Abi's Adventures

My home education journey

  • Tower Bridge Experience

    After riding on the cable car we did the Tower Bridge Experience.

    Things Learnt:

    • there are two towers, the north tower and the south tower.
    • there are two walkways that are high up above the road that connect the two towers. Both walkways have a glass floor section which I enjoyed walking on.
    • the glass panels have 5 layers of glass and are 70mm thick in total
    • each pane of glass used in the floor can hold the weight of 2 black cabs or 1 elephant.
    • the bridge used 10,000 tonnes of steel. That’s the same as 5,400 London black cabs.
    • the bridge opened on 30th June 1894
    • the Bridge Master is in charge of the bridge and he arranges the road to lift up when tall ships come through. Today you need to give the Bridge Master 24 hours notice if you need the bridge raising.
    • the highest number of lifts in one day was in 1910 when the bridge was raised 64 times!
    • today 40,000 people cross the bridge every day
    • a ship has to be 9m tall to have the bridge lifted
    • divers played an important role in building the bridge as some of it is underwater. They had one of the diving suits on display, the looked uncomfortable and heavy.
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  • IFS Cloud London Cable Car

    Today I went on a cable car for the very first time. I thought they would stop when you get on and off but they just slow down. Mummy pointed out how they change to a slower pulley system to give people time to get in and out of the moving car.

    I thought it would be more wobbly, but I really enjoyed the views. We got to see an aeroplane take off from London City Airport.

    Facts Learnt:

    • each cable car can hold up to 10 people
    • they travel on really thick metal rope, there is a total of 2.2km of cable car rope. That’s 7x taller than the Shard!
    • they travel at 20ft/s
    • it does 5,000 journeys per hour
    • the highest point is 295ft or 90m
    • it was built in 2012
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  • The Postal Museum

    On the first day of our long weekend i. london we visited The Postal Museum.

    Things Learnt:

    • We rode the Mail Rail deep underground beneath the centre of London, navigating the narrow tunnels.
    • At it’s peak Mail Rail delivered 4 millions letters every day
    • The first post boxes were green not red
    • We made and received phone calls on old style finger dial telephones
    • We hand wrote messages and sent them via pneumatic air ways across the museum
    • I deciphered a morse code messages
    • We made our own stamps
    • The first stamp was the Penny Black and featured Queen Victoria
    • There was once a time before the days of mobile phone and emails, the only way to send messages was by post.
    • I practiced sorting mail into the correct pigeon holes whilst on a mail train carriage which had a moving floor to simulate a trains motion
    • I tried on the old uniforms of various post masters.
    • I saw 5 wheel penny farthing bicycles that were once used to deliver the post.
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  • Magical Marwell Zoo

    My grandad and his girlfriend took me to Marwell Zoo for the day. I liked seeing the snakes the best.

    Afterwards we had lunch at Fishers Pond which was being dredged. This is when they clean the bottom of the pond, this means they had to catch all the fish and move them somewhere else whilst the pond was being dredged.

  • Llanerchaeron House, Ceredigion

    Mummy and I took a trip to Llanerchaeron House, a National Trust Property near Aberaeron.

    We started by having a look around the inside of the house. The staff told me to try and find 10 small cuddly mice that were hidden throughout the house, I found all 10 and two real cats which was a treat as I got to stroke them. Both cats were sleeping in warm spots in different rooms in the house.

    Things Learnt Inside:

    • What a scullery is – a scullery is a room used to prepare vegetables and clean utensils used in cooking. This allows the people in the kitchen to just focus on the actual cooking.
    • Taxidermy – this is where real animals that have died are stuffed and treated to look very real again. I’d seen this before (read here about it here) but had forgotten what it is called.
    • What a logo is – a logo is a picture that represents a specific company. The National Trust logo an oak leaf and we saw the logo on every sign.
    • Old wooden puzzles & games – in one room there were lots of wood working tools on display. There was the opportunity to have a go with spinning tops and a wooden puzzle where you had to fit all the pieces into a square frame.
    • What a mangle is and how it works. In olden days people used a mangle to dry their clothes. It’s like our little die cutting machine, you turn a handle and your clothes and pulled through a very small gap between to big drums and the water gets squeezed out as the clothes pass through.

    It was the nicest day we’d had in ages so after enjoying some food in the cafe, we explored the outside.

    Things Learnt Outside:

    • Espalier – in the walled garden mummy pointed out that the fruit trees had been trained to grow flat along walls and lines of wire. This is called Espalier and people do it to make the fruit easier to harvest.
    • We found the herb garden and I rubbed my fingers on the rosemary, I thought it smelt like sausages.
    • Identifying tree leaves
    • We watched lots of mallards all relaxing in the sun that was hitting the side of the island.

    We decided to see how many spring flowers we could find:

    • daffodils
    • crocuses
    • pansies
    • snowdrops

    Visiting the farmyard and Geler Jones Collection.

    In the farmyard we saw sheep and chickens.

    There was a big barn containing lots of very old farming machinery, mummy recognised the two biggest ones as being Thrashing Machines, these were used to separate the charf from the corn. Mummy told me about a time when she visited her Uncle Edwin in Ireland who had arranged a historic thrashing event on his farm. The local newspapers attended to report it.

    Next we went in the milking parlour and I could see where the cows would have stood to be milked.

    Next door was the dairy which had old machines for making milk and cheese. Some of these were the same as the things we saw in the Cheese Factory we visited last week.

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  • Woollen Mill

    I went to the National Woollen Mill in Drefach Felindre with my friend Madara.

    Learning Opportunities:

    • paper weaving; we made paper sheep by weaving strips of paper
    • we tried carding which is the first step in preparing the sheeps wool. You push the wool onto metal teeth on a wooden paddle, then you pull the two paddles in opposite direction to smooth the wool
    • we watched a lady demonstrate several of the machines. She was weaving scarves that they sell in the shop.

    The museum is currently undergoing some big changes and improvements so much of the museum was out of bounds during our visit.

  • Llandysul Garden Show

    On our way to Llanerchaeron House we called into Tysul Hall to have a wander around the Llandysul Gardening Weekend event, set up by Farmyard Nurseries.

    There were lots of plants for sale and an amazing country garden display that had taken over the stage. My favourite part was the taxidermied crow.

  • Dissecting a wasp nest

    We found a disused wasp nest in the barn so took it up the house for a closer look..

    Things Learnt:

    • Wasp nests are made from trees. The wasps use the water from their mouths to chew the wood into paper.
    • The eggs are stored in tiny honeycomb shaped cones.
    • We opened a couple of unhatched eggs and we found a tiny wasp inside it
    • The nest was very light to hold.

  • First frogspawn of the year

    We found frogspawn in our pond.

    I caught some in a glass jar for a closer inspection.

    It’s very squidgy and cold. The black dit in the middle is going to grow into a frog!

  • Colouring by Sums

    I am colouring in a paint by number’s picture, but I have to do a sum to find out what number is in each box. Eventually, the picture was complete and it was a duck.