Change of direction

It seems such a long time since I have written anything here, we have all had the flu over Christmas starting with the smallest ones on boxing day and then spreading through the rest of us like a plague. It has been a really horrible virus and we are still coughing and finding it difficult to breathe sometimes but we are improving everyday thankfully.

There have been lots of stargazing activities for us to use our new telescope on, which was kindly gifted to my son, by a lovely lady who we met through free cycle. This has enabled him to continue to learn about his love of astronomy. The above photograph was taken on the day we received the telescope, while he was trying to learn how to operate it. In the last few weeks there has been a lunar eclipse, a partial solar eclipse, a few meteor showers, visible planets and so much more.

My son has had a really difficult decision to make over the holiday season, this is whether to continue going to the football coaching classes that he was enjoying so much or not. We have left this decision to him, even though we wanted to stop him going due to the pain he has been in with his feet and legs after his surgery earlier this year, see here. We have obviously comforted and supported him while he was thinking about his options and he has come to the very painful decision that he can no longer go to football classes, participating has put him in so much pain afterwards that it often led to both of us in tears. We have wondered whether he is in more pain due to the cold weather, so he will assess how he feels when the weather warms up slightly. Bless him.

As it is a new year, I also asked him what he thought he might like to learn more about this year, he stated that he would love to learn more about his first love, dinosaurs. This will be a difficult challenge as he seems to know so much about this subject already, he is like a mini professor. The photograph above shows some of his fossil teeth collection. The thing he would most love to do is go on a dig as he is sure there are still new species of dinosaur to be discovered, he would love to be involved in finding something 'like a real palaeontologist'. So you can see my predicament, how am I going to pull that one off ?  Maybe we could visit some of the fossil rich areas and where they can be seen in the rock, I'll have to see.

The other things he is interested in studying at the moment are the Nature Journal project that we will be starting soon, he loves nature and this will be his way of documenting the world around us from his point of view. Also the Victorians have captured his interests, he has been watching lots of documentaries, reading books and even watching programs designed to show you exactly how they lived and worked. Looks like we will be very busy then!

We made butter...

   We have just had a hectic three weeks, with three birthdays and a wedding anniversary, we've been a little run off our feet. Things are now settling down a little though, and we have been enjoying the program escape in time. It is about life on a Victorian farm, and how modern families would cope with the work challenges.

    My son has been watching this program and at the moment there is a little spark of interest which I'm hoping will grow into a big research project. This is the way things usually work for him, it happened with the Romans, something sparked his interest then for a couple of months it was his big passion. We read every book we could find, did Internet research, watched documentaries, played games, made mosaics etc. At the end of this history session he had retained a lot of information and had a lot of fun.

     So at the moment I find myself trying to 'fan the flames' so to speak, hoping that our next history project will be about the Victorians. In the 'escape in time'  farm program one of the tasks was to make butter, so we thought we would give it a try ourselves. It is very simple all you need is a jar which you fill with cream to about a third full and shake it.... a lot!

      This works best if the cream has been at room temperature for an hour, it takes about 10 minutes to turn into butter, you then need to separate the butter from the buttermilk. The butter needs to be rinsed and squeezed to get rid of all the buttermilk and can be lightly salted if you choose to.

       The children loved making butter, especially the taste and we have now made it several times. I would highly recommend giving it a go... in the interest of education of course. If you would like a more detailed guide on making butter you can find one here.