I’m hopelessly behind with organising photos and blogging. So much life is going unrecorded and forgotten….Anyway, this weekend began as usual with tennis at the park. JJ and Bear play between 9 and 10 am, but Bee and Mip join in as it is a small class and Matt helps out. Then I come over to collect JJ and Bear while Matt, Bee and Mip play for the next hour. In the afternoon the local sailing club was holding a “have a go” weekend so we went down and the older 4 spent a nice afternoon kayaking. This morning Matt decided to take them back again while I looked after Littlest. This time they all went for a sail, canoed and kayaked, and then Bee and Mip tried windsurfing. All much enjoyed. Then home for a 10 min lunch before heading out to the park for our fortnightly home-ed group football game. So, lots of nicely tired out children this weekend.

Matt has been reading some of the Cynthia Harnett historical fiction books to the children. First they read The Load of Unicorn, which they all loved,  and then Stars of Fortune, which is based on the Washington family of Sulgrave Manor. So at Easter we went to visit Sulgrave Manor. It was bitterly cold, but they enjoyed seeing the place they had just read about. Bee has been copying drawings from the book (picture 1).

I have read The Story of the Village (Agnes Allen) to them and we have now started on The Story of the Book. (which has so many references to things in the British Museum that I think we will have to arrange a visit there soon….)

We’ve been enjoying going to the local observatory for astronomy sessions and recently also went to a Planetarium talk there too. The boys really enjoyed listening to Catherine Crawford (Cambridge Astro Prof) talking about Saturn.

Our three eldest taken with a long exposure (so you can see the stars) and ‘painted’ with a red torch while the picture was being taken.

Another long exposure photo taken at the local observatory – can you spot any constellations

The moon taken through our borrowed 6″ Dobsonian. And below is Jupiter, which hasn’t come out too well – we can see the bands on Jupiter through the scope and the 4 Galilean moons.

Saturday last week I took the older 5 to a Peter and the Wolf concert in Huntingdon, leaving the baby at home with Matt. Lovely.

This week we had plans, including a trip to London to the Natural History Museum, but the children have all had heavy colds so we stayed home. Matt has been reading “The Load of Unicorn” to the children, which is being much enjoyed,  and they have been looking at some astronomy stuff using Celestia. Also some more programming on Khan Academy has happened, and Matt has found the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures from about 1973 are now available to watch so we’ve made a start on those. Which should keep us going for a while….

Today we decided to visit museums in Oxford. We started in the Ashmoleum and then moved across to the Natural History and Pitt Rivers, with a quick stop to  look at the room in the Eagle and Child where the Inklings would meet. Pitt Rivers is the most amazing collection. We would like to go and explore some more of Oxford on a dry day – it rained all day today and we got soaked  .

Pumping water, building things, moving little balls around a big machine – all the children loved Enguinuity. They were so busy there we were left wondering why there wasn’t a coffee shop for the parents to sit in whilst they watched their children – missed opportunity for someone there.

After Cefn Lea we headed for Ironbridge. (this took a little longer than expected as we broke down and then discovered our breakdown insurance only provided for a maximum of 5 people. Fortunately we were near a station so I took the 3 youngest via train, bus and a long walk, while Matt and the older 3 travelled by breakdown truck and a long walk). Eventually we arrived at our Youth Hostel in Coalport. The next day we started exploring the museums at Blists Hill Victorian Town.

A few pictures from this years Cefn Lea holiday.

Joel is wearing the medal he won at a chess competition. He was very pleased with it and wore it daily for at least a month.

Our two birthday celebrations this weekend.

We stopped at Boscobel House on the way to Cefn Lea. We’ve used our English Heritage and National Trust memberships a lot this summer to break up a journey. The baby doesn’t particularly like travelling, so when she wakes up we quickly search for a nearby EH or NT place to stop. This time it was a visit to the Royal Oak where Charles II hid.