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.  

Caterpillar life cycle

We have decided to observe the lifecycle of the butterfly.  So we bought a kit from Insectlore, which arrived a few days ago.  They are self contained, so they have all their food in a hardened solution on the bottom of the tub which has air holes.  At the top, when they are ready, they go up and become chrysalides and hang off the paper disc at the top, which, when they harden, we place directly into their butterfly home ready for them to emerge.

Here is their picture story.

They have arrived

 Here they are, only quite small.

 Day 2 - here we see most of the caterpillars onto their second exoskeleton and the small one in the middle on its first.  The instructions say that this repeats a number of times before they become chrysalides

Day 3

Day 4 - they are getting quite big now, and seem to have formed a complex network of silk threads on top of their food area.  There is a large number of displaced parts of food and blobs of black.  We have also noticed what looks like a discarded exoskeleton, from the largest of the caterpillars with very clear hairs on it, in a hard ball.  Today they were quite active, and Evan and I watched them.for a while.  We noticed the suckers on the back legs, of which there appeared to be 5 pairs, they move together in an undulating way.  At their front sections which moved around the most, there were 3 pairs. We saw the head weaving around presumably spinning a thread from its spinnerets.  We noted no interaction between the caterpillars, but were amused by one caterpillar who seemed to hang out at the top of the container, and when it moved back towards the food, got half way and went back up again.  We got our microscope out and managed to see them moving close up, which was pretty scary but fascinating.

Been a bit slack in photo taking, but here are some recent shots

Today - they are simply enormous, and there are plenty of "spent" exoskeletons to show their size.  We have particularly been fascinated by their hairs and how their suckers move.  It is now more apparent that they move inwards as they walk, and only the back legs have suckers, the front ones appear to be more feelers than movers - more like hands than feet really.

Chatsworth we are so glad you are open again **pic heavy

Hooray, its open again!!! At the end of last month we took Pat on his first ever visit.  He loved the Guinea pigs.  We visited the grotto, but didn't have much time for other things, as the majority of time was spent digging rivers in the sand in the playground.

 Smelling the blossom

Loving trees

Evan's beautiful photograph of a daffodil - one shot wonder!!!

Wahey - first frogspawn spy of the year.

Using our portable microscope to explore the different fossils in the marble.

I just love this mini waterfall near to the kitchen garden.

Guinea pig cuddles are always a favourite on our visits.

It was a mixed day weather-wise, but the rain really came down on the way home and we were delighted by countless vivid rainbow, often double ones all the way home.

Thank you Chatsworth, once again, for a simply wonderful day.