Bendy Bobs at Camp

Green Bendy Bob relaxing in the creek before some energetic country dancing with Ruth.



Blue Bendy Bob shows us the creek at low tide.



Orange Bendy Bob looks far to cheerful at his early morning breakfast!

Bendy Bobs Build a Bug Box

So here are two of the bendy bobs. The stars of the Learning Zone newsletter. As we are the next guest editors we have the bendy bobs just now. So we took them to camp and let them join in. here are the first two piccies:

Bendy Bobs are making a bug box with Ric the Ranger from Fort Vic.

Isle of Wight Festival 2009

So all the family went to the festival this year to volunteer with Island 2000 to raise money for bee projects on the Island. The littlest two only did Friday but the rest of us were there all week end.




So here we have Jonathan leaping between the staw bale sofas and being a very sucessful volunteer collector for Gift to Nature.




Don't Adam and Holly look beeeautiful



Bee graffiti

More Spinnaker Tower pics

Spinnaker Tower

On Monday, while still being tired (but nolonger dirty) from camp, we visited the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.

The timing came about because we were able to use the £1 special offer tickets on the hovercraft. So while we were all exhausted we had a 3 hour window of opportunity in Portsmouth. The Spinnaker Tower were offering all PO postcode residents a half price deal so we decided to take a look. we also wanted to grab a few minutes in Primark to get the kids clothes for the Do It 4 real camp they are going on. We also snuck in a visit to Whittards to buy more powder fruit tea (and Martin bought me a nice new teapot).

So here are Martin's feet looking down through the glass floor.

And here I am looking out intom the harbour.

And Jonathan very tentatively walking over the glass floor - he has at this point very bravely let go of the handle.

And cheesey photo of all the kids with the harbour behind.

It was a little misty so we could only see the island as a very vague outline which was a bit disappointing but otherwise it was very interesting.

We forgot to photograph the Bendybobs up there though.

Primark - we didn't get the combats we were going for but still managed to spend £40 on other things.

Even Badman couldn't complain about today's education!

So today is our structured day. We've got geometry maths group here from 11-1 and then art from 2 until we finish. the earlier part of the morning is usually taken up with cooking something for the group, reading, music practice, tidying up and nail painting.

Do you know even nail paining can be educational? Aside from the further development of fine motor skills, Ruth is noticing the colour change in the nail varnish she has had on for a while and the freshly painted nails - so we are taking about the effects of the sun fading things. This only takes a couple of minutes but still contributes to learning and isn't it good that she is making observations and talking about them herself.

How is this autonomous you may ask yourself? Well the children have decided for themselves what they want to do and they want to follow these structures for a while.

What does Jonathan do while this is going on? Well he is reading atm. Some classic perhaps? No the Pokemon annual, but he has learnt to read mostly through his interest in Pokemon and is continuing to develop in that way - am I happy with that - oh yes (perhaps another blog post is needed about children reading in their own time). Then he will go and play at a friends and then come back and join in with the art (ooooh another blog about differentiation (not the maths concept) may also happen). What is he going to play at his friends and will it be educational? Well I don't know what it will be but I'm pretty sure it'll be educational. Last week it was watching a TV program about the Romans - then playing Romans for a long time and discussing what they knew about the Romans from sources as diverse as Asterix and church services. Could this be an education?

And actually....

... we know our children's abilities and how they improve why should we be constantly having to prove that they have progressed.

Take Rebekah for an example. last week at camp (there will definitely be Corfe camp pictures and blogging soon) Rebekah went Kayaking. She hadn't done it since last year and this year she went out about 4 times. She was better this year than last year, but we haven't measured by how much. We didn't take a baseline assessment last year so we could test how much she has improved this year. we also didn't have a programme for her to follow to make sure she improves in the correct way in the correct time for her age. But she got better, she built on last year's experiences and was more comfortable doing it, and could go for longer and was much happier. And her face shone when she had done it and she loved it. But I guess I should really have done all that formal assessment because obviously that would have improved everything for her.

The pig don't get fatter the more you weigh it.