June Inspiration

Summer has arrived. I know that officially, Summer doesn't begin until 21st but it feels like Summer. In the days when I was running a memory clinic, official advice was to allow 1st to 20th June as Spring or Summer. I'm in the Summer camp.

We've had half term, this week. It has been great to stop and read more than usual. The younger two and I enjoyed our church outing and, on another day, wandering round a, new to us, park. 

This summer "pizza" is on my to do list for a hot day.

Wasting bits of bread was annoying me. This post has 20 ideas to avoid wasting bread.

Our home education group is hoping to have a science theme, next year. These videos about each element in the periodic table are a tremendous resource. We are also looking forward to taking part in the Royal Society Young People's Book Prize judging again. The books arrived today and my own children are very excited about their sneak preview!

There is a trend to try to measure and test everything in education. This post is about those things that we can't measure.

My youngest has been talking about fidget spinners and today, made his own. He was inspired by this tutorial although he has made his own modifications. Try using red and blue bricks for the arms and see the effect.

Have a happy June!

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Awesome Lego Creations with Bricks you already have

I have been reading Sarah Dee's blog, Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls, for some years. There are so many  clever, fun and frugal ideas so I was delighted that I was able to review Sarah's book, Awesome Lego Creations with Bricks you Already have. 

Like many other people, we have a collection of Lego pieces and it always seems disappointing that often Lego is sold in sets which only make one item. It has been great to have a book to inspire us to  use Lego in more imaginative ways.

The book has two types of projects: Step by Step and No-Instruction Creative challenges. The first type of project has a precise list of parts and detailed step by step instructions while the latter type of projects list the key elements needed but then provide pictures and some less detailed instructions. Altogether there are fifty projects covering robots, knights and dragons, vehicles, Lego town, animals, games and seasonal ideas. My own favourite section is the games section which includes instructions of making a Lego chess set, a lovely and simple brain teaser, table football and more.

Vet Office

The creative challenges have been most popular here as we have been able to substitute for blocks that weren't in our collection and also, because Younger Son likes to take a project and make it his own.

This photo is Younger Son's take on one of the no-instruction creative challenge mini vehicle.

This book has been fascinating, partly, because of insights into how Younger Son likes to play with Lego. The book led to a flurry of Lego building and precipitated Younger Son's own projects which he was very anxious not to take to pieces and decided to display. 

This is an ideal book for young Lego enthusiasts. It is available in the UK, on Amazon and on Amazon.com in the US. It would make a great Christmas present.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review. I was not required to give a positive review. The opinions are my own and those of my family.

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Glorious guttering-frugal fun

Last year, we had to have some guttering replaced. There were some lengths left which were just sitting in a shed. These seemed ideal for play use.

The lengths are plastic and without sharp edges. Obviously, this is only frugal if you happen to have some guttering sitting around although planks of wood could be used equally well for some of the activities. It would be more important to secure these carefully due to their weight.

I put the guttering up at different heights on the slide. This didn't interest the children so they asked me to move things around and made race tracks with the guttering from the swing into the "jungle" of weeds.

This kept them busy for a fair time but putting the guttering on the ground provided some impromptu balance boards. There was plenty of talk about acting out Mirette on the highwire. I did intervene to prevent attempts at walking on guttering suspended on the swing!

Water came next. Anything outside tends to involve water.

Making a water wall needed plenty of practice!

Finally, we hunted for snails for a snail race. Amazingly, we only found one; perhaps, there are so many slugs that the snails don't have a chance. The one we found seemed more interested in escaping perhaps because there were so many squeals about its size.

I'm sure that these two pieces of gutter are likely to provide more fun over the summer before I put them to another purpose-maybe bookshelves or planters?



This is linked to 4 weeks of frugal fun, the weekly kids co-op, Science sparks, Living Life Intentionally and Summer-Sensory-Fun.

Lists and the great outside

This holidays we have used a rough list of possible activities. This has worked really well. We haven't done everything but it has been useful to have ideas. Having this as a reference point has meant that we have done more than we would have done without.  It can be easy for holiday time to just get lost. I'm already thinking about a summer list so was rather interested to see that the National Trust has produced 50 things to do before you're 11 3/4. The aim is to get children off sofas and into the open air.

This fascinating list includes skimming stones, rolling down a hill climbing trees, canoeing, mud slides, throwing snow, light a fire without matches, find a geocatch and abseiling.

 My three year old has done 15 of these-not abseiling- and I'm not too sure about encouraging more eating apples straight from trees. My 11 year old is running out of time and has about 15 that he hasn't done. I'm planning to use this for ideas although haven't decided about signing up for the whole challenge yet.  Some aren't practical yet-not sure about 3 year olds canoeing but a mud slide is another matter. I'm just surprised that with all the interest in mud and mud painting this hasn't happened yet.

 There must be some doubt about how accessible some of these ideas are for many families-there are significant costs to canoeing, bouldering and  abseiling. In some ways it is a shame that they didn't keep to the large number of free or low cost items. However, this list is worth a browse even if you don't decide to go for the whole 50.

Spending time with older children-games

Whilst I'm not a great fan of computer games because they seem to take up sooo much time, it did seem reasonable that if I was hoping to spend time with Middle Son then computer games would have to be part of the equation.

Racing car games make me feel sick and crash so many times that if it was real, I would be uninsurable after one round. The time had come to try something different-Minecraft. I had heard plenty about this from my son so now my turn to sample it. It transpires that Middle Son is a bit of a pro and I really didn't know what I was doing. I managed to walk forwards, backwards and to each side but perhaps better, I have more idea about the servers and the aim of the game.

Playing Minecraft with Middle Son gave me much more idea about his current interests than the more traditional games. Probably something that I should repeat-occasionally.

On to more traditional games, I avoided Monopoly and Risk as they take hours and realistically I don't have that sort of time out of holiday seasons. Middle Son would be delighted to spend an evening on one of these games-probably a Christmas treat.

We actually played Scrabble. Yes, we enjoyed it but Middle Son felt that this was a bit like work as a couple of years ago, I did allow him an end of home education week treat of a game of Scrabble. The strange benefit is that Miss Belle was desperate to have a go so I've had to pull out the Junior Scrabble and have now played with her, a couple of times.

Verdict:

• Good to get more insight into computer games and no, I'm not addicted
• I need to try another board game with Middle Son which he doesn't link with education.
• Junior Scrabble is a good way of getting a bit of extra reading/spelling practice without little people noticing.

Outside my comfort zone

Mr Exuberance and I, with a little help from Miss Belle, have been taking part in the 30 days of Play challenge.

Each day has a different challenge and the idea is to play, with your child, using the challenge as a starting point for an uninterrupted 15 minutes.

So far, we have done reasonably well. We missed a few days but I always knew that we weren't going to do the weekend days and Monday just got tagged onto the weekend.

Anyway, today's challenge was a sensory tub. This is way out of my comfort zone. I'm not quite sure why.

Paint, play dough and mud don't cause me too much trouble providing they stay off carpets and walls but a sensory box. I think the problem is the mess. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a tidy person but those little bits they could go anywhere and it is doubtful that I will ever get round to resorting the box.

There is also the thought of putting your hand into who knows what. Shouldn't be a problem as I've filled the tub but should I ask the children to do something I don't want to do?

Well, I plucked up my courage and made a small sensory tub with a fitted lid. It seemed a bit safer that way.

The contents were

• shredded paper
• googly eyes
• pipe cleaners
• two small play people
• a flag
• paper straws
• lolly sticks
• Brio houses

The lid went safely on the box. The next thing I knew was that Miss Belle announced that there was a box in the kitchen with a big spider-the pipe cleaners, of course.

Miss Belle and I settled down with the box. Miss Belle quickly requested glue-sure that wasn't part of the idea. She wanted to use the house blocks and straws to make a church steeple. I can't say that the straws stuck too well. Most of the time was spent making a spider with googly eyes, again, involving large quantities of glue.

So it wasn't so bad. Later, we had a little accident with the cocoa pops. If I can keep my courage up all those cocoa pops that hit the wrong part of the kitchen could be used as the basis for another sensory tub-it would fit in so well with Mike Mulligan and the steam shovel.

Update

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 The picture used was taken only seven miles from central London. One of the advantages of home education is being free to enjoy the outside world. I, and I suspect, the children, will miss being able to go outside so much as winter draws closer.

I recently found The Song for the fifth child. This seemed especially appropriate, yesterday, reading, about the 30 days to hands on play challenge. This is a challenge to play with your child for 15 minutes a day without interruption.

15 minutes without interruption would be a major achievement in this house but amazingly I managed to achieve this today. Some how, I suspect that this might be the only time!

Today, the challenge was to build and play in a fort. Hmmm, I built a fort from chairs, cushions and a blanket but Mr Exuberance wasn't the slightest interested. He wanted to build "Eiffel da Tower" from Duplo and was also sure that it should only have one leg. Not sure that this was quite what was intended but he loved his playtime with Mum and went back to his tower later.

On a quite different theme, Jeremy Walker recently posted a poem, In the dark of night when hell comes knocking. The sort of poem to remember and think about especially in rhe "dark of night" physically and emotionally. That makes it sound too bleak, it really is an encouragement.

Firework playdough

We are coming up to Guy Fawkes night on 5th November. Last year, Mr Exuberance didn't like the sound of the fireworks so this year some preparation is needed.

Making some playdough seemed an idea way of talking about fireworks, and their sounds, whilst having an enjoyable time.

We made black cooked playdough using this recipe. Previously, I had managed to make some grey playdough so I was fairly generous with the black food colouring. Grey playdough is less than inspiring. We added loads of glittery shapes-the playdough seemed to eat the shapes. Maybe they melted but we used the whole of two little bottles. The glitter was designed to represent colourful fireworks against the black (playdough) sky.

We decorated lolly sticks with pipecleaners and strips of shiny paper to represent rockets and pompoms to look like large fireworks in the sky.

We talked about fireworks and loud bangs and how after the bangs there are beautiful colours. It became obvious that using the word "rocket" clouded things as Mr Exuberance thinks of rockets as transport to the moon!

I left the playdough out and over the afternoon, both Mr Exuberance and Miss Belle came and played with the fireworks altering their position and talking about them. Probably worth repeating over the next few weeks.

This is linked to It's playtime and Living Life Intentionally Linky Party.

Lasting toys for children

"Lasting" is relative in this title. What I actually mean is that the toy keeps the child occupied over months and years and is likely to be used by younger siblings in time.

In many ways the best toys aren't conventional at all. Some favourites here are

• sofa cushions for houses/dens/prisons/cages!
• the shower cubicle which is a fairly longstanding rocket
• duvets and pillows for mats/fights/tents/slides
• mud

On to more conventional toys and games
In our house, these games have endured

• The Spotty dog game. A fun method of learning numbers and counting to six.
• Number dominoes.
• The tummy ache game.
• Scrabble
• Monopoly
• BigJigs and other wooden puzzles with strong boxes. I find tidiness a major challenge and anything with pieces without a strong box is a problem.

These are the toys that have lasted. Our younger children still play with these, some over a decade and a half, after they were originally brought.

• Brio or other cheaper wooden equivalent train sets.Duplo
• toy cars
• dolls' house
• pop-up tent
• tea set and cooking things

Would love to know other families' favourite toys.

Gingerbread map

We've been reading "Climbing  Kansas Mountains" by George Shannon which talks about a salt dough map.

Within the last couple of weeks, we made a salt dough map of part of Africa. Eldest Daughter had told me then how much better it would have been if it had been made of cookie dough. I had this feeling that she was right so a cookie dough map it was.

Middle son traced an outline of England and Wales. We didn't put the dough on this but just used it for guidance. It saved the atlas!

We made up some gingerbread dough.

which we shaped into England and Wales-not quite to Ordinance Survey standards-and cooked.

We added cities with purple writing icing, the Thames with blue and the White Cliffs of Dover with white.

I have to say that Wales, Cornwall and the Lake District are no more but it was a fun way to learn.

This is linked to It's Playtime.

Apple art

We have some very fruitful apple trees and have been enjoying the fruit in various guises. There are a fair few windfalls in reasonable condition so we used these for some art.

If you do this, please be careful to make sure that the apples used aren't harbouring wasps. I used fresh windfalls which were either in good condition or had some bruising.

First, the apples were painted

and then rolled on a long piece of brown paper.

Different coloured paints to add different trails.

We then cut some apples in half and did some printing. Not quite sure why the foot was involved although hand and foot prints inevitably happened a bit later.

Finally, at least for now, we made some apple faces using acorns which also seem to be plentiful this year, twigs and leaves stuck on with a bit of force and PVA glue.

This is linked to It's Playtime.

Goldilocks and the three/four bears

We've had a week of bear books, bear hunt, acting out bear stories.

Today, we've made some Goldilocks and the three bears puppets and told the story round the house.

We made the models from card

which the younger children decorated.

We fixed the characters to chop sticks with sticky tape and acted out the story.

This is Mother Bear with the porridge.

The story went all over the house

 and garden.

 Miss Belle was excited to tell the story

 and decided that there should really be four bears with Holly Bear being a bear away at university. We didn't get as far as making Holy Bear but then as she was absent it didn't matter.

This is linked to It's Playtime where there are many, many play ideas.

For little boys

This is in E Nesbit's "The Story of the Treasure Seekers" and made me smile.

Oh when I wake up in my bed
And see the sun all fat and red,
I'm glad to have another day
For all my different kinds of play.


There are so many things to do-
The things that make a man of you,
If grown-ups did not get so vexed
And wonder what you will do next.


I often wonder whether they
Ever made up our kinds of play-
If they were always good as gold
And only did what they were told.


They like you best to play with tops
And toys in boxes, brought from shops;
They do not even know the names
Of really interesting games.


They will not let you play with fire
Or trip your sisters up with wire,
They grudge the tea-tray for a drum,
Or booby-traps when callers come.


They don't like fishing, and it's true
You sometimes soak a suit or two:
They look on fireworks, though they're dry,
With quite a disapproving eye.


They do not understand the way
To get the most out of your day:
They do not know how hunger feels
Nor what you need between your meals.


And when you're sent to bed at night
They're happy, but they're not polite,
For through the door you hear them say:
"He's done his mischief for the day!"

Eczema friendly clean mud

Anna at the Imagination Tree, posted about making clean mud.

The clean mud looked great fun but I knew that it would be bad news to expose my child, with eczema, to vast quantities of soap but he would love anything resembling mud. So, we made an eczema friendly version.

First, the emollient was poured out into a tray with some torn up kitchen roll. It didn't come out of the pot very well.

Some red food colouring was added and mixed.



We mixed the two together and Miss Belle decided that she didn't like the paper.

Two children then played and standing in the mixture seemed to be best.

We tried footprints but they were a bit smeary.

Miss Belle ran around shouting, "This is such fun" and Mr Exuberance's eczema didn't get worse-in fact his feet and ankles seemed to benefit!
Then back to the real mud.

Warning: emollient may make the children prone to slipping. We didn't have any problems with this but were working outside and most of the running was done on grass.

This is linked to It's Playtime where there are many, many play ideas.