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.

What Home Education Looks Like - 17th May 2013

One of the things I love about the home ed groups we go to is that so much is happening in the same room!

Science....

Art and craft....

Water play....

And even P.E.......

What Home Education Looks Like - 10th May 2013

Baking and cooking is something we do lots of here most days. The majority of our meals are made from scratch and aside from this being healthier and cheaper, the amount of different things the children learn from cooking are brilliant!

What Home education Looks Like - 3rd March 2013

I certainly never tire of the opportunity home educating gives us to go out into the world and learn directly from it :)

What Home Education Looks Like - 26th April 2013

Edible science....

Tequilamonky's Tips - Goodbyn lunchboxes

Continuing with my plan to tell you about something that has been a great help since home educating, this week I want to write about Goodbyn Lunchboxes.

Now it may seem a strange thing that when we finally decided to home educate one of the first things I went searching for was lunch boxes! Lunch boxes tend to be thought of as something you need for taking to school or work. The thing is that I knew right off the bat we would be doing a lot of travelling and visiting. My children are both hands-on type people and the best learning experiences for them are when they can actually touch and see what we're learning about. I knew that every week we would do at least one visit to a museum or place of interest, plus the home ed groups, trips to the woods or the beach etc. Our money is limited and taking your own lunch is always the cheaper option so an easy to use, portable lunch box each was the best bet.

I do a lot of research before I buy anything, checking prices, value and also previous customer reviews. All of that led me to Goodbyn. I liked that their lunch boxes came all-in-one and despite being plastic were at least free of BPAs and Phthalates. There are not lots of fiddly little containers to contend with or lose, they are easy to use and clean and they look fun with stickers so we could personalise them. I ordered ones with ears in blue and pink for the children and a smaller sized "Bynto" for me.

Each comes with it's own water bottle with a slot to store it in; if you fill and then freeze the bottle it also acts as an ice pack to keep everything cool! The different sized slots mean I can pack all sorts of different things without them getting mixed up. It also means the children can choose a wide variety of foods to eat as and when they like. Kind of like a portable monkey platter! This is one of Papaya's lunches she took a photo of...

As you can see she has fruit salad, chocolate biscuits, llama crackers, ham and salad sandwich and dried fruit. The "sandwich slot" could just as easily have pasta in it though and the clever lid means there is no fear of the fruit salad juices and the pasta juices getting all mixed up. Everything stays separate I have even put hummus or yoghurt in the slots before without it travelling where it shouldn't. As you don't need to wrap everything separately I find it much easier to pack healthy lunches rather than just crisps and chocolate bars. The boxes even come with a leaflet giving suggestions on what to pack. 

You can see the lunches I packed for a day out in the first photo above and here is another lunch, this time my son's that he decided to helpfully do a video guide to on a snowy drive to a home ed group!

The best part? After use you just tip away any leftovers ("what are they?" my children ask!) and the whole thing can be put in the dishwasher!

I ordered our boxes direct from the Goodbyn website. They arrived quickly and were surprisingly good value.

Since ordering them, Goodbyn have actually introduced an additional new system to their range called Mix and Match involving lots of smaller boxes. I'm not sure about that; as I said before the advantage to me of the boxes was that it did come all in one piece without lots of fiddly bits to lose. I just hope it doesn't mean they stop the larger size box completely. The box isn't too big to carry around, yet holds a lot of food, if I pack carefully I can even put in enough food for my children for a whole day! I would be prepared to give the new system a try though if they fancied sending it to me ;)

What Home Education Looks Like - 19th April 2013

Using reference photographs on Google to help when painting a koala mask.