flynn011

Surprised "Killer" this weekend with a "rock school" birthday party, led by his guitar teacher and the teacher's drummer from his band, Million Faces . Here's the song they composed during that morning's session.  It's called "Chicken Pox", and the singer is doing "pox, pox, pox," sounds along with crowing. What a hoot!

I must have been mad -- taking six children to Oxford's Ashmolean museum to look at their new Egyptian gallery. Even madder to meet up with a friend who brought along four boys. Two adults with ten children was ... just about do-able. Oxford's Ashmolean Museum est. 1683 (the current building is from 1845) The Ashmolean likes to provide little worksheet "trails" to its young visitors, and while it's true that the children love to do them (and get rewarded with certificates afterwards for completing them), the practical side of rounding up ten children who want to dash through an exhibition just to tick boxes isn't, it would seem, completely thought out. Ten items were identified and "collected" on their sheets, but did they read any captions?  Did they know what they were?  Like heck! The shrine of King Taharqa --  the only free-standing pharaonic structure in Britain Anyway, my friend and I did our best to take them all through a second time and poin...

Our church runs a scheme during Advent called the Posada, which is a re-enactment of Mary and Joseph looking for lodgings on Christmas Eve.  The festival originated in Latin American countries and traditionally starts on the 16th of December, but we start ours on Advent Sunday. Essentially, it's a rota of people who agree to keep the Mary, Joseph, and donkey figures from our church's nativity set. Each evening, the people with the holy family meet with the next people on the rota, and effect a changeover. This goes on until Christmas Eve, when the figures are processed to the front of the church and placed in the nativity scene. The changeover is supposed to be a time of prayer and celebration together, though these may sometimes have to happen on the fly with a quick "God bless"; other times, there's a whole afternoon of tea and mince pies, or a meal, or a few minutes of quiet together.  It just depends on what people want to do, and what they have time for. ...

Recently discovered the RSA Animate stable of fascinating videos: talks with white-board cartoon drawings that illustrate a 10-minute precis of lectures ranging from education to capitalism and other economic issues. Here is one of my favourite by Sir Ken Robinson called "Changing Education Paradigms": And here's me with my children + friends, changing some education paradigms of our own: Boo to "Batching!" Children from 6 to 11 prepare to board an imaginary LCV for re-enacting the D-Day landings.

I've read a couple of really rubbish books about boys and spirituality this past year.  They were badly researched, full of anecdote rather than evidence, difficult to work out which age range they were talking about, and finally, not always very Godly in their attitudes, much less, it would seem, in a position to dispense advice. Hopefully, I won't repeat the same mistake when I make some suggestions about how a parent might go about teaching a son about God. Busy Timmy visits a Synagogue What follows is a short burst of suggestions that I've tried. Admittedly, they include some anecdotal evidence as well, but my observations are also put in the context of how boys learn in general, and how the Bible guides us to teach our children. Here it is in a nutshell: First of all, I applaud you for thinking about this issue at all, and I want to encourage you to make a life-long quest about how to best serve your family in terms of passing on your faith to them.  Second, I encourag...

"I may be some time" Legend has it that these were the last words of Captain Scott during his ill-fated Antarctic expedition.  Right now, they're going to be mine, as I embark on National Novel Writing Month. In order to produce a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, I think I will have to put my nose to the writing grindstone. In the meantime, have a look at the NaNoWriMo site for its free writing workbooks for kids . See you in December. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a snapshot from our trip to Stonehenge yesterday.

Just a fun "Wordle" Gosh, it's a steep learning curve on the Internet!