10:18 Thursday. Learning about...

Skeletons!

(At the Natural History Museum)

Bowling, moon rock and the astronomer's despair.

Being the frugal sort, we like to make the most of cheap deals at the local bowling alley. There aren't many pluses to half term, but early-morning cheap bowling is one of them.

Plus, of course, biscuits are an essential ingredient of any trip out.

(do you like our 'ghostly visitor' on the left of that photo?)

Later, we head to a local museum, for a question-and-answer session with an astronomer, taking a couple of other children with us. There's no space to sit with the children, so I sit apart and a little behind them.

It is just as well. At approximately 3 minute intervals dd declares in a loud-enough-for-everyone-to-hear voice that she's 'finding this a bit boring, and can we go now?' I hiss 'No'. And gesture for her to stay seated. Suddenly it seems she is unable to understand my usual disapproving-mother sign language. 'What?!' she says.

Can I go now?

Moon and Mars rock

In between the questions about the composition of Mars, our youngest companion child puts up his hand and asks earnestly whether there are magnetic teapots in space.

The woman is flummoxed. 'No I don't think so dear. No that isn't right.'

His sister tries to explain where he has obtained this information, and how, actually he *is* right.

The woman lowers her voice to a whisper and does that patronising nodding thing that adults who aren't used to children do when faced with a child's unusual question. I look straight ahead.

'I'm bored, can we go now?' A small, familiar voice pipes up from across the room.

I smile and, for a moment, pretend that I have no children.

Despair at encountering home educated children

Art Gallery

A guided tour around the James Welling exhibition at MK Gallery, followed by a home ed workshop with an artist

An explanation of abstract art and the creation of prints using randomised techniques

James Wellings photographs of foil - which in turn looked like landscapes, rock, fossils and water.

and then, in the workshop, trying to recreate some of the effects by creating 'rubbing templates'

HESFES 2011

Belatedly, here are some piccys from this year's Home Educator's Summer Festival. We had a fab time. Ds1 turned feral (returning only to grab meals and disappear again), dd adopted several other families (we saw very little of her) and ds2 hung out with a few mates designing computer games (in a field with no computers).

A few of the marquees:

Bongo and band workshopping with the HESFES band (the HESFES band consisting of children from tots to teens, including about 13 drummers!):

Ds1 as one of the many drummers:

Why did you bring me camping?
Because I'm worth it:

But I've got more hair (ds2):

And I'm rougher and tougher than both of you (dd):

Making copper bowls, i.e. bashing a bit of metal for a very long time until it looks slightly more curved than it started off(note the hair wrap, patiently created by a member of one of her adopted families):

Ds1 with his home-made (tin can) drum kit before he got promoted to a proper drum:

Twirling home-made poi thingimagigs:

A demonstration of 'rocket stoves' (made from tin cans):

The result of our group effort and the dog eating an awful lot of king-size cheap dog food (our stove is the shiny one):

Lighting it wasn't so easy:

Hand-painted bandanas:

Beautiful sunset over our tent and van:

It's all been too much:

KNEX Robot Challenge day

Thursday: Printing adventures, bugs, rocks and kerb crawling.

Thursday.

We all of us head for the University Press printing museum:

Ds1 tries to beat the speed of the camera shutter - Ha! Caught you!

The original printy thingy plate from the mouse's tale/tail in Alice in Wonderland

And then, the boys head for a printing workshop:

And with a little frustration, produce some fabulous hand-printed sheets of paper.

Meanwhile, dd and I discover a whole new meaning to the term 'kerb crawling'
There's a lot of kerb in our city. And it takes a long long long long time to crawl along it all.

Occasionally there are glimpses that she has inherited her mother's madness:

What big feet you have...(if you're a dinosaur)

Bugs, bugs, glorious bugs

That's me and the three kids. I'm the big flat one with bingo wings.

Then on to the rocks (oh joy!).

Dd takes 20 blurry photos of rocks while I go walkabout, take photos of unsuspecting tourists and wonder if I had a pocket of spit-dried-paper balls whether I could actually hit them. Ahem. And then I grow up again.

We rediscover the museum microscope

Elementary my dear Watson: dirty thumbnail, sign of a filthy child and a mother who doesn't give a toss.

Ouch! Attack of the killer stuffed animals. So that's why they say 'Please Touch': it's so gallery assistants can have a laugh watching small children being eaten by taxidermied wildlife.

Just time for a quick visit to the scary next-door museum with the pointy jangly people who stare when you put a quid in the box. Not forgetting the shrunken heads and the ghoulish masks.

And the best bit of all: a chance to see what people have dropped down the grill holes in the floor of the museum...

'Ooh! A pencil! A hairclip!'

'Yeah yeah. Can we go home now?'