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! 

What Home Education Looks Like - 15th Feb 2013

We had crazy snow this week and the children and I drove through that same crazy snow to get to a history talk with Christopher Lloyd (not the actor, the author of the What on Earth wallbooks!). We love our wallbook of the timeline of the history of the universe and so I was determined to get us there despite the weather. Povey took this photo of us on our Narnia-esque route through windy back-roads.....

....of course that meant he then had hold of my phone so also did some videoing including a short tour of his lunchbox ;)

The talk was held at the Spotlight Centre in Basingstoke, which is on the site of an old school so the children braved the weather and played in the playground for a bit.

It's a brilliant place offering all sorts of activities and support. It even had computers to play on so Povey was straight in there!

The talk itself was great. Christopher Lloyd is energetic and charismatic, and as he home educated his own daughter he totally identified with his audience. My two were a little fidgety but enjoyed it. I learnt an awful lot myself, such as the fact the Aztecs were around the same time as the Tudors! And how important stirrups were to human progress.

Afterwards we bought signed mini versions of his other two wallbooks about sport and natural history and I took a photo of my two with their favourite parts of the giant wallchart. Papaya with the point at which cats became domesticated...

...and Povey pointing the the Vikings to match his new t-shirt from the talented Kitchsy Coo.

Luckily the snow had turned to rain for the journey home making it much easier!

Pancake Day!

What Home Education Looks Like - 8th Feb 2013

My brain still thinks in lesson categories (but I don't tell the kids!) so a request to try making marshmallows this week delighted me as it pretty much covers English (reading the recipe) maths (measuring) science (physical changes) and home ed ;)

We followed this recipe..... Vegbowl Marshamallows, but only had sheet gelatin so adapted slightly. In retrospect we should have made sure the gelatin was fully dissolved before adding it as the final marshmallows did have the odd tough bit. These photos are all Papaya doing the stirring, cooking, mixing and cutting.

Best bit is you can cut them into whatever shapes you want (thereby covering art too!).... and have them on your morning porridge!

What Home education looks Like - 1st Feb 2013

Yesterday I took both children up to the South Bank to meet up with my family and visit a gallery. South Bank is such a great place to visit, there is always plenty to do even on a wet and windy Thursday in January!

We were able to spend hours just looking around South Bank and it's amazing Brutalist architecture and installed tactile artwork...

The main purpose of the visit though was the Hayward gallery. We went up to the free part first to look around and watch some cartoons and an interesting video about the architecture on the screens they have up there...

Then we went into the paid exhibition, Light Show, a study of light from various artists. Unfortunately we were disappointed when before we had even got inside the woman checking our tickets said "I hope you understand that the children mustn't run about or touch anything". It seemed like they were being pre-judged! There were a couple more occasions inside where guards commented on what they should or shouldn't do  when they were doing nothing wrong!

In fact they enjoyed the exhibition and Povey kept hold of the pamphlet and was talking through the names of each piece. Povey particularly liked Ceal Floyer's "throw" showing a splat of light on the ground and Conrad Shawcross's "Slow Arc inside a Cube IV" which had a light rotating inside a mesh box and casting moving grid-like shadows on the walls... although it made the rest of us feel a bit nauseous! Papaya's favourites were; Anthony McCall's "You and I, Horizontal" (partly because she managed to entertain a whole room of people demonstrating how she could use the light to make it appear like she was disappearing underwater!) and her other favourite was one of the few that we were allowed to photograph, Ivan Navarro's "Reality Show" where we had to queue to take it in turns to stand inside a mirrored box.

In fact she liked that one so much she queued a second time, this time taking these amazing photos from the inside...

It was a very interesting exhibition and the children got a lot from it, despite the over-officious staff!

We came back out to find more amazing light as dusk settled on the South Bank, the lights came on, and it became even more beautiful!

I love the South Bank! I used to work up at the BFI so have fond memories. I suspect we'll be heading back there a lot. There is a children's festival called "Imagine" taking place there in a few weeks time so we'll be back for that at least.