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 club: SOUND

Today was science club.  We did loads of activities and experiments about sound.  We used the following books for our experiments - Usborne 100 Science experiments, Super Science Experiments and Make it Work! Sound. The authors and publishers of which we are very grateful.

We started off by exploring the garden trying to make the largest sound possible with just one bang.  They started small by just exploring the musical instruments, but then explored further by going round the garden.  They discovered that the wheelbarrow was the loudest they could find when hit with an object.  We discussed a bit about materials, and which ones made the loudest sounds.  Evan found that plastic made the least sound, whilst wood was a bit louder and metal was the loudest.

We followed this by a series of activities which I are shown pictorially below.

We used a sound cannon to blow a candle flame... later we took one end off this and were able to actually blow it out.

We then watched a favourite television program called Miracles of Nature (from 18 minutes in)

the episode concerned with Echolocation. The technology information of which is shown here. We followed this up by trying out our own little bit of echolocation in the garden.

Using our own ability to notice if we were in open or closed in spaces by clicking.  They did remarkably well.  I was very impressed.

The children next had a go at feeling and seeing sound through the effect of the vibrations from a speaker.  This was a real hit, and later they demonstrated how the jewels moved by bouncing on the trampoline.

More seeing the effect of sound through vibrations on a drum - this time sugar on top of a stretched balloon over a glass. All of them loved the end of this activity which involved the tongue doing in the inevitable.

Next we looked at amplification using funnels in the form of making a duck sound using a paper cup, string and a wet towel.  Evan explored what happened without the wetness and without the cup, and found that without the wetness there wasn't the sound at all, and without the cup it was a quiet noise.  Plus, they all made megaphones which were super effective and simple, a great way to feel vibrations of the voice on your lips.

Now this strange looking photo we are demonstrating a tuning fork.  We literally have forks connected to thread wrapped to our fingers which are in turn sitting on our ears.  The sound is transferred and we hear it really loud after we dong the fork onto a hard surface.

We changed the pitch a few times by adding extra water and keeping them at different levels.

The whole session was super quick, and was a platform to inspire and start learning about the subject of sound.  I would hope the children now have a few ideas of how to explore these concepts themselves at their own pace now.  There was a bit of discussion here and there about the scientific conclusions we can make from our findings, but we did keep it fairly light and exploratory.