Archive for the ‘Learning’ Category
And todays bargain was….
February 4th, 2010 | 
Author: 50 fat balls for £5 from netto.. now that is approcimatly a £3 saving…for 50 or £6 for 100. As we bought to buckets.. we have still saved ourself £6.
Also from netto – we dont shop there often.. was 500 grm butter for £1.. that will do for baking with.
We have finally returned our three bag fulls of books and audio tapes to the library. and bought home a couple of audio books. Story time was on, and Asha dosnt really enjoy it, so we didnt stay long.
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Tescos and my fellow Students.
Many of my fellow OU students shop at Tesco’s for one reason. To collect tokens to put towards there courses. Now tescos have changed there policy, and you can only use them on level one courses..
This is going to mean that 100’s – possibly 1000’s of students are not going to be able to complete there courses, and of course the knock on of that is a. Tescos are going to find less people shopping there. b. Tutors are going to find them selves student less next year, c. well the wonderful institution which is the OU is going to have less students.
Please find attached a link to a facebook group entitled ‘Tesco – Every little doesn’t help OU students’
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=278290981649&ref=ts
I thought you might be interested to know the impact that the OU/ Tesco change of policy on clubcard…
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Kitchen Science.
Yesterday, Asha had a go at kitchen science.
Science
The material just goes softer and wetter... it swashy mummy and drippy!
We got some items out and watched what hapend to them in tepid water overnight
milk bottle plastic – no change.
Kitchen paper erm.. where did that go mummy!
cardboard toilet roll, strip off.. came apart.
mummy!
Oil, food colouring, water and
Food colouring.. well it change the colour of the water.. oil added.. the oil floated and the oil sank.. Why mummy?
Bicarb of soda .. just went.
xanthan gum and oil in water – well daddy can write this bit up but.. Look at the pics!
xanthan gum , with oil and water..
Asha had a great time. Considering we are all still coughing our guts out, it went really very well indeed!
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Just pottering along.
Its Saturday. Steve and I had uni this morning, Asha went on a play date to J. She loves playing with A , E and K. Asha is one of these children, who when she is content, and feels safe somewhere, she will just get on with playing. Like me, Asha feels safe at J’s house.
After our rather successfull, but demading tutorial, for our welsh course, Steve and I both took it in turns to fall asleep at home. I needed it. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Forum
I have decided to have a go at launching a forum on FTH. Its essentially for anyone who knows us.
There is a general chat forum
One section for fellow OU students and there is one section which is for current home educators only.
Please ask to join this, if you are currently home schooling. Otherwise you wont have access to it!
Vicki xx
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Work?
Asha woke up with a horrid cold this morning. So we didn’t go shopping or to gymnastics as planned.
Instead we wrapped up warm, and stayed at home. Asha has done some play with her toys, watched some videos with daddy, and played on the cbeebies web site.
One of the games is to make a model village, doing point, click and drag operations with the mouse. This is the result of her first attempt of this. I am very impressed!
My First Town.
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So what is the history of gingerbread then?
Ginger is a spice from Indo-Malaysia. The ginger root was believed to sooth an upset stomach or to prevent a cold.
Each ginger species has a different culinary usage; for example, myoga is valued for the stem and flowers.
Myoga ginger
Garden ginger’s rhizome is the classic spice “ginger”, and may be used whole,
candied (known commonly as crystallized ginger), or dried and powdered. Other popular gingers used in cooking include cardamom and turmeric, though neither of these examples is a “true ginger” – they belong to different genera in the Zingiberaceae family.
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Tescos Santa on a sleigh do it yourself kit.
Fantastic… But
Now I really didn’t have a lot of faith in this little project, can you spy the sticky tape??
The intructions said. “use normal craft glue” now for me this implies use, PVA glue.
Well Foam crafts, just dont work with PVA glue! The instructions were erm.. hazy.
Well we still like the result. Just a pity I had to use double sided sticky tape to get it to work!
Eventually we got his hat and hair stuck on his head… and then we stuck him to his red body.
Sitting Proud...
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Don’t worry, its all going to work out
Don’t worry about the small stuff. It’s all going to work out. These 2 videos help get things into perspective.
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L196 – beginners welsh
Wow!
What a fantastic course this looks like! Its 44 weeks long and has two courrse books in all, wih two practice books as well. 6 TMA’s!!! But at least I should enjoy it. The materials seem well organised and clear to use.
The use of on line conferencing and activites will make it really good fun.
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Time flys buy when your a passenger on a train….
I cant seem to find the energy or inclination right now to blog. I think i am just in soo much pain and Soo tired.
Asha is still loveing Gymnastics.
She is also enjoying her swimming lessons, especially now we have changed pools.
She is doing a week long course during half term as well. Its every morning but as I am paying for her lessons and this week is free! I thought.. Why not. Plus it will tire her out for the week, and as no one needs to go into the pool with her I wont be as exhausted!
She is still doing swimming with home edd friends on a Tuesday as well, which she loves.
She spent a day at the beach on Monday – Its mid october!
She is desperate to go back to Gwerin. I think we will try for January. Hopefully she will be over the food problems by then and I will feel stroger.
Steve is still looking for suitable work… He would like to be off benefits. Our OU course materials have arrived for L196- they look good.
I feel crap. I look crap, my balance is crap.
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Jack and Jill
The nursery rhyme has an interesting history of its development linguistically and socially over the years.
Over the next few weeks I shall develop this post.
Jack and Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water:
Jack fell down and broke his crown
and jill came tumbling after
Then up Jack got and home did trot
As fast as he could caper;
And went to bed, to mend his head
With vinegar and brown paper.
That third verse
Then Jill came in,
And she did grin,
To see Jack’s paper plaster;
Her mother whipt her,
Across her knee
For Laughing at Jack’s disaster
taken from a chap book printed by James Kendrew c1820
The oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes edited by Iona and Peter opie.
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Which Witch?
Yes, its that time of year again, but can i remeber it? for love or water!
If anyone can remeber the first verse to which witch, Please let me know!
However I now have a completed.
THE RIDE-BY-NIGHTS
Up on their brooms the witches stream,
Croocked and black in the cresecent’s gleam;
One foot high, and one foot low
Bearded, Cloaked and cowled, they go.
‘Neath Charlie’s Wane they twitter and twit,
And away they swarm ‘neath the Dragon’s feet.
With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway,
And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way.
Between the legs of the glittering chair
They hover and squeak in the empty air.
Then round, they swoop past the glimmering lion
To where sirius barks behind hugh orion;
Up, then, and over to wheel a main
Under the silver, and home again.
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When is a hill a mountain?
When it is 609.6 meters above sea level.
A Welsh hill has been upgraded to a mountain after three walkers found its official measurement was just too low.
Mynydd Graig Goch in Snowdonia was originally put at 1,998ft (609m), just short of the magic 2,000ft (609.6m) that qualifies as a mountain.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/7623904.stm
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Young Lifesaver Scheme – St Johns Ambulance
I am not sure whether I will be doing anything about getting involved with this,I do feel its worth knowing about the information sheets availible for personal use with your children.
They have juniour and seniour sheets so use what is most usefull to you!
http://www.stjohnwales.co.uk/yls/news.asp?id=3
Vicki xx
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Glow Stones
When struck together in the dark a glow appears from inside the rock.
The reason for the glow
Scratching the rocks together separates the positive and negative charges within the quartz. Enough volatage is obtained to cause an electric arc. Then the two charges re-join to neutralize each other.
This phenomenon is called the piezo – electric effect and it has several important technological uses.
source stone science. August 08.
piezo – electric
The piezoelectric effect was discovered in 1880 by the Jacques and Pierre Curie brothers. They found out that when a mechanical stress was applied on crystals such as tourmaline, tourmaline, topaz, quartz, Rochelle salt and cane sugar, electrical charges appeared, and this voltage was proportional to the stress.
First applications were piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers and soon swinging quartz for standards of frequency (quartz clocks).
An everyday life application example is your car’s airbag sensor. The material detects the intensity of the shock and sends an electricla signal which triggers the airbag.
source :http://www.piezomaterials.com/ september 08
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Well an interesting day!
What did we do today then?
Another section of painting by number, no 33 was painted in her picture.
She decorated a plate which was a present she got for her birthday, which she enjoyed doing. In doing it, she learnt how to draw a basic flower, which she was VERY pleased with. Her copying skills have really erupted this week.
She copied the word Mummy out beautifully, and Asha. I will try and get a photograph of her work up this week sometime.
She sat and played in the lounge at making food, and copying letters using peices of wood. As the bits of the letters.
We read a Elmer the elephant book this morning which she loved.
We watched the closing ceremony of the olympic games and talked about Greece, and why the Greek flag was flown on the last day of the games.
greek flaf
We looked at the other flags flying – Peoples republic of China,
olympic rings
olympic flag and
union jack and said the significance of them. -
Asha wanted to know why the welsh dragon wasnt there… Umm anyone care explain!
Asha danced to the music, loved the big wheels the dancers the riding on and said she prefares gymnastics to the trapeze artists.. I was rather pleased about this!
She danced like the rather beautiful chinese dancers, and enjoyed herself.
So for a day which I felt awfull in, Asha seems to have rather an educationally sound day. Just a pity mummy felt like a bag of wet potatoes all day!
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Education is not the filling of a bucket….
The GCSE system is supposed to educate people. And sometimes it does: facts and skills and methods and systems can all be picked up in the course of preparation for the exams. There are still plenty of good teachers and bright students. But if a desire for education gets in the way of the procedure – the “assessment objectives” that Francis Gilbert identified last week in his article about A-levels – then education loses. Like the all-important procedures that define call-centre operations, the means becomes the end. The purpose of a GCSE is the GCSE itself, and anything truly learned is a happy accident.
Which is good news for call centre managers, as a generation of youngsters learns that sticking blindly, rigidly to a syllabus or a procedure is the way to success and contentment. WB Yeats said that education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire. From many students today, proudly clutching their A* grades in English literature, the only response will be: “Yeats? Nah, we haven’t done him.”
(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/22/schools.gcses)
“Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire”. yeats
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