What do electronics, food, knitting and art appreciation have in common?

All are potential activities in a week home educating!

Making a radio transmitter with our 100 (1000?)-in-1 set (acquired many years ago from a carboot sale):

The Foodies festival. We got free weekend tickets for the family after entering a local competition. (which reminds me I must enter more). Of course we only went for the freebies. And yes, that is a giant cheese:

And photos of Sandham Chapel, Newbury, last week:

Sadly I couldn't take any photos inside, but the paintings by Stanley Spencer were really quite incredible.

Ds2 and dd in the garden, with the handpuppet I had knitted (intended to be one of many for the Christmas shoebox appeal, but dd got to it first!):

Disarming the bomb

(My contribution to 'The Soul of Sunday')

If you wondered why we've been quiet, it's because we've been doing VIB (Very Important Business).

It's these bombs. Bombs can't wait, you know. Ticking ticking ticking. Never stop ticking. It's a wonder we get anything done with the racket.

But fortunately we have the people.

We have the tools.

We have the tongue.

Plant Science 1 and Potato guns (and other scientific adventures)

Plant science.
Yep, that's what we appear to be doing. After our venture into cells here it seemed logical to carry on.

It all arose out of a desire (mine) to take our everyday-as-it-happens science up a notch or two.

My hunt for a one-stop suitable book or resource - something between text book and popular science, with sequential and relevant experiments, clear diagrams and a host of other requirements - has, not surprisingly, been unsuccessful.

And so we have resorted to our usual mish-mash of resources, researched, cribbed and squidged together as a higgledy piggledy selection of podcasts, old pre-curriculum science books, webpage printouts and BBC video clips.

First we looked at transpiration and the flow of water up plant stems. The conversation went something like this:

Dh: "Celery? But I thought you didn't like celery?"
me: "I don't. It's for science."
Dh: "Oh. Right."
He looks at me strangely. This is the man who made gunpowder in our back garden for ds1's 7th birthday. Who used liquid nitrogen and orange juice to make orange sorbet for our barbecue. Nuff said.

Anyway, the old 'celery in a glass of coloured water trick' (btw only one stick is required, not the whole blooming lot).

Et voila! Blue dye seen in celery slice. Now that was worth £1.15 at the greengrocers.

Then we look at osmosis. You know, the passage of water through a selectively-permeable membrane from a place of low solute concentration to high solute concentration. [Just look it up in wikipedia]

ds2 cuts 2 potato slices:


Yep, like that.

One slice is added to plain old water.
The other slice is added to water with a big load of salt dissolved in it.
After an hour or so, the slice in the salty water should go floppy as water passes from the potato into the water, and the slice in the normal water should go hard as water passes into the potato. Or something like that. You get the gist.


And what to do with all that leftover potato? An impromptu opportunity for potato sculptures, of course.

And ammunition for weapons

If you make the mess, you clear it up dear eldest.

Like a shoot-out on CSI, but with only small lumps of starch left as evidence (all over my conservatory floor as it happens).

More plant science.

We finally get around to planting those Spring bulbs bought in October.

Some of them were even trying to flower in the bulb bag (on 1cm stalks) Oops.

Ah well. As my father always said - they have two chances: live or die. I'm not sure what he was talking about at the time. (It might have been rather tactless if it was people.)

More science.

Have you ever seen a more characterful photo of a 12-yr-old?

...with a bicarbonate of soda rocket in his hand.

More science. Ds1 makes one of those wiggly buzzy wire things, except this one lights up a bulb instead. Made out of a rolled up piece of aluminium foil, a large battery, an empty chocolate box, a bulb and some wire (I guess). All his own work. He obviously doesn't trust me to have any useful input into these technical things whatsoever.

NUTS!

Bird feeders and nuts.

I suppose that counts as science...natural history or something, if you want to tick a box.

p.s. the birds continued...

Thought I'd post a video of ds2 making 'bird' sounds on our electronic kit last week.

The kit is basically a load of electronic components on a base board. The idea is to link up wires between springs that come from the components. Each of the 'projects' in the accompanying book gives a list of the numbers of the terminals to connect, some background on the project (and suggestions for adapting it) and a circuit diagram. I've just googled it and found a modern equivalent of our 500 in 1 electonic kit (ours is quite old) on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/500-Electronic-Project-Lab-Kit/dp/B000LR9E4A

£159.95 - yikes! I think I got ours for about 4 quid secondhand!

The birds (food, plucked and electronic) and 'Big Girl's Blouse' Kale

Ok. So the birds don't like our bird 'cake'. Or perhaps they don't realise that those weird yoghurt pots hanging upside down from the apple tree on bits of 100% cotton wool (my best knitting stock) are actually meant to be lunch. Either way, the bird cake remains untouched.

Which is more than can be said for the birds...or the bird to be precise. It seems that something has had a chunk out of one of our chickens. We came down the garden the other morning to find a pile of black feathers outside the run (yes OUTSIDE). We did a quick count of the chucks in the run - none were missing - and they looked ok (a bit scrawny and hen-pecked as always, but nothing new). Today, however, one of them is definitely limping with a damaged claw and appears to have a chunk of feathers missing from her back (not sure why we didn't notice this before - maybe more feathers have fallen out since we first looked).

Here is the pile of feathers.

And yes, those are my feet.

[Sadly this foot affliction is a well-known side-effect of having more than 2 children:'nice mummy' enters a transitional phase which without adequate sleep and chocolate and a nice holiday in the Caribbean can result in her becoming 'mummy the monster'. The disease affects mothers in a number of ways; most noticeably in the voicebox (loud screeches and interminably long rants) and in prolonged cases - where there is extensive exposure to offspring - the physical development of the feet is affected. There is no known cure.]

The chicken thing is a mystery though. Whatever it was appears to have grabbed the chicken through the bars of the run fencing, been unsuccessful (i.e not eaten it), and left a pile of feathers on the path. But what chicken would be stupid enough to go near the bars when something like a fox was around (and without making much noise). It's more damage than your average rat could do (even if it was ridiculously hungry), so the whole thing is rather puzzling. My only thought (and I've just thunked it while I'm typing this entry) is that it could possibly be a ferret. The next-door neighbour's kids had pet ferrets which escaped months ago and for a while we used to see them running through the chicken run, causing chaos and mahem (big flurry of anxious chickens doing the daft things that chickens do when they're anxious). But I thought ferrets would only usually take eggs or young chucks?

Will have to google that one.

It still leaves us in the dilema of what to do about the injured chicken. She seems to be managing ok, but experience has shown that the other chickens are likely to gang up on her (chickens have 'bully the weakest' /'pecking order' - politics) and cause further harm. I think I'll see how chuck is doing tomorrow and maybe clear out the greenhouse as a temporary shelter.

So, while checking out the chicken situation, I had a quick recky of the garden. My Italian Kale was looking very sad (but has since perked up as it defrosted today).

Sad Kale (look, you can see it shivering)

These mediterranean types are big girl's blouses compared with the rugged British greens. Mind you, the latter often taste like cattle food, so that's probably why I'm growing the former. And I watched Jamie cooking with the Italian stuff in a programme tonight so it must be awwwright mustn't it? Bless his cotton socks; he can come and cook for me any day...

Errhum..

The plastic over one of the raised beds where I planted the garlic (erected to stop the chickens digging them up) has had the added bonus of keeping the parsley frost free and still productive. I still have no idea what I'm going to use the parsley for (does one garnish baked beans on toast in one's house?), but it seems to be indestructible and non-invasive; both good qualities in my neglected veg patch.

Not very exciting picture of parsley

(are you bored yet?)

I've been sorting my seeds out for the next season and had theis year's delivery of heritage seeds from the HDRA (now known publicly as Garden Organic) seed collection. As always, I have far too many seeds, and lots of seeds for things that we probably wont eat even if we successfully grew it, but I've stuffed them into the box, in order of month of planting. It's all very organised with little cardboard separators between the months. Peppers and chillis and tomatos first (Jan-Feb). Then 20,000 packets of seeds for Mar-Apr. Then absolutely nothing until September (one seed pack in that section).

I read somewhere that this date thing was a really good way of organising your planting.

Yeah...

On Friday ds2 mentioned something about electronics and whereas I would usually have made excuses - or pointed him in the direction of dh - I patiently went in the loft and got out an electronics set that I'd got secondhand years ago (probably when he was a toddler!). Ds1 had never wanted to use it (hence why it was collecting dust in the loft), but ds2 spent over an hour making circuits to create 'bird sounds' (we seem to be having a bird theme going here) and then fiddling around making alterations. I was clueless, but both the boys seemed to know alot more than me! When ds2 started telling me what a transistor did, I started glazing over (as I would if dh did the same), but I have to admit I was impressed.

And no, I can't remember what a transistor does. If it could clear up dog poo, sort out the odd-sock drawer or even cook Italian Kale then I might show more interest. I don't need to know what a transistor does to be grateful that an electronic gadget is working. And I don't suppose a florist needs to know the ins and outs of photosynthesis to do their job...

Well either the volcanic mountain of craft materials has finally erupted, or the home-educating Gremlins have been doing some tidying up...

I really shouldn't feed them after 5pm

So...I finish on a photo of dd1 riding her bike (shortly after this was taken she got distracted by looking at the postman coming the other way, tipped to one side and fell off). Funny how I always take photos just before my children damage themselves in some way. Some might say it's inattentive parenting. I prefer to call it sequencial fate. Camera + child = nice photo + minor accident.

Essential clothing for a bike ride in below-freezing weather:

woolly hat, jumper, coat and - oh yes - shorts!