A Summer of fun and a 'MOOC'

The summer has been full of parties, fun and theme parks for us. We managed to fit in a trip to the dinosaur park along with the two theme parks and of course our usual days out to the beach, long nature walks and some pond dipping.

We tend to slow things down slightly during the summer holidays as everywhere is so crowded, the children have been busy as usual with various projects. My son was especially excited to try out one of the new 'MOOC' (massive open online content) courses earlier in the year. Many of these are free for everyone to try.

The above logo is from the course he took with Coursera... Dino 101 Dinosaur paleobiology. The course was amazing, run by the University of Alberta, perfect for any budding dinosaur expert. Dinosaurs are a big passion for my son and the course was taught in a way he finds very easy to learn. He managed to pass the course with a score of 100% and got a statement of accomplishment. I have put a link to the course above as it is about to run again, the new start date is september 3rd if you are interested.

We are currently planning many Autumn trips out to keep us occupied in the coming months.

7th Birthday

Today is my son's 7th birthday, so this is just a quick post to wish him a very happy birthday and to show you the cake we made. It really doesn't seem like 7 years ago that we came home from the hospital with him.

He is very rarely this quiet now, a very special little boy with a very different way of looking at things and he has inspired us to view the world differently too.

So here is the cake! As my son is extremely dinosaur obsessed, we thought a dinosaur cake would be quite exciting for him. It is my first go at making a themed cake like this, usually my cakes are round. I think he was quite impressed although I do remember him bringing up some anatomical inconsistencies. Happy 7th Birthday.

Nearly forgot to add the birthday cards we made for him, my youngest daughter had so much fun with her card... glitter really is her thing.

A new challenge

  Today we went to our local home education group's sports club. "What's unusual about that?" I hear you say... well 6 months ago my son (then aged 5) had surgery on both of his feet and was in casts for 3 weeks. I find that amazing and fully intend to update you all soon with a post just covering his journey...but today he played football.

 
   He did not show any interest in playing football at all until he watched the world cup over this summer, and when we heard there maybe some free spaces at the sports club he jumped at the chance to try. Today was the free trial session to see how things went. Luckily, he loved playing and he suffered no pain in his feet. It was quite unusual for us to see him playing football as his previous sporting interests were more sedate like golf. We were more likely to find him to talking about dinosaurs, pokemon or falling asleep with a book.

   
   He is definitely planning on going again and we are happy he has the chance to.