“There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.”... and LEGO

As the school year comes to its final week I am reminded that it's business as usual for us homeschooling families. There are no term times for Opeie and although he gets to spend some awesome quality time with his brother over the 6 week holiday, our learning continues because the home education has become a way of life now. This morning as we chatted about what we were going to be doing, I said 'time for us to wind down a little this week' but with out realising we transformed our morning game of hockey to a fun spelling exercise. This is the magic of being a creative and ever evolving teacher to an equally creative 6-year-old.

There is something to learn in literally everything we do and LEGO has added creativity into so many of our fun activities. The building, following instructions and symmetry of many of the builds have been such great lessons for home education and the huge variety of parts, figures and animals mean that there is no end to the mini role playing we can do, which does wonders for both creative thinking and confidence building. Remember our post about the Berlin wall?



The great thing about LEGO is that they are constantly reinventing themselves with new themes and when it comes to their brand, LEGO City has for us been the strongest line for its educational value. This range has given us the chance to talk about volcanoes, arctic exploration, Space and last year the Fun in the park kit gave us such an amazing chance to talk about diversity throughout the world.





LEGO has now joined forces with National Geographic kids on their LEGO City jungle range, which has again given us everything that we need for another LEGO themed project. Weve been learning about the wildlife that can be found in the jungle, different foods that can grow in the climate and about indiginous tribes that live in these jungle areas. as with many of the newer city kits we've also been able to cover the importance of gathering information and learning from these areas and what a huge part science plays in findings.



"The partnership has come about to inspire children to explore, discover and learn about jungles and the importance of their preservation", Which really is a great reason to be partnering up. I like to think that a lot of Opeie's learning is making him more aware of his surroundings and he is also receiving a great understanding of the amazing world that is out there for him to investigate.









the new range has been a huge hit with the boys and Opeie's new love of jungle animals has got him looking at the Jungle exploration site kit and the Jungle halftrack mission kit so that he can roleplay with the new jungle cats from the range (I'd like to get my hands on these myself).

The entire range can be found HERE.

This amazing team up also offers LEGO fans the chance to win a very exciting prize with the LEGO City Jungle competition. Further details can be found at www.lego.com/jungle

Good luck to any of you entering.

"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier."

I hate talking about politics, it really does bring out the worst in people but with all the rubbish that has been going on lately like voters getting their knickers in a twist because elections haven't gone their way and the rise of racist propaganda portrayed in the media, there has never been a better time to have a long play/discussion with Opeie about diversity. Opeie asks the usual questions that a 5-year-old would ask while taking in his surroundings. "Why do people have different coloured skin?", "Why has that lady only got one leg", "Daddy why have you got tattoo's and piercings?". The answer is simple, we are all different.

Someone came up with a great idea about making a globe out of LEGO, to learn about different countries and nationalities, which would have been awesome. This, however, would have taken weeks to do and while we were talking about the 'people are different' subject I wanted to cover all kinds of people while playing. We decided to make a park for a variety of characters to have fun in and while I quickly knocked up a quick basic park, I asked Opeie if he could make different kinds of people and families. I was just about to type that Opeie had done a great job of being diverse when recently reviewing the LEGO City - Town fun in the park kit, but then I realised that if you bring your child up knowing everyone is different and respecting people for who they are then this way of thinking for them is just the norm.

When Opeie is playing with his Minifigures and roleplaying there is nearly always same sex couples. He has always been taught that people can fall in love with whoever they please, that men fall in love with men and women with women as much as men and women, again this is the norm. So when adding these families into his games he is simply doing what he feels is natural. The one thing that sticks out for me when I am watching Opeie play is just how much 'Love' comes into everything he does. I thought it was really cute when he found a gold LEGO ring and had a lady proposing to her girlfriend.

Opeie informed me that it is okay for nan's to be in love too and rightly so. There is not a single ounce of prejudice in that little cutie.

Last week we all lay on our bed and watched youtube videos of the paralympic wheelchair tennis and we were all mesmerised by it. I was shocked to see the wheelchair being moved so quickly and was genuinely impressed by the skill and power involved in the game.  The videos really had an impact on the boys which was great and got them asking lots of questions. Opeie asked if I could help him build a paralympic tennis player for his park and of course I was more than happy to oblige.

Opeie is a big fan of the Mohican which got us talking about people that choose to stand out from the crowd, altering the way they look with eye-catching hairstyles/colours, tattoo's, piercings and quirky clothing. This is always going to be something the boys understand because of the childhood I had growing up. I wore some crazy things over the years and was covered in piercings and its only been the last few years that I have started to be a little tamer. Because of this Opeie made some great alternative people for his park.

'Love' continued flowing through his creation and a little bit of generosity inevitably came out in the build too. We had a discussion this week after finding a mobile phone on the floor while out scooting at the beach. Opeie proudly handed the phone into the parks reception and I told him that we should all try and do at least one good deed a day. It is something I have done for a while now and something that hopefully I will instil in the boys. There was no surprise that in Opeie's park a kind lady was giving some money to a homeless man. I asked Opeie why he had made each person the way he had and he told me that this lady was a Man that preferred to be a lady (which stemmed from a conversation we had ahead a few weeks back).

I was so proud of how Opeie approached this play session and it made me realise that I are doing a great job of bringing Opeie up with an open mind in a world that still isn't quite moving in the right direction. I just hope that things are a little less dramatic for the boys when they are adults. whatever happens though they will always have Love!

"It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength."

New LEGO kits for us are always exciting! When you have a real passion for a product, like we do with these amazing bricks every new kit released tends to get those corners of my mouth pointing upwards. What really makes me happy though especially as a custom builder is a new LEGO piece. To anyone else it would just seem like an insignificant piece of plastic but each new element created can open up a world of building possibilities.

When I first saw the LEGO City - Town fun in the park kit I was in complete awe! I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous but as I have said many times before, LEGO is a way of life in our home and has a huge effect on how me and the boys interact every day, so it's only natural that these little things (to us) would be a big deal. With so many Minifigures in the kit, there is a great selection of torso's faces and legs. I'm not sure how many of them are new designs but I've not seen most of them before and didn't have any of them in our collection so from a custom builders point of view, the body parts alone would have already had me hooked on this interesting kit.

What did make me laugh to myself was the fact that for the first time ever LEGO had made me broody. With the inclusion of the amazing new baby minifigure, It had me wishing there was a baby in the house just so the Lego adventures that we come up with for our posts could include a Gifts from the Pirates baby. 

What really touched home for me about this amazing kit was the wheelchair included in the set. When you have a son with a disability who is as much of a fan of LEGO as his brick obsessed dad, having these sort of extras is really important. Seth isn't in a wheelchair but he does have mobility issues himself and for me seeing this little piece of plastic showed that the world of LEGO was becoming even more diverse.

I had made a wheelchair myself a few months back when I needed a professor X for something we were building. It turned out fine but this new LEGO wheelchair has a lot more playability.

I love a kit that Spurs on some serious LEGO roleplay. What I found really interesting about this kit was the fact that when I opened the box for Opeie to build, for the first time ever he didn't follow the instructions when building the Minifigures. He sat and created his own little families and friendships and all I could see between his characters when I looked at what he had created was love. It made me realise how innocent Opeie still is and being homeschooled means that he will keep that innocence for a little longer. 

It may be a bold statement but for me, this kit is my favourite from this year so far.  While Seth and I like to create large structures, Opeie definitely concentrates more on the characters, their personalities and what sort of people they are. These City characters have been played with every day by Opeie and I imagine they will all be going on many adventures over the coming weeks (possibly even to a volcano).

Our fun didn't end there with the LEGO building. On the evening that Opeie built the kit I popped out to pick a friend up from work and he had very kindly got hold of the fountain kit for the boys, to say thank you for helping him out earlier in the week. All this LEGO City fun has got us all talking about whether we should make our own custom LEGO city so watch this space.

If from the post I haven't made it clear just how great the Town fun in the park kit is then I'll leave you with this. If you are a fan of LEGO you need this in your collection.

"The wailing owl Screams solitary to the mournful moon."

Before our recent visit to the Sea life centre in Birmingham the boys spotted a big colourful owl outside that dominated the remainder of our afternoon. After we had had our fill of fish and finished adoring the seahorses we set about our mission to spot as many of the owls from the Big Hoot as we could. I love how lots of local artists and business' have come together and created a colourful trail spanning over a huge area of Birmingham.

We had around an hour and a half before leaving to pick Mrs M up from work so we only had the chance to get to the owls situated around the town centre, the great thing is though, they are everywhere and the boys were so excited going from owl to owl. I wont hoot on too much (haha) as I think these beautifully decorated statues speak for themselves. Here's the ones we managed to find...

Our favourite was definitely the phone box and although we didn't get to see them all the unexpected adventure really made our afternoon. I was a little gutted when I noticed on my friend Aidens fb page that there was a Captain America one hiding but the owls are about until the 27th of September so maybe me and Opeie can get out and find the rest before they are auctioned off to raise much needed money for Birmingham children's hospital.