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

A WEEKEND WITH NATURE

Hiya


Thought I'd do an end of weekend blog.  Normally don't do anything over the weekend on the computer, but recent weeks have proved that there really is nothing worth watching on the TV and I've caught up on all my recorded programmes.  So have been spending more time on here listening to music and playing on Facebook and, tonight, I'm doing those and writing up the blog.


This weekend has been particularly busy as the weather has been good and we had a couple of events booked at our local Country Parks.


Saturday was Riverside for a mini beast hunt.  We obviously go there far too often as we don't even have to give our names now, haha.  But the events are really good, the staff are lovely and they don't cost much; the mini beast session cost £1.50!  So what did we do?  Well, we started at the pond for some pond dipping, looking out for different creatures that live in the water.

The Pond

The little pile of twigs and leaves (lower centre) is a coot's nest where they put their babies when they are off looking for food.  Bit like a playpen.

The Tray of goodies

It doesn't really show much in this picture, but the tray ended up with loads of water boatmen, tiny watermites, snails, caddis larvae which were really weird and waterlice (underwater woodlouse).  One boy managed to net a stickleback and another a newt.

Then off to the meadow with nets and jars clutched in hands to look for insects.

'fishing for insects'

Our ranger and some of the others

Callum with net

Admittedly there wasn't a great deal of diversity to find at this time of year, so it might be worth going on another hunt at the end of the summer.  Callum did find lots of red ants, a black ladybird, a tiny spider, lots of fruit flies, a few little beetles and a green winged insect that looked like a grass seed which I can't remember the name of and have looked on google, but can't find it.  Really need to invest in a good insect book.

All in all a good morning was had by the both of us.  In the afternoon we planted beans, cabbages and brussel sprout plants along with carrot and beetroot seeds.

Then today, Sunday; which didn't start off too well.  Both Callum and myself felt a bit rough; both of us have colds or the start of hayfever and both had very snuffly noses and not a lot of energy, but we wanted to go on our tree walk, so dragged ourselves up and off we went with dad in tow this time.

It was Capstone Park today with Ranger Dave for a 2.5hr walk around the park looking at the different types of trees that were there.  We, obviously, didn't identify every tree, but picked out the most common ones.  Will let pictures speak for themselves on this one.  

Common Oak

Large Common Oak Tree in Ancient Woodland

Hazel

Ash

Norway Maple

Field Maple

Whitebeam

There was a lot more than that, but didn't take pictures of them all.  Had a lovely walk and the weather stayed dry if overcast.  Both Callum and I felt a lot better afterwards.  Had the rest of the afternoon to laze; with Callum on Roblox catching up with his friend he's made from China for the rest of the day until bedtime, while I read my book.

So weekend over and a week of catching up to do as we don't have a lot of outings planned.

Cya