A little bit of History and Biology

We set off for Chatsworth today,  to take advantage of our year pass,  part way there I realised I had forgotten the membership card,  so we turned tail and headed back.  On the way home we passed Beauchief Abbey,  and as I had been meaning to go there I suggested that we go instead...  To my surprise Evan was agreeable.  So we changed plan and headed that way.  Unfortunately the Abbey itself wasn't open,  so we explored the churchyard,  and the old excavated walls. We started by noticing the differences between the newer and older walls,  and what clues told us that changes had been made to the building.  We went on to find the older walls,  which were surrounded by a variety of trees.  

 Since I had our tree identification sheet in my bag,  we used the key to work out the names of the trees.  This was good fun,  and encouraged Evan to look really closely at the different parts if the leaves,  as well as learn some new vocabulary  like : lobed and leaflets.

This really was great fun, and encouraged a much closer inspection of the different features of the leaves, stems and fruits than we have ever done before.  I feel that I could now at sight identify some trees that previously I would simply have an uneducated guess.  I've always loved trees.  The lungs of the world to me represent so much more than the brown things with green bits on we like to see. 

Constant

Growing

Breathing

Living

Loving

Breathing

Drinking

Soaking in

Breathing

Being

Becoming

Breathing

Seasons

Life

Breathing

Strong

Awesome

Breathing

Power

Floating

Breathing

After these wonderful moments we moved on to explore the Tombstones.  This one we found was incredibly detailed and ornate, with some passages from the bible pertaining to life after death.  It was the earliest we found at the point with the death being in 1826.  Dorothy Fox would have been born in 1763, and lived a good long life.  We noticed the difference in engravings, particularly the minimal ones versus the ones with a lot of text.  I suggested that it cost more money the more letters that were engraved, and therefore they needed to have more money to have lots of writing.

The Abbey yard was fairly empty of graves, which I am sure is no accident, I'd be interested to find out why that is, as most graveyards I've ever visited have been pretty packed.  Near the end of our search we found this one from 1801, which as far as we could read was the oldest one there... however, there were quite a few which were flat to the ground and therefore very weathered were no longer able to be read, but they could have been earlier.  We discussed the differences between the tombstones, and noticed how you could have a guess at the age from the amount of degrading that had happened to the stone in many cases.

We left, in need of a spot of lunch, and went on to Whirlowbrook Hall for a bit of an explore.  Still on the nature detective mode we attempted to identify more trees.  However I realised the limitations of my identifcation key, as it is just for common british trees.  So we took some photos of ones which weren't obvious so that we could find out more at home.

A little incongruous, a rose in a fir tree.

At home later Evan explored some new K'nex we had found in a charity shop with a battery powered motor.  He was able to construct this car with minimum support from Pat.  This was his most successful creation so far.  He was extremely proud of his achievements.  As are we :)

I loved today, as it just flowed, I had no real plans apart from to make icecream and take Autumn to her dance class.  Both of those things happened, but obviously a lot more besides.  Learning, as we do, naturally and doing things we enjoy, means that the learning is most likely to be retained, and definately enjoyed.  I believe my role is to facilitate learning rather than make it happen.  I know that sometimes I go a bit heavy on the information, rather than waiting for questions, but I am working on stepping back and trusting more.  Trust has been a key theme in my parenting journey, and I believe that the more I trust my children the better we all feel.  It does take a real leap of faith at times, for example when thinking about trusting our children to learn to read or behave in a socially acceptable manner, but I do try and work with this principle at the heart of what I do.