Flower - Saxifrage

A beautiful flower, as via a nomination on facebook by my dear friend, and amazing artist Rowan Blair  He writes the most exquisite poetry:

The Flower
A Poem by Rowan Blair Colver

Bringing petal tips against the velvet of evening, like candle flicks that lightly glaze the air,
In stillness and enticement, some wonderful feeling of inner excitement, the flower opens.
Spilling pollen, aroma and life bringing colours, dusted with nectar and silk.
 Alluring sensual milk of the fiery eye, behind half closed lid in pressure to absorb,
Sensations. It is silent, almost silent, apart from the heart that pounds inside,
And the movement of the dream that forms in bubbles and quilts around the very mind,
It comes. Like the fox from a burrow, with its whiskery nose and flash of red, allowing the presence

Of whatever awaits to greet its awareness from outside the confiding of safety

Courtesy of Rowan Blair Colver weebly page  for more of this beauty check out this, and get weekly updates

National Coal Mining Museum

Its been a while since our last visit, but we went today with friends. It was loads of fun not least because of the wonderful nature trail, and an really thought provoking visit down the coal shaft, 140metres to travel the seam worked for many years by many brave men and families. /

Hidden woods... and how to expose them

A lovely lady shared this poem and film on the Home Education group I'm part of, and it is such a wonderful combination of sharing the outdoors and beautiful words.  I am so pleased that our lives will encompass many hours and days spent in woods, surrounded by our amazing deciduous trees, making fires, building dens, making art, having fun with friends and family. What a wonderful place we live in.

It is really exciting to notice the Forest Education Initiative is alive and kicking, and making waves and dens across the country, and many things going on in this fair City of Sheffield, with our amazing plethora of green spaces.

November at Chatsworth

Another week, another trip to Chatsworth.  Despite the storms and rain we've had lately, we caught a simply magical day for this visit, with still  air and clear blue skies and bright Autumn sunlight.  It was a wonderful haven.  We went with our friends today, and had a brilliant time.  Though, Autumn is suffering from a cold and cough which is throwing her balance out a little, so she had a few falls and upsets, but fortunately was able to move on from them fairly swiftly.

The first thing we encountered (and we had to go at a fair pace to keep up with the boys - Evan was leading the way as I had told him we were going to the grotto, and he knew the way!) was the trough waterfall. Many toughs slotted together to make a marble run style waterfall.  It is covered in lovely thick moss and simply beautfiul.

After this stop at the Grotto with some stunning views, we encountered this tree which was initially mistaken for one of the many sculptures around the gardens, as it had been chopped off in such a manner that it presented itself in a very artistic manner.

Tom loved this Warthog, and Evan is seen here with a very large leaf, after having been asked to find leaves all a variety of shapes and sizes.  I also encouraged them to do with a variety of regular shapes and other objects... making me think I'd like to do a proper scavenger hunt on our next trip out and even with photos for the younger ones and words for the older ones to tick off and find - perhaps even with a camera so that they can take a photos of the objects as they find them, so they can include non-collectectable items.  I will devise some and hopefully post them up as an attachment to this page when I've done.

We stopped by this pond, at first glance, just a pond, then we stepped closer and this is what we saw. A-MA-ZING.  The glassy surface, the beautiful day, the variety of colours, the ever increasing circles of the ripples of the pond.  What could be better.

We created a mini playground in this tree near to the maze.  I had brought my rope swing which we erected, Autumn and Evan were climbing whilst Tom was exploring.  Loads of fun had by all.

Next we headed for the Kitchen garden, via the cascades.  Even now into November Evan enjoyed a little sunbathe next to the Cascade on our way.

We were greeted in the kitchen garden by these terrific pumpkin and Marrow collection.  What a treat - look at the size of that pumpkin.  For Autumn it brought to mind the enormous radish from one of their Peter Rabbit stories.

Evan, Tom and Autumn settled into a game involving making a home for a worm or two, though Autumn was eager to play Peter Rabbit, and pretending they were in Mr MacGregor's garden.

This mini maze ini the kitchen garden covered by a beautiful apple tree is still one of Evan's favourite bits of the garden.

Amy and Autumn busied themselves painting by a mini shed.  Whilst Su and I chatted about the wonders of nature and the natural world.  How lucky we are to get to fully enjoy it.  I have to say this year especially, I have been filled with gratitude for the enriching experience to my life that Home Education has brought.  I am so grateful every day for all the things in my life which have brought me to where I am right now.

We moved on after this to the playground for a short while after a little negotiation.  Evan spent the whole half hour making this river in collaboration with some other children at the playground.

Before we left Autumn had a bit of a bounce on the incredibly fast and scary zip line, and a few slides down some ace tube slides.

To entice the children away and back to the cars we lured them with a spot of animal handling at the farm.  Evan had the pleasure of Patch's company - interestingly this is the same Guinea pig he was given to hold as last time we were here (out of about 20 or so!)   He couldn't have been more at peace and full of happiness.  We talked for a while about the possibility of having guinea pigs ourselves.... watch this space.

Autumn totally loved her Guinea pig - Squirrel, and stroked him very gently and lovingly
.

A simply perfect day out, even with the myriad of fallings over we had.  Chatsworth cannot do any wrong.

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.