Creswell Crags trip + useful links

 

On Monday, it rained and it rained and it rained. We were booked onto a Home Ed trip to do a Ice Age survival skills workshop at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire. We were also going to look at the cave art - the oldest Ice Age cave art in Britain. Until recently, it was the ONLY known Ice Age cave art in Britain but then they found some in Gower, Wales.

Ice-Age bison carving

Ice-Age flint

Baby stalactites

The staff at Creswell Crags were really helpful and accommodating, changing our activities to better fit in with the weather. They were knowledgeable and enthusiastic, even though they were getting as wet as we were. They were great with the kids and easily coped with the mixed age range of our group (3-13ish). Although they were getting VERY wet, none of the kids complained and they all seemed to enjoy themselves - as did the parents who were also roped into the survival activities.

A soggy Girl building a shelter

An equally soggy Boy also building a shelter

Job done!

Hunting mammoth - the Girl hit it :)

Another mammoth hunter

Fire-starting demonstration

 The Girl says: It was very good but I didn't like the cave spiders. I liked the shelter building and hunting the mammoth. I'd recommend it and my favourite cave picture was the one of the Ibis bird.

The Boy says: It was very good but they were actually quite mean because they took down our shelters when we'd finished them and I wanted to sleep in mine. It was VERY wet.

I say: 'No chance' to the Boy sleeping in that shelter. It was very exciting to hold real Ice Age artefacts - antler is surprisingly heavy and stone-like. I learnt that there were cave lions in Britain and that there are cave spiders now. I'd definitely recommend Creswell Crags to other Home Ed groups as a place to visit. I'm looking forward to going again - probably next summer....on a sunny day ;)

The trip was a follow-up to our local Home Ed group's themed meeting where the children learnt about cave painting, made clat beads, knapped some flint and played Settlers ofthe Stone Age whilst the mums made a model of Stonehenge :)

As a family, we learnt a bit about the Stone Age when we did Chapter 1 of The Story of the World Vol 1. Here are some links I found then which maybe useful to anyone learning about Prehistoric man.

Activities
Cave painting lesson
Recipes

Info
Virtual Tour of Caves at Lascaux
Virtual Tour of the Cave at Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc


Printables
Stone Age Family picture to colour
Toolmaker and tools to colour
Woolly Mammoth to colour
Prehistoric hut to make

Clip Art
Prehistoric Mammals
Cave Paintings
Prehistoric Animals

Andy and the Lion

This is a bit of an overdue post because we did this through the summer, in one of the rare quiet weeks we had. I know it must sound really weird to many people, but it felt like an oasis of calm in the midst of 2 very hectic months - which is probably why it's taken so long to post it :)
Andy and the Lion is a Volume 3 FIAR title. It's a re-telling of the Aesop fable of Androcles and the Lion, set in America probably around the middle of the last century. It introduced lots of interesting discussion topics - telling tall stories, animal conservation, animal welfare, staying safe when your being helpful to strangers amongst others. They could relate these discussions to lots of other stories, books, films and TV programmes as well.
The Boy made a lapbook and The Girl continued with her notebook which she really prefers and seems very happy with :) It gives her more space and scope to write and draw.
We pretty much stuck to the FIAR manual for this, adding a couple of extra picture books as go-alongs. I wanted to watch Born Free, but they refused because they thought it would be too sad. Instead, they watched The Lion King (again).

The Boy's Lapbook

 

 The 'Who's who...' Minibook came from Homeschoolshare. It was part of the science lesson and he wrote some facts in about each lion he drew. We used stickers for the art lesson - we have tons of stickers and not many magazine pictures to use. I added our own maths lesson, which tied in with his maths book - he made a 4 legged lions book to practise his 4 x table.Also for science, we found out the classification of a lion - the minibook again came from HSS. But most of all, i think I'm quite impressed with how he managed to sneak the Doctor in when we looked at how the text was laid out in the book and he made his own example ;)

The Girl's Notebook

The Girl started the week by finding some circus facts. She also wrote and illustrated her own example of a picture book with sentences that run on to the next opening. She enjoyed the art activities and did a good job of getting her circle to look like a sphere. For her maths activity, she made a seating plan which gave her the opportunity to practise her 8x table. For science, she picked 3 facts and then drew lots of pictures of lions doing lion stuff :)

 Another of the art activities was to look at sculpture, so we went to our local park and climbed on investigated the stone lions there to compare them to the illustrations in the book.

We picked the right week to row this book. It was a very lucky coincidence that a circus came to town, so it was only right and proper to visit it on the last day of our row. Of course, there were no lions - or any other animal acts- but we had a great time and oohed and aahed happily :) (And got very sticky from the candy floss.)

Books etc that we used (and almost used)
 

P.S I do still intend on watching Born Free, even if I have to watch it by myself !

Not Back to School :D

Blimey! Summer has flown by. Not that there was much summery weather mind you, not round here anyway.
Needless to say, we've been busy this summer. We've had friends to stay, been camping, dealt with a broken computer (still dodgy), done some walking, visited the Forbidden Corner and been to London. In and amongst it all, we did some maths, a bit of art, lots of crafts and we even managed to row Andy and the Lion which coincidentally finished just as a circus came to town, which we just had to go and see :)
Now that September has started, temperatures have dropped and all their groups and activities are back on. And don't I just know it!!! it's been a very, VERY busy week :)
It's been one of those weeks when we've been to a Home Ed group every single day.For some reason, I have a dearth of photographic evidence for most of it so you'll just have to take my (written) word for it.
Monday, we went to a Not-Back-To-School Picnic in a local park and met lots of new families, some new to Home Ed and some just new to me :) It was cold but fun.
Tuesday, we got back to our usual maths. (We use MEP but we've been exploring The I Hate Mathematics! Book and Number Puzzles .) We then made a Pandora's Box to take to book group where we've been reading Greek Mythology over the summer - or rather, we were supposed to be......
Wednesday was our local themed session where we were looking at Ice Age/Stone Age life. Oooh!! i have photos to prove it ;)

Mixing 'pigment'

Cave painting

Knapped flint....from Ohio

Not quite rock cakes, more like slate cakes ;)

They both painted a cave and knapped some flint. Agent X (aka The Boy) also got very wet playing out in the rain and Agent M (aka The Girl) made some clay beads and read stories to a gaggle of littler girls. (Guess who's got into all things spylike this summer.)
Thursday, we went to our regular Home Ed martial arts group, where they've both started working towards gradings.
Friday -today- they went to a climbing group. Phew!!!
I'm really looking forward to a quieter week at home next week :) Not that I'm complaining mind, it's been lovely to see people and catch up with folk. I just need to recharge my batteries a little after all that hecticness :)