Clumber park, cycling, microscopes and squirrels

A change of timetable this week let to a free day on Monday.  I thought a great opportunity to get to grips with the organisation of drawers in the living room.  the kids, on the other hand had other plans - an outing was in order, and since Evan has been keen on cycling later I suggested going to Clumber park, which I know has some great flat cycling routes.  I hadn't been since I was a child, but it was a good opportunity to take advantage of the beautiful weather we've been having lately.

We took the bikes and trailer, as I didn't feel Evan would get much of a cycle if we were hampered going at Autumn's pace.  We chose the shortest route around the park, which was a circuit of the lake, which I presumed had to be pretty flat.  It was billed at 5 miles, I thought that was pretty doable. We head of with a little trepidation as Evan is a bit nervous of junctions on roads, but I managed to convince him that the junctions we were encountering were nice and empty of traffic ( thankfully they were), and after a little shaky start we head off.  We chatted as we went about what we saw, a lovely freedom of cycling together with someone.

I got to thinking on our journey round the lake, about how much learning was going on during this day.  An idea I was drawn back to later in the day during a conversation with someone about how we home educate.  I was asked... "I bet it's hard to do home schooling on a day like this."  my reply was, "on the contrary, we did a tonne of it on our trip out today."  I then went on to list a few of the things that sprung to mind which would directly translate to the school education system curriculum, like Biology - exploring habitats of animals and small creatures, using the skull of a mammal to discover what it is, what it might eat, where it might live.  We also were exploring the laws of physics through the bouncy seesaw, and how to get up a hill successfully when cycling, versus how to find the process too difficult, how to get a swing going with someone else suing weight shifting.  We engaged in no written work, but that didn't mean the learning processes were any less important.  On the contrary, I feel that the learning taking place today, and every day, allows true and honest  organic engagement with the subject matter, exploring it to the level felt appropriate at the time, leaving a far greater and lasting impression that learning taking place in a more structured traditional fashion.  It is quite scary at times, and I do sometimes feel nervous about whether the fundamentals of life will be acquired, but then we have days like today which remind me to allow the children to enjoy their childhood and give them the space to be themselves and explore at their own pace.  In my heart I know and trust that they really will learn all they need to learn.

Back to Clumber Park... here we see Evan feeding this squirrel.  I felt a little uncomfortable about this, because of the close contact, but as it was safe enough, and risk levels fairly low, I let it go.  He loved it.

We nearly passed the Discovery centre, as it was a small entrance, and we planned to go on another cycle.  I was so glad we popped in.  It was really a discovery centre (we've been in a few discovery centres before which are less discovery, more a few photos).  Loads of interesting interactive displays, child-friendly microscopes with loads of slides.

 Teamwork

We are really excited about Clumber park, we'll be back soon.  We will definitely going to look into a Home Educators National Trust membership.  

Science day - Plants

Today, with another family, we did a number of explorations and experiments to explore plants and how they grow.  To plan for this day we have been growing beans with different variables changed.

#1 - Demonstrating oxygen evolution during phosynthesis using Cabomba pondweed

This was such fun, we followed a number of the experiments in the linked to page.

#2  Exploring the variables affecting growth on a bean plant

Excitingly our beans planted at the same time about 3 weeks ago showed differences depending on their environment.  The plants germinated at Su's house (warmer and brighter) grew really well, whilst ours failed to thrive. The photographs give an indication of what they were like.  The bean which had been left without water failed to germinate at all, whilst the bean with water but no light germinated and grew quite well, but the small leaves which grew remained small and yellow.  The plant appeared to try hard to find light, seeking out fractions of light at the edge of the cupboard it was in.

#3 Exploring the different parts of a flower

#4 Hapa Zome - Exploring the colours found in plants

Hapa Zome printing is the process of extracting the colour from a plant by bashing and thereby transferring the colour onto fabric underneath.  It was the most wonderful satisfying experience and everyone enjoyed it, including me and Su.

Plant veins in action

Responding to a query of Autumn's the other day about "the weird line" on leaves and stems, we explored this using a simple experiment with a stick of celery and water with red food colouring, a day later and here was the result.

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.