Experimental MumScience + Children = Fun + Mess

According to a recent survey carried out by McCain’s the food producers, out of 1500  7-11 year olds questioned, 10% of them believed that potatoes came from chickens!

In a bid to educate children about our food sources they have set up an excellent website with great resource sections for kids, parents and teachers. It includes everything from recipes to lesson plans.

Throughout the month of March they are also touring schools with the Potato Bus which judging by the photos looks a lot of fun! Here is the Scottish School Itinerary – hopefully your children will be getting a visit.

McCain’s kindly sent my girls their own gardening kits and seed potatoes, which are sprouting happily by the patio doors. This ” tattie holidays” my kids will hopefully have their own crop to pick.

P.S. Here’s a definition of  the tattie holidays and here’s a very Scottish description!

This week I completed a cycling survey as part of the “Safer Place to Cross” campaign. It was very timely, as my eldest daughter claims she is the only girl in the class who doesn’t walk to school on her own. Most of the other children are very local to the school whereas Freya would need to cross a busy road that doesn’t have a traffic light crossing. I’m apprehensive about letting her walk and I can’t imagine ever letting her cycle the route. I used to cycle to work and had a few “hairy” moments.

Aside from the worries of her crossing safely, seeing her walk through the school gates gives me peace of mind. The school do have a policy in place to call home if your child isn’t in school by 9.10am – but it’s that half an hour between leaving the house and arriving at school that worries me.

I half-jokingly Googled “GPS for children” and was astounded to find that such technology is now actually available. The units and monthly subscription costs are still fairly expensive but even when the costs come down, is this really what I want? This article by Angela Carter raises some very interesting points.

I don’t want Freya to think that the world is so full of danger that I need to know her every movement but I know I’ll be anxiously clock watching on that maiden voyage and if she’s a minute late, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist the Buy it Now button….

Photo Credit: Locate My Things

Friday morning, my daughter Erynn didn’t want to go to school. We’d had a few sunny days and I think she just wanted to stay home and play. She had a definite “Friday” feeling!

Desperation in her voice she said, “But, Mam, why do i have to STILL go to school?”, “I can read now and do sums; I just don’t NEED to go anymore”. Oh, the world of a 6 year old!

I told her that we learn something new every day. “Well. what did you actually learn yesterday then!” was her charming response.

“Well, actually, I learnt how to embed videos into a Word Press blog!”

Now hurry up and get to school, so I can learn some more….

It started simply enough, I wanted to embed a video into my post.

Using the Word Press insert video function, I got an error message telling me that my file size was too small. I tried a tiny file but I didn’t like the way that Word Press created a link to the video rather than embedding the video directly into the post.

So I moved onto You Tube. I found it easy to use and pretty quick to upload. However, I didn’t like having links to similar videos at the end of my clip. What if there was something unsuitable for my intended audience there?

Next I tried Vimeo, but the upload time was so slow, I gave up.

I moved on to Blip.tv. Although my videos uploaded from my PC quickly and easy, they took an age to actually run in Word Press. They also had adverts along the footer, which I didn’t want.

Finally I tried Viddler. I liked this one from the beginning. I found it the most intuative to use and the clear dashboard view is a bonus. but most importantly, the videos loaded quickly and I love the neat format of the finished embeded clip.

Here’s to many more happy experimental videos….

Photo Credit: Reading in the Flowers by Norby

Next Time: A Lot of Science, in a Little Can…..