March 2

It's all been so busy! This week has been dominated by zooming around York to go to fun stuff. Firstly, as part of National Science Week (do you remember the days when this meant that I was at work until 9pm escorting thousands of kids around the university?), we headed up to the AstroCampus for a workshop on shooting stars. Some really good students told us loads about meteors and meteoroids and meteorites (ask Thea - she'll explain), and then we played with fun stuff. The kids enjoyed the ball-bearings-into-flour-and-cocoa experiment (and we got some good crater-ray formations).

And they both had great fun with the pressurised air rockets, having made their own rockets from paper.

But the highlight for me was getting to play with the big telescopes (they've got more since we were there), and the clouds clearing so that we could get a good look at the Orion nenula. We also discovered that Nathaniel isn't quiet or shy when it comes to talking to students about space - he was happily chatting away to them about star nurseries and Betelgeuse and star mapping software. Nathaniel the extrovert - who'd have thunk it?!
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For Thea, it was a fun week as she became Thea-Three-Cellos-Graham. She's starting to grow out of her 1/16 size, so we headed to Koplins to look for a 1/10. But in their wisdom, they also sent us away with a 1/8 to try as well. So this week she has been playing them all!

And surprisingly, the 1/8 is the winner. It looks pretty massive, but she is playing in tune and making a decent tone, so it'll do us.

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This Friday was history day at school. They've spent the week on all sorts of fun activities with each class having a different historical period to focus on. Thea has been studying the Romans and went to the Yorkshire Museum and the Holgate windmill. Nathaniel has been studying WW2 and went on a scary trip to Eden Camp and .... the Holgate windmill. For the finale, they were all invited to come to school dessed appropriately, as a Roman soldier and an evacuee. There was limited interest in preparing costumes until Thursday evening at which point the three of us knocked up two rather fine outfits including a tunic from a pillowcase and a gas mask case.

This is Thea's fierce soldier face.

There were some amazing costumes, especially Mr Thompson's Henry VIII. Here is the photo of them all (yep - that's the whole school).

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And no week would be complete without a picture of my view while I read my book while Nathaniel was at his choir rehearsal.