embalming…

Had a fascinating afternoon yesterday learning all about embalming. This is one of Moonrabbit Lucy’s many areas of expertise, one of her 4 current jobs, and I’d asked her to give us a talk on it :) It was an excellent lesson - we studied veins, arteries, bones, tissues, diseases, tools of the trade, the history of embalming, chemicals used… fab. Great to learn about a subject from someone who works in the field – something that could maybe be explored more? (small warning to other friends and family ;) ).

Been quite busy doing various bits this week. Started our Italian course – slightly disappointed to discover the dialogues are following the exact same story as the French, but the language content is good. Along with this were reading Miss Garnet’s Angel which is set in Venice and has a good smattering of Italian vocab, art and culture through it. Also been listening to some little bits of opera – I can’t hear the Italian for 5 – cinque – without hearing the opening of Figaro (fantastically odd modern adaptation there with Dutch subtitles), hence my frequent singing of it much to my kids horror amusement and enjoyment ;) Whole Italian thing going very well with the ongoing grammar books – Latin opens up a deep understanding of lots of languages, not just our own… loving seeing kids really learning like this.

I was actually a little surprised that the children really enjoyed playing Pop to the Shops since it is a bit young for them. They got a bit competitive with their shops though so fun was added. I bought it as Daniel still gets a bit uptight when shopping and just tends to give the checkout person a large note so he won’t have to work out change for himself. They go shopping themselves quite a bit now so I though a bit of fast money adding practice would be good… and it has been. Quite a nice change for them from plainer secondary maths things really. Shame it doesn’t have £1 coins etc. though. Bought some attractive squared paper notepads (49p in Lidl) for the aforementioned plain old maths:

Still battling with the number hang-ups left from school. It’s getting better but persists in a milder form. We watched this mathemagician – good to see someone so enthused by the subject

Set up this rice experiment (thank you Tech):

We had studied those wonderful water pictures before so it’s nice to build on it with our own test. I feel quite bad being mean to that jar on the right – Daniel does it with great gusto

Been enjoying some great walks:

and my current favourite juice – apple and pomegranate:

and you’ve gotta love the lilac pulp – pure pomegranate that

Related posts: