Schools are breaking up in Aberdeen next week but our kids won’t be starting holidays until the 23rd July, about a month later. However they’re not missing out because the holiday time is made up at the other end of summer as they don’t go back until September, about month after everyone here. The online school follows the English curriculum and school holidays in England come later.
The kids have been so lucky. Their education has not been disrupted at all over the past year unlike many other kids in the UK. Everything has gone along as it always has at MOS without any change due to the pandemic other than lots of new students enrolling. Daniel is starting GSCE in September and has selected 9 subjects. His timetable is looking very full but as he has no school commute and only has to climb out of bed and turn his computer on it’s not so bad.
They’ve also had the opportunity to do subjects that weren’t offered at their old schools like Latin and computer science (proper computer science, not the rubbish they teach in some schools). They’ve both developed useful computer skills just through having to go to all their lessons online. They’ve learnt to manipulate PDF files and annotate them to hand in assignments. They’ve become very good at researching and finding answers online. This has impressed me the most. It used to be that when they got stuck with some computer-related issue they’d just ask me for help but now they try to find the answer themselves and often do. It’s impossible for one person to know everything. What’s important is knowing how to find answers – where to look and what to search for. This, as far as I’m concerned, is one of the most important skills anyone can learn.
On Tuesday we had our photographs taken by Sustrans for an active travel report they’re writing for Aberdeen. It won’t come out until next year and they may not use our photo as many cyclists were photographed over a few days. But I got my cargo bike out and took this photo of Victoria checking it out. I have tried to put her in there once of twice but she always jumps out straight away.
A Yorkshire-based manufacturer of vegan foods is about to launch a crowdfunding campaign in which mum and dad investors can get a piece of the action. The company is called Meatless Farm and they make sausages and burgers and various other meat-free foods. We tried their sausages last night and they were really nice. I’ve been wanting to invest in a vegan food company for some time because the industry is enjoying record growth and vegan food is the future, baby!
rachel.blog 
Nice idea to invest in a vegan food company, but perhaps don’t expect quick returns on a start-up. I invested in a vegan dairy-alternative start-up business six years ago, and haven’t seen any return on my investment yet. The business is doing well, but all their profit is going into development and research, and expanding it. The business you want to invest in might be entirely different, though, especially in the UK with a bigger local market. I’m not discouraging you, just offering my experience to put into the mix of weighing things up.
That’s definitely good advice. All investments have risk and new businesses in particular probably a much higher risk. Is your dairy alternative investment selling vegan milk?
No – there are a few other NZ-based businesses doing that now, so probably best to focus on the vegan cheese side of things. I have to say that they do a good vegan feta.
Nice! What’s the main ingredient? Most vegan cheese here use coconut.
They say a combo of sunflower, corn, pea, and coconut. I’m not sure which ingredients are used in which products, though.