Robots and Me

We have had a concentration of robots today, some orchestrated by myself, but as always we follow the smalls lead and if they are interested we go with it and if not we move on to the next thing. We had a planned visit to the Lightbox in Woking after a tip off from a fellow home ed friend. The exhibition finishes this week so it was now or never to catch those robots and feed Pumpkin some new material for his robot interest. 

We have never driven that way before so a bit of route planning and food supply at the ready plus in car entertainment we made our way very successfully into the unknown. We took a copy of The Iron Man to listen to in the car and drove through Surrey countryside and farmland on our way. Pumpkin noted that 'he [the iron man] could live here,' it was a great setting to listen to the story. 

The exhibition itself did not disappoint. The staff were incredibly friendly and helpful (one guy even gave me instructions on how to use the lift.....it was just a lift!) The boys spotted robots that the have seen before, Rodney Copperbottom and a storm trooper and R2D2 amongst others plus a life size darlek. Bean was particularly taken with the War of the Worlds posters and alien structure, which was were the exhibition had grown from as HG Wells wrote War of the Worlds based in Surrey.

We also went to see an animals in art exhibition which suited Plum nicely as most of the animals were ones that she recognised in sculptures and paintings. The boys were both into the interactive parts today with lots of game playing and dressing up and drawing. We had to pay the robots a second visit before we left.

On the way home we stopped at a play park that we had passed on the journey there and the smalls were interested in investigating. It was an all age play park with adult exercise equipment too. It was lots of fun. Bean navigated the journey home with the help of google maps app. It's very useful to have a route so clearly marked and your vehicle placed on the route and so easy for him to see if we take a wrong turn. But today he was able to tell me when a turn was approaching and which way to go and was reading landmarks like bridges and rivers and train lines from the map. He even told me at one point that it didn't matter if we went the wrong way because the roads join up and we could just follow thins one and this one and join back up with the road we are supposed to be on. Amazing.

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching 'Robots' which rounded our day off perfectly, only to be topped by the moment when mummy and the smalls ate chocolate pudding and mummy said "don't tell daddy we had chocolate pudding as there is non left for him," and Bean split his into two and gave back the larger portion so daddy could have some. Heart melting moment.

Bean liked this clock robot

Plum liked this one "tea, tea"

Tripods and Ladders

Mummy Alien

"I am a robot, I am a robot"

Mummy loved the art work

Animal puzzles

Bean wrote this for daddy with mummy's help.

  

Ups and Downs

Today has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride. Mostly calm and constructive but with some real plummets in the form of sibling confrontations and refusal to leave the house/get out of the car/put on a seat belt/ leave a venue (back to the transition issue again!) 

We had the guttering replaced today which involved the removal of our old asbestos version and i really wanted to take the smalls out for as long as possible. We went to Little Verse where Plum enjoyed dancing and singing and the boys took a giant box of lego to play with in an adjacent room. Plum joined in with all the actions and made all the correct noises when the toy animals came out (sheep, lion, snake, frog.) We hung around as long as possible before venturing to the park to see friends. 

We spent a happy hour and a half with five other home ed families interspersed with one or other of the smalls wanting to go home and Plum curling up on me indicating that she was tired. We managed almost a total of two hours before there was a collective cry for homeward bound. I fully expected Plum to fall asleep on the way home but she didn't. i think maybe the cold had got to her at the park.

The afternoon was full of endless scooby doo and mummy preparing food for tomorrow as we have a big day out planned  and I find that food is often the key to a successful trip, that and a good nights sleep. 

I don't often write about our evening habits. Mostly they are taken up with extended baths and stories or family movies and board games. Pumpkin began sleeping in with mummy and Plum about two weeks ago and this has continued. He always waits until i say i'm going to bed before he will go so i have found myself in pyjamas earlier and earlier so that he will go to bed and then getting up again if i haven't fallen asleep!

Can we fix it?

Things are easier to manage with daddy around. The fall outs and the disagreements and the uncontrollable anger from Bean. When there is an extra pair of hands and another voice of calm and reason, to remove, distract, intervene. It was a much needed extra pair of hands today which meant that not all was lost and all in all a day of abounding joy. 

Today was the first day since moving to free digital access that the boys spent more time away from digital devices than on them. There was the usual minecraft and Stampy Cat viewing, cbeebies iplayer and cbeebies games and linking up to a lego game online but there was also a family trip to town to spend pocket money on lego and return and replenish library books. The library had more than a few audio books that were of interest to us today and we mainly came home with a pile a cds to listen to. Pumpkin's interest in having books read to him is thin at the moment so we're trying out audio books as an alternative. 

It worked really well. The boys returned home to assemble their lego purchases whilst listening to Harry and the Dinosaurs Flying High. It took Bean the exact length of the book to put together his lego item, about 45 minutes. The box said suitable for 7- 14 years but we have long learned to trust our children and be with them when they need us rather than listen to a strangers recommendation. And an afternoon of lego play followed. Pumpkin had chosen some Lego Hero models which is knew for us but really ticks his boxes (superheros and robotesque.)

Plum has been insistant on wearing Bob the Builder t-shirts since last night. We only have two so we have had to hand wash and dry one whilst she wears the other. Both of the t-shirts belong to her older brothers so they look enormous on her.

I had thought today's big venture would be oscelots. Bean was asking a string of questions about them this morning. Inspired be minecraft we began by researching how to tame them (on minecraft) and quickly proceeded to what do they eat? and, how big are they? and, where do they live? and, what do they really look like? We didn't quite get through all the questions but tomorrow is another day...

 

Lego heaven

Horsey riding

Bob the Builder

We're going to the zoo

The house was positively buzzing with excitement this morning as we prepared to adventure to Drusillas. It has been nearly two years since we were last there and the boys remembered it well and were super excited to take Plum with them. It was Plum's birthday outing after all. We were packed and ready to go by 10am with the outdoor thermometer reading -1 but not a cloud in sight. 

We had an absolutely amazing time. The animals were not detered by the cold weather, in fact some of them seemed to be enjoying it! Plum enjoyed getting up close to most of the animals (not the snake though) and the boys were keen to try out the zoolympics challenges. Bean recorded 115 decibels of shouting volume with Pumpkin hot on his tail at 95. Even daddy didn't beat Bean. The interactive exhibitions and quizzes were a big hit with the boys. There was lots of discussion about why flamingos stand on one leg? and how do beavers know how to build a dam? The big hit for Plum was riding on Thomas the Tank Engine which we did twice.

Playing with words seems to be one of our top things to do atm. Pumpkin is always keen on a joke and Bean has been finding words that sound the same but have different meanings and using them to make up his own jokes. This was a well played game in the car today but the word fasination continued with the creation of the pig-ow-eep and the man-eep-ow.

Am i only dreaming?

We joined friends today for a play at Rackham, a place we have ventured numerous times before. Plum enjoyed digging and making sandcastles in the sand and the boys climbed the chalk face and sat pondering life. For the first time we walked around the woodland at the top and took in the sites of the flooded plains plus found a few dens. We collected sticks, as is the norm for us, and Pumpkin swung on a rope swing. Altogether we were outside for nearly three hours which is a record in the last few months.

Pumpkin has been asking how levers work brought on my his love of minecraft and also our preparatory conversations about visiting Drusillas tomorrow where he remembered that they have a lever you pull to open the crocodiles mouth. He has also been playing a lot with light again, specifically reflected light. So now i am on a mission to find things to do that will help him answering his questions and explore these things further.

Move it, Move it

It has felt like a really slow day. I can't put my finger on why as the same things as normal have occured but time has passed slowly, for me anyhow. I think Bean is a little unsettled but can't figure out why. 

I found some magnetic words the other day and I have been using them to write messages to the smalls which we have been finding and reading in the morning. This evening Bean wrote his first message to daddy. In the summer Bean asked to learn to read so this is just another idea to weave reading into our day. We are reading How To Train Your Dragon as well, inspired by the tv and film version and our recent interest in dragons and dinosaurs. Daddy is continuing to read through the Flat Stanley series with him. 

Bean also helped me to figure out why my sliding door wasn't working in minecraft. We're still not entirely sure where we went wrong nut it's fixed and it works now and I am building a huge house for myself. Pumpkin has built himself another railway/rollercoaster system and Bean has built a house and garden for his pet dog. 

Plum and I played doll's house again today, after receiving more belated gifts from FA#2 and we also put together one of Pumpkin's dismantled Star Wars Lego models as he has been asking for it to be reassembled for weeks but what with the festivities and present playing it has been sat on the shelf awaiting attention for weeks. 

The boys choose to watch Madagascar this afternoon, followed by Christmas Madagascar and The Penguins Christmas Chaos (currently on iplayer) by the end of it Plum was dancing around singing 'move it, move it.' 

Hold my hand

A lashing squall battered the house this morning and set off our car alarm. The smalls all slept through it. We lost power at about 8am. Bean was up by then and came to tell me that the light had gone off. Consequently the morning was spent with me in candle light in our kitchen, which has very limited natural light source, and attempting chores that need electricity only to find that it wasn't going to happen. These included trying to straighten my hair, putting on the laundry and hoovering the crisps that Plum had distributed on the stairs. Fortunately, eight years ago when we installed our kitchen we did decide on a gas hob so breakfast, and more importantly cups of tea, were achievable. 

The boys began the morning on the ipad and pondering what the loss of electricity might mean to their power dependent day but they flung themselves into it with full gusto and we rearranged the living room to accommodate a battle scene. Pumpkin taking refuge behind the sofa and Bean building a fort behind the upturned table, both with nerf guns at the ready. Completely seperately, Plum choose to adorn a cowboy hat ('yeehaa' being a well used word) and ride her rocking horse in the no mans land between the boys. It looked like a scene from Dances with Wolves. The game evolved, as these things do, and the boys were soon visiting each others houses and sleeping over with Plum happily joining in.

Despite home educating, our year is punctuated by school holidays and term times. Not with the same pressures of getting up early and preparing school uniforms and shoe shining and haircuts and completing homework but as public places calm down once more we ventured out to meet our friends in Horsham Park. Plum wandering off with fellow home ed children, leaving mummy far behind, and Pumpkin rolling down the wet muddy hill repeatedly. Bean needing a change of socks and trousers after only being in the park 10 minutes. It was wet underfoot and windy out but the sun was shining and it was good to catch up with friends after the Christmas holidays. 

By the time we returned home the electricity was on and normal service resumed. Minecraft and a complete viewing of the Morph dvd with laugh out loud fun for the rest of the afternoon. 

Kitchen in candlelight

Dances with Wolves scene, Plum had been on the horse originally