Quiet on the blog - busy outdoors

I have an exam in a couple of weeks, so every minute not spent with the kids has been spent ploughing through past papers and scratching my head over ocean currents and whatnot, so it has been a bit quiet on the blog.  I also apologise to my friends whose blogs I have also been neglecting reading - I will catch up soon, promise.

In the meantime, we have had a busy fun filled couple of weeks, I just haven't had a chance to write about them.  So here's a quick overview of some of what we've been up to in pictures.

 Kids not convinced it's bedtime with the lighter evenings, so off to the woods we go.

 Building a gate to 'keep our cows in the field' made a good spider web challenge.

 Roman history project took a practical turn as we made a wax writing tablet.

 
 

 Ollie decided to dress up for an afternoon adventure at Battle Abbey.













Surprise harvest of broad beans as they were ready a little earlier than we were expecting last night.  Ollie did a fab job helping to harvest and pod them.  500g after podding, but lots of blanks - we need to work on supporting the local bee population as there are hardly any on our plot. Also leeks, onions and wet garlic.

Batemans National Trust

I've written about it before, but if you're in East Sussex and looking for a great place to entertain your family I reckon the National Trust property Batemans takes some beating.

Batemans was the home of Rudyard Kipling, prolific and gifted poet and author of ever popular children's classics such as The Jungle Book and Puck of Pook Hill. The property will be familiar to you if you watched the film 'My boy Jack' as it was one of the locations used in the filming of it.

 The house itself is lovely, but what the boys most love are the gardens and wildflower field.  We've spend many happy afternoons playing on the lawns in front of the house, but the meadow is perfect for the wilder games.

A favourite we have to play each visit is 'fox and rabbit' or 'tigers' -it's the same game but the name changes depending on their current interest.  This involves a lot of hiding flat out in the grass, stalking on hands and knees and running and shrieking.  At this time of year the hiding is less convincing, but seems no less fun.

A pond area put in recently is providing a lot of interest - to the boys and to me.  I was sitting watching the water last visit while Toby climbed a stump behind me when I saw a huge dragonfly larva swim up and hang tail up below the surface while making a rather grisly meal of a tadpole.

Laying on tummies and watching the whirligig beetles spin busily to and fro provided plenty of entertainment too.

Unfortunately on this visit we learned that the beautiful old water mill has broken down, so we've done our best to help the fundraising to repair it by buying a raffle ticket each.  The prizes are really good too - i.e. cash prizes rather than the mysterious tins no-one wanted to eat that turn up in village fete raffles.  All being well in three years time the mill will be up and working again, with a fully repaired building and plans for lots of hands on kids activities.  In the mean time it's still fun to visit and explore, although I missed our regular bag of lovely stoneground flour.

We regard our National Trust membership as our charity for the year because as well as providing us with lovely days out, our contribution also helps to maintain and develop the places we love so much.  However with times hard financially it's brilliant that home educators can access the sites for free too if you go during the week, outside school holidays, and give a few weeks notice to the property first.  However you get there, sitting outside in the walled garden enjoying a cream tea while little birds flit between the apple blossom and the crumbs on the table is a memory worth savouring.

Tesco Farm To Fork

We had a kind invitation out of the blue this week to join a group of fellow home educated children on a Tesco Farm to Fork outing at our local store. 
It's something I've seen on their notice boards that they offer to local schoolchildren as part of their 'Eat Happy' commitment to help combat childhood obesity by encouraging a good relationship with food.

The basis of this good relationship is knowing where food comes from and how it ends up on the supermarket shelves, and throughout the trip round the store the provenance of each food and how it is transported, stored and produced is covered.  They hope that it will also encourage children and families to try something different - our bunch of explorers certainly did, with cheese tasting and exploring exotic fruits amongst other things.



One of the highlights was the bakery trip where, as well as seeing how the dough is made and turned into bread, we all got to add our choice of extra ingredients to make our own bread rolls.  Ollie made a cheese and seed slug with raisins for eyes.

 I liked the look of the proving oven - that would be very useful for getting a speedy rise on my bread on cold mornings!

 We were blown away by how helpful and informative the ladies running the session and all of the staff involved were.  They really made the kids feel special, speaking to them by name and taking time to talk to them not just at them - a really interactive educational session rather than a quick tour around.

The amount of opportunities to get hands on was perfect too - feeling the flour, smelling the yeast, tasting the pancakes.  The worksheets were good too, giving us an opportunity to have some writing and reading practice as well as something to share with family when we got home.

Ollie really enjoyed the fruit and vegetable scavenger hunt and picked Okra as his unusual vegetable to show the group (we've enjoyed it frozen from a Chinese Supermarket in Croydon before but it's not something we see fresh very often).


We were given a lesson in different types of seafood and where they're from, and a demonstration of filleting a fish and shelling a prawn.  We even got a chance to experience life in the chiller and in the freezer - I would not like to be a tub of icecream at -21oC! Brrr.

I had heard these visits were good, but I am really grateful to all the staff who made it so memorable.  I am also very grateful to the home edding mum who organised it and invited us, and the other mums who welcomed us into their group and made us feel a part of it.  It was a bit tricky when Toby found out where we had been while he was at nursery, but hopefully the bribe of a sticker book has done the trick and he's forgiven us now.  If you have children over 5 (and are in the UK) and have the chance to get involved in one of these free sessions I would definitely recommend it.



Note - I've linked to the 'Eat Happy' page for information only and because there are good resources there, but have no affiliation with Tesco (other than occasional product testing).

Prioritizing and slowing down

Things have not gone as expected in the last week or so, with plans changing or being abandoned completely, partly due to bad colds and partly just because it was what the kids seemed to need. 

I'm really conscious of trying not to overschedule our time, as children need above all else time for unstructured play, but nonetheless our weeks can sometimes feel like we're chasing from one thing to the next.

An enforced stop to our week where we cancelled everything and stayed home together, playing, reading, cooking, crafting and working on Ollie's Romans project was just what we needed.

This weekend I took stock from what had happened during the week and cancelled our plans in order to get back to the basics of spending time together.  We started with a good Spring clean of the house, working together as a whole family to flush out any stale energy from a week indoors feeling poorly.

When the house was clean, we got it messy again by baking vegetable pasties together, with each of us having a job to do.  Matt was on pastry and chopping veg, Ollie on grating carrots and parsnips, I chipped a swede and a sweet potato, Toby stirred it all together.  The boys then rolled and filled their pasties, which made for a delicious lunch.

Next it was tidy up time again and then down to the park to ride bikes, a simple thing that the kids love but we don't always make time for, preferring as adults to see something new on a day out than to walk again around the same old park.  For the kids though, they love that park more than all the new experiences, spending uninterrupted time together as a family and the sense of excitement of rising down a big hill or the fun of feeding the squirrels.

Finally a quick dinner and plenty of time afterwards to play Lego with Matt, before bath and stories.  It doesn't sound the most exciting day, but it was exactly what we needed - to slow down, enjoy the moment and prioritize what we most needed and wanted to do with our time. 

Mindfulness isn't just about meditation, it's about being present in the moment.  Sometimes it feels like you can fill your life with interest and excitement if you keep moving, but when you stand still for a while you experience fully what you have right at home and what is really important, and for small children that really is nothing more complicated that your undivided attention. 

You know you might be hippy parent when...

 1.  Your whole family is walking around with chia seeds stuck in their teeth (good fish-free source of omega 3 oil and protein)



2.  Your small people know who Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon are but haven't a clue about celebrities from within the current century.





3. Your small people moan when you run out of sauerkraut and olives and actively sneak cabbages into the shopping trolley.


4.  When your largely vegetarian small people grill grandparents on whether the meat they have been given is free range (and you're equally embarrassed and proud of this).

5.  You're not that great at knitting, but your small people still proudly sport odd home made outfits.


6.  After a day out you have a list of questions from your small people that you have to Google, including 'how old is the oldest magnolia seed ever found and successfully germinated'.

 7.  You're outdoors so much that sometimes the kids just don't want to go to the beach 'can't we just stay in and watch Cbeebies today?'.


8.  Your idea of a good soap opera is watching a friend's/your own chickens bossing each other around

 9.  You don't dream of owning a fancy car or the latest fashions- what you're aiming for is a patch of woodland to call your own.


10.  You're idea of 'grounding' a child involves helping them be fully conscious and present in the moment and feeling the connection between their energy and the Earth. 

11.  Your small people completed the '50 things to do before you're 12' list by age 4.


12.  Your kids are better at 'downward dog' than you'll ever be and bounce you awake in the morning demanding to do sun salutations together.


13.  You spend waaaay to long scrutinizing the labels of any product you couldn't make yourself because you're avoiding 'chemicals' (I know, as a scientist this is a dumb thing to say because everything is made of chemicals, but you know what I mean), or gelatine, or sulphites, or wheat, or dairy, or palm oil.


I'm sure many of my friends will read this and smile because either they recognise the above list in themselves or in me and because yes, it does all sound a bit pretentious.  I don't think any of us try to live in a different way because of 'holier than thou' pretentiousness, it's just that the more we read about and the more we see for ourselves that the formula where life revolves around tv and consumption doesn't make for happy healthy families, communities and environment, and the more we try to make small steps away from this. 

I'm sure as well that this list could be a lot longer (we're planning on going on holiday to Germany by train for goodness sake) and it would be great to hear the things you do yourself that make you smile at your own hippy pretentions.  Living differently gives so much, but what it can take more of is time - fortunately at least reading labels for palm oil could be a thing of the past as my lovely environmentally friendly friend is setting up a palm oil free online marketplace.  Check out her progress at Plutoniumsox.  Our power as voters may be a little doubtful, but as ethical consumers we can change the world.

Fishbourne Roman Palace

 
 

 Yesterday we visited somewhere I had been curious about for a long time.  En route between where we live and where my folks live we pass a sign for 'Fishbourne Roman Palace' but it's usually too late by the time we're travelling to stop in.  This time we travelled home earlier as we all had colds, and decided to try Fishbourne out as somewhere to stop for a picnic, not expecting there to be much left of the Roman Palace. 

We did find a lovely picnic spot there (complete with spoil hills from the initial excavation to roll down), but boy were we wrong about there not being much left of the palace!












 The site itself is quite large and encompasses a visitors centre, café, gardens and collections discovery centre.  The visitors centre is brilliant for kids, with lots of hands on opportunities, dressing up clothes and, on the day we went, re-enactors with a table of food for visitors to try. 




A film runs at regular intervals, narrated by Time Team's Tony Robinson, which describes the history of the site and recreates what Britain's largest Roman Palace would have looked like.

 

The enormous visitors centre preserves and displays the largest collection of mosaics in Britain, along with burials from a later period after the Palace was destroyed by fire and demolition.




Walkways and ramps make the site fully accessible to wheelchairs and pushchairs, as well as giving a bird's eye view of the beautiful earlier monochrome and later polychrome mosaics.




 Children are very welcome, with elements designed for them at regular intervals around the museum, including opportunities to handle and sort real artefacts.

 Outside the original plans for the garden have been recreated in the box hedged area, and a smaller garden with herbs and vegetables typical for the period has been produced. 

 In the shed a mannequin of a Roman gardener explains how he was brought from Rome as the locals are farmers, not gardeners.  Interactive displays show more information on crops and plants and tools from the period.

A separate building houses the Collections Discovery Centre where you can glimpse some of the 1million artefacts stored and see where the archaeologists work, as well as learning about a fascinating project tracing the areas deer by looking at their DNA and analysing minerals in their teeth.

We really liked the archaeologist's desk set up for children to explore to discover for themselves what the archaeologist was working on.

In the gift shop I stocked up on a few colouring sheets and postcards for the kids to use when Ollie finishes his Ancient Egypt project and starts on Romans soon.  It was very hard resisting the brilliant collection of books on sale.  We then finished off with a trip to the lovely and very reasonably priced tea room before we headed home.







I would highly recommend this site for anyone with budding historians and archaeologists.  When we went adult entry was £8.80 with under 5s free, but we benefitted from half price entry because we have English Heritage membership and Sussex Past, who run the site, have an arrangement with English Heritage.  A program of events runs between February and December, including mosaic making, a murder mystery evening and have-a-go archaeology.

 

Birdsong in the Combe Valley

This week Ollie and I joined Alice Parfitt and Michael Blencowe from the Sussex Wildlife Trust  for an enlightening walk around the Filsham Reedbed Nature Reserve, part of the Combe Valley Countryside Park in Bexhill and Hastings.

 We hadn't done organised bird watching with a group before and weren't sure what to expect, but our morning out probably wasn't what you might imagine.  There was no sitting quietly for hours peering out of a hide, although without small people in tow this would have been quite relaxing.

What we did instead was perfect for high energy Ollie - a fantastic guided walk where we certainly weren't at much of a disadvantage for not owning good binoculars because mostly the birds announced their presence in song rather than sight.

With the aid of bird songs downloaded to a smartphone we were taught to distinguish the different songs we heard and the birds themselves put on a great show, with sedge, reed and Cetti's warbler all getting in on the act.

We learned about different habitats and habits of the birds and felt very welcomed and included in the group who all obviously had far more experience than us.  I'm good on plants and bugs, but birds are more of a mystery to me and I couldn't tell one little brown bird from another from a book, so hearing the clear difference in their songs was really interesting.

My favourite bird though was the brief glimpse of a Hobby zooming overhead chasing swifts (which it resembles - it looks like a giant swift or swallow in profile against the sky).  I've possibly seen them before but without any idea of what they were.  These are amazing birds - they migrate to Britain for the summer, coming all the way from Sub-Saharan Africa following the swifts and swallows that they eat.  They are so speedy they can even catch dragonflies - the masters of aerial maneuverability in the insect world.

We also had plenty of interest in seeing how the local landfill site is being converted into part of the country park, with part of it already covered and turfed, part with geotextile cover and methane gas exhaust chimneys visible, and part still accepting rubbish.  This made for a great opportunity to talk to Ollie about why it's important to recycle, and the economics of materials that have made it more economically viable today compared with in the past.

Ollie was pretty tired to start with after we had spent an hour running around on the football fields adjoining the reedbeds while we waited for the group to arrive, but even so we still had a really lovely morning.  Outdoor learning is unbeatable.