Treasure hunting

Last year we started treasure hunting... We use two things for this, the first being a Geocache device and the second a phone app called Munzi.

I have to admit, geocaching can be quite tricky... But of course when you find something it makes the thrill even bigger.  I think we looked for about 4/5 before we found our first one :

This was our first one that we found just before Christmas.  Sadly because of the continuing rain over the last couple of months we haven't had much chance to go this year... It looks like some nice weather has finally arrived though, which means out come the bikes :)

The Munzi app is pretty similar to GC, the difference being that you are just looking for a Q code rather than a canister of some sort.  There are literally hundreds of these everywhere, so we've made quite good progress with it.

The magic of ice...

To continue with our winter theme, this week we tried freezing a few things.

First up were some leaves (still hanging about from our autumn nature table)  We put some in a plant saucer and filled with water, then left the freezer to do it's thing.

This is how it ended up, sadly with all the rain we've had it didn't last long outside, it would have been nice to hang in the garden for a while.

We also made some ice lanterns.  A little trickier to do these as you need to have water in one bowl and then add a smaller bowl (to make the hollow) and then somehow not let these move in he freezer until they are frozen...  We kind of managed it, and from one side, with a lit candle in, it looked awesome 

Of course with a lit candle in, it didn't last long... but worth the effort. 

What have the Romans ever done for us..?

This week at Tuesday group: the Romans...

As usual a bit of a talk about what we know, where the Romans were from and some of their favourite pastimes (gladiators, lions etc..)

Then we turned our hands to pottery, by making salt dough pots.  Not one of J's favourites as it involves touching icky stuff, so he supervised my attempt instead..

We did however all have a go at making mosaics from paper, card and anything else we had to hand. I say mosaics, but I use the term rather loosely, I prefer 'creative interpretations'. 

They all had the free rain to make a mosaic of anything they wanted.. My J decided to do a paralysis tick... I love how this boy's mind works :) 

Lava lamps and shrinking pictures...

Week 3 at our Tuesday group and we're back to science again... This week lava lamps...

Most of the things we cover I've never tried before, this is deliberate as it means we are really experimenting and when things go wrong we can work out why... 

Mostly this is an exercise in density - why water and oil won't mix in this example... To demonstrate this I got most of group to pretend to be water particles and Myself and J played the part of oil particles, the waters main goal is to stick to the people they like the most which is water and not let the oil, which they don't like, mix in...

Hilarity ensued and as usual with my impromptu demonstrations it ended with everyone on a heap on the floor - laughing with it, so by that measure I count it a success. 

Next we looked at this in a more sensible manner, by adding cooking oil to a bottle half full of water.  Then a smidge of food colouring - observing how it only changed the colour of the water and not the oil... And then some fizzing salts (anything like alka seltzer works)..

It worked to some extent, but not quite the effect I was hoping for, but as an update to this a couple of weeks later, we tried again with a fizzing tablet (rather than powder) and got a much better reaction

Slightly more bubbles this time - as always with my not quite perfect experiments, it was an opportunity to talk about why there was a difference..

We also looked at shrinking plastic.  Love this stuff, so simple but so effective.. Everyone drew on their plastic and then watched with delight as with careful use of heat gun the plastic started to dance :) 

This was J's killer whale, although he preferred it in its original larger form apparently.  He has a point - killer whales are big animals...

Heading out to Egypt....

Week two at the new group, and this week it's Egypt...

We started off talking a bit about the Ancient Egyptians, and then the most essential thing you can do when studying this topic is to make a 'mummy'.  We ended up making two sorts... One from a pringles tub, toilet paper with some arms, legs and head attached..

 




And we also made some life sized mummies... which basically meant two teams competing to wrap toilet paper around one of their team mates the quickest... Great fun..! 



Ending with some cardboard pyramids and a pyramid made from Mega Bloks


A few of the more adventurous had a go at writing our names in Hieroglyphics

The previous day we were meant to visit the Egyptian exhibition in Portsmouth... but sadly we all forgot check and they close on Mondays...  A trip for another day..!

New adventures...

Having been a bit disappointed with some of the groups we went to last year, a close friend suggested we get like minded people together and start our own...

A is the one that gets the essential stuff done - books the room, handles the money etc..

Me, I'm the hired help :) 

My job is to be creative and work out the activities to follow, with very helpful input from the others.  We alternate between science one week and History/Geography the next, the focus being on hands on activities, with follow up worksheets to take home and do afterwards.

The challenge is to make the activities fun, but also covering a broad age range, so it has to lively and engaging for the young ones, but demanding enough for the older ones... It also has to be frugal, everyone brings something to contribute and then it's only the cost of the room hire to sort.

The first week was an easy one for me, a nice tried and tested activity that I knew they would all enjoy: volcanoes...!!

We started by making volcanoes from half an old juice bottle and some home made play dough, then of course the fun bit - making them erupt..! Using of course the ingredients J and I used for the Mustafar project.  Awesome fun..!

They all then went on to do paintings of volcanoes, some of which were made 3 dimensional using some left over play dough...

This is J's, which I love 

And a couple of the 3D ones some of the others made:

Dragons..!

J got a very cool gift from one of his Uncles last year... We tried a worm farm... And now we are growing water dragons... Their real name is Triops and they look like they might be quite fun to watch grow.

Starting from eggs, as you can see, there isn't much to see right now.. Hopefully in the weeks that follow that will change.  In the meantime we follow a daily schedule of adding air in the tank everyday and feeding every 4/5 days...