wodensmeet – nonsense poetry and disgusterous experiments

It was a full wodensmeet this time – well nearly and we were late due to a combination of police/ambulance and tractors causing quite an add on to usual journey time . however, the girls were happy to walk straight into an activity and get started. With a change of technique, i have given BB a single refusal card she can ‘play’ at any time, but for that I am allowed to tell her to do some other home ed from my box at any time. We had an agreement. this is because she can sometimes take ‘so long’ warming up that an activity is nearly done, and then she loves it. Other times she remains reluctant, and it is v difficult to see which she is being – hence the refusal card. This session she used it for french conversation.

We started with a craft zoe had set up, decorating jars with wrapping paper to use [presumably??] as gift containers for xmas? BB won’t part with hers, but SB does plan to use it. Since they were happy, i took that time to write out some easy to v v easy recorder parts for a piece of renaissance and a piece of tudor music. Chatting to Merry, Zoe and Em as we went on.

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BB finished quite quickly, so came and did a small bit of explode the code, the children then played and we set up science for me, and silly words poetry with Merry. for the poetry, the girls all had to think of lots of rhyming words, assonance, alliteration etc and then make a nonsense poem [+/- illustration] BB and J again shared their poem, and BB loves doing things with J, so this works well. My girls did poetry first and then science after lunch.

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i was mostly talking about eating and the early bit of digestion. SO had set up the table with variety of foods in the sweet, sour, salty, bitter and just plain nasty categories, blindfolded the children and the taste testing began! They were pretty good at it, made some great faces along the way! and then identified bits of tongue that were better than others. I love tamarind paste, and it surprised me that only BB really seemed to appreciated its fruity bitterness, and most others, including adults, had a wrinkled face look, and Em only managed to swallow with extreme willpower!

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After they had swigged drinks and swilled their mouths we then moved on to see how salivary amylase worked to kickstart the digestion process. I just used flour, and those that put more flour than i suggested in had to do a lot of spitting!! we then added pre-diluted iodine, and saw that we made a black blue solution, as iodine is an indicator for the presence of starch. then we got spitting and shaking until most of us managed to break down the majority of the starch, and the solution went a yellow colour again. obviously time, not just volume of spit plays its part in this process, but it took so long to spit 1/3 of a test tube… We then talked about polysaccharides being broken down into mono and disaccharides on the whole by the action of amylase. We finished by adding acetic acide to all the test tubes to mimic stomach contents. This puts a halt to the amylase reaction as it is denatured. we could see some appearance of ‘curdled spit’ – lovely

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O had run out of whatever toddlers run out of, so the children ran about playing a game for a bit, and then I offered singing – so we are gradually learning the ash grove as a new earworm a quick google for the words and a make up harmonisation and we were away. a few more times to get it under our belt I think . Em then got the bells out, and the children shew us how much they had remembered from last time = loads Only BB and J weren’t so keen, and BB shew off her ds draw game and they were both v happy.

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Sb did a short piano prac including duets with me, and a short treble practice [so we left the book at zoes :roll:] and BB also did a short recorder prac – just trying to get her confident with c and d, and she is pretty much there. SB, em and I had a go at our adapted renaissance and tudor tunes. deciding the tudor sounded best with a garklein tune, and the renaissance with a treble. S wanted to join on the piano, necessitating a quick part written with her range in mind. then adapted as the piano is a whole tone out…

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Merry got all the kids [bar bb and j] to read out their nonsense poetry, which was all fab, and then had to leave. the rest of us finished with some line dancing and an early dinner before setting off home. Thanks again to zoe for great hosting .

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