In which Hannah learns about the hierarchy of classification of living things

This was the topic on her online biology course last week and we wanted to make something to help her remember it. The fact that there are seven levels involved lent itself to something rainbow, which Hannah really likes to do where possible.

So we chose seven different colour pieces of card and found different round things to draw round (various sized plates, jar lids etc) to give us circles of increasing size. Hannah wrote the name of the level and some examples of it, using humans as the species. In the end, it looked like this:

Species: Homo Sapiens

Genus: Homo

Family: Hominidae

Order: Primates

Class: Mammalia (excuse the spelling of humAns)

Phylum: Chordata

Kingdom: Animalia

Honestly, those are rainbow colours. The class one looks grey but is in fact bright yellow!

The whole thing looked like this when it was finished.

In which we recreate the Rosetta Stone in chocolate

Hannah and I went to the British Museum a couple of weeks ago and looked at the Rosetta Stone, amongst other things (although mainly she sat and chatted with her friends Z and S). She got a set of hieroglyph stamps for Christmas from her Auntie Kathryn and it occurred to me we could use them to do some kind of project on the Rosetta Stone. It fairly soon afterwards occurred to me that chocolate would make a splendid medium for this project.

So today we embarked on this piece of work. First, I created a short quiz about the Rosetta Stone, helped the girls find books that might help them find the answers (yes, I created the quiz by googling it but I made them use books....research skills are useful!).
 

H and L looking for quiz answers

We then melted two bars of Dairy Milk and spread the chocolate thinly over a layer of greaseproof paper in a baking tray. We tried stamping it with the hieroglyphs immediately but that was a disaster as all the stamps got completely stuck in the chocolate and the only way to release them was to eat the chocolate around them.....oh hang on...."disaster" and "had to eat the chocolate" clearly don't belong together. Anyway, it didn't work that way in anything other than a brief snack kind of way. I put it in the fridge and let it chill until it was almost solid and then we tried again with the stamps. This time it worked...huzzah! The girls then looked at websites that showed them demotic and Greek scripts and wrote a line of each underneath the hieroglyphs.

Chocolate Rosetta Stone

The girls did learn that the writing on the original is a decree from a pharoah. This says nothing in particular, it was just to show the three scripts. And to have fun with chocolate. We've now eaten it and it was very tasty!

In which we throw a Harry Potter party

I got a few "oh, you're *such* a good mum," comments about this party....but honestly, I have been waiting for *years* for her to be interested enough in Harry Potter for me to be able to do this one!

It took a lot of planning and most of it was great fun. I can't remember the order we did things in the preparation so I'll include the stages of prep at each stage of the party.

First, the children arrived in the reception area (we had a hired hall) and visited Ollivander's to chose a wand.
We made wands by rolling sheets of A4 paper very thin, across a strip of double-sided tape diagonally across it and the last part glued. We then sealed the ends with a glue gun and also used the glue gun to decorate with ridges and patterns.

We painted them in a variety of woody shades. Apologies for the sideways posting of the photo!

I painted a large piece of cardboard brown, then when dry, painted "Ollivander's, Makers of Fine Wands since 382BC" on it in gold. This was displayed in "Diagon Alley" and when the children arrived, those who didn't bring their own wands came to choose one.

Phoebe chosing her wand...or her wand choosing her

Next they headed to Kings Cross where, between Platforms 9 and 10, they found the way to Platform 9 3/4
This was achieved through painted "9" and "10" signs stuck either side of the doorway into the main hall and a sheet, spray painted red and bricks drawn on with black marker pen, pinned across it.

Adam making his way to Platform 9 3/4

We cut up the middle so that children could run through as though passing through the barrier to Platform 9 3/4. On the other side, they found a screened off narrow corridor with a picture of the Hogwarts Express (I'm afraid ingenuity and resources ran out when it came to making an *actual* train)

Mia and Maisie catch the train

To recreate the train experience though, my lovely mum agreed to be the elderly witch who passes along the corridor saying "anything from the trolley" and each child took sweets from the trolley as they passed.

Zara buys some sweets from the trolley witch

Once arrived at Hogwarts, the new first years were led to the Great Hall for the Sorting Ceremony. I made the Sorting Hat by covering a Halloween witch's hat in papier mache, painted brown. This created a double layered hat in which a walkie talkie could be hidden.

I created a list with all the children's names on in alphabetical order and wrote a script assigning them to one of the four houses. Some of them I knew had clothing specific to one house, eg Hannah and her three cousins went to Harry Potter World at Disneyland last year and each have house t-shirts and a few others had said they were coming in costume. so I arranged them first, then the remaining children were drawn at random to fill in the remaining spaces in each house. I then wrote a script for Afzaul who stayed hidden outside the room and spoke through the other walkie talkie, doing his best Leslie Phillips impression.

Zain being sorted into Slytherin

 

 

 

Lucia sorted into Ravenclaw

Once the children were sorted into their houses, it was time for Defence Against The Dark Arts. This formed our traditional ice breaker game as Hannah's friends are from so many different groups that we always do something to help people get to know each other. On this occasion I "taught" them several different spells: Expelliarmus, Tarantallegra, Rictusempra and Petrificus Totalis. We stood in a circle and first we introduced ourselves and said how we knew Hannah. We then called out the name of someone and cast a spell at them. The recipient had to respond appropriately by dropping their wand, dancing, wriggling as if being tickled or standing totally still! They then took the next turn at casting!

Kezia, Laila and Maisie try to decide who to curse, while Zain looks on

Jago casts a spell

Next on the timetable was Potions. I'm not really physically right for the part of Professor Snape (more a Professor Sprout), but I do a good line in menacing and nasty and I learnt and delivered most of the "to betwitch the mind and ensnare the senses" speech. I have a thing about Snape, so that was fun!

Working in house teams the children had two potions to make. First was Oozing Ointment...otherwise known as oobleck, which is a non-Newtonian fluid made from cornflour and water. The instructions were as follows:

Oozing Ointment

1.     Take 6 spoonfuls of Sopophurus (Powdered Parrot Droppings)

2.     Add 4 spoonfuls of Elixir of Life

3.     Add 5 drops of grindylow blood (green)

4.     Stir clockwise until thoroughly combined

5.     Test by holding in your hands

First to finish in a creditable manner were Hufflepuff, who received 20 points, followed by Gryffindor, who got no points purely for being Gryffindor (something Hannah is still grouching about from time to time....but what did she expect? I was being Professor Snape!!!) Ravenclaw's went totally wrong so they got nothing and Slytherin were last but got 50 points, naturally!

Slytherin House make Oozing Ointment

 

Gryffindor successfully making the same potion but getting no points because Professor Snape ain't nice!

Next they made Breath of the Volcano, which  went like this:

Breath of the Volcano

1.     Put 4 drops of  hobbleberry juice (orange) into your cauldron

2.     Pour in a sufficient quantity of Firewater

3.     Call Professor Snape who will add the Lubantuum (Wizarding crystal)

Firewater was, in fact, hot water and Lubantuum was dry ice which produced some delightfully steaming cauldrons! 

You can just about see the Volcano Breath here!

Sadly there are no photos of the next part of the day, which was Quidditch. It was originally planned to be in the garden outside, but it rained so was quickly rearranged for inside. One player on each team was designated seeker whose job was to look for the Snitch, carefully hidden by me somewhere in the hall, while 2 Chasers attempted to get a large ball through a hoop hanging on the wall and Beaters threw small balls at the other players, who had to stand still for a count of 5 if hit. I referred, while commentary was provided by my nephew Zain, who was recovering from surgery and therefore not able to play. After matches between Gryffindor and Slytherin (won by Slytherin, thanks to the substitute Adam, playing in his brother's place) and then Ravenclaw v Hufflepuff (won by Hufflepuff...also starring Adam now playing for his own team), everyone was exhausted and it was time for the feast.

At the very end, everyone was sent home with a Honeydukes bag containing a chocolate frog (actually Freddos...well, they're frogs made of chocolate and at 20p, a hell of a lot cheaper than trade-marked Chocolate Frogs) and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans (a mixture of real Bertie Bott's from the Harry Potter Studio Tour shop and cheapo jelly beans). 

I don't think she can ever have a birthday party again because how will I top that???

In which we make cookie maps of Ancient Egypt

Initially this was proposed as part of a flurry of interest in Egypt, but somehow never happened. On Monday, however, we had two friends here and I was a  little concerned about the dynamic between three of them so thought it would be well to have a project to focus on in case it was awkward.

So the girls made cookie maps of Ancient Egypt.

First they made a double quantity of a basic cookie dough and baked it in flat, rectangular trays.

When the cookies had cooled,  they used a variety of coloured icing and sweets to create a map of Ancient Egypt.

Getting started

Drawing in The Nile

Adding the Mediterranean and the Red Sea

The valley of the Nile is lush and green but there must have been a flood as all the towns are *in* the river.  There are, however, some lovely Toblerone pyramids :)

Towns have made it back on to the banks and some places have been labelled

Final verdict: Egypt was a little over-cooked but still very tasty!

In which I have a moment of stress about spelling

It's no good. I've been laid back and not stressed about Hannah's spelling, but now she is of an age that her still-phonetic spelling makes her look illiterate and I hate that! I find it embarrassing that my supposedly intelligent child writes like a 5 year old.The irony is that when we had our one and only visit from the LA and I told her my own educational background (degree in English from Cambridge) she said, "oh well you're qualified to teach her English. Apparently not!

And then on top of that I feel guilty for being embarrassed by her. I worry that the mainstream community will judge home education by her inability to remember spellings because she writes things that are seen by people (family and friends), but they don't see the enthusiasm for her biology studies where she is working well ahead of her schooled peers. I worry that home educators will judge me for being stressed about it. Arrrghhh!

We've just had my niece here for 2 days. She goes to school and also does Kumon and started her 11+ tutoring while still in Year 3. There is no way I want that life for Hannah. I love her freedom to learn what she wants and to play for hours and break off in the middle of some work to climb a tree or bounce on the trampoline or make herself a snack! Rationally, I know that when she feels the need to spell properly, she will learn it. But as someone who is passionate about words and language.....and a bit of a pedant about proper usage, I am REALLY struggling with this!

In which we go out painting

Hannah said a week or so  ago that she thought she wasn't get enough fresh air, so we are making a conscious effort to get out more. Today we went to the woods to do some watercolour painting.

This was the view from where we set up

 

Just getting started

In progress

Finished painting

In which Hannah is a reporter for Sky

Sort of...!

She and her best friend were booked into a workshop at the Sky Skills studio, where the children get the opportnity to research, write, direct, produce and film their own current affairs report. In preparation for this, all attendees were given the chance to choose a topic from the long list of options, things like animal rights (Hannah's first choice), the idea of "celebrity" in our culture, natural disasters, global warming etc. In the end the topic chosen was not anywhere on her list of choices, The World of Money.

We were given some questions to research including finding out what GDP was and how much pocket money children in our family got and what proportion of that they saved and what they spent. We came to the conclusion her oldest cousin is quite odd. He is 18 and earns £100 a month as a tennis coach and claims he saves £95 of that! On the day, children were allocated roles to play in one of four groups. In studio 1, they shot the  introductory segment, studio 2, where Hannah was, filmed an indepth report, studio 3 interviewed an eyewitness and studio 4 interviewed an expert.

Hannah was initially given the role of scriptwriter which panicked her completely  as writing is not something she enjoys, but in the event, another child in their group didn't turn up so they all wrote the script together and Hannah became the reporter. I've yet to see the finished film, but apparently it was good. One of the Sky Skills staff came up to Hannah afterwards and told her that she and the actual Sky presenter who had worked with them thought she was really good. She does, I must say, have a definite stage presence and a love of an audience!

Meanwhile, best friend's mum and I went to Syon Park and had coffee....it's a hard life!