Burgh Castle Field Trip

Our recent topic is Romans and we have done a variety of subjects on it including Boudicca, mosaics, Hadrian’s Wall and Gods.

IMG_7284 IMG_7285

To find out about Roman buildings we went to Burgh Castle. Mummy made a field trip sheet to fill in, but Anna didn’t do it so Nanny did it for her.

The sheet asked us to see what it was made of and I thought it was made of stone, clay, brick and flint.

I took some pictures of the layers in the wall.

Layers of the wall IMG_7294 Flint in the wall

Next we had to look for the bastions. A bastion is there to help defend the castle. We saw 6 bastions but there would have been more.

bastion outer

These are my pictures of the different bastions we could see.

A collapsed bastion Bastion 2 Bastion 1 Castle wall Bastion join

These are holes in the walls where the bricks have fallen out and they are not supposed to be there. You could see a bastion through one of the holes. Can you see which one?

 hole in the wall 3 hole in the wall 2 hole in the wall 1

I think this hole might be something to hold a roof up with a wood pillar. There were 7 and they were square so looked like they should be there.

holes for pillars

These walls have either fallen down or are wonky.

Collapsed wall view of the wall

We learnt a lot and had fun exploring!

IMG_7331 IMG_7315 IMG_7319

IMG_7332a

Photo Scavenger Hunt #1

This time of year it’s hard to get the girls to go outside as the weather is cold and unpredictable, with it raining one minute, sleeting the next and sunny the next.

I thought we’d go on a scavenger hunt around where we live which is a beautiful spot in the English countryside.  But instead of coming home with stones, feathers and leaves, they would take photos.

So I created a photo scavenger hunt sheet and each armed with a camera off we went.

This was fun as it got the girls looking at their surrounding as we wondered home from our local village.

Alphabet Photograph Challenge – Part 1

Elsa has a camera, which she takes with her everywhere.  Sometimes she remembers to take photographs and other times she doesn’t.

To encourage her to look at her surroundings and to remind her to take pictures, I set her a challenge.

By the end of our home school year could we each have a set of alphabet photographs taken of items we see while we are out.  They can be of anything but it has to look like a letter of the alphabet.

This little challenge seems to be working as these are what she has found so far.

E  H H I I

L L O OR

V V W  X

Y  Z Z

I think she’s doing ok :).

 

 

 

Roots and Greens

N arranged another foraging trip, this time near her home, which turned out to be in the middle of nowhere.  This time it wasn’t for mushrooms (apart from this one, which looks like ears, is called jelly fungus and is edible).

IMG_6379

It was looking for roots and greens to add to a soup she had made earlier.

We all made our way up to this fabulous outdoor campfire where N asked the children to find some more sticks to put on the fire.  She then described a few root edibles she had found (Alexander and horseradish). Some of the other HE children helped wrap them in foil and N put them on the fire to cook.

IMG_6383 IMG_6386 IMG_6387

N gave the children a pointed stick each and tasked them with digging up some wild carrots with them. They look nothing like carrots, but smell exactly like them.

IMG_6388 IMG_6389 IMG_6392 IMG_6398

We then continued to walk around the land and found some ground ivy and white dead nettle, both of which are edible and the leaves went into the soup.

IMG_6399 IMG_6380 IMG_6397

We walked down to the allotment and there found an Asian pear tree.  They look exactly like apples but tasted just like a pear.

IMG_6400 IMG_6395

We went back to the campfire and chopped up the different green leaves we had found and added them to the soup.

IMG_6401 IMG_6402

Finally, it was time for drinks, oatcakes and crabapple jelly and soup.

IMG_6385  IMG_6408 IMG_6409 IMG_6410

Another fun, interesting and wet day.

Our Wildlife Garden – a work in progress

I thought it would be nice to encourage the children to create a wildlife garden so we could watch what bugs, animals and birds use it over the various seasons.  We picked a corner of the garden which would be suitable and got to work (and hard work it was)

Firstly, we cleared the area of nettles, big weeds, bricks and rubbish.  Then dug a hole to fit our pond (which is half of an old sandpit).

  

While we were digging we found this little fellow 🙂 Wildlife count 1.

We then put in some pond liner and filled it with water.  We also had a little visitor. (wildlife count 2) 🙂

We then cut off the excess pond liner and placed some shingle around it.  Then we placed some big stones around the edge to give it a bit of a border and a huge stone in the actual pond.

IMG_5170  

We then made a little ladder for the frogs to get out (as seen in a library book).

We made a bug hotel out of old logs.

IMG_5172 IMG_5173

We made a bee hotel out of bamboo and a little watering can plant pot we bought.

Finally we added a little fence around it and added some pond plants, a gnome, a flower windmill and toadstool.

IMG_5178 IMG_5179 IMG_5180   WP_000732

Next spring we will dig out the grass and add wildflowers.  We will also add a bird box and bird feeders.

 

Mushrooms anyone?

As I’ve said previously, we are semi structured and therefore, we do some indoor learning and some outdoor learning.  Recently we went on an organised foraging trip at some local woods.

This was really interesting (to me particularly as we live in a very rural place, so there are loads of mushrooms and berries around).

N, who took us, along with a few other HE families, showed us different fungi, some of which we could eat, some of which we couldn’t because they don’t taste nice and some of which we shouldn’t because ‘they can make you dead and that’s not very nice’. I quote.  LOL.

IMG_6019 IMG_6018 IMG_6014

It was a very wet and miserable day but actually in the woods it wasn’t so bad, both Elsa and Anna enjoyed the walk, poking around at the different mushrooms and even finding ones which you’d think would be impossible to see.

IMG_6017 IMG_6020

N collected different sorts of edible mushrooms on the walk around the woods and we were able to stop in a little opening in the wood, where she cooked them on this fabulous little cooker.  She had also brought along some crab apple slices with cinnamon, some fruit jelly and oat crackers, and some berry fruit sticks, which she let the children (and adults) all try.

IMG_6023 IMG_6024 IMG_6022

It was a very interesting and fun, if wet, day.