Nordic walking:The Rochdale Way

I have been part of a Nordic walking group called PolesAndSouls for a while now and today we began a new series of walks - to complete The Rochdale way a 45 mile route round the outskirts of Rochdale.

After a glorious week last week its turned cold again this week but tonight for the first leg of our walk the skies have been blue :)

Our first leg started at the top of Rooley Moor Road and headed East across to Naden reservoir

The poles really come into their own on some of this terrain

We crossed the reservoir and headed up the side of the valley towards Knowl Hill, spotting a Kestrel hovering along our way. It was rather breezy but we were plenty warmed up by now.

We passed by the wind turbines and the final push up Knowl Hill revealed some amazing views right over to Manchester.

Down hill from then on to finish at Owd Betts and home for a well deserved bath!

Term 2 2015

Maths

Ben has been working on circumference and area, conversions, shapes and percentages.

Luke has been using Khan academy

Amy enjoys counting anything and everything. She likes to count her grapes at snack time and then check again when she's eaten some. She loves to play games and recognises the numbers on a dice.



English

Ben has continued with his online lit class, this term reading Wuthering Heights and Far from the Madding Crowd

Luke has written a blog post about the-solar-eclipse and has carried on working through his book looking at spellings, prefixes and suffixes, connectives and word origins.

Amy has started to make an alphabet book. She likes to play I spy and we are just starting to move from I spy something the colour of... to I spy something beginning with... She hasn't quite got the idea yet that it is supposed to be something that you can see!

R.E.

We have continued with Postal Bible school - this term the children  have been looking at some of the stories in the gospels

Nature study

Alpacas
Spring tree

Topic Work

Continuing working through Machines and Motions Answers in Genesis book with dad on Thursdays - kinematics, speed and velocity, acceleration

We looked at what the bible has to say about work

Reading

We finished reading Blood of the Martyrs

Gateway 

The boys have been looking at 2 topics:

Aging

Middle Ages

Social/Fridays

Wk 1 Trip to Springfield Park with the dads while the mums went out to celebrate Lisa's birthday

Wk 2 Visit planned to Touchstones but when we arrived they were changing the main gallery and only the small one was open. We had a look at drawing 3d shapes and shading them to give them perspective. Then it was back to ours to play.

Wk 3 We went to Heaton park to view the solar eclipse and bought the boys some new clothes before they went out with their grandparents to an Easter Egg Bingo

Wk 4 Chosen generation meet up at Stamford park

Wk 5 was Good Friday - we went to the service at our church. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great for the picnic planned after so instead we went to visit my dad

Wk 6 Day out to the food festival at Stonyhurst College near Clitheroe

We also visited a games club in Salford a couple of times where Ben enjoyed playing Risk, Luke immersed himself in Lego and draughts and Amy had fun running about with Issy.

Other

Had a visit to Oldham college - they have provision for 14-16 year olds but mainly for vocational qualifications. Still considering what to do for Ben next year

Luke has been teaching himself drums - here he is practising

One to One time

Luke decided he'd like to learn to cross stitch so we combined it with his love of Minecraft! Ideal because everything is already in squares

Ben and I spent a morning playing table tennis (I beat him!!!) and making peppermint cookies.

They've all disappeared before I got chance to take any pictures.

Live below the line

Next week we are joining in with live below the line where we live on £1 a day each for all our food and drink to raise awareness and funds to help extreme poverty.

We have been busy planning our menus and eating up all the goodies in our fridge!

We are so fortunate to have incredible choice and availability of food and this week I hope will encourage us as a family to be more grateful for this, which we can often take for granted.

I am glad there is enough in the budget for teabags but I know I will miss the sweet treats I usually enjoy with my cuppa! Will keep you posted how we get on.

Spring art work

Amy has started an alphabet book - we have done the first 3 letters so far:

 

Mothers day crafts

Easter card from playgroup

Lukes' art

Amy made some dolls with Grandma

Busy Friday

Bird song walk

I was up early on Friday to attend this bird song ID event run by the greater Manchester local record centre.
I'd never been to this area before but found my way and spotted the group with all the binoculars out! The ranger from the Salford area told us about how they were regenerating the canal area and then we set off for our meander. I've been wanting to learn to recognise birds by their song for ages but find it difficult to stop and listen quietly when I have all the children with me so it was a lovely treat to have a few hours out for myself with like minded nature lovers.

Steve, the group leader was the same man we had met on our mammal trapping adventure. Birds are his area of expertise and we heard and saw a good range of birds on our short ramble. The most exciting was a pair of willow tits which we would probably not have seen if he hadn't recognised their call and we stopped to try and spot.

Willow tits have been declining and are on the RSPB's red list so it was lovely to see a pair of them here. Jill, the ranger, told us they were hoping to do some work on making suitable habitats for willow tits to nest in. Their nests are positioned less than a metre above the ground in rotten stumps and it is thought the loss of this type of habitat is the reason for their decline in numbers.

Here is a link to the map and birds we saw present.

Three interesting facts I learned:

• It is only the male bird that sings - to attract a mate and to defend its territory
• Magpies build nests with a roof over them
• Kestrels have ultra violet vision that enables them to see urine trails of their prey (mice and voles)

I have to say I'm not sure I am much more confident at identifying birds by their song but I had a very enjoyable morning!

Food Festival

I returned home for about 11.30 and we set off to the great british food festival at Stonyhurst college near Clitheroe.

It was turning into a lovely sunny day but Amy was a little chilly without her cardigan!

We had a little wander but decided it was picnic time first. In the main marquee there were plenty of goodies to try - the favourite being fudge and chutney.

Outside there was snail racing and vegetable throwing!

 

Inside the hall were some craft stalls. Its a very impressive building.

We finished off the afternoon with an ice cream, some balancing along the wall and daisy chain making.

A lovely day out and we came home with some fudge too ;)

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all

Just a few things we have done to remember Easter

Easter garden

Easter cookies

Easter egg hunt with resurrection eggs and Benjamins box story