Yes, everyday's something like this

Should I post about this morning watching children explore light, prompted by yesterday's Mad Science club?


Thanks to the scientist who yesterday taught some twenty home ed kids. Today happy hours were spent making colour filters, playing with prisms, and thinking up ideas about refraction, reflection and diffraction while flipping through reference books and finger pointing new experiments to try. And yes, we gathered round the worn out pine kitchen table.

Perhaps not that. I could post about our Heritage Day trip to the Holy Sepulchre church in Northampton. On the way we listened, attentive, to the Naxos CD on Great Scientists (and thanks, Michelle, part of our wise and wide communities of educators all around, for putting us onto those).


Perhaps the church. One of four round churches standing in England, nudging a thousand years old. Grit collars an old man there to guide us. He turns our time into a back and forth seamless session of the history and religions of Norman-twenty-first century England.

He's a fine teacher; he knows every stony nook and cranny, and proudly runs his papery hand over a Saxon dial embedded in the ancient wall. Our thanks go to him, too, and a wish that he won't have to submit to being vetted. His talk should fit in well with the home education group we follow, because they're up and about this term exploring religions around the world.

Well perhaps I should post about the other events of the day. Like turning up at Central Milton Keynes Library in the lock-up time, for their evening storytelling session. The storytellers wove wonderful tales, and invited the audience to tell their own stories of how they came to Milton Keynes and what they recall of this new town.

The town might be new; the land is ancient. We have stories to tell of Roman burials and Celtic roundhouses. Tiger, Shark and Squirrel were the only children there. Sad; I wanted many children to be there, listening to ordinary citizens tell their ordinary stories; this glue which holds us all in a community together. But I guess the evening time is past bed time for school next day.

So that's our day. A home educated day. Following up our lessons, clubs and societies. Working at home with practical things. Anticipating joining in with organised groups. Going out on trips. Meeting people who care. Listening to adults tell us stories about how this place came to be.

Extraordinarily ordinary.