BEEN A WHILE I KNOW

Hi folks!

Yes I know, its been a while.  But I haven't been slacking off too much, just been concentrating on daily updates on the related Facebook page.  It's often easier, as I'm normally on there in the evenings anyway, to do a quick little update there than log in and write something a bit more substantial.

So what's been happening in Callum's world?  Well, Digipen course is going well apart from some pretty big techno problems, but I've already ranted about those on my Is It Me blog, so I'm not going to go into it again here.  Callum is really enjoying the course and I have no problems getting him to do the homework.  In fact he ends up by going further into the course than he should as he's finding it interesting and perfect for what he wants to do, so I think programming is the way to go.

On top of that, the Kestral Award is starting to take shape.  We found some previous work that fits in with the criteria so we've put that in and we've done one more item on the Do It list.

We'd already made a bird box, so I found the work and took extra pics of finished object and put that in and we've bought some pond plants to go into our wildlife ponds that we have.  Basically they are the old corner bath we had and a tin bath that we found in the garden.  We've buried the corner bath and the tin bath will have stones and bricks around it so that anything can climb up should it wish to.  They have both been full of water for about a year and the corner bath is looking really green and murky, however we discovered water skaters on it this year and an underwater beetle, so were pretty impressed.  One of the tasks in the award is to help create a wildlife pond, so we went out and bought some oxygenating plants, a water lily and a couple of shallow water plants and Callum planted them up and positioned them in the pond; me taking photos.  We now need to get some plants around the pond, create the bog garden and surround the tin bath with stones once in permanent position.  As the Kestral Award doesn't have a time limit, we can take our time, but hopefully it will all be up and running and planted by the end of July.

The tin bath with rocks and now a Waterlily

One of our pond skaters in the very murky water

The other award we want to do is from the British Science Association.  They run a scheme similar to the Arts Award we did a few years ago.  We are going to start at Bronze just to get some practice in with regard to what type of work they expect before moving up to the Silver and Gold awards which have UCAS points attached.  At the moment we are awaiting a delivery from Amazon with regard to some rockets as Callum wants to do Transport!!  One of the sections he's chosen has experiments on model rockets and trajectories, speed and energy.  Looking forward to starting it, but might need to go somewhere a little more spacious to carry out the tests.

One another note, I'm back to having to remind Callum to wash his face, clean his teeth and shower!  He was doing extremely well, but its all gone out the window again.  Not sure if that is just him being a typical teenage boy or whether it's his Asperger or both, but it is a bit annoying after having got him into a routine with it all.  Oh well two steps forward, one step back I suppose.

Oh and he's still doing trampolining!  Somersaults now achieved on a regular basis.  Concentrating on technique and starting backward somersaults at the moment.  Eeeeek!!!

Anyway, stuff to do this morning, so hopefully back another day.

Cya

DIGIPEN AND STUPID TRAIN TIMETABLES

Back up to Albany Park for Digipen today; lesson two.  Teacher not really improved on being able to keep us all up and running at the same speed and, once again, Callum had to help out a fellow student!  Actually I helped out a fellow student as well today, go me! Haha.  Went over the homework we should have all done; surprise, surprise, Callum was the only one who'd managed to complete it all, so we went over what he had already done, but then added some music.  Callum didn't mind as we learnt another way of doing something he'd done already and it also meant he could play a bit more and investigate further.

The journey this week was as straightforward as it should have been with no delays, but if does look like we'll have to catch the 5.45pm train home which stops at Strood (but at least is direct)!!!  If we then wait at Strood for a connection back to Gillingham, we won't get home until 7pm!!!  We leave home at 2.10pm to get there for 4pm.  The lesson is only supposed to be an hour (although so far it's been more like 1 hour and 20mins), so that's 4 hours travelling for a one hour lesson.  Blimey we're dedicated. haha.  As of next week we're hoping to get a lift from dad from Strood which will save us about 20mins journey and a 15min wait on a cold Strood station.

Not everyone there this week either, so not sure if people have already dropped out.  Some people are still having difficulty getting the programme to run so they are going to have to talk in the week to try and sort it as it will soon get to the stage where they are too far behind.  Luckily the issues we had in the first week I managed to solve and, so far, everything is running fine.

We also got the manual this week and I can imagine Callum going beyond the required homework just to see what's next.  Had a quick flip through myself and after feeling chuffed with myself for being able to help out, I can't see that lasting as it looks way beyond me in a few sessions.  Think I might start taking my knitting, haha.

Anyway, cya

PS:  Took a flask of tea with me today to drink on the way home and stupidly ended up kicking the thing and smashing it!  Boo hoo, no tea for me again until I got home.  Waaaaaah!