Reuben's dreadlocks

In my opinion Reuben has gorgeous hair, he loves it long and it makes him instantly recognisable.

We have had a bit of a problem lately though as he doesn't like to have it brushed, I used to put a lot of conditioner on it once a week and brush it in the bath but he has now refused to be subjected to this! The result of course has been a lot of knotted hair at the back. After much discussing the issue, absolute non concern on his part and much concern on mine (dirty hair, nits we might not be able to get rid of, it looks a mess and he might be teased, etc etc) he seemed happy to consider dreadlocks. I have never had them myself so off I went to research dread maintanance (with much help from my friend H) and they seemed harder to look after than regular hair. I wanted to avoid using products at this stage so I just separated the locks in the morning, he was ok with this! It still looked a horrible mess... As you can see below all that happened is that the tangles came together in long tangles and it looked nothing like dreads anyway.

A mess of matted locks

I even started to question my motives, he doesn't care why do I? NIts? They've never had them. Am I bothered about what people think? To an extent yes I am... but that's my problem, and I just like the boys to look nice. What does nice mean? According to what culture and to whose ideas? Do I have a cool hippie skater/surfer child look in mind? Oh dear, yes I think I do! So is there any way we can come to a good solution? I found it this morning while he was in the bath, he is still adamant that he wants it long and not brushed (he has two long baths a day so I'm not concerned with cleanliness) so I will still continue to separate the locks in the morning and if it gets too matted I will do what I did today: I took the scissors to it! Not to cut it but to separate the locks even further so he doesn't get the matted messy look, just lots of small thin locks. I think we are both ok with it now. Most people probably think this is madness, just hold him still and brush the damn hair! But I feel very respectful of his wishes, after all it is his head!

Our "good solution": lots of smaller locks

Nobel prize winner was told at school he had no chance in the sciences

Today John Gurdon must be a very pleased man at having jointly won the Nobel prize in medicine and a little bemused at the emergence of a school report from when he was 15 saying:

"I believe Gurdon has ideas about becoming a scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous; if he can't learn simple biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who would have to teach him."

But he seems to possess a great sense of humour, as the BBC reports:
Sir John Gurdon is relishing the story about his failings at school and how his teachers ridiculed any notion that he might pursue a career as a scientist. Dressed casually in a sweater, and rushed from his labs in Cambridge to face the world's media, a fine sense of humour allowed him to take today's tumult in his stride. When I met him, he admitted to being bemused that a Nobel attracted so much more attention than any other prize. I asked what he thought of the 50-year gap between publishing his ground-breaking paper, in 1962, and winning the award only now. Actually, he said, the experiment on the frog cells was carried out back in 1958 - "rather a long time ago", but he said, with infinite patience, that science works best by making sure one's theories are right.

I just loved this story and wanted to share!

Here we go

So welcome to science and fairies! This blog follows on from my personal one http://the-world-is-my-classroom.blogspot.co.uk/ as I felt that what people were most interested in (apart from my fascinating family of course!!) was a sharing of resources and ideas.

We are a home educating family based in the UK and follow an autonomous approach, I often find myself being grateful to other home ed families who share resources and was looking for a platform to pull things together, like art ideas, books and websites, things to do, anything really that makes our learning journey more interesting and fun. So here we are. In time it will all be divided into categories and I hope readers will be happy to comment and contribute themselves.

And why science and fairies? They are favourites in our house at the moment, along with trains, painting and modelling, reading and writing, the ipad, animals, walking in the woods, going to the cinema,  museums and castles, and so on and so on...