Home Education Trip to W5 Science Museum in Belfast

Today was the day Barney had been waiting for since the excitement of Christmas had died down. The trip "with other children" to the W5 Interactive Discovery Centre in Belfast. W5 is one of the best places in the world for children, especially the young ones. It's like a dream land! And best of all, we always go on school days when it's so quiet that the kids have free run of the place. We were invited to attend this trip with a group of other Christian Home Educating families. I was pleased to see a few familiar faces there, and many new ones as well. It was a good crowd that attended and there were plenty of children of all ages to keep each other company.

Annabelle was delighted that her friend from Enniskillen had driven all the way to Belfast for the trip. I had told her not to get her hopes up that she would be there, but she was, and so I didn't see Annabelle for most of the day. It was great that she had some girl friends to go to the older, more educational, upper levels of the museum. Usually she gets lumbered for hours in the play area with me and Barney. I keep meaning to take her on her own sometime so that she can really make the most of all the wonderful things to do there.

This time was the first time that Barney has really relaxed in the place and just enjoyed himself. The play level of W5 is just amazing. It has a mini kids supermarket (Tesco) complete with groceries, till, shopping baskets etc. There is a play cafe, you can build a double storey house, drive a mini, play with water, trains, sand, dolls houses, explore a castle, watch yourself perform music on TV... I could go on. It's a wonderland for any three year old (even for adults!) But usually I have to go to every area with Barney and watch him. In the car on the way there he was so excited that he never took a breath, and constantly chattered. When we got there he ran straight into the mini supermarket and didn't look back. He was happy to know that I was sitting at a table with the other Mums, chatting. Every now and then he came to tell me something or show me something, but this time he wasn't anxious about getting lost, or not being able to see me. It was awesome! I was actually able to have a conversation (several actually) and not worry that Barney was lost somewhere.

There was a new 'thing' there that Barney loved. A huge (life size) wooden puzzle. It was a lady, "a Mummy" as Barney called it. You could remove each part of her body to see what was underneath. You could take her skin off to see her organs, and then take them off to see her skeleton. Well, Barney just loved this and many times I saw the staff putting the wooden body parts back in after he had left them piled on the floor. Recently he has taken a great interest in what goes on inside his little body. A few weeks ago I heard him telling his older brother Jimmy (with great delight and animation) that he has a little balloon inside his tummy, called a bladder, which holds all of his wee-wee's until its time for him to let them out! Cute?! I bought him a book in M&S about the human body. It has lift the flap body parts etc. I intended to keep it for a year or so until he was old enough for it, but he discovered it and spends minutes every day pouring over the book with a look of deep concentration on his face. Then he will ask questions like "what is that Mummy?... A brain? That's funny.... Do I have a brain? ... Ha ha, that's funny... What colour is my brain?" So the wooden body part puzzle was right up his street. Maybe he's going to be a doctor.

After a few hours of playing, chatting and having lots of fun we joined all the other home educators for lunch in Pizza Hut. That was an experience! Pizza Hut obviously knew that about 50 of us were coming for lunch because they had saved 3/4 of the restaurant for us. However, they did not get extra staff in for their usually quiet lunch time and one poor guy raced in and out of the kitchen preparing pizza's as fast as he could. We all sat where we wanted to. As you can imagine all the children sat together. And all the parents (Dad's as well as Mum's on this trip) sat together too. The lady I sat with said something that made me smile... "you can really tell that our home educated kids are lacking in social skills can't you". Ha ha. So true. That is everyone's first concern when we mention HE, but all our kids were sitting together, chatting away, socializing to their hearts content. When the waiter came to take our orders he said that he had to order and charge per table. When we pointed out that most of the tables only had kids at them, and that those kids were from different families, so he couldn't possibly give them a bill, well he was stumped. We suggested that he take orders per family, but he just couldn't get it. "The computers wont accept that, we have to do it by table". My friend pointed out that sometimes we have to adapt to suit different situations, but he just wasn't getting it. She suggested we give each family a table number, family number 1, family number 2 etc. "The computers wont accept it, I have to charge per table!" He he. Some people do not have the ability to think outside of the box. When the man sitting at our table politely said "sir, would you like us to take our business somewhere else?" the waiter finally agreed to take orders from each family. So daft. I was in stitches.

Finally we were able to eat, except we all went for the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. But the little man in the kitchen couldn't cook the pizza's fast enough. Hence you couldn't eat all-you-could-eat, because there wasn't enough to eat. It was more of an all-you-can-find pizza buffet. Still, it was all good fun and the kids had a great day.

Annabelle has now gone off for a Brownie pack holiday for the weekend. She was very nervous about going. I hope she enjoys herself. Jimmie will be going in to school tomorrow (Saturday!) to help with the open day. He is representing Geography, seen as he got the highest Geography grade for the term. Who'd have thought it eh?

Photos are below. There are two youtube videos of the kids at W5. If you want to see them click here for video number one, and click here for video number 2.