Ken Robinson lectures

Ken Robinson has been very influential in our household regarding philosophies of education and an overview of why schools are the way they are. We decided to opt out of the system for our children as we agree wholeheartedly with his point of view and feel that the boys have a better change to be creative and follow their individual calling outside of the classroom.

A bit about him: Sir Kenneth Robinson (Liverpool, 4 March 1950) is an English author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education, and arts bodies. He was Director of The Arts in Schools Project (1985–89), Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick (1989–2001), and was knighted in 2003 for services to education.
Originally from a working-class Liverpool family, Robinson now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Marie-Therese and children James and Kate.

The lectures we enjoyed were the ones he gave for the TED conference, the first one is called Do schools kill creativity? Pretty much self explanatory...



And then we really liked the RSA animate version of his talk, Changing Education Paradigms (I often feel I'm in a completely different paradigm, not to say parallel universe from most people)



I would also recommend his book Out of our minds, learning to be creative. It gives us hope that we can put passion and creativity in our lives and show the boys that these are a fundamental part of being human.

Fairy Houses

What a great idea!!

We were looking at how to make small wooden fairies and their houses and we came across this American website
 http://www.fairyhouses.com/pictures/how-to-build
It is the creation of artist Tracy Kane who initiated a fairy house building project in the US, she has written and illustrated a number of books on fairy houses in natural settings and the gallery page on the website is wonderful, we are now inspired to go out into the garden and build away.

So what are they exactly? In her words:
Fairy Houses are small structures for the fairies and nature’s friends to visit. Sticks, bark, dry grasses, pebbles, shells, feathers, seaweed, pine cones and nuts are just some of the natural materials used. Ranging from rustic to intricate ‘Fairy Mansions’, these whimsical habitats are built by children, families, gardeners and nature lovers reflecting their creativity, joy and pride.
The simple challenge of creating a fairy house gives children a unique activity that encourages them to go outside and connect with the natural world, nurturing care and respect for the environment.

The Usborne Children's Book of Baking

I cannot stress how great this book is, we have baked from it cover to cover and back again, Reuben loves it and makes biscuits or cupcakes most days with these recipes.

Cooking is very important to us, for the boys it's a lot of fun and of course they like to eat the end result, especially cakes and biscuits! From the learning point of view it's a great activity as the boys need to use numbers, have the ability to measure ingredients, read a recipe (still with my help) and understand how materials can change (freezing, heating) as well as being creative in decorating their creations.
Here are some of them:

Abstract flower shortbread biscuits

A "Reuben" fairy cake

Fairy cakes with buttercream topping

Washing up afterwards

Winter Dolphin

A while ago we bought a dvd called Dolphin Tale as the boys are big fans of dolphins (and whales), surprisingly this was a great advert for home education as one of the characters is a very happy and motivated home educated girl and the main character is having a lot of trouble at school. And it is the true story of a dolphin that gets tangled in nets and loses her tail, and the children who help her to swim again.

But aside from the home education angle, the boys got a lot out of this film, they found out about dolphins and animal injuries including prosthetic limbs (for humans too), they now know a lot about marine life rescue, they like to look at the aquarium website http://www.seewinter.com where there is a Winter (the name of the dolphin) webcam and just enjoy the story again and again.

The real Winter

Space poster

This came about by complete accident, a few days ago Reuben asked me to make something related to space, we had some large sheets of coloured paper in the corner which had been used to finger and feet paint on, so I thought it would be interesting to put some on the wall and see what we could do with it.

We all got to work, I found some black paper and chalks so while I made some rockets and planets to stick on, the boys drew some pictures. They experimented with dry and wet chalk to see which one stayed on best (the wet) and Isaac found some star stickers which also went on.
It was a lot of fun for all of us and the result is still on the wall.

London Zoo

Before I had children I was in two minds about visiting zoos, I know that the animals are all born in captivity and they would not be equipped to live in the wild, zoos offer a home for them, but I still felt very uneasy at watching them in the enclosures, especially great apes. I still feel uneasy but I also see how amazed the boys are at seeing the animals in real life, they love to watch animal based cartoons and programmes so it is very exciting for them to see the real thing. We have also visited rescue centres and found out about injured animals and how we can help.

 



So off we went last Sunday and it was certainly a very full day! We managed to see most of it, take part in workshops (see the shadow puppet show in my previous post), have lunch and numerous ice creams and play in the children's fun areas, we didn't try any of the playgrounds but that was just lack of time.

Here are some of the highlights for us:

The Okapi, is it a zebra? A horse? A small giraffe? The boys couldn't decide

The boys enjoyed the play areas set up for children throughout
 the zoo

The big cats, especially the tigers
 

The penguin beach, excellent!
One of the best I've seen
 

The giant Iguana the boys thought was a statue, then it moved!

The butterfly tunnel, it was wonderful, the boys loved the
butterflies flying all around them, I was a bit nervous at
squashing one though...

The bouncy castle!

The aquarium, especially the fish from the Finding Nemo film

It wasn't the cheapest of days out so we had to plan it carefully (we were not staying in London so had to think about trains and local transport too), but all the details can be found on the website http://www.zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo

Shadow Puppets at London Zoo

We were visiting London Zoo last Sunday and the boys wanted to go to the aquarium first (I think that the month in Cornwall gave them an interest in fish...) and we were pleased to find that a shadow puppet craft activity was going on inside. Reuben needed some help in making the puppet, but he had two willing helpers in me and my friend! The bit that absolutely fascinated him was making the puppets move afterwards.

Reuben's puppet is the small starfish on the left

The puppets were made by cutting out a shape on thick black card, we then added some holes to make patterns (we made round holes in the starfish) and covered them with shapes from transparent coloured acrylic sheets. We then taped a stick to the back with a paper clip at the end to give the fish a sense of movement.
The puppeteer was behind a big white screen lit from behind, Reuben went to join him with his finished starfish and listened intently to all the man had to say. He was moving his puppet and talking to the puppeteer for a very long time and we enjoyed seeing him so absorbed in an activity.