.

Tied in to this, we have done some Mexican themed crafts:

• Made an Ojo de Dios - check out Gman's blog here for pics and info about this


• Created some yarn paintings


• Decorated skulls in the style of the Day of the Dead

We are about to move on to the Aztec era and there are sure to be plenty of activities relating to this we can do together :-)

This week we have also been on an home education field trip to Castle Acre Priory near Swaffham, where we enjoyed storytelling from the marvellous Yarnsmith of Norwich.  As you can see, the children were totally captivated by his storytelling in such a beautiful setting, helped along by a bit of sunshine.  Take a look at the Yarnsmith's website to see if he is storytelling at an event near you.  He really is wonderful!