Treasure maps, ds2 knits, and 'when is a school not a school?'

Well we seem to be regulars down at the sailing club. Each week I've been taking along an activity for the kids (and anyone else who turns up). It's usually just something I leave on the table, a little temptation for them to dip into if they wish. This week I took some old paper, all yellow-brown with age, and pens and paints, along with an atlas and a few books on pirates and explorers. It didn't take long for the kids to be painting treasure maps, rolling them up and setting off to the West Indes with their fellow pirates. Hmm..did I spot a bit of geography there...And no adult intervention at all...

It looks like there will be a regular nature group of some sorts at the sailing club: a monthly Saturday one for all children, and a weekly one for home ed kids to join in. There is so much conservation work to be done around the site - plenty of bramble clearance and apparently lots of plans for the woodland area - so we'll not be short of things to do. I think the only difficult thing will be trying to curb all that adult enthusiasm: we don't want to scare the kids away! Among the plans is a session to make some lanterns and have a torchlit procession around the lake for Halloween/Bonfire night. It sounds wonderful! A big project will be mapping the other, smaller, lake: the kids will have to go out on boards/boats to explore the unknown territory. I think they'll like that idea {g}.

Ds2 caught me knitting at the sailing club and wanted to have a go. He was making quite a good job of it, but got a bit bored after a few rows. Maybe I should teach him how to crochet? It grows much faster and it's not so easy to drop all your stitches!

Today the kids tried out an afternoon session at a local Montessori school which is opening up some of it's primary lessons to home educating families. Ds2 had a great time, primarily because he got to use some technology in the music session (always a bonus for techno-head like him). Ds1 wasn't quite so enthusiastic, but then even the shrug and a grunt in response to my questions was more than I was expecting. Thankfully they are in different groups for music, so they got a chance to do something independently. I guess this is one of the main problems with home educating kids that are close in age: they get to do pretty much everything together, whether they want to or not, and tend to get pretty sick of each other's company.

I think we'll be signing them up for this session for a term. I'd happily sign them up for a few sessions, but finances just don't make it feasible (I haven't yet worked out how I'm going to afford to send them for this one weekly session yet!). It's a bummer when such good opportunities arise and there just isn't the money around to make the most of them. I need to find a good money-making scheme.

Ds1 was funny as we were leaving the Montessori school.

Ds1:'Is this place a school?'
Me: 'Well kind of, but it's very different to a normal school'
Ds1:'Oh. So if I went here would that mean that I'm going to school?'
Me:'No, it's just like when you were going to piano lessons. You're just coming here for a few hours and you'll still be home educated'.
Ds1:'Oh that's alright then. I don't want to be a child that goes to school'.


Ds1 has decided he wants to buy a nintendo ds lite. I'm surprised cos he doesn't normally fall for peer pressure stuff, but this is definitely motivated more by his mates and fashion than his desire for technology. Now if it was ds2 hankering after a nintendo I could well understand it:given the choice he would be permanently plugged into his gameboy advance or the computer lol! So, ds1 has decided he is going to sell his ELC wooden castle and knights to make some money towards it. It'll be wonderful if he does sell it - not only will he make some money, but there'll be alot more space in their bedroom! Don't suppose anyone out there wants to buy a castle do they?

Angular momentum with sellotape and the speed of light with microwaved chocolate.Two months worth of science in one week.

So, what have we been up to?

Well, last week we went to an hour-long workshop titled 'The Science of Magic' at our library and run by staff from a local science 'hands-on' centre. Having two scientist parents in the family means that the kids have a pretty good grounding in science. Our experience of science workshops aimed at children is at worst they are badly presented or give inaccurate scientific knowledge, and at best they are oversimplified and patronising. Fortunately this presentation was neither.

Although the bicarb and vinegar (in this case, water) in a film capsule experiment was very familiar to us (see previous blogs), the other experiments/demonstrations were less familiar. One involved an optical illusion, another involved angular momentum and another magnetism. Even I learnt several things from it; I didn't know much about angular momentum and had forgotten that zinc and cobalt were attracted to magnets. I also learnt that of the three things: movement, magnetism and electricity, any 2 of these combined would make the third. How simple! Now why didn't they teach me physics like that at school?

Surprisingly, the kids seemed to take quite a bit in. Ds2 was repeating some of the information about 'blind spots' as we crossed the road the following day, and both boys tried to repeat the experiment with a roll of sellotape tied to a string and held up, while a mug with an egg was suspended on the other end of the string over a rod. Ok, difficult one to explain...I did try and do a google search on 'angular momentum' and 'sellotape', but, not surprisingly it just came up with some very weird links. I resisted the urge to click on the one about locusts...don't think that would have been useful. If anyone finds a link to a better description of this experiment let me know and I'll put in it.

Dd1 finds a cabbage white butterfly in the garden and carries it around all day in her pop-up bug box. It even went for a car ride!

So what else have we been up to? Well ds1 played cricket for the first time, at a birthday party. I looked up from my glass of wine to find him actively participating in a group sport (shock horror!) and then taking advice on bowling (!). Maybe sometimes I underestimate my kids. Anyway, he obviously doesn't have any sport genes from his parents as he managed to bowl reasonably successfully AND hit a ball with a cricket bat, neither of which are skills his parents posess.

Then of course more time at the sailing club. Will probably get there this week some time too. Not a huge amount of actual sailing has been taking place, but as usual dd1 has been freezing her wotsits off, swimming in the lake. Have just ordered her a wetsuit (pink of course) in the hope that this might allow her to stay longer in the water (i.e. prevent her lips from turning blue during the first 5 minutes). Just hoping she likes it enough to wear it. Fussy? That's an understatement.

Ds2 takes dd1 out for a sail in an Oppie. I ask them not to go too far out, just in case they need rescuing!

BREAKING NEWS!

For the past two mornings ds1 has been late out of bed because he has been reading. Yes..READING! READING! READING!I hardly dared to get him out of bed this morning, but he had a workshop to go to and was being picked up quite early. Looks like he's worked his way through the first 5 chapters of a Goosebumps book.

The museum workshop ds1 went to this morning was 'Flintnapping'. So, two hours later he came home with a sharp - but apparently very functional - bit of flint. According to him it would be ideal for making arrows. Great. Might keep that in the kitchen drawer: it could come in handy if I mislay the potato peeler.

At the museum there was an exhibition on the 70s. It's a bit scary to see your familiar childhood items displayed in a museum. Am I really THAT old? I did love the hard plastic tupperware-style snack tray that had swivel dishes on a kind of 'tree'. Orange, too. Nice. Still it's better to have your childhhod labelled as 'retro' rather than 'antique' I guess.

The kids clean up a bowl of chocolate.

Using leftover chocolate from a Krampf experiment (see http://www.krampf.com/) we covered some chocolate brownies that I'd made. The experiment involved melting chocolate in a microwave to see how a microwave works and to work out the speed of light. We calculated it to be around 4.4 billion thingies, so we were only a couple of billion thingies out. I think we probably didn't have a big enough try to put the chocolate in, so some of the hot spots were missing and this led to inaccuracies in the calculations. Hey, what's a few billion between friends?

Here are the instructions, cut and pasted direct from Krampf website.

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MICROWAVE CHOCOLATE (from http://www.krampf.com/)

Part 1:

To try this, you will need:

a microwave oven
waxed paper
several chocolate bars

a large plastic, glass, or paper plate. Do not use metal!
Start by looking at the inside of the oven. If it has a turntable to rotate the food (most do), remove it. We want the chocolate to stay in one place, not move around.
Cover the plate with waxed paper, and then place the chocolate bars (unwrapped) on the plate to form a solid layer. You want the layer of chocolate to be as flat and even as possible.
Place the plate of chocolate in the oven and set the timer for 30 seconds. Depending on your oven, you may have to cook it a bit longer, but I learned from experience (see this week’s video) that cooking too long gives you a LOT of smoke and a mess.
After 30 seconds of cooking, check the results. You should find that there are spots where the chocolate is melted, and maybe burned, and other places where it is not melted at all. Why?
Your microwave oven works by producing microwave radiation. No, its not radioactive! This is electromagnetic radiation, which also includes visible light, radio waves, ultraviolet light, radar, etc. Microwaves can cause water molecules to vibrate, producing heat to cook your food. OK, so why does your oven have hot spots, instead of cooking evenly?
Instead of just blasting microwaves around, your oven produces something called a standing wave. The easiest way to imagine a standing wave is to look at one. Get several feet of rope, and tie one end to a doorknob. Hold the other end move back to take up most of the slack. You don’t want the rope tight. Start shaking the rope up and down, and notice the way the rope wiggles. By adjusting how fast you shake the rope, you can find the point where it produces a stable pattern. Some parts of the rope will always be moving up and down, while other points will not move much at all. Its easier to see in the video than it is to describe, but you should recognize the pattern when you see it. That is a standing wave. The points where the wave is moving up and down a lot would be the part of the wave that produces a lot of heating in the oven, producing the burned spots. The part of the wave that does not move much would not produce much heat, giving you the cooler spots in the oven. That is why you need a turntable to move the food through the hot spots, to heat it evenly.

Part 2:

Follow the directions from last week’s experiment, to produce the melted spots. If you still have last week’s chocolate, you can use it. If, on the other hand, you are like me, you ate all the chocolate, and so now you have to start from scratch. Of course, that means more chocolate to eat, so its not a bad thing.
Once you have cooked the chocolate and have your melted spots, the next step is to look at the pattern. Different ovens may have different patterns, but mine produced three evenly spaced spots on one side, and two on the other side. There would have been three on the other side, but one of the spots was beyond the edge of the chocolate.
Measure the distance from the center of one melted spot to the center of the next one. You should get something close to 6 centimeters. Mine measured 6.2 centimeters. Then measure the distance from the center of the second spot to the center of the third. Again, I got 6.2 centimeters.
Now, think back to last week. We said that each hot spot represented the extreme point of a standing wave of microwave radiation. If you froze the wave, the first melted spot would be the top of one wave. The second melted spot would be the bottom of that wave, and the third spot would be the top of the next wave. The distance from wave top to wave top is the wavelength, so the wavelength for my microwave oven is 12.4 centimeters (6.2 + 6.2)
Once we know the wave length, then we multiply that by the frequency. Frequency tells us how many waves per second are passing a point. Looking on the back label, I found that my microwave oven has a frequency of 2450 megahertz. One megahertz is one million waves per second, so 2450 megahertz is 2,450,000,000 waves per second. We know that each of those waves is 12.4 centimeters long, so if we multiply frequency times wavelength, we will get the speed of the microwaves. That gives us a speed of 30,380,000,000 centimeters per second. The actual speed of light is 29,979,245,800 centimeters per second, surprisingly close considering that I was not very precise with my measurements.
Afterwards, I realized that I should have put the chocolate bars on an insulating bed of graham crackers, and then added a top insulating layer of marshmallows, to make light speed s’mores. Now that is a potentially winning science fair project!

The giant tent

At last I've managed to upload the photos from our camping weekend at the sailing club last week and a few photos from this week too. Looking back at this blog it would look like we've been living at the club over the past month, which I guess we have. While the weather has been good it's been great to get away from our oven-like house and go have a dip in the lake.

Our giant tent.

One person - cheeky begger - asked us if we'd just erected the new club house! I guess we asked for that, having such a huge tent. At HESFES the size didn't seem so obvious as other families had big tents too. But here, next to all the little 3-man dome tents it did look like we were about to host the local circus! Despite the jokes, there were some genuine admirers. We must be getting better at putting the tent up as it took us hardly any time at all. And, even more surprisingly, packing up was fairly quick too.

This time we didn't put up the inner tents inside, and just had the huge space open, which was great for the hot weather.

Ds1 and dd1 in the tent

Sailing in a paddling pool. Not the most stable of boat designs!

Ds1 set up a business selling spectacles made of grass stalks (and rabbit ears), as modelled in this photo.

He seems to find an opportunity to sell something, anything, wherever we go!

Dh and dd1 enjoying the party, and the stunning sunset.

Ds2 'completes' the sailing boat in the playground (using a fishing net and a dog blanket)

Ds1 doing his Harry Potter impression (with home-made glasses, wand and broom(stick))

Ok, so you guys aren't wet enough, here you are!

Spot the difference...

...two 'doggies' doing doggy paddle

Dd1 absolutely loves swimming. Even though her lips were turning blue and her teeth were chattering uncontrollably, she still wanted to go in again and again.

Somewhere under the blanket is a very cold, shivering dd1, having been swimming in the lake yet again.

A whole new meaning to the phrase, 'Losing Your Marbles'!

It's amazing what kids can create, given some junk and a hands-off approach by adults.

Yesterday, at the home ed group, we brought some 'junk' along for the kids to make marble runs. The results (and the processes involved) were very impressive. Apart from a bit of help with the cutting and sticking, the kids came up with some wonderful designs, limited only by their imagination (and the stickiness of the tape). Ds2 even had an idea to create a crane mechanism which would lift the marble up in a flowerpot and then deposit it through a hole in a tube to continue on its way. Although not all of the plan was feasible in the time frame, but with a bit of help he made a start. The others ran marbles through tubes and boxes taped to the wall, periodically re-engineering them to improve results. The teamwork involved would have put most adults to shame!

Working as a team (with a bit of help from the dog)

So, where's it going to come out?

Hmm...think I might need a hand here...

Fixing the glitches in the marble run

"The marbles are MINE, ALL MINE!"

The home ed group was running an 'India Day' for charity, so the kids entered some colouring competitions (ds1 and dd1 were chuffed when they won something). The chocolate mints won in the raffle will also be much appreciated while we're camping this weekend.

After the home ed group we rushed back, unloaded some of the car and reloaded with bbq stuff and swim kit to go to the sailing club. It was a beautiful evening, still warm even at 9pm as we left. We took a couple of boats out, but mostly the kids were happy, fishing and paddling. This is going to be a great way to spend the Summer.

The children managed to catch one of the many small fish swimming in the shallows. Dh reckoned it was a Dacebut looking at the picture above and reading the info on http://www.maggotdrowning.com/fish/gudgeon.htm I'm rather more convinced that it's a Gudgeon (see picture below), because of the spots. The British record for Gudgeon was 5oz which doesn't sound particularly large, enough for a fish finger or two I guess.

The fish the children caught (a gudgeon?)

Dd1, enjoying the sunshine

Fishing off the jetty

Ahoy there!

As of today both the boys can now sail on their own!!!

We spent pretty much all day at the Sailing Club and the weather was perfect, beautifully calm and warm, and ideal for the kids to go out and have a try. So they did!! The boys' achievement today is fantastic, especially when I look back and realise that a few weeks ago they'd never even been in a boat!

Arriving around 11m, we met up with friends, and the kids spent some time pond-dipping (caught some quite big 'tiddlers') and paddling. They then moved indoors and we had to prise them away from the pool table and table football to get them to eat luch.

After lunch we got some Optimists out. One we left with no sail. It was tied to the jetty in the shallows for the littlies to sit in; they were chuffed to think they were being included in the 'sailing'. The others went out and we took turns. At first the kids were accompanied by adults, until they felt confident enough to go out on their own. Mostly the kids osailed as far as the first buoy: we figured that if they got into trouble it would be easier to rescue them there than if they went right across the lake! Ds1 even took dd1 out for a sail, which she loved. The water was so calm and he seemed quite competent, so I had no qualms about it. Perhaps not on a windier day, though .

So, our next sailing session is planned for early next week I think. I have grand plans for lots of projects and outdoor stuff to take place around the lake, not just sailing. Perhaps lots of reading, some science stuff, my head is already running away with the possibilities though at some point I'll face the reality that the kids might not be so keen! Ah well, even if all my plans don't come to fruition, it's exciting to think of all the things we might do there over Summer.

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After thinking of doing science at the lake I was reminded of the Krampf experiments I sign up to via email (see http://www.krampf.com/) . Robert Krampf is a geologist/scientist who gives talks and demonstrations. He is so keen to enthuse others about science, particularly kids, that he records free science videos for viewing on his website, and sends out emails with experiments to 180,00 households in more than 95 countries (apparently). The experiments are generally short, fun and fairly simple. Instructions given with a simple, but not patronising, explanation of the science behind the experiment. This one below particularly caught my eye because I remember being taught at school that this was an experiment to show how oxygen was being used up. Three A levels and a Science Degree later, I find out that the explanation I was given as a child - and have seen many times subsequently in children's science books - is totally WRONG!! See, with this home education thing, even the parents are learning all the time...

"Measuring Oxygen?
Every year, I reread Michael Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle. It is a transcript of some of his annual Christmas science lectures, and it is a wonderful example of science education at its best. It is also filled with marvelous experiments, including a version of this one.
Warning! This experiment uses fire. Be very careful and be sure an adult is around to help.
For this experiment, you will need:
- a pie pan or shallow bowl
- a candle
- a glass jar large enough to hold the lit candle
- water
Light the candle and let a few drops of melted wax fall on the middle of the pan. Place the bottom of the candle into this wax to secure it in place. Carefully add about an inch of water to the pan. Relight the candle if it has gone out, and place the jar over it. Watch carefully. After a minute or so, the candle will go out, and the water will rise up into the jar.

This shows that the candle has burned up the oxygen, and the water has risen into the jar to take its place, right? WRONG!!!!! If you watch carefully, you will see why is it wrong. When you first place the jar over the candle, air bubbles OUT of the jar. If you are slow about placing the jar over the candle, you might not notice this, but if you cover the candle in one quick motion, you will see the air bubbling out. Once the candle goes out, the water begins to rise in jar.
Now, lets think about that. If the water was rising because the oxygen was burned up, it would rise while the candle was burning and stop as soon as the flame went out. Is that what you saw? No. Then what really did happen?
As the candle burns, it is heating the air in the jar, causing it to expand. This causes the bubbles that leave the jar. The candle is burning oxygen, but the oxygen does not vanish. It combines with carbon from the burning wax to form carbon dioxide, another gas that also takes up space.
When the candle goes out, the air begins to cool, which causes it to contract. As the air gets smaller, the water rises into the jar.
It amazes me how many books of experiments get this one wrong. I guess they should read more Faraday. "


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We are sailing...we are sailing...we are capsizing [sung in a Rod Stewart voice of course]

Today we went sailing!

After our wonderful day at a local sailing club a month ago, we made the big step of joining for the year. I'm not what you would call a 'water' person and although dh used to sail a boat on the river when he was a kid, that's quite some time ago!

So, feeling rather daunted, the kids and I had a brief go at the club last week. Today, however, we had a full day on (and off) the lake with a bunch of other beginners and new members, mostly home educating families. First we learnt how to rig a 'topper' (see photo below for what a topper looks like) and then we went out and sailed. It was pretty gusty, so I chickened out of taking a topper out, especially having seen several others capsize. Even the supposedly un-capsizable 'Optimist' boats went over several times (dh and ds2 had a rather wet experience!)

I don't have any photos of today as I was too busy, but these photos show roughly what the boats look like.

A topper

An Optimist.

And no, I didn't look that cool when I was sailing it, I was rather more wet and flustered!

The kids had a good time, but didn't get out quite as much as they would have liked as there was a race going on for most of the morning. At one point I was sailing with ds2 and we reached an area of the lake where the wind just suddenly died. We found that we couldn't tack to return back to shore because the boat had totally lost momentum. Eventually a gust of wind gave us some speed and we could then tack. I did feel a bit of a plonker just floating in the middle of all the race boats, trying to keep clear of them and at the same time not going anywhere! I'm sure with a bit more experience we'll get the hang of it, but to me it's like learning to drive all over again, lol.

Dd1 loved paddling and was just happy pottering in the sandpit and wading in the shallows. She wanted to swim, but decided that the water was just a bit too cold. I guess she'll be pestering me for a trip to the swimming pool now, she's such a water baby.

One Small Sparrow and some Swallows and Amazons

Ds2 started the day with some more bicarb rocket experiments which weren't quite so successful as yesterday. I suspect that the bicarb has got a bit damp in the tub. We ran out of vinegar too, draining the last drop out of the pickled onion jar, so ideally we need to do a trip to Tescos if we want to do any more bicarb science.

The morning had it's own little bit of excitement. Ds1 was feeding the chickens and noticed a small bird (a young sparrow) trapped in some of the black netting over a raised vegetable bed in the garden. The sparrow was obviously very tangled and getting increasingly distressed, so we gently cut away the netting and freed it (while trying to prevent the dog from eating it!). Thankfully it seemed unharmed and flew away as quick as it could. We were lucky that ds1 had seen it so early as I'm not sure what condition it would have been by the end of the day.

At lunch time we headed off for a sailing day with some other home educators. We all had a fantastic time - at the sailing club there was a small playground, an enclosed sandpit for littlies, indoor pool and table football and lots of boats for everyone to try. The boys were initially reluctant but I persuaded them - almost before they could think about it - to go in a rowing boat with a couple of children who belonged to the sailing club, and pretty soon they were hooked! They disappeared across the water right to the other side and it was about half an hour or more before they returned. They spent most of the day chasing around more experienced sailors to take them out on the water, either in row boats or Toppers and they both got a chance to steer and sail. We learnt a little about the parts of a boat and got to go out in a larger dingy (not sure if that's the right word for it?). Even I got to go out in the latter and try some sailing! It was fun and quite thrilling to feel that I'd tried something totally new that I'd never tried before. Dd1 spent much of her time playing in the sand and in the playground, but wasn't that keen to come on a boat with me.

The weather was perfect all day - sunny, but not too hot - and there was just enough wind to sail without it being too gusty. We had such a wonderful day that it didn't take much persuasion for us to sign up and get ourselves on the waiting list to join the sailing club. I think dh was a bit shocked when we got home and told him we were on the waiting list for a sailing club, but the kids talked and talked so enthusiastically about their day over dinner that it became an irresistable proposition.