So I made the mistake of trying to have a bath whilst the kids were awake.
Mary who up until two baths ago was screaming the house down at the mear mention of the word, took all her cloths off and neatly removed her nappy and attempted to hoist herself over the side. We don't put bubble bath in her ones due to her exma but it looks like she loves them. She had the normal screaming fit but this time when she was taken out of the bath!
Jean wanted to get in as well :/ and spent ages stealing my bubbles and making excuses as to why she needed to be in the bathroom.
And then the kitten! Who once the baby was safely in bed came climbed onto me in the bath! She also spent a while by the taps fishing for my feet :/
We went into the woods with cubs to talk about climate change and so that they could get muddy in the stream 🙂
Mary adored the adventure running around trying to get over gates and finding dappled sunshine on the forest floor - of course she also tried to go into someones house when we came upon it!
This is not a brilliant pic but - I found a moss pig! It was on what is known as The Winni the Pooh tree and I just really think this bit looks like a pig (piglet?).
And of course the muddiest of all the children was Jean who had decided to go out in crocks and pale yellow trousers instead of wellies and water proofs like she was supposed to!
I only just managed the walk but it was completely without stick and did involve chasing a certain toddler for about an hour!
I spent last week working at the Times Cheltenham Science Festival and as part of it I got to go and see a few of the talks which was brilliant. The first one I selected was Mars Curiosity as I spotted it had my old personal tutor Sanjeev Gupta in it. I also got a ticket for Jeany even though at 7 I thought she might be a bit young but she would never have forgiven me if I had gone to see such a talk with out her!
Sanjeev taught one of my favourite subjects at uni Earth Surface Processes so I was very excited to see how Mars research was going especially after seeing the prototype with Jeany earlier in the week. He looked basically the same but has grey hair! He still moves around far too much for a decent photo but that is what energises his talks (of course he didn't recognise me when I said hello - boo hiss but it has been ten years).
The other talker was Lewis Dartnell who was very engaging and handled the childrens' questions brilliantly at the end including the sad, 'When is it coming home?' Jean has been going on about forever vacations on Mars ever since!
Jean did get a bit confused about the fact the robot is ingesting Mars and yet needed batteries! I explained in whispers that it was eating the rock to see what it was made off and not as food. I was impressed she knew what ingesting ment to be honest. They went through the grissly details of man missions and radiation sickness and stuff Jean is still determined to go to Mars if she can or failing that she asked me if she could build a robot to go and then worked out that the 2030 mission would be a good one for her (she'll be 24).
After the talk I had to head over for a meeting but took Jean to Alaric and Mum and Dad to get the book she wanted signed. My meeting ended really quickly and just as well as I received a phone call from Al saying they couldn't find the book! I asked and was told it had sold out but then I saw a copy on the signing table and ended up talking to a lady who turned out to be the authors wife! It was the last copy!
Jean went and got it signed and I felt an ache of sadness for my impact lithologies and endolithic organisms and a moment of doubt about science communication instead of trying to go back but I missed that boat a long time ago. Jean was instantly obsessed by the book and Alaric and Lewis had a conversation involving lots of hands about space ship design. We had to drag the still reading Jean away from the table so that he could go home!
Jean has had her noise in the book ever since, it is a good childrens' book, informative, fun and easy to read but also it is gamified - the kids get to choose where they go on a stella holiday - Jean has always loved books like You Choose so this is right up her street. The illustrations are lovely and colourful, some simple and some intricate giving it a wide appeal to kids as it has different levels you can appreciate it on. It is one of the best I have seen recently and Jean took it into show and tell at school this week along with her cave man stickers and her t-shirt saying Question Everything. She proudly showed the other kids that it was signed with her name in as well 🙂
Jeany was very excited that they had mentioned Liecester as we had spent the previous week going around the space centre there etc... with my friend Becca 🙂 (still need to process the photos and blog about all of that!)
Here is me and Jeany in our festival t-shirts - I'm hiding it at the end as it isn't that flattering of me! hee hee!
The Science festival was amazing - I just picked out the photos here that aren't going into their own write up about a specific event etc.... It was crazy and mad and informative and showed me just how valuable science communication is!
There was the normal fun circus stuff - lovingly science themed 🙂
This rather elegant dude reminds me of someone? 😉
Mary loved exploring.
Ok so mainly it was running off but excited running off.
She did grudgingly come back when I started counting.
I found a random hospital trolly outside one of the venues!
I found a BBC dude with random props wondering around a little lost so I photographed him and then found him the place he needed to be 🙂
I found a ferret!
I don't think it was with the festival but was someone walking their pet - it was funny because one of the suggestions Al had given me for getting more people to fill in the highly important research questionaire was that I should find a ferret!
Unfortunately I just missed him filling the bag with stuff from the hydrant can - but oooo random stuff at a festival - really?
Once more aliens seemed to have taken up residence on the roof of the town hall!
Thursday the kids came and joined me after school - they all loved the explosions bit run by the BBC.
When we first arrived Mary was over awed and just kept saying WOW! and Ooooo 🙂
Jean and her friends found the racing car simulator 🙂
She rather liked it even if she did keep crashing!
Dad found an old sports car with gears and things inside it 🙂
See cogs!
It was rather a nice car
The kids made LED torches 🙂
They were all just so excited 🙂 Mum found knitting and Al and Andy found robots - it was brilliant 🙂
Construction toys like stickle bricks, lego, play mobile and umpteen others are fabulous but soooo expensive. We tend to get them in lu of other gifts which seem funkier as they are the toys that just keep giving. They are not that age dependent as the older the child gets the more complex the items they build with it. It improves spacial awareness and hand eye coordination, it taps straight into engineering and with things like lego technic it begins to be something more.
But it is not just science and engineering that it feeds into, it relies on the child's imagination, it is design skills and then it is pure and simple play, once they have made the set up they want. Above is Jean's Antropolis or Ant City. She imagines all the little ants making their homes in the stickle bricks and how they would interact with each other, how they would get there in the first place. The stickle bricks were a christmas present for Mary who is happy to act as stickle brick goffer fetching the little spiked rectangles for her sisters latest piece of ant arctecture.
It has gotten to the point that I am story boarding the escapades of these ants which Jean reads when she remembers.
Maybe one day I will draw up the adventures of Ant Ee Matter and Antropolis and yes he has a cape.
The point is that we think construction toys are one of the best things to give children and we have also found a set of convertors you can print on a 3D printer so you can make lego and stickle bricks and all the others fit together into one huge great big uber construction kit!
I'm not sure who is more excited about this - me or the kids or Al!
Of course you need access to a 3D printer - oh look - hello Bristol Hack Space have we told you how much we love you?
Thu 20th Jun 2013 8:19 pm | 
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