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Monday was a much looked forwards visit to Knebworth House for a writing event. Although initially we hadnt planned bb to do much writing, she did and really loved it. they all got to look around the house and then end up in the library to think about creative writing. it started with an ‘it was a adark and stormy night’ . The rainedrops, manor borns and fishes were there too. SO after the morning of a tour and a creative writing ghost story challenge, then they got to play outside. There was a fantastic water play area so they all got pretty wet! Wonderful day, so thanks to M for organising it so far in advance.

Tuesday was bookish in the morning and then chemistry in the afternoon. I’m not exactly sure what they were doing, but it certainly looked very pretty when i got home!

Weds will get its own blog post, as it is our typical home ed day 2014

Thursday was a clarinet and oboe lesson for the girls, and then multisports. Our friend B took the kids in for sports with her own, and then they all went to the water park afterwards – yes more water! – as DH was putting up our tent for Kentwell. B will stay in it the first week, and we will the second, so lots of tent for little effort . The usual guides and scouts in the evening as well.

Friday was a great day into London, they had a bus tour ride, a boat ride along the river Thames, visited the sights – trafalgar square, tower bridge etc and I was hoping DH or one of the girls might blog it, since I wasn’t there!

[photos to follow]

Each year I spend one day taking a few more photos and planning to write up in more detail one day, our typical day of the year! Traditionally a May thing, I realised we had got to June, so I had better get going to it. SO like most of the typical year posts, it didn’t start bright and early in the morning. We are perhaps not a bright and early morning family

We started with all 3 girls doing conquer maths. Conquer maths has been a really good fit for all of them. SB loved singapore maths, but having got to 6B before going to france, she came back ready for something else. SInce it had suited BB we signed up all 3 girls to it. I have a suspicion that FrB is doing far too easy a level [which she denies] as she is doing a year below her maths, whilst SB is half way through the KS4 maths. we are in no hurry for her to do her gcse maths, but at this rate she may be doing it in the next year or 2.

Sticking with an all 3 girls theme, they all moved onto English next, and there was some jollity that at least for 2 of them, this was about suffixes or prefixes. BB has liked the collins English, and has nearly finished the 3 first books. FrB is on those for 10 year olds now as I insisted the easier books were far too easy and she needed to move on! SB is galore park-ing it. Since SB’s takes longer, the 2 other girls did both the grammar and the spelling books – with encouragement!

After this FrB did some oboe practice, and SB then did her clarinet practice. FrB said she was preparing an animation sketch for the sylvanians in the dining room, but I happen to know she was mostly playing with them FrB and BB have quite a lovely time playing with the sylvanians!

I went out and picked some fruit from the garden to eat – mostly strawberries and raspberries, and we had a punnet of blueberries – yum! SInce we had some abominable squirty cream in the fridge, the kids squirted their fruit. for lunch we had toasted sarnies. I love that we have little nanny’s toasted sandwich maker as it makes me happy to look at it

After lunch we dual tasked and baked fruit scones and cheese scones, and also read and wrote about William and the battle of Hastings in our history journal. I have a number of books we read with this, but the usbourne ones are excellent! The girls take turns reading sections and then decide what they want to put into the history journals. Bb decided she had done a lot of writing, so told me what to write and drew a pic of harold getting an arrow in his eye. She plans to put in the conquering/ran out of conkers joke as well. FrB put in a ‘funny imagined speech’ allegedly by william 1, and sb chose a variety of elements. SInce they can’t share books and write at the same time we had FrB and BB writing whilst SB made the cheese scones, and then whilst she wrote, the other 2 made fruity scones. Works for us!

SO, scones cooked and tested – yum! and the history journals completed, we went outside to sit by the pond. BB was having a go up and down her ramp on skates, and SB also had a go, whilst bb changed to skateboard – very brave! we settled to aboriginal dot art as our crafty thing after much deliberation, using the pretend oil pastels from djeco. Alfie the tortoise got a bath as it was gloriously sunny, and i did a bit of fruit garden tending.

Winding down our home ed, SB, FrB and I played the game forbidden island, whilst BB went minecrafting. The girls then all had judo, where they got to collect their certificates, so I got to sit in on the lesson.

perhaps not the most exciting home ed day in the world, but it works for us!

OK OK, I have missed out the home ed during the week. I know it happened! I can’t really remember what, and will come back to here to update when raided the phone and camera for photos and slot in a post! i do know that we had a weds4ed, so that will def have to have a slot!

However, on Friday we went down to my parents for a visit. Nice straight run there and no hold ups on the M25 – always nice and we got there late evening for tea and bed. the next day we went to the nearest town so the girls could enjoy bowling with grandad, and then had an early fathers day meal at Frankie and Bennies – which we all really enjoyed. Rather amazingly BB won the bowling! it was a close run thing, and DH thinks he will have the rails up next time he plays . Mum and I did some sneaky shopping in M and S and then cheered them on

After lunch we went to West Wycombe caves and the Hellfyre club. It is quite different to places we have visited, and BB and SB interested, but forgot that FrB is ultra sensitive to creepy. It really isn’t that creepy, but she was quite quick to come out and have an icecream Told them all the history tho, and it is pretty cheap visit and quite interesting for a short hop!

SUnday we went to Waddesdon manor, home of the de rothschilds. it was fantabulous! luckilly National trust – we have really made use of our national trust cards this year! It is sort of designed to be a pseudo french chateau, and having visited lots of mediaeval castles, i thought we were due a more modern look! The house was really interesting, and the guides informative. We loved nosing in the rooms. FrB has really got the hang of talking to all the guides and experts. She had visited a rotshchild residence in the south of france and was comparing and contrasting. After the house we had a picnic in the gardens before going onto the play area, where the girls spent quite some time having fun . We finished in the stableyard looking at a roman mosaic imported from Israel. [oh and the had an icecream as it was a really hot day!]

We had a lovely weekend at mum and dad’s thankyou [will add pics as available]

I have to admit to writing this 4 weeks away, and being not at all certain of the week! certainly the usual things will have happened – ballet, swimming, judo, cubs/guides and the girls clarinet and oboe lesson. I know roller skating was an option on the monday pm, but all the girls were still too tired from our fortnight away and had a stay at home day. I am fairly certain there was either botany or chemistry on the tuesday afternoon. Prob botany, as they had some plants that they were to hide patches on the leaves to see what the difference was and then do chromatography the next time to look at chlorophil components.

Weds was a home ed weds meet up, always good to have everyone! We did crayon art – sticking crayons to card and melting them with hairdryers on a slope. then we put silhouettes over the top. they were remarkably effective even if they were quite messy! For science I did some more of the kitchen science mooc. we were working out how we could measure the amount of vit c in a litre of apple juice. quite cleverly done, using the power of redox! there was some musicality too – always good and photos will be added!

Thursday the big girls had their clarinet and oboe lessons and BB had young engineers. They made compasses and learned about pivots and force. She had a great time and has been really absorbed by young engineers and it has really suited her.

[photos to follow]

The holiday wasn’t over yet though! still a further week of fun and excitement. The children and DH ran away with the circus! Well, they camped in Norfolk as part of a home-ed circus skills camp. I managed to go to the first day, but then i had to go back to work It was EVER SO miserable leaving them there to go home.

They got to spend the first day trying out various different circus skills, and BB had a dramatic fall from tightrope and managed to scrape all her shin. they didn’t quite have an adequate enough first aid kit, which surprised me, but luckilly I had some dressings at the tent. BB however, was pretty brave and did manage to carry on. luckilly she had already tried aerial – which she had enjoyed – as she then decided she couldnt really do it due to the hurty shin. SB chose to specialise in hoops and then acrobatics. FrB decided to specialise in the aerial. She also did some work with the poi. It all looked so fabulous, and so likely to be a wonderful week it was hard to leave! The kids did all have a great time, and DH took some pics of the circus show they put on.

Various of our home ed friends were there too, so had a fabulous time altogether.

We have some friends that live in a fabulous house at the end of civilisation with a field that can put up tents that are small and low lying and react well with wind! i think most of us now have tents specifically for their field and every whitsun bank for an eternity they have a party. This year lots and lots of friends could make it, including those that now are ridiculously far flung and ultra remote on tiny scottish islands!

So we had a lovely time, chatted to lovely friends, ate lovely food and generally felt loved and happy aren’t we so lucky to have this family group of friends . Kids ran around and were crazy, got totally wet doing a stream walk, had a fab time in their individual groups.

When you write this in Latin, it becomes clear that the Normans were Vikings… ANyway, we went to LIndisfarne. it was a grey drizzly day to start with, and BB was a bit nervous about the causeway, absolutely sure we were going to be trapped on a remote island, and even seeing how inhabited the island was didn’t really reasure her!

We went to Lindisfarne Abbey and the museum, contemplated the lindisfarne gospels, the history of st cuthbert and the attacks of the Viking raiders on northumbria [hence title] . that morning we had read about viking raids in our english history project, so all tied in rather nicely. We also walked around the coastline a bit, found a geocache and the kids and dh scrabbled to a little island. however my hip had been too hippish, so didn’t want to fall off the rocks!

having looked at Bamburgh castle all week, this was our final destination on the Saturday. It has a fantastic history of occupation from Saxon times onwards [covered in history] It is very imposing and dominates the skyline frm beach and islands. It is privately owned but open to the publuic. the inside has an eclcetic collection of ‘stuff’ accumulated over time and it has a central norman keep [see those pesky vikings won out!] with accumulations of architecture subsequently! They were setting up for a viking living history event which unfortunately was starting the following day . ANyway, a good wander round, very interesting, and a FABULOUS teashop . The kids got to sit in a recreated anglo-saxon throne – they liked being queen

We did a shop in nearby seahouses and then the next day headed for Yorkshire, stopping at the iconic angel of the north on the way.

Thursday was absolutely raining cats and dogs. an entirely miserable looking day. after some discussion, we decided we needed to leave england, so on a whim, we took FrB up to scotland! It took a while to get there, and we did make her stand in the rain to have a photo with the entering scotland sign but finally we reached edinburgh. There was a bit of a heated debate over visiting the castle or the museum, and we went with FrB choice of castle, since it was ‘her’ day. BB slightly grumpaceous as feeling ‘castled out’.

Unfortunately we had left our English Heritage cards at home so it cost an arm and a leg – argh!!! But well worth the visit, and it is an ‘iconic edinburgh’ moment. we went via princes street gardens and the scott memorial first. quite a clamber up to the castle [and my hip not feeling friendly so harrump!] but we really enjoyed exploring it. I told the kids all about mary queen of scots, and the interelationships with the other tudors whether they listened or not and we saw the stone of scone and royal bits and bobs including a wand! FrB rather taken aback by soldiers in kilts.

when we left the castle we had to run the gamut of the tourist shops! eek!! we went in every single one on the royal mile, but the kids didn’t buy too much. In the end we needed a cafe stop to reinvigorate, but all were shut! Panic! 3 cheers for cafe nero.

I am giving this a separate post because it was fantastic! on weds we booked to go to the farne islands to see puffins. I have never been to the farne islands before, and we booked a boat trip with serenity which took as round the islands before landing on inner farne to view the chapel and nesting birds. The guide was very informative, the boat comfy and we got a really close up look at the cliffs and the seals. The island itself had lots of nesting birds, with the arctic terns being right on the path in places so that they would fly up and dive bomb to protect their eggs. we tried hard to avoid upsetting them. at the cliff top we were so close to the chicks we could have touched them. and we loved the puffins . well worth a trip.

having driven up from hadrians wall, we quickly put the tent up to reverberating thunder. we stayed at a nice campsite in budle bay. after a discussion, we also put up the porch. mostly because the weather forecast was a bit iffy, and the thunder was concerning me. a good thing too! it rained buckets that evening and even hailed. the thunder and lightening was a bit extreme! BB was actually pretty scared, and we ended up having a beans on toast supper to cheer people up before snuggling down for the night.

The next day [Monday] was gloriously sunny and we decided to spend it at the beach. Bamburgh has a fabulous long sandy beach of perfection. has sand dunes, gently slopes into the sea, there are some rock pools and it overlooks the farne islands and is overlooked by a castle. What more could you want oh, and yes, as I said, it was sunny . It is still the North Sea, so wetsuits for the kids on the boogie board! when we were kids we would swim and then be wrapped in towels and handed a cup of tea to warm up. Lots of pootling around on the beach, in the pools, swimming in the sea. FrB and BB ran up and down an exposed dune and then made sandcastles. SB read a book. I did some sewing, as rather behind on my kentwell sewing

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The girls were desperate for a BBQ, so that evening we had halloumi and veg kebabs and veggie sausages BBQ with choc banana for pudding. Very Nice!

tuesday was a slightly iffy weather day, so we decided to go to Alnwick castle and gardens. we really should have just done one of them, as we saw a lot of the gardens and hardly any of the castle [tho did visit the state rooms] and it is quite expensive! We started with the poison gardens, which SB [ as a stillroom apprentice] and I found fascinating, and our guide was informative. BB also found it surprisingly interesting, but FrB just found it a bit creepy, and even though we discussed the medicines bit, I think she was bemused about being told about all these plants that could kill people. I loved the beech walk and we all loved the watergarden. My favourite planting was the alliums and tulips in the meadows. It was perhaps the wrong time of year to visit a garden and look at the planting! We couldn’t resist the treehouse and had lunch in the potting shed and a race around the rope bridges.

The first couple of Harry Potters were filmed here, and there are various bits relating to that at the castle. However, we didn’t actually get to those bits before they shut – oops! but did go round the staterooms, along the curtain wall, in and out of various little museums and had a wander and thought we might need to visit again.

I wish I had known BB had flowers in her mouth!!