Back to the Modern Day and Beyond

Does anyone recall our visit to the Muckleburgh Collection?  Can you believe that was three years ago?!

While we were in Norfolk, I thought it would be good to revisit this marvellous museum where Tiger and I spent a whole day carefully looking through every piece of equipment.

Strangely, this time it took us a little more than 2 hours to go through the collection, and we even spent 45 minutes at the cafe to have lunch!  Maybe it took us much shorter time now because:

• Tiger is bigger now so he can read faster, walk faster, and
• his interest in military history has moved past its peak from three years ago.

In any case, I am glad I was able to fully support his interest back then and gave him all the necessary exposure that he craved.

From the (slightly) historical military vehicles at the tank museum, we moved on to a modern luxury brand saloon car assembly plant.

 It was a fascinating tour of the Jaguar assembly plant, seeing the robotic arms at work.  No photos were allowed in the plant, but you'll get a good sense of what it is like from the video below:

However, I am more intrigued by the incredible corporate turnaround of the brand:

While we were not running around, we managed to do a bit of potting while enjoying the lovely spring flowers that in bloom.

Meanwhile, Tiger is devouring a new series of sci-fi books -- yes,  he has finished reading all the Star Wars books we can find.

He is now moving on to Star Trek.

According to Tiger, Star Trek is more relatable because the story has earth as the anchor planet for the crew -- a planet that Tiger has some familiarity with.  Despite this, Tiger remains a big Star Wars fan, along with his best friend at school.

The boys are currently in Wales enjoying their boys-only, male-bonding trip.

This gives me plenty of time for the much needed me-time, hence my able to write two blog posts to provide some catch-up news to all who are interested.  A few more days of peaceful and quiet time for reflection before I go back to the relentlessly frantic stress of work. 

Summer is Not Over Yet!

We are still officially on our summer break, and I have made a deliberate effort to stop ourselves from signing up for too many of the tantalising summer courses available.  However, as I look at what we have been doing since we got back from Cornwall (that was a real holiday), it seems that we are on the go again!

We have been spending time in nature,

spending time in the garden,

Tiger's current interest/obsession is anything and everything nautical, so he has been reading up on this topic.

Fiction and non-fiction books.

As he read the books, Tiger became intrigued by how boats and ships work.  He then decided the best course of work is to build a model boat that would float.  After he figured out what materials to use for his model boats, we went to the craft shops and got balsa wood and some fabric (for the sail).  Tiger has been obsessively designing his models, cutting the various pieces out of wood, testing his models, and redesigning them in the sink.

Once he was happy with his final designs at home (after several unsuccessful ones initially), he asked to launch them at a pond to see how they would respond in the 'real world' (as opposed to the sink at home).  Tiger brought a net to catch his boats before they floated too far away from the edge of the pond.

Even with his new area of interest, Tiger is still very much engrossed in the study of military history, reading books, play acting, and resuming the mini lectures.

Recently, he has been playing around with PowerPoint by himself and is using it in his mini lectures, progressing from his previous use of the whiteboard for his presentations.

While I managed to stop myself signing Tiger up for a multitude of summer classes, I did take him to an electronics class, only because he got to solder his own circuit board and learn about its various components, which I have absolutely no interest in or knowledge of.

The end product is a small bug-like machine that responds to different light intensities.  That is pretty cool.

It looks as if we have started 'school', doesn't it?  Our days before or during the summer don't look any different, except that many of the regular classes that Tiger attends are on a break at the moment.  I expect our days to be much more hectic come September, in view of the various classes that are currently being organised for the new academic year. 

For now, I am still enjoying the relatively slow pace of what's left of the summer, while watching our diary gradually being filled up with activities for the new term.

What Came Out of the Crimean War

Even with the relative calm at home in the UK during the Victorian Era, war was still being waged by British troops overseas, the most well-known being the Crimean War and the two Boer Wars.

Between the two significant wars that took place in the Victorian period, we choose to focus on the Crimean War as it seems to have more far-reaching effects on the social and medical fronts than the Boer Wars.  The first example of which is Lord Alfred's Tennyson's famous poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, that describes the heroic but tragic fate of the British calvary in the Battle of Balaclava.

We did not go into a full analysis of the poem but only listened to it a few times to hear its meter and rhythm, then briefly discussed the poem's content and background in relation to how war was fought in the Victorian times.  Tiger has already learned about the Battle of Balaclava on his own, so he is very familiar with the geographical and historical background to the poem and is able to put in context the fatal situation described within.  He did, however, have a little play with the poem by changing its title to "The Charge of the Lunch Brigade", and altering a few words to suit the new title.

Once we got past the horror of the battle, we turned our attention to the development of nursing care that took place as a result of this war, in the form of Florence Nightingale.

Florence Nightingale's story is a very interesting one.

Even as a child living in the Far East, I had heard of "the lady with the lamp",

and of her contributions to the nursing practice.

Naturally, we had to go and see for ourselves who this remarkable Victorian woman is, so we went to The Florence Nightingale Museum, which is situated by the St. Thomas' Hospital, the largest teaching hospital in London.

When we got to the museum, we first had the pleasure of an audience with Miss Nightingale,

where she told the children the story of her life and how she got into nursing despite her family's opposition and the prevailing social pressure of the time for her to remain an upper-middle class socialite.

 
The children then had a few worksheets to do, where they had to go to different "stations" located in different parts of the museum to look at some replica items (such as the Military Cross, the Victoria Cross, copies of Victorian paintings depicting the conditions of the military hospitals, Nightingale's photos from her pre- and post-nursing days) and note down their significance in relation to the Crimean War, as well as to Florence Nightingale's efforts at social change.

After the workshop, we had time to look around the museum at our leisure.

The museum is one of the smallest we have visited so far but we are very impressed with its layout and the amount of real artefacts (such as  Nightingale's actual nursing uniform, the medical supplies she first took to Scutari, the actual lamp that she carried on her night rounds).

The more I learn about the Victorians and the society at that time, the more I admire Florence Nightingale's determination and courage to break free from societal expectations to pursue what she felt was her calling and in the process, transformed the very notion and practice of nursing care.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/17/15
2. Finishing Strong - Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years #47
3. History and Geography Meme #156
4. Collage Friday: The Hidden Benefits of Homeschool
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with the taste of spring
6. My Week in Review #29

The Time In-Between

What did we do in-between Christmas and New Year?  We went to... (surprise, surprise!) the IWM London!  Only because it's the kind of place we would go when we don't know what to do with ourselves.

The IWM was reopened last summer to coincide with the First World War Centenary but for whatever reason we have not been there until now.  I must admit that we were not too impressed with the immeidate exhibits at the first instance, only because we have been to places choked full of military exhibits.  However, we went back two more times (that's right, we clocked three visits to the IWM London in the space of two weeks) and were increasingly impressed with the layout as well as the content of the museum, especially the newly opened First World War galleries, which has a long queue outside everytime we were there.

There is so much to see that we will definitely have to go back for more!  While we were there, we visited the Horrible Histories: Spies temporary exhibition before it closed.

My overall impression of this particular exhibition is that it was very entertaining.  The curator obviously tried to present a realistic view of the life of spies in WWII, with all its glory (e.g. the secret weapons) and gore (that spies had to kill innocent people in the process of completing their missions) while not losing the draw for young children.

There have been some controversies around the related series of books lately with regards to them being a cause of children's trivialised view of English history.  While I have let Tiger read all of the Horrible Histories books, we did it with the understanding that:

1. they would not be his main or only source of history learning;
2. they are just entertainment; and
3. he would only read them in the summer, and he completed the whole series three summers ago; and
4. to be able to appreciate the humour behind the serious topics, one needs to have a solid knowledge of the actual historical accounts.

I probably would not rely on this series as the sole source of history for Tiger, in the same way that I would not dream of teaching history based on the Blackadder series even though I think the people behind the series are exceptionally clever to be able to pull the comedy off.

Besides running to the south of London three times, we spent the last two weeks of 2014 not doing anything that is remotely academic.  It was  a time for all of us to take a complete rest and to do whatever we fancied.  During that period, Tiger spent a lot of time drawing mostly military vehicles, especially fighter jets and dogfight scenes.  He has been sketching from aircraft photos from his library of books and stills from dogfight documentaries.

In his usual autodidatic way, Tiger has been very focused on teaching himself to draw the subjects that interest him.  In my plan for this year, I have hoped to focus on developing our drawing skills but Tiger has told me decidedly that he is not interested to draw still life, the subject that is often covered in beginners' drawing courses, so I have not pushed the matter too hard, except to provide him with the necessary drawing materials and reference books when he asked for them.

Learning in this way, he has since filled out two A2 sketch books (30 pages each) with his numerous drawings and his very recent drawings show much improvement from those in the first pages of his first sketch book.

His latest interest lies in drawing people and faces so I got hold of this little book in which the illustrator's style is very similar to Tiger's early attempts at drawing people.  He has been doing some of the exercises in the book each night before bed with much enthusiasm.

I noted a few things while observing how Tiger goes about teaching himself to draw:

• that he does not require anybody's permission to start learning;
• that he does not feel he needs to wait for anybody to come along to teach him;
• that he knows when he needs more instructions - "I think I can do with a book that shows me how to draw different tanks from start to finish."
• that he knows what kind of help he needs - "Mum, can you get me a book on how to draw different people and faces?"

This child clearly shows signs of knowing how to learn.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 1/6/15
2. My Week in Review #18
3. Virtual Refrigerator
4. Collage Friday: Learning About the Civil War
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with all the Painting

Don't Blink!

With a child who reads books like the ones below for 'leisure',

and who gives 'lectures' on the the differences between a Sherman tank and a Cromwell tank

by addressing their technical specifications,

I often forget that he is only 10 years old... that is, until he reminds me of his real chronological age by playing in a big box for days, pretending to be a (rather giggly) tank driver.

With only a few weeks left to the end of the year, I am feeling rather nostalgic.  The old photographs (taken when Tiger was two to four years old) are a poignant reminder to myself of how rapidly time passes.  See what has transpired during that time when I blinked...


1) By the sea
Then:

Now:

Then:

Now:

2) On the bike

Then:

Now:

3) Gardening

Then:

Now:

Then:

Now:

4) In the kitchen
Then: Tiger worked his way up, starting from washing vegetables at age 3.

Now:

5) Art

Then:

Now:

5) How and what he learns

Then:

Now:

6) Dressing up for lessons

Then:

Now: Still dressing up but slightly more understated than before.

6) Reading
Then: Dr. Seuss books were highly popular.

Now: Hours spent in the Military History section of a bookstore is a very common occurrence .

7) Writing
Then: Learning to hold and control the marker pen.

Now: Completing a three-page written narration.

8) Toys
Then: Toys for small boys.

Now: Toys for big boys.

9) Between mother and son
Then: "I'll go wherever you take me, Mummy!"

Now: I don't have a photo for this, but a very recent declaration made by Tiger sums it all up. 

"I will NOT submit to my mother!"

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/9/14
2. Laugh & Learn - Week 10
3. Finishing Strong - Week 40
4. My Week in Review #16
5. Collage Friday: Serving with Teens
6. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with another birthday