Bit of an odd day today and the mystery locked door....

It has been a bit of an odd day today, the weather has been glorious so the kids have been out most of the day, they had their first official picnic lunch in the garden and made a collection of animals in a little tin that they intend to feed for a few days and then apparently let go, they made a den with the garden chairs and some blankets and quite frankly look like they are wearing the garden and nobody owned them, I should have taken a photo before they changed and washed for tea but I am sure there will be plenty of other opportunities that will arise to show just how grubby these two can get in just a few hours.

My kitchen is of course now full of mud they have dragged in from the garden, between the kids and the dog's my floors are never clean.

There has been no focused work today but we talked about voting again as the voting card came through the post for the local election and we started to discuss the European vote coming up in June, the kids are keen on politics and we often have little discussions, they really do have a dislike for Cameron. We talked about what by-elections are as they made the comment that it wasn't that long since we last voted, so I explained that it was a by-election due to the death of our local councillor Michael Meacher, it's all very confusing for them, but they keep the questions coming.

We also did a bit of sign language this morning, Olivia is very keen on sign language and has been learning bits for a long time since she was introduced to Mr Tumble, we have a free program from Learn Sign language The easy Way This is something that sits there and we dip in now and again, today was a day when she wanted to brush up on what she already knows.

We also did a little bit on our Mystery Science Project on Earth, this is a great science site that is free until the end of the school year. They have little projects you can do whilst you learn and again video based which is great for the way we learn.

I have felt off this week and tired all the time and I really did not even have any motivation to do any ebay postage today, I did print the postage off and intended to pick and pack and take them to the courier depot but it does not appear to have happened and there are quite a few to do with it being month end and everyone gets paid.

I feel tired and grumpy, I had intended to do a tip run today and do some work in the garden but that was wishful thinking and why I had those ideas in the first place I will never know,  it is year end so there are lots of other things far more important like updating software and doing final submissions for PAYE and contacting clients to get ready for me collecting their books.

I love my Quickbooks, it makes the accounts so much easier than anything else I have used, it's just a couple of clicks and downloads and it is done, all updated for another year.

I can now concentrate on getting all the data up to date and then we can get things filed and forgotten about for another year, ha ha, yes I wish, clients will be trickling in now right up until December when the Tax year end deadline looms in January.

Although I did nothing that I had planned to do we did get an awful lot done, sadly most of it was computer based today for me so I did not manage to get much sun, but a lot of loose ends tied up and the kids had a good day too..

The strangest thing to happen was the living room door mysteriously being blocked from the other side, so no one could get into the living room  I have the kids book Case next to the door and it appears that the draw has been left open slightly and this has stopped us from getting through the door, worst thing is the space left to shove a hand in isn't even wide enough to fit the kids hand through so we are a bit stuck, I have no idea how the door could have been closed, there must have been some force to make the door close leaving the door to the cabinet still open.

I tried every which way to open the door and nothing has worked we are pretty much locked out of our living room with no way in, I am a bit desperate now though as I have ebay picking and packing to do and with not doing it early this morning it really does have to be done, so I think my only option is to kick the door down, literally, I cannot get to the hinges to unscrew them as the gap is non existent on that side and as I have no other way.

I am not impressed to be fair and it is going to cost me a fortune for a new door and all the materials and  tools to fit it and where do I start with that one, I have no idea, I can feel anxiety kicking in on this one..... It is just going to have to look unattractive for a while until I can find the massive amounts that it will take to pay to have a door and the fitting that these things usually cost, very annoyed, very annoyed indeed.....

PC vs Console Gaming Costs

(In the spirit of full disclosure, this post contains affiliate links, which means that I may get a commissions if you decide to purchase anything. I only recommend products that I have used and love myself, so I know you’ll be in good hands.)



Green Man Gaming came to my attention today, it came popping up on my newsfeed that they had an up to 80% off Spring Sale and as the kids birthdays are coming up I thought I would take peek.

I did not actually spend anything but I have certainly found a site that can guide me in the way of downloadable games for the kids.

They also have a forum on their site too which I have not peeked at yet but for sure it will give me some great information on some of the things that the kids might enjoy.

The issue I find with finding games for the kids is that there are so many out there and without having a central place to look these things up and get a good description of what the game entails I tend to struggle, but this website has changed all that for me now I can just take a peek on here and see what it is that the kids are going on about.. ha ha ha..and with over 5000 titles I should find what I am looking for.

I saw quite a few familiar titles including Lego Marvels Avengers on there and they are a fraction of the cost of buying disks, I had never even considered there was a possibility of this downloading games instead of buying the disks, I have always been blinded that you have to have a console of some sort, but actually PC Gaming and downloading the games is something that I will now look more into as being a skint kind of family it will be far more cost effective for us to do and I wouldn't fee as bad not letting the kids have what they want, I mean if you can get a game by downloading it for a fraction of the cost of buying a Disc then I am all for it....

We purchased a Playstation 3 console for Xmas and it has not been used that much, Playstation 3 games can be quite expensive, as any other game for any other console is, so they only have a couple and as they are only still 6 they tend to damage the disks and not take very much care of them so they never last long anyway.

Seeing this Green Man Gaming has changed how I look at gaming for the kids in both terms of how the twins will encounter gaming, Olivia always complains anyway that the games are all boy games, so hopefully we might be able to find her something girly amongst these 5000 titles.....

The Secret Garden

(In the spirit of full disclosure, this post contains affiliate links, which means that I may get a commissions if you decide to purchase anything. I only recommend products that I have used and love myself, so I know you’ll be in good hands.)




This week we chose the Secret Garden, mainly because it is Spring time and we are spending quite a lot of time in our own garden, clearing out after the winter and starting to grow our own vegetables.

We watched the film the Secret Garden....

And read the book The Secret Garden which we have from our Classic collection.

We discussed the difference between the film and the book and how parts of the film where not contained in the book that we read and discussed possible reasons why.

We are working on nouns and adjectives and verbs and adverbs so we looked through a few pages of the book to find some of those words and categorise them.

I created a sheet that the twins used to categorise their chosen words, feel free to download this template here or click on the picture to grab a copy.

Hack Green Bunker video production day....

Oliver and Olivia decided they wanted to make a video of their day at Hack Green Secret Bunker as they really enjoyed the photographs that we took on the day.

They enjoy making videos and have made a few in the past but never ventured onto Youtube, they decided that they wanted to put the video on Youtube and see how many hits it would get.

They worked hard between themselves and created the below video themselves using windows live movie maker and searched hard for royalty free music that would fit their video.

They did a great job and this is what they produced.

Now they await eagerly to see how many people will view it....

Goodbye Bank holiday Weekend...

It has been a back to normal day today, well semi back to normal.

Work dispatching ebay parcels which sold in my ebay store over the bank holiday commenced this morning, 4 days worth of packages took longer than usual to get through and although Tuesday is normally an auction/buying day, today I decided with everything else on I would knock it on the head considering I have an awful lot of stock purchased over the past month that I have to sort and get listed, including still having some client stock to list and another new client waiting in the wings for me to collect, so instead we did what we usually do without the buying day.

The kids spent a lot of the morning playing in the garden with the dogs and playing with the chickens and by lunchtime they had decided to continue working on their timeline for our history project, creating different houses through time, they drew pictures, coloured in and made a Tudor house model.

We then did a bit of revision on English covering punctuation, nouns and adjectives, verbs and adverbs, for this we have been using and taking guidance from the Letts English Success Revision Guide, we also started looking at our new book for the week, The Secret Garden. There are lots of worksheets online to accompany The Secret Garden, so if we have time during this week, we may do some worksheets and work on some grammar, depending how our other projects are going.

Olivia expressed her interest at learning more about money, this is not something that has concerned them much, they both know money and which pence is which, and the difference between pence and pounds, but Olivia wanted to do some 'working out change' worksheets, so I printed some off for her to have a crack at. Money is not often something that comes up in our house, and there is rarely any cause for them to come into contact with money due to us always buying things via debit card, but I may make an effort over the coming months to purchase things with cash and let them do the working out themselves.

We had a discussion about salt and how it is made, Salt has been prominent for the past few days since they watched a video (by chance) on how sea salt is processed and we where also near a Salt Factory Museum Visitors Centre whilst in Northwich the other day at the boat lift, which they have both expressed an interest in visiting at some point, so salt is a little bit 'there' right now, they decided to see what happens to the salt when mixed with water, so they had their own private experiment going on which I was not privy to the details of, although a safety talk was given beforehand when they let me know their plan, the only time they let me into what they where doing with their experiment was when Oliver knocked the beaker over and blamed it on Olivia and all hell broke loose so that was the indication it was time to take a trip to the courier drop off point with the parcels, and we went on to visit the farm shop where we buy the chicken supplies and dog food from, we came home and had a lazy chippy tea..

We are trying to fit and cram quite a bit of work in this week, as next week we are out every day, and there will be hardly any time for any sit down focused work between flitting from one place to another and I really want to get this history project down on paper and well under way.

We have quite a few projects on the go at the moment and it is driving me nuts, so much unfinished work hanging around, it will feel like a huge achievement to finish a project before we start on another, so I am determined that this History project covering what we have learnt about history will be the last new project for while, whether the twins allow me to achieve that is another story.... 

Roundup Of Learning Focus on Historical Change in The way we live.

Today we have been working on something for our History Group presentation in April, which will actually be the last one.

At first we thought of presenting something on the History of Peace Symbols around the World which we had the idea to do, due to seeing the peace symbol display in the Museum the other day and also our ongoing project on symbols used in everyday life.

We have started this project already and have a half complete powerpoint already in progress, you can take a peek here...

We then started a discussion about some of the things we have learnt about history during the past year and decided to present a presentation on what we have been focusing on during the year, which is how people's lives have changed throughout history, how history is a process of historical links throughout time and that we are not just made the way we are in fact the way we are and live is due to a series of historical events.

Throughout this past year we have visited different houses throughout time ranging from the stone age caves, Celtic Homes, Saxon Homes, Poor people homes, rich people's homes, we have also visited things like food and how food is produced through the ages, we looked at fashion throughout the ages, Language and how language has changed to the introduction of the dictionary in the 1600's.

We even looked at how borders have changed through battles and political change.

Superstitions and how they affected and effect people' lives such as witches and some of the things we do today around superstition like avoid walking under ladders.

I will update here when we have completed our presentation on what we have learnt since last September about history and how people's lives have changed over time.

Busy doing nothing....on Easter Sunday.

We had a 'do nothing' day today, apart from cook a Roast Beef for dinner I had a very relaxed day.

This was not a planned do nothing day, what we had planned to do was clean the car inside and out and clear the garden and get the junk ready for the tip on Tuesday, but I took one look at the weather and decided on a 'do nothing' day.

So between eating lots of Easter Eggs and watching films like Watership Down and James Bond and a couple of documentaries about Dinosaurs all day 'our do nothing day' was a success....

Not a spec of dirt was moved, not a dirty sock hit my washer and not a toy was moved to it's toybox, although I did do the washing up, (well the dishwasher did that for me, but hey... I had to load it).

Escaping the Madness of Easter Saturday at Hack Green....

After spending so much time stuck in the car yesterday we decided that today we would go on our planned day out today instead of Easter Sunday and Monday. We figured that most people would be doing their shopping today (Saturday) for supplies for the rest of the bank holiday weekend, and a lot of people would be out on the road on Monday with it being Bank Holiday, so we thought it may be sensible and a better option to do our Sunday and Monday planned events today instead.

We opted for the Secret Hack Green Bunker as they had a re-enactment weekend which we thought would be fun followed by the Anderton Boat Lift which is on the way back.

Both great places, the secret bunker is full of surprises, although I did feel uncomfortable whilst we where there, I probably would have enjoyed it more without all the German and Russian re-enactors knocking around, all those Russians and Germans in Uniform where a little off putting to say the least.

Hack Green is a genuine military site - you can find all about it here on the Wikipedia - a fascinating place with a fascinating history or check out there web page

Anyway the kids enjoyed running around from room to room and I was happy to run around and get finished in there...But it was a good place, one we may re-visit one day when we cover the war it is packed with historical artefacts, overall a pretty interesting place to go......

 

I was overcharged which I only realised when we where headed back to the car, I should have noticed when we where entering, well I actually did and had that fleeting thought of that seemed a bit expensive, but it didn't register at the time.. It was only when I worked it out when I got home that she had charged me twice for an adult, it should have been £20.50 but ended up a whopping £30 + £3.50 for the brochure, £33.00.. 

A bit late to do anything about it when you have left, but all in all, I would check what they charge you if you ever go......



****UPDATED****

I emailed the company and voiced my opinion on the price situation and in actual fact they had charged me correctly, it was me that got it wrong and had not seen the extra charge for the re-enactment day which to be fair was worth it.

There was a lot going on and looking back over the photos the place is pretty amazing, so amazing that I decided to create a video in homage to our day there.

The issues where mine that day, partly due to being tired and partly due to walking into something that I had not expected, the atmosphere was tense with those Russian Speaking re-enactors, who where pretty much true to character and thinking back did a pretty good job.

They even had the exciting little details covered like the Passports that where checked randomly by the very stern hard to understand Russian Officers putting the fear of god into you and the bunker cat and Spy mouse that where randomly spotted around the place.

Overall I would say the place is great and worth visiting and there where some very nice people there, some could tell you anything you wanted to know about the cold war, you will have to watch the video to get feel of the place but if you do get a chance to go, make sure you are prepared and know what you are in for if you choose the annual re-enactment day....Be on the look out for the Spy mice too..... It is one of those places that stays with you for a few days, giving you lots of food for thought.

Once we had finished there we headed over to the boat lift, which was really lovely, we went on the boat ride up and back down the river and headed over for the  boat lift which unfortunately had broken down, but at least we where in the right place and warm and dry on the boat as it was tipping down with rain. 

 

We sat on the boat for quite a while, but the kids got to 'have a go of the wheel', whilst they where trying to fix the gate so that we could go up in the boat lift, but sadly it would be quite a while longer before it was fixed, so they gave us all a refund and gave us a complimentary coffee, the refund was £20 so that more than made up for the overcharge at the previous place.

Even though we never managed to get up the boat lift, the river cruise was nice and we where given a thorough talk about the history of the construction and use of the boat lift, all the staff there where really lovely, polite, smiley and really welcoming.

Although the kids where obviously upset about not going up in the lift  as they had looked forwards to it all day, they soon cheered up once we headed for the complimentary coffee and ice cream...

And all without one traffic jam in sight, it only took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the Hack Green Bunker and forty minutes to get home from the Boat lift........

Good Friday Frolicks...

I had the mad hair brained scheme of going to Tatton Park for their Roald Dahl event, lots of things to do and see, we normally hibernate at home on occasions such as Easter Friday but the Spring weather was just too good, normally the thought of spending most of the day in the car just to drive 10 miles down the road fills me dread, it did fill me with dread knowing that a half an hour journey would take twice as long or more, as it usually does, but I still decided to take the plunge.

Off we trot on our journey expecting to be there by at least 12 in time for lunch, but no, the journey that should take half and hour took 2 and a half hours, I should have known better really with it being Good Friday, the roads are always a horrendous massive car park, but hey ho we still had a great time in the car, eating lunch and playing games with the animals, calling cows, sheep and any other ridiculous animal we could think of that was not actually the animal in the field, we also had the usual sing along to the radio and had a giggle at all the people who wasted so much time sitting patiently in the line of traffic only to loose that virtue of patience and turn back, one such fellow decided to stop and give us the grave warning that it would be another hour yet before we got to the entrance.

As it turned out it was only half an hour, but like me and the kids said, even if we only get an hour there, at least we have reached our destination, we ended up getting to the farm by 3:30 to be faced with another long cue, but they played on the surrounding bushes and naughtily played on the private farm machinery until the gates where locked, they made friends with other kids also waiting patiently to get to the farm, climbed the wall and had leaf fights.

By the time we did get to the farm we where relieved, we had a wander round at the animals and spotted a pottery in the corner which we usually bypass, but this time decided to pop in and have a look and maybe buy some pots to paint, they had some lovely dinosaur figures and butterfly figures that would have been ideal for the twins to paint, but sadly the woman in there lacked a few manners and we promptly ended up leaving with nothing, I have to say it is the first and last time we will be going in the little pottery.

The kids saw, some sheep which are about to give birth, there is an event here in early April for the lambing, which we do intend to come back for, Oliver is very keen to see the lambs being born.

 There was a very ugly pig with very funny teeth that the kids found quite disgusting, poor pig, there where lots of ewws.. going on around him, bless his cottons... They laughed at the very funny goat lording it up in the barn, I can't wait to introduce the kids to how much dexterity a goat has and what they can do in terms of climbing, they will be very sorry they laughed at that poor goat in the barn.. 

They had tea with Mr Fox and didn't even notice that Mr Fox had a badgers face, lol, they listened to a story and looked at the 'man horses' as the twins call them, which are beautiful shire horses.

After the farm, we knew we did not have very much time before the place closed and Oliver was upset that we did not have time for the house but we wandered round the gardens and had a look at the amazing plants and designs, it was peaceful and relaxing to meander round the paths heading towards my favourite spot of the Japanese garden and looked at the Roal Dahl display, spot and see if you can recognise the book...

 

having fun with the washing line and chair.

 

a spot of den building, 

tree climbing and even a wizz round the maze....

It turned out to be a good day, but next year I will stick to my plan of staying close or even at home around Easter, it is great being able to go to these places when everyone is at work and school, it is so much more peaceful and enjoyable not having to que for hours either sat in the car or stood waiting in lines....

Take a look at the video the twins created in homage to the very wonderful Spring day at Tatton Park...

 Our outing to Tatton Park inspired our book of the week The Secret Garden...read more about our book of the week  here

Home Educated Kids Shoved in a Bedroom All day..

Oh look at that my poor home educated kids who are stuck in their bedrooms all day, have actually managed to escape for the day and experienced the 'real world' (said in sarcasm in response to those people who think we shove our kids in bedrooms all day) that rather 'far from reality' comment that keeps popping up and I have heard on quite a few occasions over the past few months...).

Today was a Museum day with a couple of other home educating families - Olivers focus was 'as per usual' on the Dinosaurs, he also managed to stump one of the curators by asking a question regarding the Ichtyosaur and Plesiosaur, and why they where not classed as dinosaurs and thought to be more related to the Dolphin... He has decided to do a bit of research and find out why and how fossils are classed as Dinosaurs, the curator gave him a start by stating that is was down to DNA

Oliver decided to email a question to "Dinosaurs from Top to Bottom" - Mike Walley?, a show we are going to in April all about Dinosaurs and their digestion, and the audience is invited to submit questions to the team beforehand.

He did also look online and found the topic of Taxonomy (biology) which did correspond to the curators response of DNA, hopefully this can all be explained in a simplistic form to him and he can go and digest and do some further research.

In our group where some new home educators who have only been HE for a short time, it was nice to meet some new faces.

Olivia had a quiet day and was rather subdued all day, she hardly spoke to anyone and seemed a little withdrawn and tired, probably down to the fact that we where up late watching Jesus Christ Superstar... Louby La La is not one for late nights, she is an early riser and likes her early nights, so it is early bed tonight...... 

Crazy thinking.... Adventures into Physics.

Today I have decided to be a bit crazy.... the first thing Oliver asked me when he got up was - can he do some maths today?, as he asked me that question, I remembered when we where at the Big Bang Fair, he asked - how do scientists use maths?, how do they use maths in Science?,  it was a very good question that I could not answer at the time due to the complexity of the question.

I was thinking about this question all weekend, how can I demonstrate in a way he will understand, how scientists use maths, how maths is used in our everyday without us even realising that maths is somewhere behind it, beyond what they already know about the basics such as shapes in our world and lengths and distances, weights etc, his question is more specific as to how do they incorporate maths to come up with say a robot, how do they use maths to create something like that.

When he asked the question this morning I thought, what is the best way to explain and give him his answer (which he always expects) in a way that he understands, and as I don't quite understand it all myself I thought we could do a bit of learning together, and as he is the type of child that constantly asks questions I thought there is no better way than demonstrating by learning about the specific topic of Physics.

The twins are familiar with the usual topics of push and pull, materials, forces and movement  and solids liquids and gasses etc but those on their own do not explain what he is actually doing in terms of relating it to Physics, he knows it as just basic science experiments with no relation to why or what he is doing.

I thought I would be a bit crazy and combine his new love of maths with his passion for science and break them down for him into subject matter, he is obviously at that stage where he has not knitted things together, he is doing, but not understanding what and why he is doing, as all the things we have done with science all incorporate maths in some way, but he clearly does not see how an end product of making a Robot or understanding the solar system or how a car travels incorporates maths.

As I know nothing about Physics as it was a subject I was not introduced to at school or encouraged in any way to get interested in, I cannot really help him understand what Physics is, so the best remedy for that is to learn together.

Learning together is great for us, it gives the kids a great boost knowing they are learning something alongside mum, it's a killer for me because I can't use the term, 'mum knows everything' very effectively these days, as whenever I do they rightly turn round and correct me and say 'no you don't'...

I had trouble knowing where to start so I decided to find a course that introduces Physics, the bad thing is obviously there are only GCSE level things out there, the only other thing is the usual broken down into materials and push and pull basic experiment type stuff that we have already done and they already understand, there isn't much for their age range for the depth that we require so we are going to have to improvise and bend what we find to fit their understanding.

I found this great course that started on 20th Basic Physics (Physics)S by Dr. Wayne Rowlands on the Open To Study website which is great for free courses.

This course is great as it is video based, which is good for all of us as that is the way we learn best by seeing and being able to rewind. I was very surprised and underestimated Olivia as she seemed more keen than Oliver, she was getting stuck into drawing a Vector Graph and working out a few final velocity calculations.

We rewound and rewound again and the kids asked questions and copied what they saw on screen practising some writing skills and doing some maths calculations, I was extremely surprised at their focus on the subject and they where both very keen and I had to stop them at the vector quantity on the second video, as I need time to sink the information in so I am sure they will too.

Olivia was taking quite a lot of notes in her book so I thought I would introduce some note taking techniques into my notes for her to see so she could mimic how I do my notes, I have to do these things very covertly so they do not realise my sly tactics of helping them learn without showing them directly, as they are both very independent and hate to be shown anything.

Of course our session was not just all about Physics, along with some basic maths, addition working out velocity and drawing a graph, we worked on English and how to use a dictionary, I got the dictionary out and pretended to not know a few words and I had to look them up, but needed help from the twins to find what I was looking for, needing their help with tasks is a great way to get them doing things without asking them to do something, I find it very effective. along with the note taking methods I slyly introduced, lots of things where covered in a very short space of time.

Olivia has asked for some Vector worksheets to practice working out addition and subtraction as she enjoyed working out the question given after the first video, so I will take some real life examples over the next few days and test them out a few times. We have a trip to make to the auction house tomorrow so we can work out our trip there and back and watch some of the lifting trucks and do some calculations on those. It should be fun....

I thought initially that I was bit crazy even thinking of adventuring into this but actually it is fantastic and exciting for all of us, take it slow and work it round all our understanding we should be well on our way to understanding a bit about Physics and Oliver should in the end get the answer he needs to explain why and how Maths is used in Science........ 

For the rest of the day it's painting Easter pictures....and me trying to come up with ideas to make Physics easy for all of us to understand..