Jenerally Speaking,

Our Wild Year: April: Food Chains

Wow... I'm rather late blogging about our fourth month of our wild year of learning, but our Food Chains inspired month was  excellent! I was surprised by how much Master R and Miss O enjoyed the various activities, and how swiftly the understand the concept of how energy is transfered from one living thing to another. 

One of the first activities we tried was...

I had fun raiding various toy boxes looking for a big range of animals and foods. Those seeds from March came into use again!

We had even more guests queuing to get into the café!

Early the next morning, with tousled hair and pyjamas, these two waiters got to work filling bowls and tummies with tasty goodies. Master R got quite cross when Miss O made mistakes, like trying to feed bacon to the squirrel!

A couple of days later I rearranged the same toys and added some chalk so we could make some simple food chains. I wasn't convinced they'd get the hang of this...

... but not only did they understand it, they found it even more fun than the café! 

They took it in turns to create their own food chains and draw their arrows. Drawing the arrows was half the fun, actually. We made sure all the chains started with our sun (a wooden ball, courtesty of Grimm toys!) Master R was careful to make his food chains accurate. Miss O enjoyed making a fantasty food chain with a fox and a dinosaur!

Amusingly, after a good session of creating chains, these two thought outside the tuff tray! It turns out that even if I put the tuff tray on legs, sitting on it is still essential.

One day on school run, Master R spotted this leaf and was curious about what might have even its way through it. We decided probably a caterpillar.

See? Sitting on the tuff tray is essential. After our success with food chains, I thought we'd raise the bar and attempt a food web.

We had a great time adding more and more plants and animals and working out who ate what and who.

Soon we had LOOOONG arrows twirling their way around the tray.

I'd introduced the term "top predator" to Master R a while back, and he uses it confidently. This web made it quite clear who was top predator!

... and then under the tray they went again. Their faces were covered in chalk crumbs!

One of the final challenges involved some smaller animals and more chalk. Master R was really challenged by some of these animals. As I lay in bed that morning, he came up to explain that he couldn't decide where to put the butterfly, because it doesn't it meat or plants, only nectar.

He decided that the crab was probably an omnivore, because "it could eat tiny floating plants AND animals, couldn't it?"

This month we also had our first hatching at the allotment of our mason bees! Very exciting to see one had finally wriggled out of its cocoon. 

We looked carefully at the blossom on the tree bordering our allotment, but we couldn't spot the released bee anywhere. We still had a good discussion about how the bees find food. 

Early one morning Master R, Miss O, and their friend were cycling around our cul-de-sac, because we had spare time before we needed to get everyone to school and nursery. We spotted this dead caterpillar on the floor! More excitingly, it was surrounded by ants!

We revisited many times to watch how the ants were getting on. First, they tried to lift and carry the caterpillar away, but it was too heavy even for those strong critters. We watched them nibbling away at the caterpillar and thought maybe they'd chop it into pieces and carry it to their nest for the lavae to eat. 

Then we spotted an ants nest across the road, with several back doors and this front door. We spotted ants busily working to excavate their nest. We weren't sure if these was the nest of the caterpillar-munching ants, or a different family. 

We remembered to check on the progress of the caterpillar corpse after school and discovered it had been squashed by a foot or perhaps a bike. All the ants had left, and there were two ant bodies left behind. This lead us to wonder if the caterpillar had perhaps poisoned them... or if the ants had just been crushed at the same time. 

Another day, we had this magnetic fishing game game out, and I started them wondering who would eat who. I grabbed some lollipop sticks and we started to make a web. We had to add F to represent fish and K for krill and zooplankton. We had to ask Google what seahorses eat... it turns out they eat tiny floating animals, which they have to suck into their mouths as they can't bite! 

I really liked this theme. We did a lot of valuable talking and thinking and, more importantly, we had fun. They don't know they're learning science or developing their understanding of nature. They're playing and chatting and being curious. They're wondering, testing, exploring and debating. It's good.

Our Wild Year: March: Seeds

We have SO enjoyed our month learning about and playing with seeds. I did the Great Shelf Changeover one evening, so that were were some vaguely seed and growing related items. I put the conkers and acorns we collected during the autumn in my wooden yarn bowl that I use for treasures, because I'm clearly never going to use it for knitting!

And I switched over our books so we had lots of outdoorsy, growing and springtime stories. And some adult nature books with great photos in.
For my birthday, I was pleased as PUNCH to receive the exact Respiin bowls which I'd been eyeing up on Babipur, but were sadly out of stock. Rachel searched the internet and found them available elsewhere, so I went rooting around in the garage and found MORE seeds for us to play with. Sunflower seeds saved from the allotment last year, runner beans and peas gifted to us and broad beans.

How much more beautiful did they make the shelf?

The next morning, Master R was there, ordering the Grimms rainbow by size, and walking the caterpillar through. Off in his own little creative world.
Miss O was content to play for hours this month with her seeds and scoops. Spooning, pouring, tipping, mixing and stirring. She adored it.

Master R enjoyed counting the seeds into the little pots, pretending to sow them ready to grow.

I loved re-organising them by type and arranging them beautifully in the pots. Literally every day I would tenderly sort the seeds into their correct places and when Miss O would mix them up again, I didn't even mind. It just meant I could re-organise them all over again! So therapeutic!
On this morning, Miss O enjoyed feeding the decorative hare I also got for my birthday, and tucking him into bed.
The microscope was put to the test after school one day, when Master R investigated what the broad and runner beans looked like up close. He wondered what the little white shapes at their centre were and we talked about how the roots and then shoots would grow out from there.

On a trip to the library, I got some non-fiction books about plants and growing for us to peruse. To be honest, we only perused them when I instigated it, but Master R did like the jokes in this one, and the look of the experiments.
So I popped out to the garden to fetch some leaves and we plunged them into water to see if they did, in fact, give out bubbles. We tried it twice. The second time we spotted two bubbles on one leaf. So not a raging success, but it got them thinking!
The next morning, while I was getting up and ready for the day, these two were entertaining themselves in the playroom. They brought up some seeds and used them to create a delicious stew. There was a very cute conversation going on about what ingredients to put where and what the stew would taste of. There was also a bit of arguing, because Master R does like Miss O to follow his instructions, and Miss O does likes to do what she fancies!

Mmmm.... stew!

Later that day, we decided to prepare the exemplar broad-bean-planted-in-a-CD-case ready for the toddler group craft activity the following day. We did it last year and it was incredible watching the roots and shoots develop, so I volunteered to organise the activity for the village toddler group.
We put a little compost into the CD case and tucked the bean in carefully.

Master R wrote his name on the masking tape we used to seal the bottom, so Miss O had to write her name too. She is actually able to write the letters of her name with help, but when she's pretending to write, she does the classic wiggly line. Love this stage. She sounds out as she's squiggling: "To Mummy, Love from O____."

Watering the bean is best done with a Calpol syringe and there was a lot of diplomacy needed to ensure each child got a turn and nobody got battered with the dustpan and brush, which were lying temptingly close to hand.

I needed to write some instructions so the other adults would know what to do at toddlers, so I enlisted my son to help me. Actually, he volunteered, which I was happy about! By the way, if he appears a bit pale and listless in these photos, it's because he was. He was off school for three days with a nasty virus and it took him the rest of the month to fully recover. It was a LOOONG illness. Rash, temperature, headaches, vomiting, swollen glands... the whole shebang.
But while dosed up on Calpol, he was able to enjoy none-too-energetic activities, and we were both very proud of his instructions. He likes to annotate his writing by underlining digraphs and marking split digraphs (which I had to help him with, because he hasn't learnt yet) with a curved line.
We've enjoyed watching this plant develop over the last few weeks. I have to say though, that it appears to be a runner rather than a broad bean...

Another day, another tuff tray. This was another day off school, so I whipped out the box of popcorn kernels to keep them busy for a while.

Of course, the seeds had to join in the fun:

Later, when Master R was back at school and Miss O and I were pootling around at home, I couldn't resist a bit of posing for the Babipur photo challenge.

Miss O immediately decided the three bowls belonged the the three bears. She told me that these bowls of "honey" belonged to Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Baby Bear.
Then she kindly invited me to join her for a feast. Who could resist such an invitation?

There was another experiment mentioned in the library book which we tried. This involved mixing mud and water and leaving the mixture in a jar to separate into layers, so you could see the different components of soil. I was sent out one morning while we were all still in pyjamas to collect soil, and since I'd accrued three different jars, I collected soil from three different locations.

They loved pouring in the water and shaking it up like miniature mixologists.

We put them on the shelf to settle and came back later...

I was definitely more interested in the results than the children, although they did have a good look before we poured them out a couple of days later. I was fascinated to see how the soil in different parts of our garden is quite different. I thought the raised bed, having been filled with a huge load of topsoil, would have a lot of organic matter, but it hardly had any.
Something I was really excited to try to classic celery experiment!

We practised our cutting skills, chose our food colouring colours and popped it on the windowsill...

... where all that happened was the celery wilted in the heat of the radiator.

...

So we tried again with some of the inner parts of the celery and some flowers...

... which still did absolutely NADA.

I'm flummoxed. I've had good results with this in the classroom. I don't understand why the plants weren't drawing up water.

Disappointing. I even put red food colouring in the water our March bunch of daffodils sat in to no avail.

Oh well. Some you win...

It took us until a couple of days ago, a week into April, to do what we'd kept talking about and plant a couple of each type of seed to see which will grow fastest and biggest. Master R thinks the sunflowers will be tallest and understands that the trees will be slowest to grow.

Busy little gardeners at work:

All neatly labelled up... some by me, some by Master R, and some by Miss O. I'll leave you to work out which!

Frustratingly, a lot of sowing which we'd planned to do in March at Careu Pippott has been postponed due to the ongoing winter, which is only just releasing its hold on us.

We've enjoyed playing with seeds a LOT. We've used dried oats, popcorn kernels, lentils and stuff as playthings for years, but seeds are much better in a lot of ways. They feel lovely, running through your fingers (particularly the smooth broad beans), they aren't so small that they get lost under the sofa and carried on your socks all through the house. And they are better for sorting and scooping because they're all different.

We like seeds. And this month, we are going to get on a plant lots.

Our Wild Year: February: Space

Space. Awe-inspiring. Astounding. Mysterious. Full of possibility. Our topic for month two of our wild year of learning. Originally, we'd planned to do Hidden Worlds, but Master R's class at school have been learning lots about space, so it made sense to link up. 

We have quite a few books about space, as it turns out, although Master R rejected 'Traction Man' on the grounds that it isn't set in space. Traction Man does adventure over Planet Duvet in his Supersonic Trainer, but apparently that's not spacey enough for my boy. Fair enough. We also borrowed a couple of space books from the library, but I confess we didn't get round to looking at them much. 

We also have a couple of space-themed toys and games, which I enjoyed setting out on the two shelves in the lounge reserved for toys. Of course, I chose some other toys as well. I like to change over the shelf toys regularly, and it happens naturally as Master R and Miss O bring things down and they get popped on the shelf, and I tidy other things away. But it's handy having a theme for the month to help me chose things to bring down from the playroom. 

Miss O and I had lots of fun playing the rocket game. I love Orchard Toys! So beautifully made - robust and attractive. The games are really manageable for little children and we have many of them, which come out regularly. This is one of our favourites. 

The first time we played I got precisely zero loops. Zero. Miss O got over a dozen. The second time, I managed four. More respectable.

Miss O still wiped the floor with me. Sixteen. Four times my score. It seems to be a theme, actually. Miss O wins board games. She just does!

Another morning I set up a space-themed crafting activity for us to do. Typically, the children were up before 6am, so I came down with them to enjoy some early morning playdough making. I used the opportunity for Master R to practice his newfound reading skills. You'll notice I've underlined the digraphs and trigraphs, which he is fascinated by.

There was plenty of counting, measuring and mixing for Miss O to help with.

Master R did sterling work sounding out the instructions. He even requested a teacher chair and a pointing stick!

I love watching these two little people playing and working together. They sometimes squabble, as is inevitable. But they adore each other and they often play beautifully. Master R is so caring and thoughtful. Bossy, yes. But he tries hard to keep Miss O involved. Miss O is much more fiery and impetuous. She is trying to learn to use her words, but often slaps or roars in rage first. 

Eventually, after plenty of mixing and LOTS of black food colouring, we created this. Sparkly spacey playdough!
Miss O made this... monster? I can't actually remember what it is! For shame!

Master R created this alien monster dude. 

Then he created Jupiter, which seems to be his favourite planet at the moment. He likes the Red Spot. And the stripes. And the fact that it is BIG. 

After all the playdough fun, Master R asked for permission for rub off the instructions so he could play at being teacher some more. He proudly wrote up the entire alphabet in capitals, although he was a bit perplexed by Q. 

Miss O wanted to join in, and freaked me out by correctly writing a number of letters on the board! "O, for O___!" "i!" "e!" I'm not sure how much was fluke. She is copying the letters of her name when we sign cards and things, and she watches Master R reading a lot. She went through a stage of copying, by pointing to the letters and saying random sounds like she was sounding out too. But at the same time as him, so it caused quite a lot of confusion!! They both had a great time entertaining each other writing and drawing. In fact, simply moving the easel to the lounge for the weekend prompted a lot of drawing and writing. It's usually in the kitchen, and they use it now and then. But having it in a new place motivated them to use it much more. And simultaneously, with one on each side!
I had found lots of space, planet and rocket photos from our friend Google, which I popped onto the memory stick of my electronic photo frame, so we often had these space images scrolling past. Master R was fascinated and awe-struck by some of them and enjoyed spotting planets he recognised. 

This is a random one. Master R realised he could reach the hall ceiling while standing on the stairs, and was delighted that he could affix our HappyLand alien to the ceiling! He even gave him a funky hairstyle!

One of my friends from our local toddler group kindly let us borrow a huge space jigsaw, which proved really popular!

We built and re-built and built again. We talked about the colours and sizes of the planet, the bright suns and the asteroid belt.

Miss O insisted on building it with me often while Master R was a school two. She adores jigsaws. Last year, she progressed astonishingly quickly from 2-3 piece jigsaws to 16 piece jigsaws. She seems able to "see" the matching shapes, colours and picture quite easily. 

Another day, I set out some materials to use for Master R and Miss O to create rocket collages. They had a lot of fun snipping and scrunching, gluing and imagining who might be in their rockets, and where they might go. 
Later in the month I pulled out the two large pizza trays I'd stashed months ago to use in a future craft project. 

Miss O loved the chance to snip with her new scissors. She chose pink felt, lots of pom poms and then, when I suggested a sea, some blue paper. We talked about the pom poms maybe being volcanoes. We wondered what creatures might live in the sea on her planet. She decided there were yellow aliens that ate water. 

Mostly for her, this was about choices, colour, texture and fine motor skills. And glue. It was a lot about glue.

When Master R got home from school, it was his turn. Initially, he wanted to creature Jupiter. But he decided that it would take too long to create all the stripes...

... so he settled on a face. With hair and ears and spikey spikey teeth. 

All in all, it was another fun month. We also popped outside with a star gazing app to try to identify some star constellations one evening, but since I'm between phones, we only did it that once, and the app wasn't that wonderfully accurate. I'll look into it once I'm properly sorted with a new phone. I've wanted for a while to learn more than just the three sisters. 

We're moving onto seeds already here, with happy memories of our month of space. 

Our Wild Year: January: Water

Yippee!! Here I am blogging in real life, rather than just imagining a time when I'll have time to blog! Rachel and Miss O are shopping and Master R and I have postponed our visit to the allotment on account on the rain. Checks weather through window. Ah. The rain has stopped. I don't care! I'm here, and I'm going to carry on. We can plant garlic and shallots this afternoon!

Because what I REALLY want to record today, is our first month of Our Wild Year. This was an idea that slowly developed in my mind as I read 'How to Raise a Wild Child', by the inspirational, optimistic Professor Scott D Sampson. That book and the ideas within it resonate a lot with me and how Rach and I try to raise our children. To be wild. To appreciate and value to beautiful, exquisite and incredible world around them. To enjoy spending time in it and to want to protect it. So we came up with this plan:

And we came up with these themes. Big Ideas to inspire the activities and invitations to play that I set up now and then at home. A concept to ruminate on while playing outside or inside, working at the allotment, wandering (who am I kidding? RUSHING) to school. They're flexible. Already I've changed February's theme to Space, because Master R's class at school have been talking about Space a lot so it makes sense to think about that at home. We can do Hidden Worlds another time. But we thought about when in the year it would make sense to focus on particular things. We considered the weather, what we'd be doing at the allotment, what would fit in with what would be going on anyway.

Our first activity was a polar themed tuff tray. Easy enough to set up the night before. I'd seen the turn-a-paper-plate-into-an-igloo hack on Pinterest at some point and happily I have lots of blue hand towels from when our downstairs toilet was yellow and blue. Rummaged through the small world box (and the duplo one, actually) of the playroom to find watery and cold critters and popped some takeaway tubs under the towels as landscaping. Easy peasy. 

Happy little penguin in an igloo. 

Master R and Miss O were enthusiastic about adding water and ice the next day, and investigated in that natural, curious way children do. I tried to probe into their thinking a little by asking some open questions and encouraging them to make observations. 

Mostly, they enjoyed the small world imaginary play. Animals chased and ate each other. Creatures attempted to float on the ice cubes (too small, they inevitably tipped off). Lots of adventures and chattering. 

I recorded their talking and activities as soon after was I could, before I forgot all they did and said:

Master R talked lots about his thoughts and wonders:
"Is a shark stronger than a stingray?"
"I think grass went in the sea and changed into seaweed."
"The ice is cracking because the water is making it warm!"
"The stingray wants to float on the ice."
"The water is cold now! The ice made it cold."
"I think the ice out of the water will stay frozen."

Miss O mostly made the animals talk, which was adorable. She also:

• Built a duplo tower for the polar bear.
• Enjoyed making the animals chat to her and each other.
• Ripped up the paper plate igloo and put it in the water.
• Licked the ice... a lot!

Keen to make links between water and nature and do delve a little into why water is so essential, I thought we should make a bird bath. I found instructions to make a simple birdbath in our RSPB book and collected some inspiring items. Mostly, laying stuff out like this in the evening ensures I remember to do the activity the next day!

The construction took literally five minutes. I found a big flower pot and a tray. Master R and Miss O each chose a large pebble from the dry riverbed. I let them pour the water in. Job done. We even got to school on time... then discovered it was Team Tuesday and Master R was not wearing the welly boots which are required. Sigh. You can't win them all!

The bird bath, actually, and dumping those bird related items on the window sill has led to a huge upsurge in bird watching in our household. I've always been interested in the birds and pointed them out to the children from when they were teeny tiny. But they've become more curious about them since building that little bath (which, to date, I've only seen one robin land on momentarily). Just doing a five minute activity and leaving bird watching equipment in a convenient location has inspired them quite a bit, so I'm really pleased. 

Lazy Sunday morning bird watching, one in pyjamas, one already dressed (she dresses like it's August every day. She's forever saying "I am not told, Mummy!"). Note my new adorable caravan teapot on the window sill. A teapot is a key part of my weekend mornings now. 

 Having seen that were were a-bird-watching, a friend got Master R this lovely bird book for his birthday. Much easier and more fun to identify birds from this than the adult RSPB book which has hundreds of species. 

Miss O loves using the binoculars. She usually uses them the wrong way round. We've had them ages and I can't even remember where they came from. They used to be in the dressing up box, but have recently moved (we had to have the post-Christmas and birthday Sort Of The Playroom) to the nature activities box. A box filled with magnifying glasses, those little pots with magnifying lids, a microscope (another excellent birthday present) and some entirely random things that also needed a place to live. The playroom is categorised... to a point!

Love her serious expression as she flicks through the grown up RSPB book.
A bit late on, I realised that I could have themed books in the book bag we keep in the lounge. I think it occurred to me while I was having a marvellously satisfying re-sort of the bookshelves in their bedroom. I took ALL the books off, organised them by shape and size and replaced them on the shelves. Man, it felt good! Then I pulled out all the books related to water, sea, water animals... quite a few, as it turned out! The children enjoyed having some different books downstairs (we do change the book bag books round fairly regularly), although I don't think they noticed there was a theme until Rachel pointed it out!

Another lazy weekend day, I set up this quickly. I'd shoved the ice cube tray in the freezer earlier in the month, with some coloured ice cubes, some glittery ice cubes and some oat milk ice cubes. We had a quiet morning in, and I thought it'd be a good opportunity for some sensory play. 

Wonderfully weird ice cubes:

They were keen to get started! The first thing we did was feel the water with our hands... one dish was hot water, one was cold. I thought that could extend their thinking about melting. 

Lots of fine motor skills picking up the ice to put it in the trays.

Master R:
"The ice will make the water cold."
"Oh! The water is turning blue! I want it MORE blue. I'm going to put another blue ice cube in."
"I think the glitter will sink."
"I've caught it [the ice]! Look how small it is!"
"I'm going to catch that piece of glitter... I've got it!!"

Miss O:
"It's cold! My hand is fweezing!"
"I want to pick up the ice. I tan't do it. Help me Mummy."
"My hand is blue! I will wipe it on my t-shirt."
"Look! I have blue water!"

I challenged Master R to guess what was in the yellow coloured ice cubes, which were giving off tiny flakes as they melted. He guessed paint, apple juice, orange juice, all kinds of things! Even when we described it as stuff in the fridge that we eat on cereal, he was baffled for a while. He did eventually work out it was oat milk. Tee hee. 

It was a fun half hour or so. They lifted, scooped, poured, sieved and stirred. They noticed how cold the hot water became as the ice cubes melted. We were amazed by how blue the water went and how much faster the ice melted in the hot water. And most importantly, they had fun.
On the same day, it was rather snowy outside, so Master R donned his snowsuit to go out and explore. The bird bath was full of ice and slush. 
Keen to play in the snow, Master R requested the digger, dump truck and some small cars to "rescue". He painstakingly collected snow (well, cold slush) to bury the little car, so he could then dig it out again. This is why I chose January to be the month about water. I hoped there would be natural opportunities to play with solid water. 

The next day we fulfilled another idea on my brainstorm, when we popped to the allotment after school for snacks (obviously), digging in the mud (mandatory) and a bit of pond dipping. We learnt that we have leeches in the little trug-pond this year, which we definitely didn't have last year. We found out that leeches are really easy to catch in a tub, but exceedingly difficult to release, because they just attach themselves to the bottom or sides and cling on as the water pours out. Eventually I worked out that swishing the water round in a swift circular motion made them let go so I could sluice them out. That evening, Master R described really clearly to Mummy Rachel how we'd  caught and released the little suckers. 

Soon our bird-watching skills and enthusiasm were put to the test, as we took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch. I was pleased that both chiddlers were keen to help, Master R definitely more so. Miss O mostly just ran round being a pirate... with a finger puppet bird on her hook. But Master R and I set outselves up on the blanket box, with out recording sheet, bird book, binoculars, camera (and, if you look carefully, a red jersey top I'd sewn the day before and needed to unpick a line of top-stitching that hadn't worked out).

Master R requested that we read "that story about the birds building the nest"... a story about crossbills in the RSPB Wild Times magazine they get a few times a year.

We had a little finger puppet birds which we'd made from our RSPB magazine during the month. It really had turned into a month of learning about birds!

We spotted a wood pigeon, a pair of blackbirds, three starlings and a dunnock. Sadly, our garden pair of robins and family of blue tits didn't show up. And no gulls or jackdaws were tempted down by the bread I'd thrown out for them. The birds clearly know about Birdwatch, don't you think?

But the fact that not all that many birds showed up didn't spoil the experience. We had fun watching for them and chatting. Master R loved filling out the answers to the quiz about the crossbills story. He managed to sound out pine cone tree (pin con tree) and winter (wintu) and various other challenging words. 
I had pootled round Pinterest (as you do) looking for ideas to add to my brainstorm earlier on in the month and I was keen to try this experiment using ice blocks and coloured salt. When Hello Fresh delivered us a box (accidentally, because we forgot to cancel it!!) with huge ice blocks to keep the meat cool, it was the perfect opportunity. 

Coloured salt, as it turns out, is absurdly easy to make. You just stir some poster paint into some salt and leave it to dry overnight. So quick and simple! Master R spotted the pots of sand after school one day, so we did it there and then at the kitchen table. Pour on some salt and watch to see what happens. 

A first, not much. But then, after we'd wandered off to play for half an hour, then returned, we could see it was starting to bore holes through the ice. The ice was pox-marked and bumpy to touch where the salt was lying on it. 

And later still, at dinner time, it was hollowed out! Little spots of the coloured salt were burrowing their way through the huge frozen blocks. This would be a great experiment to do again when they're older and get the science behind it. I wish I'd known about it when I was a teacher. 

I was fascinated by the side view of Miss O's block of ice. See how far through the ice the salt has travelled?

The last activity was spontaneous, relates more to light and dark than water and was unplanned. Rachel had picked up some glow sticks from a conference and I decided to take them up to bathtime that night for a glow in the dark bath experience. I also took my camera, so I could play around with my manual settings to try to take photos in really dim light that were in focus.

I've been reading up on birth photography, because I'm debating whether to apply to do a midwifery course as soon as Miss O starts school, or to give it a few years, so I can really enjoy their childhood before I'm committed to three years of really time-consuming work and study. In the latter option, I'd want to be doing SOMETHING with my extra time, alongside sling librarying. Maybe birth photography? The huge challenge of birth photography is the fact that many births take place in very dimly lit surroundings, because that's how most women birth well. So I was testing the limits of my little camera. I ended up with a LOT of blue glowing blurs... and a few gems! I'm well aware that if I decide to pursue birth photography I will need a truly AWESOME camera on which the ISO goes to 9,000 instead of 3,600, but I was impressed that by tweaking the aperture, I could get much better photos than I thought I would!

Anyway, they enjoyed making the bathwater and themselves glow and we were pleasantly surprised that the sticks were still glowing the next morning... and the following evening!!

So... January. The month of water. I've enjoyed having a focus. It has meant that I've found ideas on Pinterest I'd never have found or considered before. I'm surprised by how the five minute activity of creating a bird bath took us on a diversion into a month of bird watching, but I'm pleased by that. It fitted in nicely with the fact that it was the Big Garden Birdwatch and it's begun to get the children seeing animals as other living creatures with needs, personalities and desires just like them! That's something I'd like to build on this year. I'm starting to think that a theme per month is a bit swift, to be honest. There were more water activities I wanted to do, but ran out of time for. Perhaps 2-3 month themes would have been wiser. I'll see how we get on with our month of SPACE in February, and perhaps amend our plan for the year.