A Solar Eclipse

The magic of two pieces of card and a pin hole!

There was much excitement in the house the morning of the solar eclipse. A solar eclipse on the first day of Spring, no less! The Podlings were all walking to school with their friends, many of whom had pin hole projectors and colanders with them. As we walked, we heard the oft repeated phrase 'Don't look directly at the sun' that we parents had been drumming into them amongst their excited babble. It was wonderful to see so many children taking so much interest in an astronomical event. The maximum coverage of the sun in Staffordshire (around 90 %) happened just after half past nine, so Tom, Lily and Emma were at school when it happened. I was thrilled to learn that the entire school were out on the field for the eclipse and were watching through various safe methods arranged by their teachers.

I was at home with Alex, who probably wondered why Mummy kept popping into the garden! He was much more interested in his breakfast! I had my little pin hole projector and had a brief go with a colander, which I thought was more of a gimmick than anything else. I stuck with the two pieces of card to watch the eclipse, running into the garden for a quick look, then running back to Alex! He must have thought I was nuts! At maximum coverage the light levels were not dissimilar to an early evening sunset. Not dark by any means, but certainly darker than you would expect at half past nine in the morning. It was certainly dark enough to confuse the Dickens out of the birds, who were returning to the trees and twittering loudly in confusion. I found it all rather thrilling! Not quite as awe-inspiring as experiencing totality in the 1999 eclipse in Devon, but certainly exciting.

The Podlings were rather harder to impress! They came home from school complaining that "It didn't even get dark!". I think they were expecting to be plunged into total darkness in the middle of the day and felt rather let down!

I made 'eclipse burgers' for tea (a beef burger 'eclipsing' a chicken burger!), after which we settled down with some popcorn to watch the BBC Eclipse Live programme I had recorded in the morning. A lot of it was filmed at the Jodrell Bank observatory, which isn't very far from where we live. The programme also showed the total eclipse as experienced in the Faroe islands, which I think they all found really interesting.

The eclipse was rather a thrilling event for all of us in the end. Tom is talking of travelling the world to watch eclipses and they were all cheerfully telling Mark and me that we would be dead next time there is a total eclipse in the UK! Charming bunch! I hope that if they are watching that eclipse in their dotage in 2090, they may remember their first eclipse back in 2015 and the evening we spent talking about it together.

Another use for a kitchen colander!

The view through my pin hole!

Alex wondering why Mummy has gone mad!

Eclipse burgers!

From my photo album: Watching the eclipse with my sister and parents on Dartmoor in 1999

The irony of these pictures was that there was so much cloud coverage there was no way we needed the eclipse viewers! We couldn't see the sun at all! Experiencing totality was completely awe-inspiring though and I wouldn't have traded that for a glimpse of the sun!

Sun? What sun?

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Emma's Sunflower

For Mother's Day this year, Emma brought home a sunflower seed for me from school. It was planted in some soil in a little pot she had decorated herself and had a sweet little poem with it. We kept it on the kitchen windowsill to begin with, but it soon needed to be planted in a larger pot and we moved it to a windowsill in the conservatory. We kept watering it and watching it grow and soon it needed to be replanted again and we put it on the floor of the conservatory.

I'm not sure exactly how tall the plant is at the moment, but it is now taller than Mark who is 6 ft. It has finally come into flower this week, so I took a picture of little Emma next to her sunflower. She has waited patiently for months to see this flower and has been so excited at the rapid growth of the plant.

We have never grown sunflowers before, but it was tremendous fun. They grow so fast that even the littlest children can be entertained by watching their progress and it is immensely satisfying for them to grow something so big from a little seed. We will certainly try growing more next year and see if we can grow another sunflower that is bigger than Daddy.

Emma is very proud of her sunflower

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Magic Christmas Tree

 

 

We'd given Tom a 'Magic Tree' for his birthday last year and the Podlings all enjoyed watching it grow, so when I found this Christmas themed magic tree I knew they would love it. Once we put the tree together and added the 'magic' water, it is a bit of a waiting game. The first crystals appear within an hour and after about six hours it looks quite impressive. It kept the Podlings amused for an afternoon and looked rather pretty by the end. Not bad for £1.99!

Before

After

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Colour Fun

The Podlings have been on half-term this week and it has been so nice to have them home. We have been to the park a few times, we've baked cakes, we've watched cartoons, read books, played in the garden and just had fun in each other's company. However, today is the first time I have taken any photos of anything we have done, which is unusual for me.

It was too cold to play outside today. Tom and Lily came back in from the trampoline after less than five minutes, declaring they were too cold to play (almost unheard of!) Emma had the sense not to go outside at all! We gave Tom a colour mixing science set for Christmas and this afternoon seemed a good time to pull it out and have a go. It proved to be a huge hit with all three Podlings. They spent ages pipetting the different solutions to see what colours they could make and it was fascinating to watch their thought processes. Tom and Lily already know the basics of colour mixing, but it was interesting to watch them experimenting with shades. Emma has known her colours since she was about 18 months old, but she still likes to demonstrate her knowledge and had a great deal of fun today.

In addition to colour mixing, they also made gel-crystals and we put some colour tablets in milk and watched the colours swirl together. They then played with soap-tipped cotton buds and were fascinated by the effect this had on the colours. I pitched the explanations low this time, but they had a lot of fun and I hope they learned something along the way.

We read various colour-themed picture and story books after we had finished our science experiments and I finished off our colour-themed afternoon with a special treat...a blue bath. I simply put some food colouring in the bath and hunted around for some blue toys to throw in it. I can tell you this was a HUGE hit with the Podlings. Tom is usually quite keen not to have a bath (though he loves it once he is in there), but he couldn't wait to get in this one! I have already had requests for baths in every shade imaginable, so I think we have some scope for future colour fun around here!

I can't believe how quickly this week has flown by. I truly love having the children home for the holidays and I wish half-term could go on forever! I love my little people!

Colour mixing.

Playing with soap and lipids.

A blue bath!  Tom was still in science mode during the bath and kept asking me for different colour toys so he could see how their colours appeared under the blue water. For very little effort this bath provided a huge amount of fun and colour baths are definitely something we will do again (and, no, the coloured water doesn't stain anything, though it would have been amusing to tuck three smurfs into bed this evening!).

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