Hey Blog! I hope you all had a merry Christmas. I received several books and book tokens, and spent quite a bit of the week reading.

Welcome to the end-of-year highlights review!

In this special post on Home Ed In A Shed, I will sum up my highlights of the year.

1. Sailing: I learned to sail on a two-day course in summer this year, so I am now at stage one sailing. It is an exhilarating sport, and one that I will be trying to do stage two of next year.
2. Drama performance: I took part in a production of “The Marvellous Mellow Melodrama of the Marriage of the Mislaid Minor”. It was the biggest production I have ever been in, with about 50 people as an audience, and was the best in terms of both craziness and fun!
3. Hitting a Six: In the spring, I hit a six, the highest score you can get by a single hit in cricket (to “Hit a Six”, the ball needs to land outside the boundary) in a juniors match. I was the only one of my team in the season to hit a six, which I’m really quite pleased about.
4. Caving: A few weeks before Christmas I went caving with my Scout troop. We explored Devonshire Cavern, above Matlock Bath in the Peak District. The cave was previously a lead mine, and you can still see evidence of the workings and relics of mining times.
5. The SEM session:  Written about in “Eco Week”, in late October.

So these are the five top “Highlights of my year”, and I hope 2022 will have even more to offer!

Happy New Year!

Hey Blog! Welcome to the Christmas Special issue of Home Ed In A Shed!

Wow, it’s the Christmas Eve blog post! I can’t believe it, Advent has gone so fast! It seems like no time ago that it was November. So, to celebrate the festive season and my first “Blogging Christmas” I have loads of things set up for this week’s post. 

This week I have been making a felt wreath for the decorations, made by pushing wire through scraps of felt to create a beautiful piece of artwork (and get the tiny scraps of felt out of the bag!). We have hung this up on the front door, so that callers can see my wreath.

In one of the days in my Advent calendar I got a knitted Santa Hat. It’s the one I’m wearing in the picture. I have worn it quite a lot already, including for the annual Bailey Family Christmas Quiz, which is in its second year. The Christmas Quiz is an event where me, Mum, Dad, my older brother and his wife, and my older sister all write a set of questions on a theme and we take it in turns to ask them. Everybody answers as best they can, and when all the questions have been asked the answers are revealed. This year I had “Things we do at Christmas” as my theme, and two of the five other contestants only got one answer right in my set of questions, so I guess mine were hard…

Instead of having a Christmas tree, this year we have chosen to hang holly branches around the house, a tradition that used to be done in the Mediaeval period. Did you know that Christmas trees came to Britain with Prince Albert (Queen Victoria’s husband) who brought the idea over from Germany? They are actually quite a modern tradition in Britain. You may think not having a tree means we cannot hang decorations up, but we have a cupboard that has holes in the doors which we can hang decorations on.

In “I’ve gone Nutcrackers!” two weeks ago I said that I had another piece of work to do, and last week I said I hadn’t finished it. This week I have! Here it is:

Join me next week on New Year’s Eve to find out what presents I got, and what I get up to next week!

Merry Christmas!

Hey Blog! I’ve been doing baking this week, and I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s CHRISTMAS! One week to Christmas Eve, so this is my second last post before Christmas, and I’ve been doing some baking to celebrate the festive season. Biscuits were first on my agenda.

For the biscuits, I used a recipe from an old book that used to be my Mum’s. The main recipe is: breadcrumb the butter, flour and baking powder, then add ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and golden syrup. Next, knead into a ball, roll and cut. The picture of the finished product is below.

The other bit of baking is the one mentioned in the title – a chocolate Yule Log, its wooden counterpart is mentioned in the carol “Deck the Halls”. This one differed from that by being very tasty, and having gold stars sprinkled on it! Yule was the pagan celebration of midwinter, and is still remembered in Scandinavia as “God Jul” – Merry Christmas! The picture is also below.

Last week I said that I still had another Nutcracker project to do and I would include it next week. Well, I haven’t finished it, as the clay it’s made from took a long time to dry, but it’s a water-lily flower-inspired clay candle-holder, yet to be painted…

Hey Blog! Art-y week this week.

I really like art. It’s inspiring, beautiful, and sometimes a little bit crazy. At the moment I am doing an online art course called the Nutcracker Art Experience, making art inspired by Tchaikovsky’s music for The Nutcracker. There are five days to the project, and so far I have done four of them: A Picasso-inspired Nutcracker collage, a Dali-inspired clock, a Beatrix Potter-inspired Mouse King, and a Degas-inspired Snowflake ballerina. My favourite is the clock, which is the big picture. The others are below. We also listened to some of the Nutcracker suite that Tchaikovsky wrote, and my favourite of the extracts I’ve listened to so far is the overture.

The pictures are all done in different media: the clock, pencil; the Mouse King, watercolour pencil; the Nutcracker collage, paper cut out; the ballerina, oil pastels and cut paper. There is one more work that is a pre-party project – a Van Gogh-inspired tree, done in paint, which is the other picture at the bottom.

As I have not finished the project, I will conclude it next week, with my final piece. Keep looking out for the next post on Home Ed In A Shed!

Hey Blog! The 29^th November was Advent Sunday, and it seems that Advent has got off to a great start (Can you guess what I’m talking about? Snow!).

It was pure coincidence, but I have been extremely lucky. Last week I said that I would need a sledge before it snowed, so Mum and Dad looked on eBay and found one in Allestree ending on Friday evening and we got it! So now I have a sledge-for-life, a proper wooden one with metal runners. The day after we picked it up, it SNOWED, a lot! But it was so wet that we decided to wait until it froze…

That night, it did! And we went sledging on my new sledge, proper sledging, instead of the plastic bag sledging that we used to do. I managed to learn quite good control over the sledge, consisting of putting the right foot down if you wanted to turn right, and left foot if you want to turn left. To stop, put both feet down. The science of this is that putting a foot down creates friction, and friction saps energy from the movement of the sledge, and that means the sledge slows. If a foot is put down on one side only, then the other side is going faster, which makes the sledge turn.

Afterwards, we did some Après-sledge (taken humorously from Après-ski!) which was reading books, crème brûlée flavour hot chocolate and a mince pie.

Hey Blog! One thing I haven’t really talked about is where I live, so today I’m going to tell you.

Those readers who live in Derbyshire (where I live, and have for nearly five years – wow, five years!) may have guessed that I live somewhere near them. I live just to the north of Belper, which is great for home-edders as Belper has one of the best home ed communities in the area! Covid kind of scuppered a few of our groups, and has caused others to stop running temporarily, and not start up again yet. There’s a Games club, and Craft group, Eco Group (mentioned in a previous post), regular “Woods meet-ups”, Home-ed Drama, and then more which are not exclusively for home-eddders, such as Scouting, Drama and Cricket.

Derbyshire also has places for nature, something really important to me. I have seen many animals and birds I did not even know existed before we moved here.  I used to be interested in hawksbill sea turtles when I lived in Barbados, then it was glossy starlings in Ghana, here it’s badgers! Plus, there are awesome history sites around here, such as Peveril Castle, Cresswell Crags and Arbor Low.

Hey Blog! An appropriate topic considering we had cream of mushroom soup at lunchtime…

At the moment I am doing an online course with The Home Ed Institute on “Folklore and Funghi”. In each class we start with some folklore about funghi. For example, the ancient Greeks thought mushrooms appeared when Zeus was using his lightning bolt and it hit the earth. The reason for this was that to them, funghi was so complicated that it could only be a gift from the gods! The amazing thing is that if you look at the mycelium, or hyphae under the surface, they look very similar to forked lightning! Later in the classes, we learn about funghi. One activity was to making a wheel with the seasons which mushrooms grow in on one side, and the habitats they live in on the other.

Autumn is a great time for funghi, as it is moist, not too cold, and this year seems to have been a good year for it. In fact, it’s so good a year that we have mould in the bathroom where we’ve never had it before…  Outside, we’ve found plenty of funghi on walks, including some we’ve identified (not without difficulty), such as Fly Agaric, Candlesnuff, Sulphur tuft, and possibly Destroying Angel. That last is DEADLY POISONOUS, so be careful!

A few fun facts are: did you know that funghi can sing? And all orchids rely on different types funghi to be able to survive? And they don’t grow extra cells to make a mushroom, they just expand the others with water? And that they are another kingdom of life, alongside plants and animals? Funghi are seriously cool!!

Hey Blog! I put my investigative skills to the test this week.

We meet up with friends every week, and this week we decided to do a Treasure Trails trail (https://www.treasuretrails.co.uk). We downloaded the booklet and did the Duffield one, which was a (TOP SECRET) murder mystery.

According to the Chief Inspector’s background information, the crime came to light when Tina Paint was found slumped outside her house. Four young detectives (plus three senior investigators) were on the case! To begin, we looked at the list of suspects and each made a guess as to which of these we thought had committed the crime.

We then followed the directions and solved the clues by finding names or dates on signs, buildings, or memorials. Finding the answers meant that we could then eliminate suspects or weapons from the list one by one.  Eventually, we solved the crime, and I guessed the weapon right!

Later, one of the senior investigators sent a message informing the Chief Inspector (i.e. the Treasure Trails HQ) of the name of the criminal and the weapon used. The Chief Inspector is pleased with us and has entered us into a prize draw for the chance to win £100. If we are lucky enough to win, we plan to spend it on hot chocolates and more days out.

Hey Blog! My first “Focus on” week.

Music is a diverse subject. It contains history (looking at & listening to old instruments and music), geography (finding out about where composers come from), maths (time values), and finger skills. It also can help with concentration and calming down.

I play the piano, an instrument designed c.1700. Before the piano, there were no keyboard instruments which sounded louder/softer depending on how hard you pressed the keys. I am currently playing pieces out of “The best of grade 2” and “Piano Misterioso” books.  I started learning in 2018 and I haven’t stopped since! I like fast, lively, and exciting pieces. I have lessons once a week with an excellent teacher and usually practice five days a week, though I’m actually meant to practise six…

In terms of listening, I like listening to Classic FM radio in the car while we are driving somewhere; they do some good pieces on there!

Hey Blog! Eco week this week.

Yesterday I went to the National Stone Centre with the Belper Home Ed Eco Group. We were looking at items under a SEM (scanning electron microscope). It was a “Bring your own items and we’ll look at them” session. I took a dead dragonfly, which we broke up and put on mini microscope slides. These were tiny studs, which looked like cuff-links, and had double-sided tape on the top. It was SOOO cool! You could even see the hexagons which make up its eyes! I also brought a piece of slow worm skin and under the microscope you could see the different scales, like plates, which caught the light in different ways. It was amazing!

Today (also with the Belper Home Ed Eco Group) I went to a workshop at the Derbyshire Eco Centre. We learnt about why and how it was built. We also played habitat loss games and I planted a sweet chestnut that I hope will grow into a tree.

The other thing I want to talk about is Earth School. Earth School (Earth School 2020 on TEDEd) is “30 Quests for students around the world to celebrate, explore and connect with nature”.  Today I finished the 30th Quest. I thoroughly recommend them! After completing the video, there are “Dig deeper” and “Discuss” sections for people to explore. The quests really help you to understand why we need to make choices to help the planet.