a little time travelling..

this week we have seen the future-it is nano technology and visited the past in ancient egypt, not bad considering it is only thursday! Wednesday saw us in nottingham visiting the Nano Technology fair with some of our friend from french as well as other home ed families from the area. It was hosted by nottingham university and it was very slick and very professional but lacked one essential thing..a concise and easy to understand definition of nano techology. There were lots of examples of how it helps us and what it will do for us in the future but not even the well produced and child friendly film could give us a simple explanation. In the end sam summed it up by saying, "small things helping big things". Which given my limited understanding of the field seemed a pretty good way to explain it. We enjoyed the event and it was fun meeting up with our friends despite all the rain!!

Today we went up to Derby to attend an ancient egypt session run by one of the home ed groups up there. They had a curator from the derby city museum come to talk to the children and he was a very good speaker. Even sam listened with a minimum of wiggling. After the talk there were craft activities and then the obligatory game of tag. No matter where wer are or what group we are attending it always seems to end in a game of tag or chase. We didn't know a soul at the group but that didn'ty matter to sam who wasted no time in making friends and then joining in with their game. They seemed a nice group and we would probably go back, my only hesitation was the cost. The session was £7 which seemed an awful lot given the simplicty of the craft actitives on offer. Perhaps the hall costs are high, not sure. Think they are going to do a viking session which would fit in well with our trip to norway.

Monday was the second session of our home ed group and we had two new families. The theme was spring again and the worm farm when down well as did the wind power experiment. The children dipped ping pong balls into paint and then blew them across a sheet of lining paper to replicate the wind. Think we used half of V's baby wipes cleaning all the paint off the floor! We had fun and I hope the others did too. Next session we are doing space ( three guess as to who suggested that!) and have found a great DK book with lots of experiments for us to try. Good thing we are doing two sessions on space as there will be plenty to keep us busy.