weds4ed november – no fireworks this time

trying to blog contemporaneously

It is hard to know what my lovely girls will remember of their childhood, and whether this blog will alter that. I hope they remember the love, laughter, crafting and hugs, and book reading! more like they will remember the nagging and that i always have a migraine. i don’t really, but it does often feel like that, and i had one all weekend, monday i managed to carry on tho speech slurred and stuttered by it, but poleaxed again on tues, and missed a day at work/study in the smoke which v sad about as 1) good to go to, 2) cost a fortune and 3) argh to work ramifications of sick leave

Hopefully they will remember days like this, where we had fun, laughed and learnt something. Weds4ed science is coming to the end of the plants – cos my lab assistant hasn’t quite cracked a working home made potometer – has 2 weeks to deliver! So we looked at structure today, both the stomata, and the vascular bundles. We chatted a bit again about plant respiration, how it works, what the plant needs, and set off the colour experiment and then did the stomata. Most of us have done the colour a lot – but celery/carnation etc in coloured water and look at where the colour is. We contemplated the properties of a successful dye to look at this, and did quite well, and then used methylene blue on dead nettles. Whilst this was doing the works, we plunged geranium leaves into boiling water. air in the leaves interstitium expands with the heat and is driven out – the only place to do this being through the stomata, so we could see loads of air bubbles on the underside and none on the top. v effective! we then put clear nail varnish on tops and bottoms of fresh leaves, peaed off when dried and looked for the stomata on the peelings – luckilly visible. finally we cut up the stems of the deadnettles, having had some conversation about what we might find, to anounce we were wrong I love a good microscope session where it all works as planned!

SB and jfish did some french, and then we all did some more of the degas modelling project. some are painting, some still wiring with modroc to do! plan is to then dress with material. SB’s is gold – of course! and afish no longer has a horse, but a dog!

other things this week – BB has v much enjoyed another wizards academy kit. we have made batteries from coins ages ago with wodensmeet at zoes, but i thing bb to young to remember, and loved doing again. SB has returned from SOTP where she spent the weekend celebrating a birthday. SHe successfully managed the 2 train changes on her own – v proud! [tho she chicked out of asking train trolley person for chocolate frogs]. She also got back in time for her offical entrance to air cadets – which she is very happy with.

this eve i played games with both girls – yahtzee with SB and bieberband with BB, which she loves. we finished the day snuggled up watching dr who