Education update April 2017

The children have been very busy and involved in so many projects that it would be a very long post if I included it all, so we have picked a few of our favourite things to share with you here.

After seeing pictures online of the many sock toys made by other people they made a plan to recycle some old socks into these cat plushies. I'm very proud to say that all the little sewing projects I had given them over the years must have paid off as they pretty much completed this project by themselves.

My eldest daughter's cat brought her a surprise one morning... a pile of frogspawn!!  We have no idea how the cat carried these in but in an attempt to try and save the eggs she brought them round to us. We are pleased to announce that many of the eggs are now wriggly tadpoles, this has made an excellent nature project for my youngest children and given them the chance to study the life cycle of a frog at very close hand.

We have joined the Woodland trust's project to plant more trees, with great success as we already have many little trees coming up from our packet of seeds. This project has coincided with all the seed planting we do every year to grow our vegetables on our allotment, so it has been very busy.

The latest science project the children have been studying is sound, vibration and wavelengths. We have completed many experiments including a tin can telephone, balloon noise and the above experiment to see the sugar move on the cling film by the sound vibration alone.

We have also tried to recreate how the wavelengths looked on an oscilloscope by using a really long piece of cord and moving our hands either fast or slow as seen above, until it looked the same as a given noise.

 My daughter wanted to try some new recipes in the kitchen, sticky toffee squares were one of her new experiments... and very tasty they were too. We have also been eating some of the early harvests from the allotment, so far this has been asparagus and rhubarb.

Another science project has been about light, this led to an art project involving stained glass windows to really brighten up the house. The children's sports club started up again this week for the summer now that the weather is improving which has been keeping us extra busy, along with the building of a new poly tunnel at the allotment with the hope of allowing us to grow extra vegetables.

 Will update very soon with some new projects and updates on the ongoing ones like the tadpoles and baby trees.

Resurrection plant time lapse

My son decided to buy a resurrection plant called Selaginella lepidophylla also known as rose of Jericho and dinosaur plant amongst other things and we wanted to capture footage of the plant returning to life. So my husband and children set up the camera to make a time lapse film recording what happened for them to keep.

The clip lasts less than a minute but captures the plant opening and is an amazing educational project for the children to watch again. Our camera battery ran out slightly sooner than we would have liked so we have added a photograph at the end to show the plant after 24 hours. The good thing about these plants is that they can be dried out and re hydrated again. Fascinating to see!

Garden Love

    We are not lucky enough as yet have an allotment, so my poor hard working husband has to fit as much as he can in our garden. We have been blessed with some good crops though, so we definitely owe the garden a little love. One of our best croppers has been our blackcurrant bush as you have seen in previous posts it has produced many fruits, at the moment it is in the middle of a second crop. Sometimes you get surprises, the plums below were picked today from our new plum tree, which must only be three foot tall, we certainly weren't expecting any plums from it this year.

    Not only is the garden good for growing things it has excellent educational potential for our children. Right from the start they have been involved in the seed selection, planting, care and harvesting, and they have enjoyed every minute (especially the eating). We still have the "bean in the jar" science experiment on the kitchen window ledge in spring, but this is because my husband gets a little concerned if my son pulls up the beans to look at the roots.

    They also love their bug hunts, but even this has advantages when the cabbage white caterpillars are on your brassicas and someone needs to pick them off. There is great excitement in the tomato bed too, as this year we decided to grow four different kinds of tomato just to see the different growing styles and tastes, two are pictured below the plum tomato and the marmande.

   So, I'd like to say thank-you to my garden, for the bountiful crops, for the education provided to my children, for the fun times, even for the frogs and toads that jump out of the undergrowth and scare me half to death and the abundant mini beasts that I've had thrust under my nose... to the chants of "WOW, Mum have you ever seen one of these?"
    How about you? I hope I'm not alone with the garden love thing.