Behind the scenes of C14 Lego Robotics: It's not just bricks and pizza.

The videos produced by C14 Lego Robotics might lead you to think that the First Lego League competition is all high-tech and whizzy and glamorous. Sure, there's a lot of building and programming, and quite a bit of pizza eating (surely the realm of the rich and famous), but there are other aspects to the competition that aren't so well advertised.

The team has to research a problem associated with 'Nature's Fury' (the FLL theme this year) and then present their findings, and a proposed solution to the problem, to the judges. It takes a lot of work to get that presentation right. And quite a lot of my sofa, dining room table, floor...(you get the picture). There was me thinking that a presentation was about the spoken word. Apparently not.

Ds1. More research. More editing. More late nights.

Outside of the robot construction and programming, there have been additional requirements for lego building. For example, ds1 created this attachment in order to carry a video camera on top of the robot . This means they can get better footage of the robot attempting challenges.

Behinds the scenes mothers are working hard, too. This mother has been producing home bakes to send with her two team members as they head off for yet another mammoth roboteering session. Yes, I know the pasties look like a road traffic accident, but I'm told - by the boy who doesn't eat normal things - that they are very good.

On Monday they worked from 9.30am to 5.30pm. Today is the second day of their 2-day intense Weds-Thurs session. Last night they slept over at another team member's house and I don't suppose they'll finish early today.

There has been an awful lot of packing, unpacking, packing: a constant pile of ingoing and outgoing bags in my hallway. And tomorrow we pack, yet again. This time for Loughborough and the national competition.


If you haven't 'liked' c14 robotics team on their Facebook  page, please do so. They would love to reach 200 likes before they set off for the competition - only 25 to go! (I know, I'm nagging...)

"Actually, my kids are amazing."

Imagine the scene.

*****

You bump into someone you haven't met for a while.

You engage in polite chit-chat. 

They ask how everything is going . 

"Fine," you say. 

They ask how the kids are.

"Fine." 

You move on.

*****

I've made a promise to myself. Next time anyone asks how the kids are, I'm not going to say "fine". No. Next time, I might say "Actually, my kids are amazing."

Because no matter how much we mumble and moan about our kids and focus on the 'issues' and 'problems', the day-to-day grind, AND ALL THAT STUFF, if we take the time to stop and look, our kids really are AMAZING.

Ds2's contribution for the group's Arts Award display, inspired by sessions with artist, Bethany Milam. He also completed a behind-the-scenes video of a children's performance and researched Michele Paver for his portfolio.

Dd wins bronze medal for her age group at the fencing England Youth Championships, having only been fencing in full kit since September. (Note the lovely apres-fencing-pink-crocs-with-socks look ;) ) 

The other competitors were a little taller :)

But perhaps even more of an achievement, dd, having only learned to read this year, writes her first list (unprompted) of essential things to take to the fencing competition. As you can see, ham sandwiches are far more important than fencing kit.

And on a family camping weekend ds1 (14) surprises us all by having a great time with a friend's teenage girls (14 and 18). It seems the gender divide isn't irreparable, even at his age.

My Laptop Ate My Soul

Despite good intentions and a positively pressing pile of photos to put on my blog my soul has been consumed by other laptop things.

The first (and possibly most pressing, though deadline-less) soul-sucking project has been a new new NEW new new magazine for our county of home educators. It was a great idea. It still IS a great idea. But like all good ideas it has grown from teeny to massive, and now feels rather like a monster looming from my laptop screen. Of course the blame could be placed on me, but instead I am blaming technology. Software that is great at dealing with graphics, but crap with text (when I say crap I mean refusing to word-wrap, persistently stripping out any web links or email addresses, randomly enlarging font to illegibility etc etc) is not helpful. At all.

But I am winning the battle. I have cut, pasted, edited and proofread. Now just the final corrections and a (non-religious) prayer and perhaps all will be well.

The next - and equally pressing - soul-sucking project is my writing assignment. 2000 words isn't a lot. Unless you can't think beyond the paragraph that ends at word 474. A story without an end might succeed in off-beat literary mags, but a university assignment winner it is not.

And so. My laptop ate my soul. It has nibbled it all away, except for the bit that is posting this blog message while procrastinating about actually doing those very pressing projects.

'Assonance means getting the rhyme wrong...'

Today I received my course handbook for the part time diploma in Creative Writing I'm starting in September.
Slap on the doormat it went, a slender A4 spiral-bound tome containing a recommended reading list of 168 books.

Yes 168!

I counted.

In a panic I emailed a friend who is also signed up for the course. She replied saying that yes, she has read most of the books at some time or other (damn, no sympathy there then).

I counted again. Just in case I had missed something. Out of the entire list of 168 books I have read 4.

FOUR books in my entire lifetime.

And 2 of those were 'how to write' type books, so I'm not even sure that they count.

What have I been doing with my life?(Obviously not reading the same books as everybody else.)
Even accounting for periods of drunkenness and periods of hangover recovery, surely I must have read more books on this list.

I read down the list:

Chekhov...Kafka....

And I'm there. I AM Julie Walters in 'Educating Rita':

["Suggest how you would resolve the staging difficulties "inherent in a production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt"
you have written, quote. "Do it on the radio. "Unquote.]

As if this wasn't bad enough (yeah it's bad enough), from week 6 we are 'doing' poetry.

POETRY.

POETRY.

poetry

Nope, writing it in different font doesn't make it any more attractive.

168 books in 8 weeks before the course starts...that makes it about 20 a week, or 3 a day (4 a day if you want weekends off). Yeah, no probs. I'll go get started now...

And the train arriving at platform 1 is...

Ok, slow motion train crash averted at last minute. Surprisingly sympathetic audience. Working microphone. All performers turned up (with their script). Audience didn't notice the non-deliberate mistakes. And I was sober the whole way through.
Should go down in history...

...as the last time I ever put myself through anything like that.

ARgghhh!!!

I am brain of Britain (but shhh it's a secret)

Last night I answered 8 questions right on University Challenge. Perhaps they were particularly easy...or maybe I have a few more brain cells than usually displayed while cleaning the toilet or washing up. Don't worry, I'm not going to make a habit of being brainy. I know my place (somewhere between the kitchen sink and the chocolate display at the corner shop).




Yesterday we spent a wonderful day with friends, walking by the canal. Ds1 went off fishing with one of their sons (well ds1 dangled the rod optimistically over the edge of the bridge into the water, which is closer to fishing than he usually gets). My friend and I wandered along the tow path with small people leaning precariously over the water, not-quite-so-small people waving swords and disappearing into woodland, and two dogs (one of whom needs some lessons in gender identification) doing what dogs do. We talked about living on a barge, chickens, knitting, jam, decluttering, life, the universe and everything important. It was one of those days.




I abandoned our very noisy cockeral in their garden (these are the people who have already adopted our secondhand rabbit) and dd chased their teeny puppy around the house like a demented terrier (her, not the dog). And then after prising ds2 off the life-support-machine (computer) i took them all home.

(Has anyone seen the littuns - you know, the non-swimmers?

Oh yeah, there they are, disappearing into the distance)

Tonight I am doing a performance with other writers in one of my writing groups. I'm not quite sure how I said yes, but obviously somewhere along this unrehearsed, slow-motion train crash that started way back in October I thought it would be a good idea to hop on. Are we doing it somewhere quiet and secret - no! We are doing it in a restaurant. A restaurant! Now whose big idea was that?! (not mine). And people - public, non-writing human beings - are actually coming and paying to see us do...er...not very much, very poorly. And if anyone mentions positive thinking to me I will smack them. Not even chocolate can fix this.

The Incredible Sock-Making Woman and other tales...

Yes! Another pair!





I found this wool on my last wool-hunting expedition (the one that involved the unhygenic chip shop and a wind up toy rat). Only problem with this wool is that the repeat on the colour isn't very frequent, so I had to work really hard to get two socks that looked similar out of one ball of wool. They're very soft though. Shame I can't keep them - sent them to my mum as a belated Mother's Day present. Hopefully they'll fit. If not I'll have to do more knitting...


Other news?


Well dd has been seen in public sporting a very lovely hat. She even had a photo taken of her like this by a local attraction for her annual pass. Oh yes...it's those home educating nutters. You should see what they make their children wear.






Dd's fascination for millipedes and centipedes and other pedes is taking over the house. New tubs with their littlepede houses appear daily. Often with their lids left off. I am extraordinarily tolerant of this sort of thing, having kept various creatures in old Ferrero Rochet tubs under my bed, as a child. However when a dehydrated and rather crunchy centipede stuck to my sock yesterday and I padded around the house it did cross my mind that perhaps this isn't how normal families function.

Dd1 begged to do handwriting practice! (the alternative was a page of maths - God he must really hate maths). So he wrote some beautiful letters in beautiful handwriting...

And then put them to good use...

Don't you just love the eloquence of the English language?

Ds1 and ds2 designed their egg buggies for a home ed competition.

And the kids made puppet theatres out of cereal boxes. Well part-made. Dd was only mildly impressed with my efforts on hers, but she did enjoy the cutting out. Amazing the joy one can get from a pair of scissors and a glue stick.

And the boys were invited to a birthday party involving quad bikes.

Note the 'Oh God Mother put the camera away' look on my eldest's face...


And...so who invited the leopard to breakfast?

I hand made the costume about 7 years ago and NONE of my children have ever wanted to wear it. So what if it gets used to mop up Cheerios - we don't care. Go girl!

I'm not tired, I'm just checking my eyelids for leaks...

Ok, behind on my posting again. Just a quickie to say that I haven't disappeared (honest). May is the month of birthdays and I've been having a bit of a frenzy this week trying to organise ds2's birthday party (today). All went well and now feel shattered. Will post photos when I get a chance. Just one more birthday to go- dh's birthday at the weekend - and I can start trying to pay off my overdraft lol!

Another reason for my lack of posting effort is that I've been focusing on keeping up with my writing class. I have lots of ideas, but as always it's taking me a long time to get any of them into the required format; the more I work on them the less appealing they become and the further away from my initial enthusiasm I trail. I feel like I should put a 'lol' in here, but if there was an abbreviation for wry smile {ws} ?that would suit better.

The tutor is looking for 'sparkling prose' in our work, a term which has completely frozen my brain into petrified squid intestines. If she keeps mentioning sparkling prose I'm not going to be able to write a darned thing! Personally, in between keeping the house from meltdown, home educating and going out to work, I think she should just be grateful I appear in class with 2 shoes the same colour. Sparkling Prose!!! What does this woman want - Blood??!!

I don't have writers block. I just can't stay awake long enough to finish a ....

The Rebel Forces are at work - and they're sat at the table!

Ok, ok, so it's been a while since I've posted.
And we've done loads of stuff (honest!).

So let's start with today..

ds1 started writing a letter to his penfriend this morning (it usually takes about a month of hard slog before he completes a page), ds2 did a few pages of his Miquon maths (all easy stuff at the moment) and dd decided she wanted to join in. So I had to rummage around and see if I could find something for her to do too. I'd thrown away most of the preschool educational stuff as I thought it was a bit pointless. And then I had a girl and realised that some under 6s can sit down for longer than 30 seconds without destroying everything in the immediate viccinity. Funny that...

And there we were, all sat at the table - yes, sat - SAT! - SITTING DOWN! - AT THE TABLE - doing worky - WORK! - sort of stuff. I wish I'd taken a photo, cos it's such a rare event in our house. But then one click of the camera would have spoiled it all wouldn't it?

Oh horrors! Am I really celebrating that my kids are doing what they're told to do? Am I really singing hooray because they are writing and doing workbooks? Hmm...my autonomous education body is turning in it's autonomous education grave. I guess balance will be restored to the universe in due course ('Help me Obi Wan Knobe, you're my only hope'). Watch this space.

And then around 9.30am a friend's kids came round and everyone plugged themselves into various electronic devices: computer, Wii, etc. But, hey, my children haven't come off the set of 'The Railway Children', so what else could I expect? As I said, balance will be restored to the universe, and in this case it only took about an hour (and the wrinkly guy with the pointy ears and a fondness for lightsabers didn't have to turn up after all)

In the afternoon ds1 went off to a friend's house, and later to an ongoing workshop thingy where he learns behind-the-scenes stage/theatre stuff [don't ask me what, cos I only get monosyllable replies when I ask him - it's his age, you know]. And the remainder of the circus troupe helped me put up beanpoles at the allotment. The beanpoles look very rustic (sorry no photo yet) as they are real willow poles from real willow trees that I chopped down (no, I didn't chop the tree down, just the poles you understand). I'm just hoping they don't start growing - willow has a reputation for this - as I don't think the allotment committee will appreciate 3 willow teepees growing on my plot! (They don't like children, so they certainly wont like willow sculptures. Sometimes you just know these sorts of things.)

And what other stuff have we been up to? Well lots. But until I load up the photos I wont remember it all.

So...be patient. I just need to upload some photos and then I'll tell you all about it.

Ok?

Are you sure?

Good.

May the force be with you.

And 'The Booker Prize' goes to...Jack the dog!

The storm kettle has arrived!!

Jack seems to think we've bought him a new dog toy.

(And no, I don't normally keep camping equipment on the lounge floor)

Are you wondering why my blogging has suddenly become more frequent? Displacement activity of course...still haven't done my homework from last term's writing course (er, yeah, the one that was meant to be in several weeks before Christmas).

I can do the week-to-week writing stuff, cos that's fun, but can't seem to summon up enough mental energy to complete anything longer. Besides, with my short attention span, it's far more fun to start something and ditch it for something new the following week, than to persevere and stick to it. Ho hum..sounds scarily like my attitude to home educating.

We did something in a class the other week that was fun. We took a piece of writing that each of us had been working on, printed it out, cut it up into its separate words and then rearranged it to make interesting sentences. Here are some of the ones I came up with:

'Who am I? I rise with unfamiliar legs, waffle-dusting the fluff with each of my functional toes.'

'Coordinated clouds weave wooden skylarks in A minor'

'I notice that a metal head can strangle the line of aesthetic'

I quite like the idea of waffle-dusting with my toes, particularly if they are functional. I'm not sure how difficult waffle-dusting would be if you didn't have functional toes.

The original piece was a descriptive essay about 3 different beds. Most of the sentences were far improved in the muddled around product. Ok, so it was a bit dodgy in places where I had to try and make a sentence out of the leftover words (3 'and' s and 4 'bed' s and 1 'duvet'- not a great combination for exciting writing). But it's a fun technique to give 'added value' to writing - a bit like turning boring old potatoes into a pack of fab cheese and onion flavour crisps. And yeah, I write alot of potatoes...

So I now feel inspired to do something similar with the children (no, I don't mean cutting them up with scissors and rearranging their parts, though there are days when that might be tempting). I thought I might take some poems or song lyrics, preferably ones that they know fairly well, and get them to chop them up and rearrange them into something else. Of course I haven't told the kids that I'm going to do that.

Hmm...I'm not quite sure how to approach it with the kids. I have to totally not emphasise the possible educational slant (a guaranteed put-off). Though if I just leave some printed poems with a pair of scissors on the table, in the hope that a child might get the urge to cut it up and rearrange it, I'm not sure they would tune into my subtle approach. And of course the dog might just go and eat it. Or maybe (thinking really abstractly) the dog might tear up the piece of paper - scissors are kinda tricky without opposable thumbs - scatter it on the floor in a really artistic manner and make his own marvellous contribution to world of literature.

I need to get out more...