Friday 21 November 2014

Parkour

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Cosmo has recently discovered his new favourite sport - Free running.

There's a club near us in Milton Keynes and a friend has set up a day time class for home educated kids and it is so much fun.

Two hours every Tuesday of this:









During which time Lychee and I get to go shopping together, which is nice. It's always fun to get some time 'just the girls' too.


Thursday 20 November 2014

Making Candy

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We made our own 'pulled taffy' the other week using pure honey and just adding a few essential oils for flavour and it was so fun! I'll be honest, my kids did not particularly like how it felt on their hands, but I had a lot of fun and they were so proud of their finished products.

If you want to have a go it is super easy. Just boil some honey with a candy thermometer until it reaches 140c for at least five minutes. Then tip it out on a non-stick sheet and use spatulas to move it around until it's cool enough to touch.

At this stage you need to grease your hands with butter and then you just pull and fold, incorporating as much air as you can. When it's only barely warm add a few drops of your favourite essential oils (we used, peppermint in one batch, lemon in another, orange in a third and left one plain). Essential oils are volatile, so it's best to add them as cool as you can get away with if you want the flavour to last.

When you've twisted and pulled as much as you can and the candy is pretty hard, you can cut it into shapes, wrap it in waxed paper and store in the fridge.

Even though they didn't like getting messy (there were tears over butter on hands) the kids enjoyed watching the process and learning how candy was made.




The second time we made some honeycomb. I adapted this recipe I found, but boiling the honey again, but I added a mix of 50:50 bicarbonate of soda and ascorbic acid (vitamin C powder). The acid in the vitamin C ensured we got a good reaction from the baking soda and we had a slightly chewier than I'd have liked honeycomb. I think next time I need to boil the honey a little longer.



Still, the kids really liked this one. 

Wednesday 19 November 2014

Art Class

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My children are so into art right now. Cosmo has been teaching Lychee about the art and crafts he does at boys brigade throughout the week. Last week it was blow painting fireworks (she liked that a lot).


This week we missed brigades :-( 

In lieu of her 'art class' from Cosmo, I decided to get out our sketch books (darn it, I lost mine) and follow some really cute lessons that I had found on pinterest (you can follow my homeschool art board here).

Today we started with exploring different types of lines.

I drew this:


Cosmo drew this:


And Lychee drew this:


Tomorrow's lesson: Shapes