Chinese New Year celebrations

This week it was Chinese New Year so we decided to celebrate! We all wore something red. A few of us found some amazing Chinese outfits! 

We tried our hand at writing some Chinese symbols. Using gold paint and brushes we concentrated hard and made some beautiful words. We wrote "prosperity", "sun", "mountain", "love" "moon" and "banana"!

We also had some stories and made Chinese dragons and for lunch we made noodles and practiced using chopsticks. This was harder than it looked! After lunch we tried some new fruits, lychees and Chinese pears.

Happy Chinese New Year!

                        

Acorns and conkers

Our second meeting in a village hall had a definite autumnal feel to it. It was raining finely, and about half the temperature of the previous day!

Armed with a glue gun, a drill and lots of acorns, conkers, beech nuts, pinecones, sycamore seeds, some googly eyes and a bit of glittery glue and golden paint, we set about making some little people/animals/fairies and necklaces.

If you have some leftover material and are unsure what to do with it all, check out this page full of great ideas.

A bit of warm-up drawing

Drilling with a smile ;-)

Concentrating

Smiling proudly

Beautiful princess, fairy and animals

Love the prickly shield, and the acorn hat toes Alex insisted on having for his conkers man to stand on

After the session, some of us went for a little walk in Fyne Court. We enjoyed playing this new natural instrument,

and said hello to the three resident pigs.

First autumn meeting

The last Tuesday of September was our first meeting back in a village hall. The weather was gorgeous, and so we enjoyed the little park next to the hall.

Ruth and Ida had brought some apples from their garden and some raisins for us all to make baked apples. Mmmmmmm ...you can find a similar recipe here.

Afterwards the children enjoyed some crafty time with glittery bits and pieces as well as sticky butterflies, dragonflies and flowers. Thanks Naomi ;-)

Not Back to School Picnic

This week we held our Not Back to School Picnic in Vivary Park, Taunton.  This was an opportunity for us to celebrate home education together.  We had to postpone the picnic by a day, as the original day (Tuesday) had a forecast of heavy rain!  It was definately the right choice as the weather was so much better on Wednesday.  Some of us even took our cardigans off! 

We met two new families at the picnic, which was great as it is always lovely to meet new people.  We set up for a picnic near the fountain, with our new Taunton Home Education banner to help bring awareness of our group to people in the park.  The children collected acorns, spotted lots of squirrels, fed the ducks and generally had fun together. 

We then moved over to the play area at the back of Vivary Park, where the children (and some of the adults!) enjoyed the play equipment.  We also had a go at making giant bubbles, with slightly mixed success.  Some worked really well, others were not so good.  We will have another go at it later in the year.




Making giant bubbles

Bubble making



Playing together on the roundabout

Next week, we are having our first meeting in a village hall near Taunton.  If you would like to come along, please email us at tauntonhomeeducation@yahoo.com for further information.  Look forward to seeing you soon.

Tree Climbing at Fyne Court

This week was our last official outdoor meeting.  It was definately an autumnal feel today.  Brief, but quite heavy showers and a definate chill in the air, meant our meeting was quite a bit shorter than usual!  The children spent most of the time climbing on a huge log at Fyne Court.  They have added some tree trunk steps since last week, which made it a bit easier for those with 'littler' legs!  There was also quite a lot of blackberry eating as well, as evidenced by the red streaks around some of their mouths..  Unfortunately, as someone (ahem) forgot to charge their camera, we have no photos to share this week, but I'm sure there will be some next week.

Next Tuesday, we are meeting in Vivary Park, Taunton for our "Not Back To School Picnic".  We will be meeting at the Fountain at 11.30am for a picnic, fun and games.  The picnic is for anyone who is home educating or considering home educating regardless of whether you normally come to the Taunton group meetings or not.

From the following week (27th September) we will begin meeting in a hall near Taunton.  Please email tauntonhomeeducation@yahoo.com for further details.  Look forward to seeing you soon.

Not back to (or starting) school

Today was our first meeting of September and we met again at Fyne Court, Broomfield.  It was rather eerily quiet compared to previous weeks.  Partly because it was raining, which probably put visitors off, but mainly because this week was the first week back at school, so the children from the Home Education Group were the only ones there.  Some of us are entering our second (or more) year of home educating, some of us are just starting out with little ones who would have started school this week and some of us have just de-registered our children from school, but we are all looking forward to the 'non-school' year to come.  

At Fyne Court, despite the rain, we still had 4 families meet up, which was a pretty good turn out considering the weather!  We picked, and ate, a lot of blackberries and raspberries, slipped over in the mud (the children, not the adults!), played hide & seek, played giant snakes & ladders (improvising due to lack of a dice), snap and matching pairs.  We even managed to have a (dryish!) picnic.

We're meeting at Fyne Court again next week (13th September) at 10.30am in the car park.  Look forward to seeing you all then.

Sheltering from the rain.

Looking for blackberries

Playing in the den in the woods.

Giant Snakes & Ladders.

Last meeting of August

Today we enjoyed another walk in Fyne Court.

We braved a field with no bull in sight, and spent a lot of time climbing spectacular trees. We very luckily avoided a wasp nest (which stung some other children later on :-((( we all hope they're ok now).

The children also loved swinging on a tree swing brought by Christina, and unfortunately... playing with (slightly too short) sticks and with ... (fresh) cow pat! (withheld photographic evidence ;-) )

Then, a little dip in the stream, and a picnic in the courtyard, with regular visits to "the secret garden". All rounded up with more tree climbing, and playing "mummy, daddy and their two babies" for quite a long time!

Looking forward to September now, with more meetings in Fyne Court, our first Not Back To School Picnic on the 20th and our first meeting back in a village hall on the 27th.

June & July

In June and July we met up a couple of times in Longrun Meadow,  a newly developed green area in the North of Taunton. It's a lovely area accessible from town through French Weir Park. The Willow Cathedral is also well worth a "visit".

　

In June we had a couple of picnics at The Spinney in Kingston St Mary, where the children enjoyed playing in the stream, climbing in the trees and swinging on a tree swing.

We also had a couple of walks in Langford Heathfield, a Somerset Wildlife Trust nature reserve near Wellington. We all enjoyed meeting the mini Shetlands ponies which are kept there in the summer to graze a small area of the reserve. It's a beautiful reserve with wildflower meadows, boarded walks as well as woods with multiple paths where it's surprisingly easy to become lost!

In July we took part in the Big Butterfly Count, a survey organised by Butterfly Conservation
We decided to meet up at Thurlbear Quarrylands, one of the best sites in the area to see a good variety of butterflies. With our copies of the butterfly charts we were able to identify a few species: gatekeeper, meadow brown, ringlet, large skipper, peacock, marbled white, large white, red admiral, silver-washed fritillary ... The children also enjoyed looking for bugs and buildings dens under some trees.