Summer is Finally Here!

Finally after such a dismal summer we have some good weather. Good weather always seems to make home education easier, especially for natural sciences.




Although I do pine for those early days of HE where Ram was so eager and excited to get outside. Today he is not only displaying the usual grumpiness of being a teen, but he has the aches and pains and lack of energy of the hypermobility syndrome , so it is much harder to get him outside.




However yesterday our ivy which covers most of one side of our house was in bloom and we had an assortment of various bugs, flies, bees and wasps, not to mention a few butterflies. It was noisy and interesting enough to get him out there. We took some photos so that we could identify the different species later.














Then of course we had to observe the chickens. Sometimes you can get more out of just sitting and observing than you can get out of a text book.






Last night was also the first warm night with a clear sky since we bought the telescope so we managed to see Vega. That was exciting as Vega is the star that Ellie from the film Contact was sent to by the aliens.

We have just finished reading Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku and he mentions Contact and Carl Sagan who wrote the book that Contact was based on, so it was a good way of tying in physics, astronomy, and fiction, all in one fell swoop.

Today I suggested that we go out for a walk or a wheel I should say. Ram begrudgingly agreed. I am sure he would much rather stay by the computer but pushing his wheelchair gives me some needed exercise. However once we were out we managed to not only have a look at the ducks in on the village pond (the two females seem to have turned into males!) and a chat with a neighbour, but we also walked down to the old badger set where I hadn't been since I used to walk the dogs there 10 years ago.

Again, watching things on TV or reading them in a book is one thing, but actually seeing a whole set, looking at the different bits of it to see if it is active, and seeing it in the context of the wider countryside is very valuable. Ram suggested that if they wanted to get rid of these badgers all they would have to do is get the Autumn Watch http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/uk/ people out there to film them!





On the way back we saw some sheep and again watched them for a while. We managed to get a couple of the beauties to pose for us which was lucky. They were still a bit flighty as they had only just been put in that field.










So all in all we have had two good days of learning. It might not be as intense as it was when Ram was younger, but at least he is still learning in informal ways.

Minecraft Meets Fibre Craft

I needed something to do while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (complete DVD set, series one to seven as Ram wasn't old enough to watch it when it first came out) and decided to weave a tapestry of a Minecraft Creeper.

Then we realised that it was just the right size to replace the broken fabric on our book chair. I just hope it doesn't blow up our books!




Book rest Creeper: That's a very nice book rest you have there. It would be a shame if anything should happen to it!



Detail of the weaving, done with offcuts of rug wool from a carpet factory, on an old Spear's number 3 loom. All mistakes credited to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Joss Whedon.

The Code: BBC Does it Again

I have written before about how the hype surrounding science programmes on the BBC and beyond, are actually putting young people off science, and we have yet another example.

In the weeks before The Code was broadcast the BBC and Marcus Du Sautoy started Tweeting and referring to the website. It sounded fun and intriguing, so I applied for the postcard. It actually arrived while friends, including Ram's best friend, were staying and with a lot of effort I managed to get them interested in decoding the card.

What I couldn't do was get Ram interested. It was hard enough getting the other young people intersted, but Ram was impossible. I would tell him what was being tweeted, tried to show him the photos on the Facebook page, but to no avail. He wasn't just not interested, he actually started getting hostile. Eventually I had to back off a bit.

Never mind, I thought that maybe when the programmes were broadcast he would be more interested.

That was not to be either. I mean, he did watch them, but he refused to look for clues or go to the website and play the games. And I had to endure a high level of sarcastic comments throughout, far more than usual.

Eventually after the second programme, the truth finally came out. “It's the hype. I hate all the hype and it makes me want to have nothing to do with it.”

So there we are. Once again what was meant to get young people like Ram excited about maths and science is actually putting him off. Luckily he is actually watching the programme so hopefully something will be learned, but I am wondering how much longer it will be until he refuses to even watch science programmes on the BBC.

Who Said Computer Games Aren't Educational

Well, not a home educator, that's for sure! The current fascination is Minecraft.

I was a little dubious at first but another home educator told me it was definitely educational. Apparently it has something called red stone that makes use of logical components such as capacitors and logic gates as used in electronics. That sounded good as Dxh had been teaching Ram about logic gates.

We paid our money and off Ram went. Very quickly I realised that he was going to get a lot more out of it than just game play. Basically, it is a sandbox building game, where you can build a world, eat, sleep and get blown up! In no time he was building amazing castles with great detail. He even made guest bedrooms with chests (containing cake and explosives) for his friends. He has also built a library to die for, complete with three galleried floors, lighting and books.




The Minecraft world is based on cubes, which fascinated Ram, but it also means that he has to have a good understanding of how cubes work, as any other shape you want has to be made up from cubes.

Time management also has a part to play, which is something that doesn't come naturally to Ram. If you are not in a safe place by the time night falls, then bad things can happen!

But the biggest thing is the development of social skills, something that Ram needs a lot of work on. How? He joined up with two other home educated friends, and the Dxh set up a server for them so that they could all play in the same world together. This meant he had to communicate, and the easiest way to do that is via Skype.

My boy, the one who once, a long time ago, attacked someone with a Stanley knife because I was talking on the telephone, has started communicating via phone! Mind you, it isn't a phone call as most of us would recognise. They sit there for hours not talking to each other, and forget to say goodbye! But we are working on it.

The funniest thing though is when the monsters, called creepers, explode. He always uses noise cancelling headphones when on the computer so I can't hear what is going on. The first time he was playing he suddenly jumped a mile. I looked over at him and he had a look of shock on his face. A creeper had snuck up behind him and exploded, startling
him! Because he is so immersed in the world with his headphones on, it was a whole body experience!



There is more to playing a computer game than just the game itself. One lad (not home educated) has even written a song so that allowed us to talk about music. We have discussed architecture, geography (yes, water does flow to the lowest point!) electronics, and how to retrieve a deleted home directory! That actually happened when Ram was installing a mod in the terminal window, and accidentally deleted his home directory. He now knows what cd .. rm -rf means!

Ramism

As Ram is now bigger than me, I have started wearing his old hoodies that he has grown out of. I hadn't said anything but suddenly today he noticed and said:

"I guess you are wearing a hand me up instead of a hand me down"

More Dyeing with Woad

While looking for something else, I came across two skeins of wool that were treated and packed away in the aftermath of The Moths and The Move. As I had also spotted some more woad in the garden, and Easter Sunday was such a lovely sunny day, I decided to do some more dyeing.



I did the same basic recipe as I had done two days before But as you can see it has come out slightly different again.




I also tried to get pink again but ended up with a very pale blue. I have no idea why that isn't working, perhaps not enough alum, but too much alum gives the wool a slightly harsh feeling.


It doesn't really matter what colour it comes out as, because we can always use small amounts of different coloured wools to make interesting things. Now all I have to do is find my carders and oil up the spinning wheel!

Dyeing with Woad and Stale Urine

Our terrible experience with moths last year resulted in having to track down every single bit of wool fibre in the house, and either boiling it, freezing it, treating it with chemicals, throwing it out, or in some cases doing all four. After treatment I had to put all wool in sealed bags with moth killing papers inside. This as you can imagine has put my spinning and weaving on the back burner for now, not just because I am trying to protect what is left, or that I had no time to spin while dealing with the moths, but also because after we had dealt with the moths we had to move out of the house to have the underfloor heating replaced! We had quite a traumatic year last year!



Rather than put everything in storage and live in rented accommodation which would have been very expensive, and we only just had enough money to replace the heating pipes, we decide to hire a portacabin to live in, and a shipping container to put all our belongings in. Ram and I had no problem fitting all that we needed to live for three months in the portacabin. All Ram needs is his computer, the TV and hard disk recorder, and someone to put a bit of food on his plate. A bed is helpful, and that fitted in perfectly to the cabin, but the one thing that it didn't have was a toilet.




Luckily I had an old commode chair that I rescued from someone who was about to take it to the tip, and we had a potty that fitted the hole perfectly. Although we could use the toilets in the house as we had given instructions to the builder and plumber that one toilet had to be working at all times, when it was raining, or at night, or even indeed when the men were working in the bathroom area, it was easier to pee in the potty, and dump it in a bucket outside.

Then came the question, what do we do with a bucket of wee! The first thing that came to mind was the compost bin. Lots of people urinate in their compost heaps, not because they have come back from the pub drunk and their wives won't let them in the house, but because it helps make better compost.


However, we also knew from watching Tony Robinson in The Worst Jobs in History that urine was used in the dye industry. Unfortunately I had foolishly packed away my favourite dyeing book, A Dyer's Manual by Jill Goodwin. Luckily I was able to get hold of her daughter and she told me what we needed to do. It is very similar to the way we did things with the chemical method, but instead of using sodium hydrosulphite we added bran and stale fermented urine to a bucket along with the water containing the woad and washing soda.

We then put the lid on and left it in the sun to ferment. After a few weeks, we decided to check on it and see if it worked:





We aired it that day, and found out just how pungent the smell really was! We had to stuff paper up our noses, and stand up wind. Strangely, the chickens seemed attracted to it though, and every time we opened the bucket they were there trying to stick their heads in! I had to wear my old lab coat and nose plugs as the smell even penetrated clothing.

After the initial few times, we had a spell of very wet and windy weather, and then we had the move back into the house. It bucket got left at the bottom of the garden, as no one really wanted to air the wool again. Eventually I took it out and left it in the rain and sun for a couple of weeks until the smell subsided enough that I could bring it inside to wash it properly. Although it started out being quite blue, because it got soaked for a long time in the bucket without airing it, it lost its colour.


The results were spectacular, not in colour, but as a learning experience, it is one that no one will forget in a hurry!

Dyeing with Woad

Natural dyeing was something that came out of combining my interest in spinning and weaving and home education. There is nothing like a little magical dyeing to teach chemistry!

I have been growing woad for several years now. It is classed as an invasive weed in some countries, and I was hoping that it would give that other invasive weed in my garden, stinging nettles, a run for its money, but so far it hasn't worked; we still have far more stinging nettles than woad, and the dye from stinging nettles is not nearly so spectacular! Woad also has medicinal properties, and our chickens have been self medicating by stripped off the leaves on the woad plants on the patio. Luckily they can't get into the veggie patch where I most of my woad growing.

Woad is a member of the brassica family which includes cabbages and mustard. I haven't dyeing with cabbage, but mustard does give a wonderful yellow. Woad though, when it comes to dyeing, is in a whole different class.

Ok, here is the science bit! Woad has molecules that absorb light because it has lots of double bonds. This means that some of the the electrons can effectively spread across the whole length of the molecule in a strange quantum mechanical process. The significance of this is that if the incoming light (the photon) has a wavelength similar to the length of this double bonded chain then the photon can be absorbed and in the case of woad this is very easy - so pretty well every photon of red light hitting the molecule is absorbed giving you the intense blue colour.  

Unfortunately the woad molecule is a lousy dye in itself because it is not very soluble. However, if you raise the pH and either give it a reducing agent, or alternatively raise the pH and let some bacteria at it, then the molecule can be reduced - electrons are added to it - and it loses its colour and becomes very soluble at the same time. The reason it loses its colour is essentially that the double bond in the middle is broken and this means the molecule has two much smaller regions of double bonds - this means that only ultraviolet photons now match the length and the absorption shifts away into that part of the spectrum. This reduced form is a white form of woad. It is the perfect dye precursor because you can easily saturate your cloth with this material as it's so soluble, and when it's exposed to air and dries out, the oxygen in the air plucks off the electrons, oxidizing it back to the blue form. Since this is not soluble in water, the indigo is now entombed in the fabric, and unlike many natural dyes, it is “permanent”.

Now, to the practical bit. We used the reducing agent way this time. Last year we tried the bacteria method by using stale urine, but we didn't fancy doing that again. However, I will post up that story another day!

We picked the leaves, tore the ones the chickens didn't eat into shreds, and poured on boiling water (woad is temperature sensitive and you don't get good results if the temperature gets too high) to scald the leaves. We let that sit for a while, then strained the liquid and squeezed out all the juice. We added washing soda (alters the pH) and with an rotary hand wisk set about beating the water until it no longer had blue bubbles.







The temperature is supposed to be about 50 degrees Celsius and because it was a hot day we barely had to reheat it before adding some sodium hydrosulphite (the reducing agent) and leaving it to sit for a while. This resulted in a yellowish green clear liquid.






We then added the wetted wool (I haven't got round to spinning it yet so it was in the form of raw fleece) trying not to disturb the dye too much, let it sit for a while longer, and then the magic began!














After washing the wool, we set it out to dry, and I embarked on a second batch (I don't have pans big enough to do it all at once), and then decided to try to revitalise the vat, but in a way that is supposed to give a pink. I thought it was by raising the temperature, but while I had the pan on the heat I reread the book and it was not temperature but alum, a common mordant used in dyeing, that had to be added! So with a quick dig in the larder, alum was added and the result is the batch on the right:




It looks grey when on its own, but beside the blue of the woad it does have a pink tinge. But then this is the excitment of natural dyeing, you never know how things are going to turn out!




This page on woad has more details on how to dye with woad as well as how to grow it.


I found some spun fleece on Easter Sunday, and some more woad in the garden that the chickens didn't get, so I will post up some more photos of that later.

Ramism

Collective Nouns:

An enquiry of scientists
A wow of cosmologists
A spurious of string theorists (he used to like string theory, but now he would rather make fun of them!)
A collision of particle physicists
A test tube of chemists
A geek of Spring Watch presenters

And finally:

A million billion of Brian Coxes!

Woad-es Me!

I have been complaining that I haven't been able to get out in the sun very much in these last few days. I can't stray too far until Ram wakes up, which has been at 11 o'clock recently, and then by the time I have read aloud to him for an hour or more, fed both of us and do a few chores, it is about 2. We have managed a few minutes outside, but usually he wants to go back inside and for the last couple of days we have been catching up on recorded TV.

Someone asked if I couldn't just leave him to watch on his own and go out into the veggie patch on my own. There are two problems with this.

First of all, I like to watch these programmes together so that we can discuss them afterwards. Purposive conversation is a very powerful tool for home educators. I also like to watch many of these programmes too, especially the science ones. We very rarely watch drama.

Secondly, Ram like to be around someone. He doesn't have to be interacting with them, in fact often we sit at our computers not speaking a word to each other, but he does like to have someone close by. Luckily in an open plan house that isn't too hard as I can be 'in the kitchen' while he is 'in the sitting room'.

But today I wanted to pick the woad for the annual woad dye. Ram was playing Minecraft and was happy to stay inside, so I took my bucket down to the bottom of the garden followed by the chickens. Five minutes later there was Ram, wondering down the garden looking for me!

It worked out well with him chatting and keeping the chickens out of the beds with plants in them, while I stripped the leaves off the woad.

So he proved my theory. He does need to be close to me. But I also managed to get outside in the sun, so I guess that is a win win situation!

More on our woad dyeing another day. I still have one batch in the pot!

What is the Point of Choose and Book?

Ram was getting dizzy, not just when standing up, but when laughing hard. That is something that happens a lot in our family as Ram wants to be a stand up comic. He was also very tired all the time, and as this was beyond what we would expect from hypermobility syndrome, we decided to go to the GP.

This was to be the first time in 10 years for Ram! He just isn't ill very often, and when he is, he gets better very quickly. This could of course be because he has less stress on his body due to being in an environment that suits him. It was also the first time with this GP as our beloved GP who saw Ram into the world had retired.

It didn't start well, with Dr W implying that there was a problem that Ram hasn't seen anyone for 10 years, then he quickly corrected himself by saying that he was glad that he was really healthy! I then outlined what we were there for. But before I could really get going on that Dr W started talking about how Ram didn't have a formal diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. I pointed out that we didn't really see the need for one but he was insistent. I expressed surprise as the experience of most people at the moment is that they can't get a diagnosis at all, and some are even having them taken away from them.

He then moved onto the school question. Ram launched into how schools couldn't meet his needs and they couldn't cope with his meltdowns. I giggled a bit and stopped Ram, and suggested that he really should have started by explaining that he was home educated! Dr W laughed and said that yes, that was what he had been expecting, and was getting worried that Ram hadn't mentioned home education!

So I thought that maybe we were going to be ok with Dr W, but no, he then went on for the next 10 minutes saying things like we don't need to home educate anymore because schools are now so good, that with a diagnosis of Asperger's he would get more support and social contact, and would be able to do exams and so on. I countered that with examples of current social contact, how to do exams if you are home educated, and my experiences of others whose children were in school. He wasn't listening, so finally I had to pull rank: I explained that I moderated an email list for home educating parents, and was a former trustee of the largest home education charity in the country. He finally conceded that I knew more about home education than he did. But it shouldn't be this hard!

He finally agreed to blood tests to rule our various things such as anemia. We went back to discuss the results and he said the good news was they were all normal. He then started talking about getting a diagnosis of Asperger's again! I stopped him there, and explained that we were not ruling out getting a formal diagnosis one day, but at the moment we would like to find out what is affecting Ram, especially to rule out Marfan. Eventually we got him to agree to refer us to a paeditrician. But Asperger's kept popping up.

The Dxh and I decided to write a letter just to make sure that he understood that it was most urgent to rule out Marfan Syndrome. When Dr W rang back a week later to discuss the booking I though we had made a break through. We discussed things and he did a Choose and Book there and then. I got the letter though a couple weeks later. Then a week after that I got a second one saying that it was cancelled! No explanation!

So I rang, and it turned out that Dr A, the one that our GP had carefully chosen for us, had decided that he didn't want to see us and referred us to Dr B! Dr B's speciality is neurodisability. I started to get worried that Dr W had gone against his word and referred us for an ASD diagnosis after all! A week later I get another call from Dr C's secretary asking what school Ram went to. I explained but before she rang off I asked who Dr C was! It seems that we had been passed on again, so I stressed that we wanted to rule out Marfan, and needed someone in rheumatology, not neurodisability! So what is the point of Choose and Book if the consultants ignore the GP's choice?

It seems that Dr B specialises in epilepsy, but we will be seen by one of his team, Dr C. who doesn't seem to have a speciality at all, and certainly isn't listed as rheumatology.

So it looks like we will just have to wait and see. I just hope that we don't have to spend the first 75% of the appointment telling them all about home education!

Hypermobility Syndrome

When Ram was younger he used to hate shopping and as soon as we got into a shop he would lay down on the floor. I always thought it was to do with the autistic side of things, but eventually we realised that there was more to it than that. When he was nine we consulted with a physiotherapist and found out that Ram had hypermobility syndrome which is a condition where the joints are more lax, causing pain and fatigue.

That is when we started using a buggy which turned out to be a life saver is so many ways. Many health professionals don't like children in wheelchairs or buggies as to them it 'makes' them disabled, but our experience was far from that. It gave us a new freedom as it meant that we could go further and faster, knowing that at any time Ram could rest comfortably. It also addressed his autistic side as it meant with the sun shade down no one would talk to him!

However, once puberty hit his hypermobility became worse, something that we had heard about. As the tendons in the joints are weaker than normal, the muscles have to work harder to keep things in place, which can lead to tiredness, especially after a day of activity. The idea is that people should pace themselves, but try telling that to a boy!

Basically, Ram's feet don't just hurt when he is walking but even just standing cleaning his teeth. Various joints feel like they will sublux if he is not careful, and any amount of activity will have him exhausted for a few days afterwards. This means that we have to space activities, so if the Dxh comes on Saturday, we have to keep Sunday and preferably Monday too clear to rest. And two days are needed after a home ed robotics meeting, even though now that they are teens they spend most of the time 'loitering without tent'. You know, the opposite of loitering with intent.

We had got used to this, and took it all in our stride. He does have exercises which are very hard to get him to do because of his oppositional side, but we were coping. However, in the last six months it had got a lot worse. He was feeling dizzy not just when standing up quickly, but when laughing, something we do a lot around here. He was also showing extreme fatigue. Some days hardly being able to walk. In fact after one robotics outing to the regional heats of The Big Bang Fair when he got home he had to crawl from the sofa to the kitchen to eat dinner!

So we finally bit the bullet and went to see the GP. First time in 10 years! But I will save that story for tomorrow.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Like many people with SEN or disabled children, when they reach a milestone or learn something new, it is a time for celebration. Sometimes it is the smallest thing, something that others will take for granted because their children will have mastered this long ago, that gets us excited. But then sometimes when you think about it, you realise that in the grand scheme of things maybe it isn't so good after all!

Normally when the dxh comes on Saturdays he brings the papers for us as we don't have any home delivery or shops here. Last week the dxh couldn't come up on Saturday so I told Ram that we would have to drive to the next village and get the papers ourselves. At the last minute Ram decided he didn't want to come and stayed home on his own! This is a big thing for him, as normally he doesn't even like me going next door, let alone to the next village.

Then the following week we had to do the same, only by the time Ram had got up they had sold out of The Telegraph. So I suggested that next time I go while he is still asleep and he agreed.

I was amazed and so pleased! Finally at age 14 he is comfortable with staying alone for short periods of time! But then I thought about it, and realised the down side. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. By staying home when I go out to get the papers, it will mean that there is one more time when he isn't getting outside the house and seeing other people.

Then today we went to town to get our monthly rations of gammon (the only meat that Ram will eat. Well, you didn't think he would eat lamb did you?) I gave him the option of staying in the car which he has previously refused to do, but this time he decided to stay on his own in the car! Result! My boy is growing up!

But wait. Yes, this also means that yet again he is not getting out and interacting with other people. We now have almost all food and other things delivered to the house, and there is no other reason for him to go out except the home education group once a week.

So one step forward, he is happy to stay by himself for short peroids of time, but two steps back, he has also managed to isolate himself from people even more.

Oh well, he has said that when he grows up he wants to be a hermit!

Justice

We had a catch up TV day yesterday. We find that all the really good educational stuff is on at the same time, and end up recording half of it. Our hard disk recorder is usually full! The advantage of this though is that we often watch entire series in one or two goes, which makes for better continuity.

One thing we have been following is the BBC4 Justice Season

We started watching Justice with Professor Michael Sandel who presented a series of lectures from his Harvard undergraduate course in Political Philosophy. In it Sandel Sandel tests the philosophies of Bentham, Kant and Aristotle against contemporary problems. We really enjoyed watching this as it asked hard questions to which sometimes there are no right answers. I think it is good for 14 year olds to find out that in life not only are there sometimes no right answers, but sometimes people can wildly disagree with each other. I wish there were more programmes on TV of this calibre.

From there we watched some of the other programmes in the series. Yesterday we finished watching one about the programme Rough Justice as well as watching two programmes on Crime and Punishment: The Story of Capital Punishment and The Story of Corporal Punishment. (only 18 hours left to watch on iPlayer!)

This was quite thought provoking for Ram, as he has gown up totally in a society that is against corporal punishment so it has allowed him to realise how we got to where we were today, and how different it was in the previous generations. It was also interesting to see how much of certain cases I remembered, and how fallible my own memory is. I totally fluffed the Guilford 4 Renault 5 joke! I just couldn't remember the punch line!

We also watched most of the debate that Sandel chaired, Justice:Fairness and the Big Society. One of the advantages of watching the recording of it rather than watching live is that we can pause and have our own debate.

Serendipitously this actually ties in with the book we are reading at the moment. Easeful Death – Is there a case for assisted dying, by Mary Warnock and Elisabeth Macdonald. It starts out by explaining the main ethical, medial and legal arguments for and against a change in the law covering assisted suicide and euthanasia. Ram now has a really good understanding of Kant and Bentham, and how it relates to modern moral dilemmas. This is something that we had already had a look at after watching Terry Pratchett's lecture on this.

We find one of the great advantages of home education is that we can come at the same subject from several different sides, and see how it all ties in with life, society, and our own personals circumstances while at the same time reinforcing what we have already learned. All the while sitting knitting and putting Lego models together!

Saying Goodbye to Lambing Live

With a nickname like Ram, it will come as no surprise that we have spent an enjoyable week watching Princess Kate and Adam present Lambing Live which finished on Saturday evening. This year they had a new family, the Marstons, from Cumbria.

Sheep farming in Cumbria is different from down in the south. They have different local breeds, and a different way of grazing the sheep. The sheep next door to us are Dorsets crosses, and they are contained within fields, but up on the Marston's Farm they have Swaledales, a local breed, which are hefted to the fells.

When sheep are hefted they stick to their area of the fell, and the ewes show the lambs where that area is so that the knowledge passes from generation to generation. The Marston's can't buy in sheep and introduce them to the hefted flock, it is something they have to be born into.

We had a chat with Glow, the farmer next door, who also enjoyed watching the series, saying that it was like a busman's holiday, but still enjoyable never the less. I don't know how much they learned about sheep breeding in Cumbria, but we certainly learned a lot which will tick several home education boxes; history, economics, biology, current affairs, and geography to name but a few.

There was a lovely piece that they filmed with Rachel Marston who is not just wife to Andrew, daughter-in-law to the woman whose family had owned the farm for 100 years, but also mother to three children. She made it clear that farming is not easy, nor will they ever become rich, but it was obvious that she really enjoyed life on the farm, as did her children, both who want to become farmers themselves. She finished with the hope that her own children will be 'hefted' to the farm.

It was clear that the Martstons work well as an extended family, and spend more time together than most families do, living and working on their isolated farm. Many home educating families spend more time than is usual with their children too, as they spend their days together learning, rather than rushing out to drop the children at school then going on to a full time job outside the home, not to see their loved ones until later in the day. This can lead to a much closer relationship with their children, and it is often noted that home educated children don't go though the teenage rebellion the way many schooled children do.

We many not all have farms handed down from generation to generation like the Marstons have, but I think we all hope our children will be 'hefted' if not to our homes, at least to our hearts.

Dorset cross sheep from the farm next door:

Ramism

Silence is easier done than said. So is lethargy.

Spring Has Sprung...

...the grass is grew, and look at all the chicken poo!

Yes, spring is truly here and a lot more springier than April two years ago when we had cold weather and in some areas snow. We may come to regret this warm weather though, as there is so much new growth that will be damaged with a frost. We nearly lost my artichoke to frost this way a few years ago, and it has barely recovered yet.

I don't know why I bother trying to grow vegetables sometimes. Ram doesn't eat them much. His total vegetable and fruit intake is carrots, frozen peas (eaten frozen) apples, and a little sorrel when it is available and the chickens don't get to it first.

In fact he has slowed right down on the food intake front. Last weekend he had his two hambagels for breakfast, (which is consumed at lunch time) and that was it! I offered to get food for him though out the day, but he turned it down. I hadn't really registered that he hadn't eaten anything else so didn't push anything in the evening. It was only when we went to bed that he mentioned that he was colder than usual. The penny dropped!

It can be hard to know what is going on at times like this. Is he feeling poorly? Has he somehow got out of the habit of eating? Is he is pain? One of the difficulties in having multiple disabilities is that they affect each other. I can't find out what level of pain he is in from the hypermobility, because the Asperger's means he has difficulty answering questions, and at times doesn't know himself if he is in pain or not. All I can do is watch and hope I can spot something.

Yesterday Ram was very tired, looked very pale, and hardly ate anything. Maybe today I might find out why!

Update.

I have realised that in long neglecting the blog, things have moved on somewhat, and I had better bring people up to date.

Ram is now 14, taller than his mum, and speaks in sarcasm like many teens do. Despite this, he is still like many home educated teens and gets on well with his parents.

We are still home educating, and much of what we do is reading aloud and purposive conversation, but this too has matured. Ram has a great interest in physics, so we have been reading a lot of science books, in fact he says there are only two types of books, non-fiction and physics!

One big change is that Arrow our elderly dog finally died. I had always said that she was so stupid that she would realise that she was supposed to die, and would carry on for years, unlike our other dog that was very cleaver and died at age 10 (of a brain tumour). I was right. Despite being a large dog she managed 15 years, the last however I couldn't really say that she was with us. She was deaf, mostly blind, and just wondered around and slept all the time. We knew it was the right time to let her go when she couldn't recognise the Dxh when he arrived, and we had her put to sleep.

There had been much discussion about what to replace her with. It certainly wasn't going to be another dog, as Ram's Hypermobility Syndrome was causing a lot of trouble (there is a subject for another post all on it's own!) making walking dogs impossible. We toyed with the idea of fish, then reptiles or snakes, but in the end after a visit to a friend we decided on chickens.

At the moment we have five lovely girly girls, producing eggs every day for us. Death is something that we have had to get used to a lot more as the original four rescued hens died pretty quickly. We have two themes running for names, architecture and food. We have been though Veranda, Porch, Kentucky, Tikka and now we have Terrace, Patio, Masala, Nugget and Korma.

Bob also has had his cousin come to visit. Fred arrived in the post one day, having been traveling around the world living in post offices. He heard that Cousin Bob had a nice place to live, and decided to visit, and hasn't actually managed to leave again!

Unlike Bob, Fred is laid back with his straw hat, a little hard of thinking, so we have to explain things to him a lot.

That's enough of an update for now!

Professor Jim and Home Education

Professor Jim and Home Education

We had seen a lot of Professor Jim Al-Khalili in the last week or two, and will be seeing more of him in June at the Cheltenham Science Festival http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/science We also watched him give evidence to the Science and Technology Select Committee http://tinyurl.com/458ls55 as well as watching the excellent Everything and Nothing (BBC 4).

One of the things that Jim and others such as Professor Brian Cox seem to be concerned about is getting young people more interested in science. There seems to be a bit of a problem though, as the young people giving evidence to the Select Committee didn't seem to think much of the programmes or personalities involved with science in the media.

Ram is getting like that too. He heaved a sign one night after Horizon and said that he guess he would just have to get used to being bored for the rest of his life!

The young people were clear that one of the big turn offs for science is GCSE physics. Of course this is one of the many reasons why people like us home educate. In particular, I asked the question how would the school meet the needs of a bright child that can out think many in particle physics, but at the same time has learning difficulties.

By home educating we can meet the child where they are, and they don't have to sit bored by school science. Right now we have a few books on the go, such as Richard Feynman's University Lectures, and a PhD on acoustic microscopy and superconductors (I used to feel hard done by because I was the only one not married to a PhD but now I am glad of my friends!) Ram says that there are only two types of books; physics and non-fiction!

The internet has also helped with home education. After reading a book on superconductors we emailed the professor that wrote and asked for suggestions on further books (he couldn't really come up with any, apparently superconductors are for the post grads only) and we have found PhD papers from the likes of Brian amongst others, as well as Jim's lecture notes for his first year class. Thanks Jim!

Without the internet and the generosity of our university professors, physics would be a lot harder for home educators!

Wonders of Our Universe

You don't have to be a professor named Brian Cox to talk about the wonders of our universe. Wonders of the Universe His universe may be quite large thanks to the BBC travel budget, but most of us have to settle for something a little more modest and closer to home.

Petrol like helium is constantly going up, which may well be good for the environment as we think twice about hopping in the car to travel around. And public transport was never frequent in our part of the woods, although twice a week would have qualified it to be regular. However, there are 'things to do' on our own doorstep.

Spring is one of the best times of the year to get out walking. The sun is not yet strong enough to burn or over heat us which makes it idea weather for walking and there is so much to see. There are the spring bulbs, the ponds coming to life, the buds on the trees, even the insects are active. Our chickens have been enjoying chasing flies around the garden before laying out looking as if they are playing dead in order to get plenty of sun.

We are very lucky to have the Badminton estate on our doorstep. I will leave others with better knowledge to give specifics of where to go, but I do understand that there are some lovely walks there. We also have the Boxwell estate, and others such as Ozleworth and Newington Bagpath in the valleys. These estates are not open to the public nor are they run as parkland like Badminton is. They are working farms, and because of this they have maintained over the centuries what we think of as natural English countryside. However, there are official footpaths and bridle paths running though them.

Then of course we have Westonbirt right on our doorstep. I have never liked the 'front door' of Westonbirt, with the car parks, visitor centres and high charges. Thank goodness there is also the 'back door'. There are public footpaths running from both Leighterton and Didmarton into Silkwood and the woods behind Silkwood. This to me is the real Westonbirt, the wild bit where the trees are left to grow naturally and the wildlife is less disturbed by people. Again, much of this is on private land and public footpaths and the Countryside Code should be kept to.

There is a good reason though to go into Westonbirt by the front door, and that is when there is limited mobility. In the modern part of the arboretum there is disabled parking, hard paths and electric scooter and manual wheelchairs available (best to book on weekends and at busy times).

But if you have someone in your party that is of limited mobility, and you don't want the expense or the crowds of Westonbirt, the Cotswold Conservation Board has produced a small handbook called Walks on Wheels containing 15 walks suitable for buggies and wheelchairs, two of which are in our area: a town walk in Tetbury and a walk on the Badminton Estate. Each walk has a map and details about parking, length, and whether there are any hills or not. That's essential information for the people pushing!

Theses walks and others can be downloaded for free from their website http://www.cotswoldsaonb.org.uk/

So Professor Brian Cox may be able to watch the sun go down from the top of a mountain or stand in the middle of a Peruvian desert to watch the dawn though a fourth century solar observatory, but nothing beats standing on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment and watching the sun rise over Westonbirt, or gazing across the Severn floodplain to take in a sunset.

Bang goes Bang With the Weather

I just suggested watching Bang Goes the Weather with Ram. We gathered our things and turned on the TV. As the presenters introduced themselves, Ram looked disappointed: "Oh, it's this lot. I thought the title was some clever pun that I didn't get. I don't like that kind of enthusiasm. I like people that are really interested in what they are doing, not just trying to look interested."

So much for the government's attempt to make science exciting. Mind you, from listening to the young people giving evidence at the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, my son is not the only one that despairs about about the dumbing down of science on TV. Most of them said that they get more information from reading the New Scientist, and talking to real scientists.

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=7888

Maybe it is time that Bang Goes the Theory goes bang and we can get some real science on prime time TV.