Not at school

So we spent the first Friday that the kids had off from school in the park.  We were supposed to take a picnic but after making packed lunches all week I couldn't face making another sandwich so we had lunch at the park cafe instead.  They played for hours and spent quite a bit of time in the sandpit... the little ones made a fort..

 and the big ones planned strategic manouvers based on specific scenarios that they took turns to make up...

 Daisy made dessert when we got home.  She planned what she was going to make, drew her shopping list and then went shopping with Crush to get all her ingredients and this is what we had... 

Strawberries in a melted ice cream sauce with ice cream, raspberry sauce and chocolate.  The melted ice cream certainly gave it a unique flavour that I'm not sure I want to try again lol.

 Then on Sunday we went to the centenary celebrations of the Leicester AERO (flying) club.  It was a blissfully warm day and very enjoyable although the kids were disappointed to have missed out on the free flights as they got booked up so quickly each time.

Replica of a WWII Doodlebug

Replica of a Lancaster or Spitfire [depending on which one of the kids you spoke to].

Lots of helicopters to look at.

Kids had an interesting chat to the glider pilot who explained how the glider flew and how to pilot it

A restored WWII Lancaster plane that did an amazing fly by right over the heads of the crowd.

Playing with the 'blues and twos' in the police vehicle.

We went to the fun day as Lego has expressed an interest in becoming a pilot for quite a while now and we did have a lovely day.  The best bit was that the boys got to chat to some really interesting characters including old pilots both private and from the RAF... it was really strange listening to Lego chat to a retired RAF pilot about the qualities of Hurricane planes [or it is jets] that the gentleman used to fly. 

The kids did lots of recapping at school last week and as it's not 'full time' I have had to supplement a lot of their learning with further explainations; especially for Sprite as he has trouble remembering what he has done during the day because of his dyslexia.  He is not enjoying his time at the academy as much as the younger two and has been feeling ill quite a bit... I think that this may be a masking technique because he is finding it difficult to deal with his dyslexia as at other times he is so enthusiastic about what he had been doing.  So we are having to give him quite a lot support at the moment but we are hoping he will settle in soon.

Daisy and Crush come home every afternoon amazed at everything they have learned... like we have never done it before! Hmmpf...

Now that it's getting a bit colder I am planning to start a project with them to do on their 'day off'.  I want to teach them about the human body; I have been planning this for a while and have lots of fun, hands on, learning activities for them to do so hopefully they won't see it as even more 'school work'.

Royal Duxford

As a part of the boys ongoing fascination with war planes and tanks etc we spent a really lovely day at   Royal Duxford in Cambridgeshire.  Set in an old WW1/II airfield it houses hundreds of aircraft, tanks, military vehicles and boats.  And as they had an air show on the weekend after we visited we were also lucky enough to see the old planes flying and doing tricks in the air, it was fantastic - even for me and I'm not into war planes lol.  Anyway at a cost of £17 per adult and children under 16 going free it was a cheap day too and I would highly recommend it.  There is lots of walking between all the hangers and the two younger ones found it a bit hard going so we sat on some picnic benches towards the end and let the older two finish the hangers by themselves but everyone loved it and we plan to return one day soon inshaAllah [God willing].

And as usual, here are some photos...

Library Homeschool Group

 

We had a wonderful day at the museum.  We were collected by minibus; of course the kids loved this and it was a real treat for me not having to worry about getting everyone there and parking, yay!  We were split into 2 groups and began our behind the scenes tour.  We got to see and learn how paintings were restored, how the museum stored and acquired it's exhibits, we learned how fossils were prepared and put together and we also had quite a long stay in the taxidermy department.  The boys, in particular, loved all the skins and stuffed animals [hence the pictures, I was pushing a wheelchair so Lego was in charge of the camera!] and we spent quite a time learning how animals were 'stuffed'.  We also got to see all the sea/water creatures stored in jars [I felt like I was in the middle of some evil doctors lab LOL] and all the collected and preserved insects.  The private areas of the museum had a certain smell and feel to them and you felt very special to be allowed to see it all.

Then, after some tea and biscuits, we learned all about the Ancient Egyptians; we got to walk around some of the exhibits and had the Egyptian death rituals explained to us. We also got to see a typical Ancient Egyptian kitchen and learned how food was prepared and cooked.  We got to handle some original artifacts and the kids got to put cloth body parts in the correct canopic jar.

It was a great day, enjoyed by all!  Sorry for the poor photos, lots didn't come out for some reason.

Soooo, yet again the Historical Banquet has been put on hold because of our illnesses and the homecoming of the prodigal son [or father in our case].  We tried to change the date but couldn't find a time to suit all; we do intend to go ahead at some point God willing so watch this space!

So what have we been up to....hmmm....well....not much is the answer! We went to stay with grandma which was lovely....the kids had giant sparklers and played football with their cousins among other things.  Sprite has been inspired to finish his owl project so we are aiming to finish by the end of next week God willing.  Lego has been doing this [again!]:

The little ones have been doing this:

 

This was an animal workshop run by Pets at Home. The kids got to handle rabbits and guinea pigs but unfortunately couldn't hold the reptiles as it was feeding time and the staff wasn't prepared for our visit as 'it was in the diary no one put it on the board'.  The young man [oh, that phrase gives my age away!] running the show did a fab job and was very patient with us answering all our questions and more.  Sprite was very impressed with the way the chap talked about the animals and that he got to handle them everyday and announced that when he was 13/14 he wanted to get a part time job working there with the animals.  The workshops are free so check out your local store and see if they can accomodate a visit, it's good fun alhamdulillah!

Sprite has been cooking again and made a lovely Lemon Drizzle Cake....it came out of the oven whilst I was out and by the time I got back hubby and the kids had demolished it so no pictures I'm afriad!

We also held a small gathering for some friends that we hadn't seen for a while; it was lots of fun but we had a complaint from a neighbour that the boys were making too much noise playing dodge ball in the garden... it was past 10pm but we didn't realise that it was so late so now we're off to organise an apology cake!

Banquets and Businesses

This week has seen a business idea of Lego's come to fruition mashaAllah; he has been setting up his eBay account to sell his creations, opened a bank account (he needs to get paid of course) and has designed his 'company' logo, prepared a budget and a profit and loss statement, designed compliment slips and packaging. He needs to photograph his creations so has also designed a 'light box' for the purpose.  I was very impressed mashaAllah and he took the time to explain it all to me and 'prove', through examples, that his idea would work.  As a result I decided to invest a little into his idea to start his business off inshaAllah. A budding entrepreneur indeed, mashaAllah.

The kids have also decided that they want to hold their Historical Banquet at our house in October mashaAllah.  As it all go out of hand before they have been told to keep numbers down and are being very sensible mashaAllah.  They are going to need some guidance as this is their first time organising a 'do' and they are getting a little side tracked and need to set a list of priorities. Their first priority is to get the invitations out asap as each guest will be given a character that they need to dress up as and present a very short precis about on the day.  I though this was a fantastic idea and have already purchased the tooth and face blacking for my character [can you guess who I'm going to be? LOL].

The mums also thought it would be a great idea to hand out the invitations in the style of Funeral Biscuits [just to maintain the historical theme!] which were used in Victorian times to bid people to attend funerals; specially prepared biscuits, wrapped in paper and sealed with wax, the banquet details on the front and a biscuit and information about the original form of the biscuit inside. They sound like great fun to make, we have found a recipe and are looking forward to helping with this one!  Here's a picture of original wrapper displayed at the Pitt River Museum at the University of Oxford.

Everyone is going to bring a dish but the boys want to cook a sample of different foods for varying era's for people to try and are researching and organising historical games inshaAllah.  I'm quite looking forward to it all but dreading the cleaning up!

This seemed to be a week or revisits so we ended up at Watermead Park [again], feeding the ducks and strolling mashaAllah.

And at the Abbey Park Pumping Station [again], here's a picture of part of the pumps:

And we had a day of building marble runs on Saturday at a friends house, here's one they manage to perfect after running various tests with different size marbles, inclines etc....meanwhile I had a nice chat and a cup of coffee with me mate!

Autumn has returned with a vengeance and has left us all with the sniffles but poor Crush had it worse with a very high temperature and hallucinations where all the cloth/material came to life in the house...he was so scared, poor thing, and I find it quite difficult as it reminds me of when my father was in intensive care, he was  complaining that the people in the beds opposite had been partying all night and were cutting off Jesus' legs LOL [yes, we can laugh about it now but at the time...!].  He was begging me to take him home and it was really difficult convincing him that he was in the best place!

Lego is learning all about racism in Amercia as part of his study of Holes, we were worried that they would find it difficult but they are doing very well mashaAllah.  I was a bit concerned about how the English lesson I teach on a Saturday is going and that Sprite wasn't taking it seriously but this week he did me proud.  We read our book and did looked at debating.  We did an off the cuff debate and the kids enjoyed it much more than I anticipated and they have been 'debating' everything every since!

Too busy to post....

hummm, well almost!  We have all been very busy getting the back garden sorted...hubby laid the patio and we have all been helping to strip paint/repaint/put up fences/planting etc so the patio area of my garden now looks like this alhamdulillah.  There are still some bits and pieces to do and that's a lot of white space...I can feel a mosaic coming on lol...

However, the back of my garden still has a long way to go but that's enough for Ramadan inshaAllah..

 We have been making flowers from scraps [some of which you can see below] which was really fun and it was almost impossible to go wrong so they were really chuffed with the results...

 We also had a day at the National Space Museum again [thanks to our free annual pass, yippee!] so the kids could participate in the Lego building competition; the criteria for which was to build a space station out of available pieces. Here are their efforts mashaAllah,  starting with Daisy's

 

Next is Sprite's attempt...

Last but not least was Lego's space station!

Here is a photo of a piece of moon rock....now it may not look like much to you but it had Daisy transfixed for what seemed like forever; she just couldn't believe that here in front of her was a real life piece of the moon lol!

Here are the journal entries that Daisy [top]  and Crush did about their trip to the museum mashaAllah. They both used the certificate they got for taking part in the Lego competition as a background. The theme of the entry was collage and they both also stuck on their tickets with Daisy also cutting out one of the rubbings she did at the museum and Crush [quite inventively I thought] managed to acquire Sprite's certificate and cut out the Lego men and used them as decoupage pieces on the page.  Sorry about the oily patches they are from the marbling they did 2 pages previously!