mud clock and zooks

Had a lovely chat with an old friend of mine today, a fellow home educator who used to live near us. She has written two most interesting websites recently: Bolshy Breastfeeding (**edit in – no longer there but she may have something else exciting coming soon!! ) – a great article on there ‘the good baby myth’ and also HouseWolf, a site helping you sell your home without estate agents in the Telford/Shrewsbury area.

In the afternoon, after our extremely cold walk we built the mud clock. Such a relief when it sprung to life as soon as the metal rods were placed in the damp earth. Amazing how the chemical reaction between the different metals and acid create electricity – this clock could be run on fruit also. Kids really enjoyed working with the screwdriver and connections.

Received  World Book Day vouchers in the post today (home educators can email them to be sent these).  Must take a trip to use them soon. Charlotte started the day out working on her Zooks and practicing the recorder. Been a while since either have been done. Daniel was researching people presumed or suspected to be autistic from Jane Austen to Isaac Newton. Then we all washed the floors together – practical life skills! We did a meditation being a star of light today then played Trivial Pursuit which Charlotte won. Traditional academic study was provided by another 2XL tutorial for Dan (extended notation working with the power of 10 – wow this is certainly helping my maths knowledge!) and Charlotte did her magical maths and then started an Eerie English book too for a change from Schofield and Sims stuff. We have the Scottish version fitting in with the 5-14 guidelines stating it’s for age 9-11 whereas the one on Amazon I’ve linked is to fit the National Curriculum and states age 9-10 though it is exactly the same book (except our stars are silver Kids do start school earlier in England – maybe that’s the reason, whatever it seems about right for Charlotte. We listened to and discussed Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude (most suitable for today’s weather) and Minute waltz. That got me remembering a cartoon I used to love called ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’ which has fantastic music throughout so I located it on Amazon here and ordered it – add a bit of fun to our musical education

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