A scientific week..

We seem to have done endless amounts of science this week. On top of our usual sonlight science we have done a young scientist club set on weights and measures (which ties in nicely with what we are doing in math!) and have been to nottingham university to a science fair. That was undoubtly the highlight of the week for us both. We went as part of a home ed group and knew absolutely no one there as they were all from the east midlands rather than leicester. We met several nice families and hope to set up a few playdates. The Chemistry dept at the uni had set up 6 stations all run by students and the children got to participate in a variety of experiments including making slime (went down well as you can imagine!), alchemy (changing a 2p from copper to gold-well not really gold, we covered it in brass but it looked like gold and the children thought it was at first), watching the effect of liquid nitrogen on various objects (see the pics below), powering a calculator with fruit and veg and several other experiments all designed to be fun. We also had a tour of the labs and a real scientist (cue a very excited sam) showed us an experiment with liquids and bases. Sam was excited to meet a real scientist and has now revised his plans for the future. He wants to be a scientist and an lego designer. He wasn't sure what kind of scientist he wanted to be but he knows that he wants to do experiments-especially ones where you get to make explosions.

Friday we did a different, calmer sort of science-we went fossil hunting with our peterborough home ed group. We also took V & I. It was nice to see old friends and make new ones, there were lots of new faces. Sam was in his elment, and managed to find several fossils, mainly of bivalves. V & I also found several and I had lots of fun just digging in the sand. In two weeks we are meeting up with them again to go fossil hunting at the hanson quarry just outside pborough. There will be more and bigger fossils apparently and Sam is already making space in the garden for his yet to be found treasures!!

Yesterday was Rogue's first puppy class and he did better than we thought. He can be quite grumpy toward other dogs but by the end of class he was able to sit right next to his classmates without barking or making a fuss. I think we may be watching too much dog whisperer as sam kept saying "remember mom, calm assertive engergy" and " rogue needs to be calm and submissive". Actually we are picking up lots of good advice from the DW so thank you MK for letting us borrow it. It will be winging it way back to you soon.

The biggest disapointment of the week was finding that the bbc had cancelled our fav radio show, little toe radio, without any warning. One minute it was there and the next it was gone. They have replaced it with ceebies radio which is drivel in comparison. It is mainly about characters from the children's tv programmes and the stories are far and few between. I email to complain and although they apologised for the cancellation they could't give a good reason for it. Guess we will have to search around for another radio show, M suggested that NPR may do one.

On a positive note, V and self have sent out the announcement about our new group. Hopefully it will generate lots of response and lots of new members. I have yet to send it out to the leicester group but will do that this week. We hope to have the group up and running by the end of april. We need about 7 families each sessions to meet the cost of room hire. If anyone out there wants more details on the group just let me know.