TheB and co joined us today for weds4ed and we had a great time. although again had a 24 hour shift, i did at least get to spend the post midnight on call bit of it at home! so not as shattered as last week. i did some prep, looked up Mondrian, printed bits off, and looked up what is doable with what i have of the next section of young engineers. need to speak to bigger group about what they want to commit to tho, as it does cost to do any others due to kit considerations.
so here we are doing oils in the style of mondrian, having heard a bit about his life, the movement, and the progession of his art and vision of the future.
when the paintings are dry, we plan to go over the lines with black thick marker – steadier than paint! it was good to use a different medium of oils onto oil paper, and we got quite differing things out of the brief. Kids all enjoyed it, and i think also enjoyed using oils for a change. When they are complete they will go into the ‘tableau’ shot!
TheB then did maths games whilst i got the pasta going. a nine mens morris game, followed by a cunning card strategy game. This week BB in a far better frame of mind and enjoyed playing all the games. I am intrigued enough by the card game to have a few iterations of it to see what the best strategy would be
The young engineers activity this time [from the Be ENGineous section, as I am a registered Young Engineers leader] was producing, packaging and marketing bathbombs. I just happened to have all the ingredients. I have to say, it did surprise me a bit that bath bomb making was in the younge engineers stuff, but the kids really enjoyed doing it. They did it all very nicely, and found helping each other worked better. R’s was very puffy to start with, but did solidify!
we then tried out one of the bathbombs each in warm water. BB’s didn’t come out of the ramekin, but it did demonstrate very nicely that the reaction is endothermic, as the water in the ramekin became quickly cooler. Following this was some messy water play… 
The children finished off at minecraft. unfortunately i had a ‘short conference call’ lasting nearly an hour!! we said goodbye to TheB , BB did some non verbal reasoning and piano prac, but unfortunately went completely wobbly over the theory – i thought the jump was too big, and now we are at an impasse… i am sure we can sort this out. She enjoyed judo, and we snuggled watching a film rather than her minecrafting the evening away.
