a trip to the past

Today, we went to Weald & Downland open air museum, just north of Chichester. The museum has a collection of old buildings from the area, including Titchfield market hall (just visible in the middle background of the first photo). It's a lovely place and during the summer, they run Wonderful Wednesday activity days, where they put on lots of traditional crafts & activities for the children to try. I organised a trip for our home ed groups, so there was quite a bunch of us there today. Tess thoroughly enjoyed the activities and made lots of things; Brodie was less interested in making stuff today, but really enjoyed playing the traditional games, running around the grass maze and visiting the buildings.

(sorry that the photo quality isn't too good - my compact camera was struggling with the very bright sunshine today, plus I discovered that Brodie had changed the settings so that it over-exposed a lot anyway!!! Still, you'll get the idea!).

Taking a horse-drawn wagon ride with friends ...

Dancing around the maypole .....

Making 2 ply wool .....

Brodie in the grass maze ....

Trying out traditional games .....

Tess made this friendship bracelet with her friend Teyha ....

Tess & Teyha making tudor style scented bath bombs .......

Brodie in 17th century Poplar Cottage, from Sussex, where he saw a live sparrow nest in the rafters .....

...and looking at the seeds and beans being dried in the garden .....

Tess and Hannah making bread .....

Tess had her face painted as a princess .....

Making a corn dolly ......

Teamwork on the water pump ......

The day's treasure: clockwise from top left, friendship bracelet, scented bath bomb, corn dolly, bread dough (after 2nd kneading at home), Brodie's candle, Tess's candle, the 2 ply wool that Tess helped twist .....

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a letter from senegal

We received a lovely letter today from our other sponsored child, Theodor, who lives in Senegal. He was very enthusiastic and extremely keen for us to visit!!! He has broken his hand, so is being provided with medication by World Vision, the company that organises the sponsorship .........

home education videos

Here are some interesting videos that have been made by the organisation Education Otherwise (one of the main charitable bodies which supports home educators) about home educating. These have been created in response to the recent consultation about monitoring home education, which was led by someone called Graham Badman. The government is now going through another (!) consultation to see which of the recommendations will be implemented.

Doctor Alan Thomas on informal learning

School is not compulsory

The concerns about the recommendations include that formal assessments of the standard of home education for a child will be made by people who do not understand or support non-schooling methods of education, that the review was based around home education as a possible cover for abuse or forced marriage and that there are some fairly strong powers of access to the home and to children (without parents present) being recommended as a result, even though the premise was found to be false.

More information about home education can be found on the Education Otherwise website and about the review on the organisation's campaign website, Freedom for Children to Grow:

Education Otherwise

Freedom for Children to Grow

a quiet day at home

My new resolution is to post more frequently about our day to day activities as well as bigger trips and holidays, so here are some pics to show a few of the things we did on our home-based day today .......

We were excited to get a letter from one of our sponsored children, Silveria, who lives in Bolivia. It was a short note written on Silveria's behalf by her brother Vicente, thanking us for the colouring pens and book we had sent with our previous letter, and included a photo of her with these things (we are going to assume that she was happier to receive them than she looks!) ......

Brodie built a huge train track .....

Both Tess & Brodie had a play on the computer, including Education City (for some reason, they keep doing the number & colour games in German and Spanish, where the words are spoken and you have to click on the correct item, so Tess in particular is starting to recognise a few of these words) ....

Making fresh fruit smoothies ........

... and more importantly, drinking (and enjoying!) them ......

We started a slightly (but hopefully not too) ambitious project today to make bunting to hang around our tent when we go camping. I had a bit of a brainwave to combine two planned projects into one, and so we are going to use a variety of fabric dying techniques to decorate the individual flags (bunts??) instead of using normal coloured fabrics. Today, we mainly did the preparatory work of cutting out and sewing the flags. And Tess & Brodie decorated a few with some colourful fabric crayons. For the rest of the flags, we will be using dyes to try out tie dye, batik and African paste dying. We are camping with some friends over the bank holiday weekend, so it will be good if we can get the bunting finished by then.

Tess is getting quite adept with the sewing machine now, and was managing to sew the individual flags on her own .......

In training for future child labour (I can hope!) .....

Using the fabric crayons ......

Brodie proudly displaying his designs ......

....... which don't really show up at all in these photos, but seemed to comprise dismembered train and digger parts - he was obviously going for the Picasso approach to drawing today!!!! .....

Tess was a little more traditional, with a castle complete with duck pond, a cake (with a cherry on top) and a rainbow ....

portchester castle

We spent a lovely day at Portchester Castle yesterday with our friends Chrissy, Teyha & Zeanne .....

quest seekers reading challenge

Tess & Brodie have signed up for the Quest Seekers reading challenge being run by the local libraries during the summer holidays. They have to read or listen to 6 books over the summer, and get a poster & stickers as they complete each book plus a medal at the end of the challenge.

4 books completed .......

A couple of Tess's books - Dog Friday (audio book) and Scratch & the Ragged Reef (both rated as 'brilliant') ......

Unfortunately, Brodie insisted on using a smudgy pen, but hopefully you can just about make out where he has written 'snowed' - for Bob the Builder's Snowed Under story - also rated as 'brilliant' (the other book was One Pig went for a Drive in his Car) .......