Heritage open days 2016

Last week the Heritage free open days took up a lot of our time, we love this time of year and to get the chance to visit some of our local Heritage sites is always very exciting. Day one started with two garden tours, the Bishop's beautiful garden is a favourite of ours and has many different plants from all over the world.

This year there was an added attraction for the children, the Bishop's cat! Well we assume it was the Bishop's cat as it came running from the house to greet us and insisted on giving us a tour of the woodland gardens.

The children love the wildflower maze and the large swing that hangs from a very old tree near the ruins. As these visits coincided with the anniversary of when we first met, my husband and I took some photos of us sitting on this swing as a memento of the many wonderful years we have spent together.

The garden has some quite quirky plants like a tree that oozes the smell of curry, and a vine with flowers that resemble snails and smells incredible. Did I mention the little cat?... best buddies, they spent ages together.

After lunch we went on to look around a gallery housed in an old Victorian skating rink with a unique and extremely vast collection of South Asian art and objects. Followed by a medieval church in which our children got the chance to try their hand at some brass rubbing.

Day two we visited two small museums, another church and an old shawl and clothing exhibition. The first Museum is in a centuries old merchants house with a 14th century under croft and very old herb garden. We got to try on costumes, play old games, learn to write in Tudor letters, complete a shakespeare quiz and make old puppets on sticks.

We finished the week on day three with a visit to the castle museum, the children got to watch and chat to some stone masons at work which was very interesting. My daughter made a crown and they both made a shield using the heraldry pictures to describe themselves.

We had a wonderful time visiting all these places and were extremely exhausted by the end of the week.

The end of Summer

Summer is well and truly over now and the leaves are starting to show their Autumn colours, so I thought I would share some of our summertime activities with you. We have been on all our usual adventures in nature as you may have seen in the 30 days wild project we joined in June, also trips to the Dinosaur adventure park and a theme park.

We have explored new places and had adventures on a prehistoric walk through ancient areas of woodland. We have also spent time exploring the countryside and the thrill of playing in fields of long grass.

The children gave themselves Summer challenges, my son's was a reading challenge to read the entire series of Harry potter books including the extra short books. This is a big challenge for him as he prefers to read fact books and encyclopedias so me and my husband joined him on this challenge to give him extra support... everyone finished this challenge in less than the three months given. He has now gone back to reading about Japanese mythology and his dinosaur research.

My youngest daughter had different challenges, she wanted to teach herself to weave bracelets, make wind chimes, hula hoop and juggle... all of which she accomplished with ease and has now moved on to learning musical instruments.

We have also spent a lot of time at our local swimming pool, the children had so much fun and can all swim a number of different strokes and have hugely increased their water confidence skills.

Both children attended two activity club courses looking at different animals and their care which they found quite interesting. We also took advantage of the Heritage free open days and went to three museums.

The children love exploring museums, my grandmother used to take me around the strangers hall museum when I was a little girl and it is lovely that it is still there for my children to experience. This year we even played old games in the museum gardens.

We managed to find a newt, something the children had been looking to see in the wild which was quite exciting for them.

We have had a few new additions to our family too, after spending time with the reptiles on the animal care courses that the children completed we decided to add a snake to our family, my son already has a leopard gecko, which is fascinating, so learning about snakes would be just as interesting and something my husband has been wanting to do for quite a while.

This is a photo of our beautiful new Royal python when he first arrived, only a few months old. The other new arrivals are chickens, as you know we lost two of our older girls earlier in the year and were only left with one chicken. The remaining elderly chicken, Dotty, was very lonely so we decided to increase the flock.

It took Dot a little while to accept the new chickens, but after a week or so it all settled down. Dot is on the far right of the above photo, the black and white chicken is called Sylvie and the two reds are called Evie and Ginny.

That covers a few of our summer highlights, adventures and challenges... Preparing for winter has taken hold here and the last of the allotment harvests have been collected and preserving food is in full swing.

A Trip to the Castle

Last week we went to see the Roman Empire exhibition just before it moved on to another museum. The children had a really interesting time revisiting this historical subject and examining all the artifacts but unfortunately photography was forbidden in the exhibition itself so all photos are from the rest of the museum.

We collected the pamphlets above to remind us of some the things we had seen and for further investigations into the subject.

The children spent some time riding in the replica Iceni chariot in the Boudicca gallery and examining some of the treasures that have been dug up in and around our local area.

Had a go at building stone arches and traced the route of the stone used to build the castle from it's origins. My son had a go at firing the medieval siege engine whilst my daughter examined all the types of food eaten at the banquets held in the great hall.

I think we explored all the narrow stone corridors and what felt like the longest winding staircase ever. We love exploring our museums and try to go as often as possible. My daughter recently went on an art master class day held at the museum with our local home education group and we all went on a special RSPB open day, where the children got to dissect owl pellets for the first time and join in with many bird related activities.

not back to school days out

As a home educating family we usually plan quite a few trips out in September as all the parks, zoos and museum suddenly become much emptier with the return of the school year. Also this time coincides with the heritage free open days when many museums and other heritage sites open their doors free of charge for everyone to explore, naturally we take full advantage of this.

This year we started with a trip to a zoo containing wildlife from south America, this was a wonderful experience for the children to back up some of the things they had been studying throughout the year. South America had sparked their interest earlier in the year and we have been on a wonderful learning journey from it's history, geology, botany, ancient civilizations and wildlife to mention a few things. The advantage of the emptiness of the zoo is that the children got to watch the animals being fed at close range and ask the keepers a million and one questions about everything.

We managed to fit in quite a lot on the free heritage days, we visited three museums, two very old churches, one of which had an ongoing archaeological dig and a photography exhibition.

The three museums covered so many eras between them it gave the children lots to think about. The castle had armour to be tried on and siege engines like the ones we made earlier in the year. They also spent a lot of time looking at the art gallery and studying the different styles of two of the artists exhibited there.

This is one of my favourite exhibitions at the museum about the history of our city. It is a replica of an old chemist, I could stand here for ages looking at all the old jars and books.

There are also lots of drawers to open here containing herbs and other ingredients to look at or smell. This museum has many things to touch, smell and try on, the children really love to be able to interact with things and it is very beneficial to the learning process. All these visits have sparked much more interest in a number of things we can continue to explore further during the winter.

We still have more days out planned to enjoy the rest of the autumn days and quite a few crafts inspired by some of our activities. This is always a very busy time of year for us will all the harvesting and preserving too.

Magical Museum visit

Last week we had the chance to visit the Magic Worlds exhibition at our Castle Museum, it is touring from the V&A. There was a wonderful mix of magical items from film props, magician's props, items from fairy tales and many beautiful works of art.

My daughter was really pleased to see sooty was included in the exhibition and even happier to perform her own puppet show with some of the props available.

 Many fairy tales had their own sets to explore... I know one little girl who was in her element and totally oblivious to the real world. 

We really enjoy going to the castle museum there always seems to be something that fits in with our studies, something amazing to see. As a teenager I used to visit the museum nearly every Saturday and it's still a place I love to visit.

Whist exploring the keep we found this model trebuchet, a siege engine weapon from the middle ages. My husband and son were very keen to explore the workings of this as they have been planning to make a small one for the garden in the summer.

As you can see it's like a large catapult or sling which throws heavy items at the castle walls... we were aiming for the little model of Stonehenge my son built.

'Not back to school' week

Every year, as a home educating family, we celebrate 'not going back to school' as the parks, libraries, zoos and museums become less full. Usually we have a quiet picnic somewhere in a natural setting and the children have time to explore but this year we thought we would try something different. So we started off the week with a trip to a theme park, the children had a fabulous time and we didn't have to queue for a single ride.

The week coincided with the Heritage open days, and many historical places were open to experience absolutely FREE of charge. To take advantage of this opportunity we chose four activities or places to explore and got set for a very busy few days. 

The photograph above shows the booklets we have collected from each activity for the children to keep and read to help them remember our days out. The first place we visited was a church from our area which had recently had restoration work completed, we had a member of the church take us on a private guided tour and tell us the history of the building and answered all our questions.

Then to the great delight of the children we took a open topped bus tour of our city usually aimed at tourists, so the commentary told us the historic facts of all the places we passed. This was very exciting for the children and not something you usually do when you have lived somewhere for a long time.

Next we took the chance to visit a museum which has been closed for several years having refurbishments done, so the children had never been. we loved this museum it told the history of our city, with many stories of the local people and industries through the ages. We explored an amazingly reconstructed old pharmacy, our city through WW2 and even spent some time relaxing in a 1950's lounge. 

Lastly we went to the castle museum and art gallery, we visit here quite regularly and really enjoyed the costumed characters that were walking about on the open day. My favourite section is the celebration of the Victorians and their collections and documentation of the world around them. Also the food available to the castle occupants in medieval times which was laid out for us to see today. The children loved all the interactive displays and things they are allowed to touch and they also got the chance to ride in a chariot in the Boudicca section.

Overall we had so much fun and had the chance to learn so much about the city we live in, surprisingly, we have decided to visit some more places. I have also managed to get a book from our library about the history of our city from a children's perspective, which is proving very popular.