Smells like teen spirit

The arrival of the drum kit !

Thank you to the family that sold it to us. We're sorry to see you emigrate, but we're very happy to have your drum kit :)

[In case you missed it, take a look at my post below on The Festival of History]

The Festival of History

The Festival of History, at Kelmarsh Hall, near Kettering. Last weekend.

Weather, very British.


and totally appropriate for the First World War trench experience

Guns for the boys

More guns

Interspersed with WWI horses

And a lot of water

Archery

Michael Morpurgo

(yes, ok, so we did sneak round the back of the marquee because all the tickets for his talk had gone even though we queued, and we did get told off by some jobsworthy English Heritage woman for standing outside the marquee and looking in (!), but I did stand my ground (since when is it a crime to stand outside a marquee?) and we did see Michael Morpurgo and it was very much worth an English Heritage bollocking to do so and I would highly recommend that anyone else does the same)

More guns

Horse, man and gun.

More horses, more men, more guns.

Oh look! Is that a gun over there?

Red flag. And gun.

Yeah, you get the idea...

Michelle Paver talking about the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness and her encounter with a bear(note: no guns)

Think I've seen this one before. I recognise the gun.

Children Fencing

A taster of what my kids have been up to. Ds2 on the left, ds1 on the right.

p.s. This is my second blog post today...scroll down for the other one.

This is perfectly normal for OUR family.

We had a sad discovery this afternoon. Three fledging blue tits drowned in our unused pond which had tipped up and collected rainwater. I assume that they fledged out of a nest in the apple tree then went plop into the water.

Of course in a usual (normal?) household this would simply be a sad event. In our family...

ds1 began to dig a hole in our lawn.

He said 'If you put this on your blog I want people to know I'm not burying the birds because I care. It's because I want them to decompose and then in a few months time I can dig them back up and examine their bones. I haven't got a bird skeleton yet.'

I can hardly accuse my children of being odd seeing as it was me taking photos of dead birds on our back lawn...

Another thing that is perfectly normal in our house. Taking an old outgrown t-shirt like this (with too-short, chewed sleeves) :

and converting it (with ample cursing over a sewing machine) into a new, extended sleeve, t-shirt using scraps of blue t-shirt.

Ditto this one which was an adult t-shirt got for free from the local Swap Shop,

now converted to a long-sleeve child's t-shirt:

And as if that isn't enough to classify us as slightly odd compared with the rest of the population, some of us have daughters who spend the whole day like this:

Historical fiction websites

I've added a couple more links on the right sidebar for historical fiction. I now know of two sites devoted to historical fiction for kids: my favourite here, Historical Fiction for Children, which looks slightly amateur, but is a truly amazing resource and includes short synopses and age recommendations. It seems to be mostly UK authors which is a bonus (the US seem to be great at producing historical fiction for kids, but the history tends to be US-based).

The other site is here , Historical Fiction for Children and Adults, that I found today on a home ed list. I haven't had much chance to look at the latter, but I suspect at least some of the material is duplicated between the websites.

In addition I've added a web link (again from a home ed list today) to a site that lists historical series. These seem to be all adult books, but may be useful.

One day I will compile our own subject lists of historical/subject fiction we've read. Currently we're venturing into the realms of World War I and fiction has been a little difficult to track down. Will keep you posted.

Physics Demonstration Films

This link to physics demonstration films (scroll down the page) was crossposted to our local HE list: http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/collection/491/physics-demonstration-films

Check out the jelly bean wave machine. It's now on our 'to-do' list!