Free your voice and a beach visit

We have had a fantastic day today. We went to the first session of a home ed family music group called 'free your voice' and then, as the sun was still shining, we headed down to the beach for a few hours with the other families. We are so lucky to live near such beautiful and child-friendly beaches here. We were at Cullercoats beach today and we have never been there, but I think we will be returning given the superb home-made ice creams available from Beaches & Cream at the top of the steps! They were polished off very quickly.

The music group was really good and Harry enjoyed it and participated well - we sang an animal song with noises, played a large variety of small instruments and finished with some relaxing chanting. Peter ran around the entire time!

Egyptian headdresses

We followed up yesterday's Egyptian workshop by decorating these headdresses today. Peter stuck with it for 15 minutes, which is good for him at the moment. I was pleased that Harry took a lot of care with his and it looked really good. They have worn them lots today and Harry has been pretending to be a Pharaoh - he said his headdress had so many jewels to show how rich he is.

Egyptian hieroglyphs workshop

We attended a 'scribe school' workshop at the Hancock Museum today, where the children learnt about Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and deciphered some themselves.

We spent the morning reading these books to get ourselves in Egyptian mood and we also watched YouTube videos about the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and Ancient Egypt.

I also read Harry the Egyptian chapter of this book, which I love! We will be reading it all over the next year or two and it gives a really good and accessible overview of history. I am reading it myself as well as reading parts to Harry.

At the workshop we had to match hieroglyphic pictures to the letters of our alphabet (we used our 26 letters for simplicity, although there were hundreds more hieroglyphic pictures). There were also posters around the room with hieroglyphic pictures which we had to translate back to English to find the meaning. The children also wrote their names using the symbols. There was a replica Rosetta Stone which Harry liked - I was pleased we had covered it in the morning so he knew what it was. This was a good workshop as there was plenty to do so the children weren't waiting around and they had to move around the room to look at the symbols, so there wasn't any fidgeting in chairs!

A weekend in London

We spent the weekend in London with some friends and had a superb time! We drove half way then got a train (as Peter will not yet sit down for the full 3 hour train journey). The shorter train trip was absolutely fine and the boys did very well on the tube too as we travelled on it a lot.

We went on Friday morning and spent Friday afternoon at The National Gallery and walking around Embankment. We all really enjoyed the gallery. We followed a children's trail based on the Katie character by James Mayhew and we had been reading Katie and The British Artists on the way down so we also looked out for some of the paintings featured in there. Harry was amazed by how big some of the paintings were and we thought it would be a very difficult task to sit at a huge canvas and fill it all. The trail was good as it took us around 6 paintings and posed questions to get us thinking about each one. We were there for just over an hour which was the right amount of time for the children at this age.

We met our friends on Saturday and went to The Science Museum. Harry and Peter both enjoyed the hands-on exhibits. Harry used air pressure from dropping a bowling ball to force a tennis ball into the air.

He loved this giant machine with a variety of chutes, pulleys and a bucket wheel excavator all transporting thousands of lentils around! 

Stuart and Peter tested the strength of an arch bridge.

And we made geometric patterns in the pattern pod area.

On Saturday afternoon we had booked tickets for The London Eye so we walked there via Buckingham Palace. We only decided to take Peter at the last minute and he absolutely loved it, I am so pleased we did! He sat on the floor pointing things out and wandered around looking at the viewing map.

Saturday had been a very long day with a late night after going out for pizza with our friends so we relaxed a bit more on Sunday and went on an open top bus tour. We got off at Tower Bridge, one of my favourite London landmarks, and took a boat back to Westminster. There was good commentary on the boat pointing out landmarks and explaining some history.

We finished off our trip with a stop at Hamley's toy shop so Harry and Peter could spend some money given by their grandparents. We liked the huge Lego royal family and guards and we have building and playing with some new Lego and a London jigsaw we bought today.

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Harry was asking in the car when we are going back again and there will definitely be multiple visits in the future. We have had a very relaxed day to recover today as my legs were feeling the effects of all the walking!

Ed Rusha art

The art group for home educators at the Hatton Gallery recently covered the work of Ed Ruscha. We weren't able to go as it is at the same time as our French class but it looked like something Harry would be interested in so we went to look on our own.

We liked the 'Parking Lots' series of pictures which show aerial photographs of car parks. Harry thought they must have been taken at night as the car parks were all empty. We liked how the lines of the car parks made geometric patterns.

Harry couldn't think of a word to include on his picture so I read him the section of the gallery leaflet about Ed Ruscha and asked him to listen out for one. He chose 'remarkable' which works really well I think. We looked through the leaflets in our recycling bucket to get the letters we needed and cut them out. He used these new paint bellows to create a spatter effect then glued the letters on top. I love the finished article and it is on our kitchen door at the moment.

We also looked at the 'Dog' work (shown in the gallery leaflet) which shows a silhouette of a dog obscured by grasses. Harry made a picture in this style. I helped him draw a squirrel and he used soft pastels so he could smudge the edges. He used sweeps of green and yellow for reeds.

A trip out - Seven Stories Enid Blyton exhibition

I have been looking forward to visiting Seven Stories all weekend as a new exhibition opened featuring the work of Enid Blyton, whose books I loved reading as a child. We waited for today to visit so it would be quieter. It was brilliant! There were lots of hands on areas for the children and there is much more to explore (and inspire us for activities at home) in future visits once the initial excitement of sliding down the tree has subsided! The exhibitions at Seven Stories really get Harry excited about the subjects and he plays some great imaginative games based on them. We will also be using them as the basis for some projects in the future, to make use of the great resources already set out there.

We got special stickers to start with....

We played in the magic faraway tree

There was a giant wall screen depicting various lands at the top of the tree

We played at being in the land of goodies, which is a recent chapter we have read in The Magic Faraway Tree (we are now on the second book in the series, having finished The Enchanted Wood in one week!).

Harry dressed up as Silky the fairy and pretended to make pop cakes

Peter kept returning to Noddy's car in toyland

I read Harry a chapter of the first Famous Five book - he now wants to read all the Secret Seven and Famous Five books after we finish The Enchanted Wood series. I was hoping he would as I will really enjoy re-reading them too. Peter made a close examination of Timmy the dog!

We also visited the craft area and Harry designed his own enchanted wood with a shimmery pool and upside down trees (the land of upside-down!). He also imagined what he might see out of a telescope on an adventure and drew a treasure island.

Conquer maths weekend

I signed Harry up for the Conquer Maths free mayday weekend and he has really enjoyed doing it. He has asked a few times in the past if there is maths he can do on the computer like Reading Eggs so this was a good opportunity to try. He actually cheered when I told him about it!

He has completed 5 reception year lessons with questions on a variety of topics over the bank holiday weekend (I let him choose) - pattern, time (analogue), time (more or less), addition, subtraction and position. He did find them quite easy but he is coming towards the end of what would be reception year at school so I think he could start year 1 lessons when we subscribe in the near future. 

I like the layout of the lessons - it is really easy to see them all and the lesson pages are simple without any distractions. The teacher's voice is encouraging and not at all annoying. I think this will work alongside the other practical maths activities we do very well.