"A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world."

When we started the home ed back up at the start of the month, I had every intention of having a museum week but sadly something happened and it completely threw me. So last week we decided it was time to start making up for that and decided to visit Derby Museum and Art Gallery. I love a museum that grabs your attention straight away and the Natural history section of the museum was pretty much all we needed for a perfect afternoon of visual education.

We can pretty much rate a museum on the amount of beetles we find there and this one did not let us down. Opeie loves Coleoptera displays where he can see his beloved beetles up close. 

After having a look around we fluttered our eyelashes at the front desk and asked whether they would mind us painting while we were there. We've gone ahead and painted without asking in places before and people can be really funny. They were more than happy to let us get arty so we found a nice spot to get set up and let our creative juices flow. Museums and Art galleries are usually quiet but this place was so peaceful. We were both fully relaxed as we painted in perfect surroundings.

It's afternoons like this that really reinforce the decision to home-ed. learning visually in a relaxed environment and at a Childs pace is what education should be. Opeie can take what he wants from a visit like this and the both of us probably came away learning something completely different from each other. It's always important to end a day of learning on a high and it was all smiles as we left Derby. Time to plan our next museum trip.

"Read enough about the dung beetle, and a picture of its character emerges: patient, optimistic, uncomplaining."

Home educating Opeie has really helped me embrace our day to day adventures and I couldn't be happier with how it's turning out. Over the last few years I have been regularly reminded that you never know what is around the corner and some of our home ed days out have taken some pretty amazing and surprising turns. Last week we ended up on an unexpected trip to Oxford, as our friend Charlotte was dropping off some of her amazing work at the Ashmoleon. The plan was to have a look around the museum, visit the natural history museum and then the Pitt rivers museum too (pretty awesome day out I thought, little did we know where the day would take us).

The Ashmoleon was fab and was a great help for Opeie's current Egypt project. We spent a good couple of hours taking it all in. Opeie was pretty eager to get to the natural history museum though and who could blame him, our last visit had been such a great day out and Opeie and his friends had found it fascinating. We'd only been in the museum 5 minutes when we noticed a chap with a tray of beetles, as expected Opeie was super excited so we went over for a chat. Darren had us completely mesmerised from the moment he started talking. An expert in all things 'Dung beetle' and so passionate about his field, I think we could have sat and listened to him all day. I love a 'come on! lets sit on the floor and chat' kind of person too.

Darren had me and Charlotte standing in the middle of the museum pretending to be trees as he explained why dung beetles were so important and Opeie loved every minute of it. I asked him where the best place would be to go and see a large Coleoptera collection and he said 'Here!' then continued to explain just how many beetles they had behind the scenes. Thats when he said 'Meet me at the main doors in 20 minutes and I'll take you backstage and show you some beetles', well it was like Christmas from that point. Opeie was so excited, I was trying to stay calm but was doing cartwheels inside and Charlotte had picked up on us nerdy boys getting into it and was loving it all too.

Darren took us to his office and showed Opeie some beetles under his pretty impressive microscope and even had Opeie help him identify some of the beetles that had been sent to him using an extensive collection of books on dung beetles from around he world. This is the sort of thing that would never haver happened so organically had it not have been for home ed, and being in the museum midweek. It was lovely to take a step back and watch Darren really take the time to talk to Opeie and explain in detail what it was that he does and how he got to where he was, with stories from his own childhood and his interest in beetles.

One of the things that really stuck out for me was when Darren told Opeie that he hadn't really done very well at uni but his passion for Dung beetles got him to where he was. From a home ed point of view that really summed up how I feel about Opeie's education. Ive always said from day one that if theres one thing that I want Opeie to come away with from this, its a passion for something, whatever it is. When I left school I had no passion or motivation for anything because not a single thing had inspired me.

After identifying some interesting beetles Darren took is further into the backstage area of the museum to where there were an insane amount of cabinets full of beetles. From the always impressive Goliath beetle to a beetle that was the size of a pinhead, it was fascinating and I would love an afternoon there going through each and every cabinet looking at each tray of beetles. This for me was the Most perfect (and unexpected) home ed day.

As we left, Darren gave Opeie his card and said that if he ever wanted to chat about beetles or if he was struggling to identify one then we could email, which I thought was so kind. After such an amazing visit to the museum we wanted to do something to say thank you. Opeie wanted to write a letter and Charlotte (absolutely loving being a part of a home ed adventure) asked Opeie to draw a beetle picture so that she could print it onto a travel mug at her studio to send to Darren as a surprise.

A gift from us wouldn't be a gift without immortalising the awesome chap in LEGO, a full on team effort by the three of us. Complete with a dung beetle and ball of pooh to roll around. I'm not sure that all of Darren's talk of rummaging through pooh has got Opeie to that point in his beetle loving adventure yet, but his passion and excitement has definitely pushed him that little bit further.

"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory."

I'd purposely not weighed myself in over a year because I'm disappointed with myself for letting my exercise come to a stand still. I still get out walking with the boys and play a lot of Hockey with them but I used to go out walking and sometimes running and it was part of the reason I lost over 3st a couple of years back. It's so easy to let things slide and although I've said in the past 'I don't have time'  and 'I just want to relax of an evening ', I am the only one to blame for the weight that I have put back on.

When I received a surprise package just before Christmas and was also told that one of the main aims for micro scooters during 2017 was fitness, I knew it was time to make a change. It's no shock to anyone that I love scooting, if you are local to us you probably see me and the boys whizzing about the streets and we can regularly be seen adventuring around the streets of London, museum hopping. I've never really pushed myself on the scooter to use it for proper workouts, but 4 weeks ago that changed.

It all started one evening when I had nothing to do. It was dry outside and I'd picked up some lights so I thought 'what the heck I'll go for a scoot'. There is something so therapeutic about scooting, just me, the wheels and some great music to keep me motivated. I scooted 6 miles that night and although I tackled some pretty steep hills and had been out of breath a few times, the last leg back home had 10 minutes of flat, making it the perfect wind down, which meant that I was completely relaxed by the time I reached my front door.

It's safe to say that I was hooked from that moment and my evening scoots have become a regular thing. After arriving back home after the 6 miles I realised that I could have actually scooted a lot longer. So when I went out again I changed my route and added a little longer to the journey, coming in at just under 9 miles. This was then extended to a 10.7 miles route and then to 13 miles.

So this is what I've stuck with as it's the perfect route with a great variety of up hill, down hill and flat. Sometimes my route is a little shortened depending on how brave I am feeling as there is 0.5 miles of unlit road in a quiet area and sometimes I just don't feel like chancing it. Other times though I find myself with a little more time in the evening if I have started out early, so I scoot for longer. My top distance so far has been 15.3 miles and what is really interesting is that even after that I probably could have carried on, because scooting doesn't put the same strain on your legs as running.

 

This solo scooting fitness adventure started on the 5th of January. I weighed myself that morning and I was pretty disappointed by the fact that I had put on 2.2st over the last year or so. It was all the motivation I needed to make this change.

I weighed myself last week and was shocked to see that my evening scoots have taken 9lbs off of my weight which is a pretty amazing start I think. I cant wait to weigh myself in a few weeks to see if there is much change again. The great thing about this exercise is that I love scooting, so it's not a burden and I'm not having to force myself out of the house of an evening. Scooting with the boys on our home-schooling adventures has been a huge thing for us over the last few years and now these solo evenings are something to look forward to with a weight loss goal that is getting closer with each evening scoot.

"It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project."

 

These gloomy grey skies recently, make it really difficult to get motivated to get out and do stuff. It's wet and cold and would be so much easier to take the literal sense of Home-schooling and stay at home where it's warm and there is a steady flow of coffee and warm milk if needed. Sadly that doesn't fit into how we want Opeie to be educated so we've been going out as much as we can, braving the damp, bleak daytimes.  Over Christmas I watched a Youtube video made by a 13-year-old girl who was home schooled talking about her experience and how she felt it had benefited her. It was an awesome video and she was a very intelligent and well-spoken girl which was great to see as even now I still have my 'Is this really the best thing for Opeie?' moments.

One of the things that really stuck out for me was that there had been no structure to her home education by her parents and that she was left to her own devices as she got older. Her parent's roles were to simply keep her motivated and help with the things that she enjoyed doing. She also said that most of her home education was project based, projects that she chose herself and if she enjoyed them she continued with it and if not she moved on, giving her the flexibility to really get stuck into the things that interested her.

I loved this way of educating as it made me think of a project I did at school (a long, long time ago). I was probably around 8 and we started a project on dinosaurs, I remember thinking Wow! and I was hanging off every word the teacher was saying, it was fascinating, but... within a couple of weeks the project was over and we really hadn't covered much. I don't ever want Opeie to feel like that about something he is learning and both Mrs M and I will always do our best to get both of the boys the best resources that we can to things they are interested in.

So... projects! Opeie loves going to museums, I couldn't even tell you how many we have been to as there have been so many. We had a little chat and have decided to start a history project, which of course gives us the opportunity to go to even more museums and find out lots of interesting things about the past. On Seth's recommendation, Opeie has been watching horrible histories which he loves and it has been great for breaking into our project.

Today we decided to go to our first museum of the project which was the RAF Cosford Air museum. We've visited many times, but not in the last 2 years so it was clear that Opeie would take a lot more in now and ask lots more questions. I love the museum mainly because of the planes, so visually it is a great place to spend a couple of hours. If I'm honest I had not really taken the time to read much of the facts and information that is available during previous visits as Opeie was so young and excited just looking around, so this was a completely different kind of visit for me too.

As we walked about looking at the planes we talked about World War II and what it was all about. We talked about what life must have been like back then, compared to how different things are now and it was interesting listening to Opeie, really concerned about 'why people can't just be nice to each other'. At 5 he didn't really understand some of the things I was talking about and reading to him but what is great about museums like this is that between all the information available, there are lots of child-friendly things to do to break it up and make it more of an experience. We got to climb into a cockpit and play with all the buttons and switches, learn about altitude and how to measure wind speeds, fly a model plane and do some experiments around air pressure. One of Opeies favourite things there was learning about how ball bearings work.

We only stayed at the museum for 2 hours but as with all museum visits it was fascinating to see how much information was actually picked up, we talked about what we had seen all the way home and when we got home we printed out our pictures and Opeie wrote about it in his history project book. Today was a home education day at its best and this hands-on active learning is what really sticks with Opeie. I think it's going to be a busy few months making the most of the museums that interest us.

"It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage."

Part 2 of our London trip, because clearly the Gruffalo took full control of that last post. After finally getting into London and getting over the initial 'what the !@%£ is with all this traffic', we made our way to our friend's house and it was clear that like myself, Opeie didn't have any energy to do much else that evening, so we took it easy. Visiting Sam and Jamie is amazing, they are such lovely people and when we visit, it is like having a couple of fantastic tour guides on hand. We spent the evening discussing where we should go and narrowed our day down to the Horniman museum, because we only spent 30 minutes there on our last visit, Greenwich Observatory and Richmond park. We had the Micro Scooters loaded into the boot ready for action and we set off early to make the most of the day.

When we arrived at the museum it was closed for another half an hour so we made the most of the beautiful surrounding gardens and whizzed around on the scooters. The smooth winding path around the grass areas was great for picking up some speed and we could have happily scooted there all day.

When we entered the museum I looked to see if the lockers were scooter friendly but they were tiny so I carried mine while Opeie casually scooted around. Thankfully no one asked him to get off of it so we were left to our own devices. The Horniman museum is a great resource for our home education adventures and it is great for Opeie to see animals that he's never heard of even if seeing them like that is a little eerie. Opeie thought that the wall of dog heads was "really cute" until he realised they were real heads and he moved us along quickly with disgusted look on his face.

On the way out Opeie picked up a new fashion accessory which he ended up rocking for the remainder of the day. Even as a bug he is still absolutely adorable!

After the Horniman museum, we scooted back to the car and then made our way over towards Greenwich observatory. The weather was lovely and we were both itching to get back on the scooters as soon as we saw the winding paths running from the top of the hill. We've scooted so many amazing places over the years but this had definitely been one of my favourites, we were scooting so fast. The great view and huge grassy area gave us the chance to stop off and have some lunch, lightening the load in my backpack, phew!

We hadn't planned on going to the Maritime museum and I had no idea that it was even there but as soon as Opeie spotted that giant ship in a bottle as we scooted by, it jumped straight to the top of our to-do list. They have a huge manned cloakroom there which meant I got a break from carrying the scooters round which was a relief.

I love nautical themed things especially art work and the Maritime museum was great for taking photos to document our visit. Everywhere you look there is something interesting to learn about (and then use as a backdrop in your pictures). We both loved the ships figureheads mounted on the wall and Opeie managed a cheeky face swap to send Mommy at work (I'm trying to start this as an ongoing game, but I'm yet to receive anything in return... spoil sport!).

When we first arrived at the museum I wasn't sure if there would be anything for Opeie's age group but there is so much for younger children to do and we both had a great time. Opeie got to sail a virtual ship, unload and reload cargo, see what it was like to live on a ship and there was drawing and colouring that he could proudly display. We had so much fun that we ended up losing track of time and had to rush back to the car because of the parking being up.

(Oops, there I go again! come on Mrs. M join in!)

Inevitably, the morning/afternoon of scooting and visiting museums was too much for my little side kick and he had clearly reached his peak when we got back to the car. It was time to head back to our friends house for a relaxing evening with good food and great company (and an early night for us both). Another amazing scooting adventure in London.