Rendezvous in Oxford

Dad had a gaudy to attend at Lincoln College last Friday.  A good excuse for a trip to Oxford and a nice opportunity to hang out with some old friends.  It is such a lovely place!

Visiting the Masseglias

 (in a small village just outside town)

Roaming around with the Mazhuvancheris

(Christchurch Meadow)

Natural History Museum

(unfortunately Pitt Rivers closed before we got to it) 

Life Fantastic

One of our adventures during half term was a Family Fun Day about Life Fantastic at the Royal Institute.  This time we spent most of the day there so we could make the most of everything on offer.  The boys really got stuck in and had loads of fun.  They demonstrated their existing knowledge and learnt a lot of new things too.  It was a great day out for all of us!

Taking a closer look at the human body

 Investigating real organs

A bit of art

Nicholas' giraffe adapted for life in the desert

(long legs, big ears, hump for storing energy and a bushy tail)

Danny's cells and DNA

(it was totally his choice)

Playing Vet

Making Molecules

Introduction to DNA

Extracting DNA out of a strawberry

Using the microscope to look at the DNA

Full moon over The Thames on the way home

Perseid Meteor Shower

The Perseids meteor shower is on at the moment.  I find it odd that I never heard about this annual spectacle until this year, and now I see stuff about it all over the place.  Unfortunately we are stuck in light polluted cloudy London so it hasn't been dazzling but we have spotted a few shooting stars.  This video makes me wonder if I should have organised a trip to somewhere suitable for the occasion.  We thought it was a good excuse to visit Greenwich Planetarium.  We enjoyed exploring the museum and the grounds of the observatory as well as two shows in the planetarium: "Sky Tonight" and "We are Aliens".  We all found it absolutely fascinating (especially now that we know more about space after Nicholas' latest show and tell at school)!

Dinosaur Hunters

Dad recently read the book, The Dinosaur Hunters, all about the pioneers of palaeontology including the founder of the Natural History Museum.  So one rainy Sunday afternoon, just after we got back from SA, we headed off to the museum to see what we could find.  We don't often have Dad for company when we visit the museum so it was a real special treat for us!  

I enjoyed sitting in the cafe, people-watching, while my boys went to look at the dinosaurs.  That was after we did some serious detective work to find some of the fossils in the diagrams in the book.  It was like a treasure hunt, looking for some of the original fossils of the earliest dinosaur discoveries (icthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and iguanadons) which completely changed everyone's understanding of the earth's history!

We were also lucky to get a couple of the explorer backpacks which led us to the bird section.  The backpack contained clues leading to various birds that are on display, so essentially another treasure hunt for the boys.  We usually breeze past the birds without paying too much attention so it was nice to have a closer look for a change.  Perhaps some inspiration for the next show and tell!

Luck was on our side once again and there were no queues for the Investigate Centre.  As you can imagine the boys loved getting their hands on all sorts of interesting objects and investigating them with all the wonderful equipment.  We could have spent a whole day in that one room alone!

'Old Four Legs' in London!?!

(after a lot of talk about coelacanths while we were in East London)