Card making, sculptures and wind tunnels...

This is Miles cracking an egg. He can actually crack an egg on his own with no help and gets no shell in the bowl. He loves to do it. 

Full egg..

A break occurs after one or two gentle taps...

He pulls the shells apart...  

And voila... 

Impressive or what !! No shell!! It's great getting actual help with baking from my 3 year old! Ha! 

Then he played with the steam - he said 'evaporation'. 

We went to a Mothers Day card making session for under 8 home educated kids. There were a few people they know well there. 

Miles is pretty good with scissors, he does well with all things manual. He is quite a doer!

Sticking hearts, flowers and squares onto a card. 

Then he 'wrote' his message inside. (Loads of splodgy squiggles)

Then I showed Caden, who has been unwell today, how to stencil with felt tips. He liked it so got stuck into the space stencilling. 

Meg, Betsey and Fred arrived so Miles rather proudly showed his friend what he had been making. 

I don't know how to rotate this photo. You can see the rocket stencilling Caden did and the words he wrote in the card for his Dad (for Mothers day, bless). 

Miles card, that was re-labelled as a sword, scrunched up and brandished as one at me.... and his squiggled on envelope. 

Caden watched the older boys play cards, deadly 60. 

Caden and I read about meteorites and meteors, we talked about orbits which tied in nicely with our conversation about gravity and the experiment we watched this morning. 

Selfie! 

Caden got to watch spray paint being put through some stencils, that was pretty cool!

Then Jo and I took the kids to see some sculptures. There was a mini stone henge that they played on. We talked about how it was a replica of the actual one and discussed it briefly. 

We talked about what 3D is, the three dimensions and were able to demonstrate them by way of this very practical resource. 

Caden is very interested in the pyramids at the moment so he was happy to see these. 

We saw a spiral too and noticed how the posts decreased in height the further away from the centre it got. 

They had lunch and then got a lot of mileage out of the playgym.

Then Jo and I took the kids to see the wind tunnel at Airkix. We talked about the giant fan and how the air in the wind tunnel blows at nearly 100mph and lifts people off the floor. They learned about skydiving and watched a very technical indoor skydiver make minute movements with her hands to move her body around in the tunnel. It was very cool to watch and they were all very excited about it. 

Miles found superman on the ceiling. 

Then we came home and Miles drew the toppings on ice creams and faces in photo frames for me. 

A very very busy day today. We have got a lot out of it. 

Plasma

http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_plasma.html

This morning we talked about atoms. Caden and I have talked about them before so he is familiar with the idea. He asked what Ne meant (In the link) so we talked about and looked at the periodic table briefly and about elemental gases. He finds this stuff interesting.

We talked about plasma and stars and light bulbs. He had a basic introduction to electrons though its a bit beyond him right now. I think we could get into diagrams of atoms soon and maybe even model making if he likes it so much. He ran off and switched on the light to show me how he could make plasma .

We also had a conversation about gravity and looked at an online experiment where a sheet of fabric (the fabric of space time) dips according to the weight (mass) of the ball (earth) placed on it. Then if we roll a smaller ball onto the fabric we could see how it naturally went towards the original ball. This experiment shows how gravity works.

Last few days..

A summary of some things we have done over the last few days. 

Miles and I made a marble run. We tried it with one marble at a time and loads at once. 

Caden hid Miles in a house of his own, they even lined it with a soft towel. 

We went out on our bikes in the rain. It has rained a lot and been cold lately but they needed to be out. 

Another playground. 

We baked a cake and they went crazy with the decorating!

They REALLY enjoyed eating this! 

Caden and I made a lego helicopter. Caden did pretty well, working through a lot of the steps himself. 

The finished product, being flown around. 

Miles went to the supermarket with his friend Meg. They had a great time together. Meg's jazz hands here! 

They played at Meg's house together. Trampoline...

Making a dinosaur land together. 

Getting their guns ready!

Another playground in Aylesbury after Forest school. They went very high on this. 

Tackling the wobbly bridge. 

See saw. 

Running around a spirally planted patch of daffodils.

Then on the way home we found some interesting Spring items. This was a physalis, decayed to it's leaf skeleton but still retaining its shape. Very beautiful. 

Finding catkins...

Smelling the blossoming privet hedge. 

A laurel leaf.

Caden shows Miles an interesting bit of moss he has found. 

Dandelion leaf, edible. 

Lavender, Caden's favourite. 

False nettle and ivy leaf. 

At home Miles painted his truck. He abandoned it half way though as he lost interest and wanted to play with his friends who arrived. 

Little Alex in the garden. 

Miles and Alex playing in the log cabin. 

Miles and Alex find an earthworm. 

Miles and Arthur play with Ben Ten Aliens, comparing bigness and fighting them mid air. 

Caden did some excellent reading, he read from the science experiment book. He is doing very well with larger and more obscure words lately I have noticed. Street names too. 

They also had a play at Ikea with their friend Harlow. 

There have been lots of good social things going on over the last few days. The Forest school teacher said that Caden has made amazing progress in the time he has attended. He has developed confidence in relating to the children and parents who attended. He made a penguin out of rope this week and joined the big boys in their stick den. I am looking forward to him going back.