ASDAN Stepping Stones

Another great opportunity from a fellow Home Edding mum! ASDAN Stepping Stones is...

...a 20-30 hour PSHE/ Citizenship-based programme with an accredited outcome, aimed at 7-12 year olds.

To complete the programme, young people have to:

• Complete their Skills Book and use a file or folder for their portfolio of evidence
• Carry out challenges over 20-30 hours
• Put evidence in their portfolio to show the activities they've done
• Keep a list in the Skills Book of all the challenges they've done
• Use Stepping Stones stickers to record the skills they have developed and used during the challenges
• Hand in their books and portfolios to the teacher
• Receive their certificates!

The Stepping Stones skills: Communicating; Investigating; Presenting; Using Multimedia; Researching; Independence; Working With Others; Solving Problems; Perseverance; Confidence; Respecting Others; Collecting Evidence; Planning and Reviewing; Looking After Yourself; Budgeting; Leadership.

The topic areas for the challenges: Active Citizen; Community Spirit; Identity; Personal Wellbeing; Money Matters; Around the Globe; Environment; Valuing Each Other; Different Cultures; Health; Enterprise; Trips and Visits.

Will update our progress as we go.

I'm a Cub, Get Me Out of Here!

Another weekend camping for Madi, with Cubs from across her District, with a theme that found her clutching stars with her teeth from all kinds of substances (but fortunately not the living ones from the Ant and Dec show!) 

She also still made it to Rookies, as Sherbrooke is not far from there, and she came home a VERY tired little girl, too tired even to tell me very much about it!

parents watching the closing ceremony at the camp fire circle

Flight

To make the most of the opportunities available to us, we actually started our March 'Flight' topic a little early with a great day at East Midlands Airport

Then as part of National Science Week we attended an excellent 'How Aeroplanes Fly' workshop day at South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, led by Dr Mike Diprose.

Our lapbooking this time was almost entirely led by a 'Hands of a Child' purpose-designed pack purchased from Currclick.

Looking and talking about passports tied in nicely with the first of our ASDAN Stepping Stones activities. This is a PSHE/Citizenship programme aimed at KS2/3 children which a fellow HE mum is making available to HE families. More on this to follow...

Children's University

Thanks to Julie, a fellow Home Edding mum, Madi is now signed up to the Children's University in Rotherham, and is very much looking forward to a school holiday session they have organised.

Primary Mathematics Challenge

Amazing news today! We extended our break from Mathletics, and have been looking more at 'problem-solving' and applying maths to real-life situations. We started off using the Schofield and Sims books that Madi was familiar with from her time at school.

She was much more engaged with this than she has been with maths for some time, and encouraged, I tried a couple a couple of past papers from the Primary Mathematics Challenge and although it is aimed at ' aimed at the top 60% of pupils in Years 5 and 6 England and Wales' she did well and we decided to give it a try and signed up to join the Home Educator's group to enter.


Unfortunately the paper had to be taken in a quite difficult week when she already had Clarinet and Piano exams to sit, so I was overjoyed when we received the results and she had been awarded a silver certificate!

Madi, typically, thought she should have done better! Maybe next year...

Blast Off and bag pack

This term's choral event with Music for Everyone featured Blast Off! - a short musical telling the story of a school threatened with closure whose pupils attempt to save it with a trip in to space to bring back Jupiter Rock! This wasn't my favourite selection, but did include a range of puns and wider cultural references that we were able to talk through together, and the accompanying selection of songs from The X Factor included Hannah Montana's The Climb, a favourite of Madi's and 'You Raise Me Up', which I can't believe any Mother could watch her child's choir perform without a tear in her eye!

But before heading off for rehearsals, Madi left Nottinghamshire Performing Arts School early and dashed over to Morrison's at Mansfield to take part in a fundraising bag pack. She really enjoys these, and with her friend Holly, was one of the few Rainbows to take part at previous events. This was a joint Guiding/Scouting event though and had a good turnout, and even better for me was a chance meet up with Amanda, whose previously HE daughter returned to school about the same time as JK, for a coffee, chat and catchup in the cafe.

Poolsbrook Pals and the Goose Fair

It's always lovely to meet new home ed friends, and recently we have joined in with some get togethers at Poolsbrook Country Park, not that far from us, but somewhere we had never heard of before.

Some families we had met before in different ways, and others not, but everyone is very friendly, and the children seem to all mix really well in different combinations, and we've been amazingly lucky with the weather!

This week the weather was not looking good and most people had agreed we wouldn't meet up, but in the event it was glorious, so Madi and I took the tram in to the 717th Goose Fair at Nottingham:

Goose Fair is one of Europe's largest travelling fairs with a history that dates back more than 700 years. Amongst the array of Roller Coasters, Water Rides, Giant Wheels, Bombers, Dodgems, Twists, Waltzers and Miamis familiar to Goose Fair there will be a number of new attractions that have not visited Nottingham before.

This year the Runaway Train became the largest ride ever to attend any travelling fair probably in the World! Previously it was a permanent attraction at the American Adventure theme park before the park closed. Since then, it has been completely rebuilt into a mobile attraction by Nottingham-based James Mellors Amusements, using local engineers and craftsmen.

Some facts about the ride: The £1 million ride has 300m of track length and occupies a 2800 metre square area although the height of the train is no more than 8m to make it a suitable family ride. There are eight carriages each seating four passengers with a two-driver engine at the front. The ride proved to be a huge family attraction at this year's Goose Fair.

Along with the traditional Goose Fair food of mushy peas and mint sauce, candy floss and brandy snaps, visitors could eat their way around the world with chestnuts and doughnuts to food from the Caribbean, Chinese noodles, Indian kebabs, Spanish churros, paella and French crepes.

Madi tried several rides, whilst I stuck to my mushy peas and mint sauce at 7th Nottingham Scouts HQ, which is on the Forest Recreation Ground, and where many of our Gang Show friends are based. Madi did have donuts there too, but then couldn't resist a strawberry and marshmallow kebab from the chocolate fountain!