God knows where i'll take the inspector when he asks to see our 'premises'.

Today’s educational environments have included the front room, Activity World, in the car and walking between the car and Tesco.

First of all the girls all did some music, some felting, some more Horrible History watching and some tidying. I interviewed a builder about altering part of our garage into a playroom of sorts and then had in depth conversations with the children about insulation, doors, measuring and suspended floors – they were unnecessarily interested i thought! 😉

We watched the rather fantastic political coup which was the largest ever presentation of petitions to the Commons regarding home education last night and discussed why and how it occurred.

Once we’d sped through a quick lunch i took them off for a treat visit to Activity World. Once they’d got into it, they had a lovely time; Fran and Amelie paired off to do some form of game that involved rescuing each other, while Maddy invented a spaceship game and took Josie on wild, swinging rides followed by adventures where they went to the Weather Factory, the sun and various other fantastical places. Josie was just completely thrilled to get so much amazing attention from Maddy and had a ball in her company.

Amelie came over to talk to me at one point and asked about a candy floss machine that had “Only 70 Calories” on it. We discussed calories and also typical calories in a meal, a rink, a snack etc as well as typical calorie intakes for men, women and children and how energy is burnt off. She looked thoughtful for a minute and then, with a bit of a twinkle in her eye, asked “does that mean i would have enough energy to live if i ate all my calories every day in chocolate?”

I put her right 😆 (She knew really though; it was very funny!)

In the car, Fran asked if people went deaf (they all have clogged ears at the moment!) or could be born deaf. We talked a bit about glue ear, malfunctioning ears and brains that don’t receive the signals, as well as treatments, devices, implants, ageing deafness and the “i need to put my glasses on so i can hear you” type of phenomenon. She’s spent a reasonable amount of her life in ENT clinics, so plenty of the things were familiar to her, once she dredged them up from her memory, as well as remembering hearing tests from when she was little and how they have changed now.

I wish i could remember the conversation i had outside Tesco with Maddy and Amelie – it was really interesting but has jumped out of my brain now – grrr. I shall have to ask them tomorrow as see if they do.

EDIT: Remembered this. It started with me telling them about a comical but amazing bit of maths that hiccuped up on Facebook – that if one person had 25 googlewave invites and sent them all, they were all accepted and then 25 sent on again, each time to different people who all had email addresses and all accepted them, it would only take 8 repetitions of that to give everyone in the world a googlewave account. Amelie piped up that this could mean everyone could have one in a day; i said that imagine how quickly a computer virus could spread under those circumstances and Maddy remarked that it was a bit like the New New York episode of Doctor Who where an airborne virus killed everyone in 7 minutes (ah ha! He’s clever that Mr Russell!) So that led to a clear up of conversation about viruses v computer viruses and then some discussion as to how quickly you could wipe out the world with a real virus, if it followed the same pattern as the googlewave invites – and why that was unlikely, the barriers that would stop it and the things that would mean that 25 people didn’t immediately infect 25 more people etc etc. And this linked back to the HH episode on the plague they had watched in the morning, with Amelie asking if it had really been “that bad” and whether it still existed today. Really quite fascinating. Bet Mr Balls wouldn’t approve though.

When the Inspector Calls, i hope he has petrol money built into his budget – he’s going to need it to drive all over the place to visit such auspicious ‘premises where education takes place’.