Calbourne Water Mill (aka my longest blog post ever!)
So we arrived at Calbourne Water Mill and Jonathan wanted to go straight to the fire engine room. However it wasn’t Jonathan that made it onto the fire engine and got a hat on first, it was Rebekah who did so with great glee. I think they all rang the fire bell too. Well some things you never grow out of, I rang the fire bell too!
Then we wandered up the wooded hill at the back and saw some ridiculously thick ivy and a tree with a gold bauble. The the
At the top of the hill the older Gibsons stopped and looked at the view and the looked at the mileage chart and talked about comparative distances. The younger Gibsons had declared their love of the wonderful swings and had long since ran down the hill to enjoy them.
We managed to find some self heal (it was the one plant on the bee wicks that we hadn’t seen) and looked at lots of bees. Bees have been of particular interest to our family since Martin got involved in the bee project with Gift to Nature and the Isle of Wight Festival. We know about the bees disappearing and about some of the different sorts of bees, most of the bees we saw here were red tailed bumble bees but we also saw a buff tail bumble bee (aka a small earth bumble bee – according to Rebekah and Jonathan). Now I have to say that the knowledge we are gaining about bees is not really differentiated, we all (regardless of age) seem to be learning the same – if anything the kids are learning more and faster. Martin is however learning the most by virtue of it being his job.
We did some singing and role play too. Five little ducks and the three Billy Goats gruff.
Back to nature:
We saw a lovely Red Admiral and a damsel fly. This led to a discussion about the difference between a dragon fly and a damsel fly – Ruth explained that a dragon fly keeps its wings open when it’s resting and a damsel fly closes them. Rebekah and Ruth then did a dance showing this!
Then if we were going to discus our educational provision I might suggest that jumping over a channel of water was about practical estimation skills, informal measuring and physical education but Badders probably wouldn’t approve but I think the Smith family nextdoor might!
