One word? When seven would do…

Today was Pulborough Brooks day but I’d already decided last night to let everyone sleep til they woke up and when I woke it was 10am, the kids were a good half an hour behind me, which coincidentally would have been the time we *should* have been arriving at PB to start walking round. So despite it being a lovely sunny autumn day we didn’t attend today.

I did some kitchen clearing, let the chickens out, sorted some laundry, cleared up some cat poo (oh how we pay for going away for a weekend, that cat is *such* a bunny boiler!), took out something for dinner, got breakfast for children and chivvied them to get dressed. Which took us to well past 11am. I then sat down with a cup of tea to check my emails and looked at the message from the RI about tomorrow’s lecture which had 3 suggested science experiments to do to help prepare for the lecture. I decided they were simple enough so gathered the required stuff and brought it into the lounge and put it on the table (knew it would come in handy sooner or later ;)).

The first was dissolving sugar in water and then talking about what had happened, whether it was still there and how you could tell. This was all very straightforward. I did laugh when Davies suggested it had been ‘deleted’ but he corrected himself to ‘dissolved’ and claimed he’d mixed up words rather than meanings 😆 They said they knew it was still there because they could taste it and smell it. They then asked if we could get the sugar back and I asked for some ideas of how. They came up with the idea of evaporating the water by heating it so we poured it into a saucepan and put it on the hob until all the water had evaporated and just sugar syrup was left. We didn’t continue as it would have burnt. Much discussion of gas, liquid, solid, told them that water boils at 100 degrees and freezes at zero, we talked about dissolving, solutions, saturation, catalysts and then checked whether temperature plays a role in dissolving sugar in water, did an experiment to check (one glass of cold water, one of hot) to prove the kids hypothesis that it would.

Next was curdling milk – two glasses of milk, one with water added, one with acid (we used vinegar) added. Some discussion about acids, but not as many ideas on this one.

Finally we had to tear a sheet of newspaper in half, then try tearing in half again, one from short edge, one from long edge and speculate on why one tore smoothly and evenly and the other was all ragged. We tried this several times to ensure it was the paper and not the tearer who caused the outcome and speculated on several reasons why.

All of the experiments are apparently being discussed and explained tomorrow.

That took maybe half an hour. When they were interested and engaged we took it further (hence lots of dissolving stuff), when they weren’t we didn’t.

Davies had posed the idea that his animation station might work on his portable dvd player. He brought it down to check but it didn’t (it doesn’t have the correct input port). We plugged it into the old laptop which recognised it and allowed us to download all the photos but it doesn’t have a working disc drive to install the driver for the animation station and I couldn’t find the external disc drive we have somewhere. So we watched Trapped instead.

Scarlett has been spending lots of time brushing various toy horses she owns (Barbie horses and a collection of similar toy horses mostly gathered from charity shops and car boots sales) to ensure their tails and manes are ‘tangle free and glossy’ (her words) – I suspect she’s been watching too many shampoo and conditioned adverts on tv! 😆 She is experimenting with various potions to see which results in easiest brushing and glossiest results. The irony of her own rather tangled hair was not lost on her and indeed she commented on it…

We decided lunch should be popcorn inspired by melting sugar, we decided we should watch a film inspired by eating popcorn so watched WALLe and ate our popcorn.

While watching I emailed Booth museum, Sealife Centre, Herstmonceux Science Centre and South Downs Planetarium to see about prices and offerings for group visits during Christmas camp.

I’d had a bit of an ordering books frenzy at work the other day for Colin Thompson books for Davies and slow cooker recipes books and friendship bracelet books for me and had several email notifications that books had arrived so I decided to go to the library to collect them. I offered Davies and Scarlett the chance to stay at home while I went or to come with me, they chose coming too and both voted for walking rather than driving. We walked a ‘different to normal’ route there and collected the books, both chose a couple more and a DVD for Scarlett, admired my Andy Stanton display, chatted to various colleagues and then looked at the ‘What makes you smile?’ display complete with pens and postit notes for people to add their answers. I noticed ‘shepherds’ and ‘National Badger Day’ in the handwriting of a particular colleague, both of which I knew to be aimed at me 😆

Davies did a drawing of Mr Gum and wrote ‘Mr Gum’ on one and then took another post it note round the corner and came back to stick it on with ‘My Mummy’ written on it, complete with little drawing – awwww. I’m not like sunshine like Michelle is but I am worthy of public declaration :).

We’d got so many books my bag was full and heavy so we went straight home, stopping only at the sweet shop for some sweets each for the kids. Once home I made their tea while they watched Pablo the little red fox on dvd (Tarly chose it from the library).

I started watching the SC but had to pause it to run them out to gymnastics. I came home and continued watching, really enjoyed some bits of it and certainly didn’t feel GB got an easy ride at all.

The honeymoon may well be over at gymnastics already. We forgot to tie Tarly’s hair up so they’d done that with an elastic band which she was less than impressed about. Davies had been pulled out and told he can’t wear all his wristbands and needs to cut them off. After the first week they told him he needs to cover them so he’s been wearing a buff wrapped around his wrist but they told him today that’s not okay either. As far as he’s concerned that’s the end of gymnastics. We talked a bit about their reasoning, how he has to wear a uniform at Badgers and a swimming cap at swimming lessons and the rule is if he wants to do these things he needs to abide by their rules, if he finds their rules unacceptable then there is no pressure to attend. For him this is a deal breaker, he is not prepared to take off the wristbands he has been wearing for 18 months and which to him are part of who he is. Personally I’m very proud of this and happy that he is not bowing to pressure although I am being resolutely impartial in what I tell him. I have said I will email the gym owner as I do feel allowing pierced ears with tape covering the earrings is no different to allowing wristbands with a covering.I am happy to sign a disclaimer to say we won’t sue them if he injures himself as a result of wearing them, or alternate clothing to allow him to carry on wearing them covered up.

Got home and read several chapers of
would have continued for longer but time was marching on, it’s an early start tomorrow, I needed to have a bath / cook dinner and so on. So I had my bath, cooked dinner – shepherds pie including two individual portions for kids for tomorrow with their personal vegetables of choice ready for A to slam in the oven when we get back tomorrow for Mad Tuesday for them while I’m out at my course.

In the end nobody managed early to bed, but that might be to do with the 10am start to the day really 😳