Science in Action!

A while back an home educating friend suggested we check out the schools lectures at the Royal Institution. We booked for one of the lectures last year but sadly our train was delayed and we missed it. I've booked another couple of events for this year and our first was today. I must admit I was a little unsure as when we booked it was called "Chemistry goes bang" but when I actually came to print the tickets the event had been changed to "Science Misadventures" as the original speaker was ill.

When we arrived we were shown into the lecture room where a couple of big school groups were already settled and chanting out the answers to questions projected up on the wall. There was a great atmosphere!

The new guest speaker was Fran Scott who describes herself as a "science translator" and has designed science demonstrations for the Science Museum, BBC live stage shows and numerous television productions including Richard Hammond's Blast Lab,  and Bang Goes the Theory. She was fun and engaging and the demonstrations were brilliant. Friction was demonstrated by interleaving the pages of books and then trying to pull them apart, first by two children live and then on video holding up an entire car!

She then moved on to non-Newtonian fluids such as ketchup and oobleck.

Then came the part everyone was waiting for..... the explosions! After a quick demonstration of the flammability of hydrogen bubbles on a teacher's hand...

She then combined hydrogen with oxygen in a paint tin for two impressive explosions!

For a finale (and taking her 5 minutes overtime!) she created a huge bang using Carbon Dioxide this time!

We left the Royal Institution after quickly having a look around, Papaya particularly wanted to know who the big statue in the entrance hall was of....

........It was of course Michael Faraday one of the most influential scientists in history!

We continued the science theme to the day by heading to the Natural History Museum, where after a quick lunch...

We headed up the awesome escalator through the iron earth sculpture.

Typically the very thing they wanted to see the most; the earthquake demonstration was closed that day!

We had a great time exploring all the other galleries though, learning about the planet we live on....

...touching on genetics with our family of curvy thumbs!

...and making the rest of us curvy too!

The Human Biology section was their favourite this time and we spent a good hour or so there trying everything out.

I had to get a close up of Monkey safe in his sling, she's such a little mother!

We finished at that museum and headed down the road to the Science Museum too to get in a bit of time at Launch pad...

We stayed at the Science Museum until it closed, and as I walked back along the underpass to South Kensington Tube with a hot little hand in each of mine and them jabbering away about all the things they'd seen and learned that day it was one of those moments I love being able to home educate!

What Home Education Looks Like - 22nd Feb 2013

Climb to the Moon

Imagine Children's Festival

It was half term this week, which doesn't really affect us except that all our favourite places were crazily crowded! The good thing about it though was that it meant the Imagine Children's Festival at the Southbank Centre.

There had been a lovely build up, with cartoon monsters by artist Jon Burgerman popping up all over the Southbank.

The festival itself was a riot of shows, music, workshops, interactive sculptures etc. It was insanely busy and we saw some very stressed parents, but all the children seemed to be having a good time.

Our first stop was the Lego book.

This had been built by people attending the festival the week before so sadly we'd missed out on that, luckily Povey was just happy to see it.

After that we felt drawn over to the Festival Control Room, which had been built and was being run by local children. We signed up for the 15 minute tour and got to see all around the structure they had created with a special portal....

Magnetic letter board....

...interviews with visitors to the centre, and the mallow machine... sadly out of order that day!

In the inside part of the structure were bean bags for lounging on...

.... a look out tower (here with one of the kids running the place giving us a talk)....

....and an interview room in the form of a mini ball pit!

Povey liked the free library and in particular the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, we must look for them in our own library!

The rest of the time we just explored around the rest of the free stuff like these cool glasses that turned all light into rainbows....

....a chance to create your own Imagine monster....

....and adding their hopes and dreams to the tree and elephant sculptures...

At 3.00pm it was the workshop we'd booked them in for; The Great Escape (A Borrower's Tale). This was an interactive theatrical experience, lasting 80 minutes and for children only!
The children were all taken through by people in white coats and glasses and hung up their coats before disappearing out of view!

We did spot them wandering around the Festival Hall a couple of time all in the same white coats and glasses! Papaya looked very happy and Povey had his serious concentrating face on!

Whilst they were in their show we watched the junior bands performing in the centre dance hall, with compère by the amazing Madame Lark! The quality of the bands was very impressive and the exuberance brilliant. They even projected up the words so we could join in!

My two came out of the Borrowers show bubbling with excitement about what they had seen and looking everywhere for signs of the Borrowers in holes in the ground and walls. They had a little leaflet showing some of the Borrower created objects they had spotted around the building.

A lovely moment was when they put their coats back on to leave and discovered a surprise in their pockets! A little plastic bag full of bits and pieces to make their own Borrower object!

Such a great little touch!