Beachcombing for Shark and Sting Ray Eggs!

 

Another home ed mum came up with the idea of hunting for sting ray and shark eggs as she is currently doing the Great Shark Hunt Project which can be found here.

The Great Shark Hunt Project is an initiative to provide the Shark Trust with crucial information about the distribution of British sharks, skates and rays.

We found a lot of shark and ray eggs and we also found some other great stuff too.

Besides the bottles and plastic that we found and collected up to ensure it went in the bin instead of back in the sea.

 

and besides strange things stuck in the middle of nowhere. (If you know what this is please do tell)

We also found a fabulous fossil of a seal humerus.

Some Whelk eggs

and of course a small collection of shells.

And of course what we went there for the Shark Eggs

and Ray eggs

We rounded off the day with a trip to the local museum which is currently housing the Egyptian Collection that once belonged to a Mrs Goodison and not seen for 40 years until 2015. A very impressive collection.

Firing Clay Models!..

The kids have started on their Firing Clay models at the monthly creative club club they go to.

Their depictions of the sea and bedrock fits in nicely with our trip to Southport beach tomorrow where we will be hunting for shark and stingray egg cases..

Next week once the models have been fired they will be ready for painting:-

 The finished product:-

Youth Volunteer Opportunities

There are plenty of opportunities for the twins to experience some volunteering in Greater Manchester when they come of age. This will give them a taste of the working environment along with providing them with a good way to showcase their learned skills for their CV amongst many other things like fun and friendships. 

There are some conditions that can limit opportunities for under 16's due to legal limitations but opportunities are available if those conditions are met. Some of those conditions include:-

• Children under the age of 15 are allowed to volunteer for 2 hours per day on a school day and 12 hours per week during school term. On a non-school a day they are allowed to volunteer 5 hours per day and 25 hours a week during school holidays. Under 15's are allowed to volunteer for 2 hours on Sundays.

• Children aged 15 and over, but under school leaving age, are allowed to volunteer for 2 hours per a day on a school day or 12 hours per a week during school term. They are allowed to volunteer 8 hours per a day on a non school day and 35 hours per week during school holidays. They are allowed to volunteer 2 hours on Sundays.

• These hours must be between 7am and 7pm and must be generally in school hours. They need to be given an hour break if volunteering for more than 4 hours. Also, a child under the school leaving age must have at least a two week break form any form of activities a year. Volunteering cannot be a reason for being absent from school.

• Consent from a parent or a guardian should be obtained before a person under the age of 18 starts volunteering.

• Under 16s cannot have a DBS check carried out on them and are prohibited from making house to house collection for charities.

• 16-17 years old have no restrictions on the number of hours they volunteer, as long as they remain in part time training or education until they are 17.

There is an increasing number of providers of volunteering opportunities which can have some surprising added benefits around Greater Manchester, I will highlight some I have found below, of course I will keep updating as I find more.

•  Kooth recruit Ambassadors for their helpline from ages 14-25, they run training events in Manchester to provide the ambassador with the skills to prove support in exchange for around 2 hours a week volunteering time.

• British Exploring leads scientific expeditions to remote wild environments to encourage the personal development of young people.  British Exploring have a scheme for collecting explorer miles so that Explorers will be able to reduce the cost of their expeditions by contributing to social action in their local area by Volunteering For ages 16-25 Years of age. So volunteering can really pay off.

• Banardos Recruits volunteers from the age of 14, they are usually stockroom volunteering positions for around 2 hours a week.

• VInspired provide regular updates on youth volunteering opportunities from the age of 14. 

• Greater Manchester Youth Network Their main focus is on youth volunteering and social action. This includes supporting young people to volunteer locally and abroad. Their services are for children from age 13.

• Manchester FA Young Leaders Academy, the young volunteers aged from 16+ undertake a variety of roles within local football from coaching and refereeing, to finance and marketing.

• Duke Of Edinburgh is a programme of personal development for 14-25 year olds, although not strictly just volunteering it does play a key part.

• Challenge Offer opportunities for 15-17 year old's. NCS helps build skills for work and life whilst taking on new challenges and meeting new friends. The programme involves a short time away from home, trying new things as well as taking part in a team project in the local community and much more.

Self Directed Learning Through BBC 3

Today has been one of those days that self directed learning is evident and blossomed for the twins.

The twins spent their washing up time listening to BBC Radio 3 which they have done a lot of since going to the Halle event a little while ago, I asked them why they had chosen to listen to BBC 3 today and Oliver informed me that the presenter explains each piece before it is played, which was interesting to hear.

I looked online at who they were covering today and it turned out to be Robert Schumann, who after committing himself to an asylum ended up never coming out and spending his last days there.

I read the twins the synopsis about Robert Schumann that the BBC presented and the twins wanted to know more about what an asylum was and why he was committed and why he died there, we also looked at the Wikipedia entry which lead to the kids asking lots more questions.

We looked at Asylums on Youtube to discover what they were and why we no longer have them, through a couple of useful documentaries..

They also asked about Syphilis and we talked briefly about sexually transmitted diseases which we will cover more in depth at a later date but for now we just looked at the possible reasons he could have contracted it and the use of Mercury which people were treated with as a medicine back then.

This obviously lead to the question of what is Mercury so we found the Mercury element on our poster of the Periodic Table and they wanted to know more about it so we looked at the following video:-

 

The kids used a good analogy of the Mad Hatter from Alice in wonderland and we talked about why Hatters were afflicted with madness (We also talked about how the author used history to come up with the character of the Mad Hatter) 

We used our own town of Oldham as an example, as Hatting was one of the main industries besides coal and textiles and towards the end of 1756, Oldham had emerged as centre of the hatting industry in England. Due to this little fact we thought we would look up some information on Oldham's asylums and see if there were a lot of asylum patients in Oldham, although we did not come up with any particular facts regarding patients we did come up with some interesting facts about Oldham Boundary Hospital's Workhouses and imbecile wards which you can find here. 

(The twins also asked about the poor law's which I decided to distract them from, as I want to keep this on track so that question will be filed on my to do list of topics).

There is a hat museum in Stockport that we may pop in and visit next week if we have some time during our packed schedule for next week. If we do I will update here on what we saw and learnt.

We talked a little bit about how their grandmother was in an asylum due to her having Schizophrenia and bipolar and talked about some of the treatments she would have received and one of them we know was Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and how medicine and its understanding has changed through new developments of drugs and other therapies and developing understanding of mental health conditions.

We will look more into Mercury and I will find some interesting things for the twins to do, I will update here once we have done that..

All in all a lovely day of the demonstration of the places self directed learning can take you to!..

Round-up of HE Related YouTube Videos

I thought I would do a post on some of my favourite YouTube videos these will appear in no particular order:-

This video by Antonia Robinson at the Family Life Internationals 2016 Conference reflects on the state of education in the United Kingdom with a focus on home education, explains beautifully home education.

This has to be my all time favourite and will certainly make you smile:-

Ted Talk about why one parent has chosen to home school:-

The next two videos are pretty funny and the guys channel is worth a watch as he has other videos pertaining to Homeschool....

Funny Homeschool kids...

Homeschooler at Hogwarts...

For those who have been home educating for a while...

Wigan S.T.E.A.M SciArt Stem Cell Explorers

We have been attending a two day art/science workshop at the Wigan S.T.E.A.M Hub, what a fabulous place Wigan S.T.E.A.M is, they provide workshops to both adults and children and also have exhibitions to connect people to Stem, culture and heritage and a few other things that you can find out about on their website (here).

Some of the large range of activities they provide is coding, digital and interactive arts, game design, 3D printing and loads more. Some of their more recent workshops have included:- Draw a Circuit using conductive paint to draw a light up circuit, 3D Pixel Art and of course the workshop we attended over two days The SciArt Stem Cell Explorers, which I will tell you more about shortly but I have to tell you about some of their exciting up and coming workshops first, which include Stop Motion Animation, Light Up Canvas Bags and Catapult engineering.

I found Wigan Steam by chance on eventbright and thought the workshop looked interesting so obviously booked on, I am so very glad that we did. I have to say this is in our top 5 events we have attended whilst home educating, definitely worth the two hour trip there and back.

When you walk into the building you immediately feel relaxed with the fabulous entrance up to the reception area. It feels very informal and welcoming with the gallery just to your left as you walk in, you get a sense of calm and creativity.

Vicky the facilitator greeted us with a big friendly smile and immediately put us at ease and a lovely hot coffee was plunged into my hands not long after.

The learning/workshop room itself is lovely, such a cosy room which has a really uplifting atmosphere, kitted out with everything you need for a workshop, including a projector.

The room has a fabulous shelf area with lots of things to discover, these items would be for the use in other workshops, such as the lego stop motion and robot workshops and there was a fabulous book shelf full of fascinating art books. Even though these items were for other workshops and not this Stem Cell workshop, there was no problems or eyes batted at the kids bringing them out throughout the two days on the Stemcell workshop and having an informal play with them, which I thought was a really lovely touch, the kids were just allowed to play with them and just discover for themselves, nothing was out of bounds on the shelves.

There is also a lovely comfy sofa to sit on too, which my bottom graced for two days with its presence.

I should get on and tell you a little bit about what the kids did for two days on the Stem Cell workshop, which was presented by a fabulous young lady called Gabby York-Salmon who is currently doing an MA in art and science at Liverpool John Moores University.

Over the two days Gabby introduced the kids to Stem Cells, they watched slide shows  on cells and some fascinating videos of magnified cells whilst learning about the components (if that is the word) of cells, they also learnt about Science Artists such as Stelark (definitely check him out, he is a very interesting figure) and they created their own pieces of art work using different mediums such as using dried clay to create cells which they painted with colourful UV and Florescent paint, they also used wool on paper to create cells and used felt pieces with beads and various other things to create cells and they peered through a microscope.

The twins were very happy that they got to show off their cell project that they did a couple of years ago and some of the felt cells were created using some images that they had on their project cover, they also got to show off their video that they made, the blog post about that is here if you are interested. 

They learned all sorts about stem cells and did some fabulous artwork over these two days and we will be going over some of it and doing some more writing, googling and arty things around these fascinating cells.

Gabby and Vicky were very engaging throughout the two days, they covered so much in such a short space of time and they were naturally great with the kids, I would recommend anyone go to at least one workshop there or arrange one with Wigan S.T.E.A.M, either one for the adults or one for the kids, but you will definitely not regret it and certainly add a fantastic experience to your life's tick box, we certainly will be going back!...

With permission of parents here is the Stem Cell Sci/Art Gang!..