News

Home educating families had two fantastic workshops at Armagh Planetarium this morning. 

The children were split into older and younger groups, they made rockets from plastic bottles and paper that they launched outside by filling with water and blasting. 

In the older group, this was followed by investigating the differences between a normal Earth rock and a meteorite that landed on earth from space. One of them being very heavy and the other light. 

Home educators finished up their term time monthly science club this week with investigating caterpillars. 

After an interactive read of The Very Hungry Caterpillar on its 50th anniversary, the kids then got to see real caterpillars. 

The education team put them under the microscope, showing the kids their qualities on the projector.

“On Monday 29th April 2019 a group of home educators got together at Springhill House for a history workshop on World War 2.

We met the people that were dressed as land army volunteers and they said we would experience 1945, just before the war ended.

We were given our national security cards and then we walked out and talked about the A.R.P. in the country which was different from the city A.R.P..

Some of our families had fun at a workshop in Jordanstown’s Loughshore beach this morning with Beach Schools NI. 

Children between the ages of 3 and 9 explored the beach, digging for treasure, rock-pooling and making seaweed castles. 

The rockpooling uncovered some really wonderful creatures including star fish and hermit crabs! 

Several home educating families had a wonderful time immersing themselves in the Viking Experience Day that came to Portadown, Co Armagh this weekend. 

Among many things families went on long boat rides on the River Bann, conversed with Vikings about their various instruments materials and trades, got to purchase some beautiful hand made items and had a great experience watching the ferocious Vikings battle!! 

After the huge success of BBC2’s Lego Masters, since the beginning of 2019 some young people have been taking up the challenge and creating their own masterpieces.

Meeting in a local library on the Woodstock Road, the group meet once a fortnight and follow themes to inspire ideas.

The group have been working on the theme of Space for a few months and - at the end of April and following their ideas - will be moving on to creations/ projects on the theme of Lord of the Rings/ Harry Potter/ Game of Thrones/ Merlin.

Like the last theme, this will link in with other HEDNI events, such as the Viking Day Trip - we can’t wait!!!   

Recently, some young people have got together to demonstrate their skills in the kitchen, and what skills they have…. parents, time to hand the oven mitts and dishtowels!

They have been working with Barbara, the Health and Lifestyle facilitator from the Health Improvement Team at the Belfast Trust who, as part of ‘Let’s Get Cooking’ programme, works to provide people with opportunities to develop their cooking skills.

The young people choose and create their own low cost, healthy lunches, with prices ranging so far from £1 - £3.

Their delicious lunches have included home-made pizzas, club sandwiches and filled omelettes, with baked potatoes next on the list. And there has been lots of washing up!

In April, a large group of young people took part in a visit to the Transport Museum to see the Soyuz Space Capsule used by Tim Peake in his descent to Earth.

Their visit included a workshop on rocket-making – the aim to get them to stick to the Museum ceiling (well, our young people didn’t need any encouragement there!)

– a Virtual Reality experience of inside the Space capsule, and a visit to the rest of the Transport Museum.

Twenty of our HE kids had an artist led art class at FE McWilliam Gallery this morning, receiving high praise from the artist for their excellent imaginations. 

After a warm up the kids got to build houses with boxes and lots of crafts. This turned out to be stunningly different in comparison and so imaginative! 

We had buildings ranging from FBI towers to Fire houses. 

Afterwards they put them all together and built a village with roads and gardens. 

Some home educating families had a tour around Exploris aquarium this week, a parent outlines their day below. 

“It’s not every day that a tour guide is stumped by a question, however when they are bombarded by 100 random questions in a row, there's a possibility they're interacting with a home educated child. 

How does that work?