April Homeschool Miscellany

I tried to get J to organise this month’s excursion to a cave in a national park that is not that far away from us in the grand scheme of things. I had organised it mostly for 14yo but I had misunderstood, he had some vague interest in oldschool mines which was related to an interest in blacksmithing but didn’t like caves, and neither did anyone else so that idea got nixed.

March Homeschool Miscellany

We accidentally had two excursions this month. I’m not sure whether that makes us “caught up” due to not having one last month or able to chill next month given that the first and second months tend to be organisational and transitional.

The last time we went to the Gravity Discovery Centre was in 2010. Unfortunately stuff just didn’t occur to J and I, for whatever reason I thought that we were only going for the night thing even though their night things always include entry into the rest of it, so I didn’t cancel roleplaying, and J assumed we’d be roleplaying and didn’t mention it. And it was unfortunate as the kids would have made the entire solar system walk now, before we only managed to get up to Uranus before we had to turn back.

Sound of the Universe

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

[imported from livejournal and backdated]

Last Saturday (1st of May), the parents-in-law took us to the Gravity Discovery Centre in Gingin.

It is well worth a visit. Once they got over the toy corner, the kids, especially 5yo, had a great time checking out the exhibits in the main building, particularly the chaos balls, the “pod racer” (big metal sphere with two magnets being held just off it by wires), and the giant gravity funnel that you can spiral tennis balls down. We raced up the leaning tower and my legs are only just recovering (I blame the extra 10kg+ I was backpacking the entire day), and we went on a “solar system” walk, which is an incredibly scaled down model of the entire solar system that from the sun to Pluto is a bloody long walk, we got as far as Uranus before we turned back. The kids were getting tired and my jelly legs were being pathetic and not holding up.