What Home Education Looks Like - 26th May 2014

Thursday was a visit to the British Museum. The reason for the trip was the Viking exhibition, but before-hand we managed to quickly see the children's favourite view....

The Romans for Povey where he found his namesake.....

The Egyptians for Papaya who was inspired by her new Cleopatra jewellery.....

And finally my favourite gallery, titled "Living and Dying" but actually an exploration of life in many cultures.

As with the Pompeii exhibition we couldn't take any photos inside the Viking exhibition, but I can assure you it was awesome and impressive.... until the fire alarm went off and we were all evacuated into the main hall!

Here's an idea of what we saw.... and didn't see!

Such a shame as we were just getting to the part about genetics! I'll have to do some research myself. The publishing company my sister-in-law works for have actually brought out a book on the Vikings so I'll try and get to see that :)

The British Museum

Today just my girl and I visited The British Museum!

We were there to visit the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition. We had a timed entry organised by a home educating group many of whom are studying for Latin IGCSE. We were just there because Papaya has a real interest in Pompeii, but we left Povey behind as I was concerned he would be upset by the casts of the bodies. I was a bit worried about Papaya too at the start as I think her late night (we hadn't got to London until 9.30pm!) caught up with her while we waited for the rest of the group to arrive!

She did liven up for the exhibition, which was amazing, but unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take any photographs whilst we were in there. Hopefully this video will give you an idea...

Afterwards we went for lunch in a nearby cafe as Papaya really fancied pizza!

We then went back into the museum to look around the rest. To be honest the museum was rather overwhelming as it is so vast and there is such a wealth of artefacts and information. We did focus some time to the section on the Romans to continue with the day's theme but it felt like we only scratched the surface of the rest of the museum. Here were some of our highlights.....

In one of the upper galleries we found a "Hands-On Desk" where Papaya was able to actually hold some ancient objects including a Stone Age axe! Just so amazing to be able handle something thousands of years old! The man at the table was very informed and able to give us lots of details about each object, which also included a bronze age axe-head, a piece of Roman pottery, and part of a Roman breastplate.

After a quick stop for Millionaires Shortbread in the Court Cafe we decided to visit one last gallery before we left, the Enlightenment Gallery. To be honest I really wish we'd visited it first as it was a condensed version of the entire museum with an explanation of how the museum came about. It would serve as a good introduction to the museum for anyone who has never been before.

One of the exciting objects there was a copy of the Rosetta Stone that you could actually touch!

There was also another Hands-On Desk this time with a string of dolphin teeth and, Papaya's favourite, a seven hundred year old model of Ganesh.

There were other Hindu Gods in that gallery so we searched for and found Hanuman, the monkey God.

We also even found an model of the goddess Dhurga one of whose other names is Papaya's real name!

My girl's favourite part of the entire museum surprised me rather as it was this little window looking out onto the main court...

She was so very happy there just watching all the people! Here is what she was looking at....

It was a real revelation to me to see the joy she took from just being at that window!

The museum was amazing and I'm sure we'll visit again this time bringing Povey. I think it would be good to again have a focused reason for going though.