Happy New Year!

I posted the following on a homeschooling forum today - and I thought, hey, what a good thing to pop on my poor neglected blog. It's a short and sweet wrap up of our year that was - hope your year went well too. xoxo

"Well, so long 2010, it's been nice knowing ya, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

This year has been, well, just another year, really. It's our second year of 'proper' homeschooling, and I feel like I both found my stride and lost my way a little - I think we've got a good routine going, and I'm happy with my overall curriculum choices, but I think now that Miss6 is almost 7 I need to be introducing a bit more work that requires her focussed attention and I'm not totally sure what direction that will take us. The down side is that as the year progressed, I've been letting the laptop draw my attention away from the kids during the day and consequently I've been 'reactively' parenting - putting out fires, yelling and generally not being on top of my game. I need to be more disciplined in this and not turn the computer on during the day, and also start the day in prayer and be mindful about what we're doing that day as a family with each member's needs in mind (including my own!)

In non-educational spheres it has been the year when my (probably last) baby turned into a toddler, my toddler turned into a little girl and my little girl turned into a big one! I am both sad and happy about all of those things. Merl got made redundant and started a new job, and we bought a second car to accomodate that, with all it's accompanying repairs and expenses. I've also finally decided to get rid of my saggy tummy and get some real exercise on a more than sporadic basis.

At the end of this year, I am thankful for my Saviour, my wonderful family, my good marriage, and the freedom to homeschool!

So how has 2010 been for you? Good, bad, scary, challenging, indifferent?... Here's your chance to say goodbye to it all, and no matter how your year has been, what is something you are thankful for?

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Nope, we're not dead

That's right - still in the land of the living. Life is pretty full around here and blogging has taken a back seat (which, with a people mover, is a loooong way back).

Some of the things taking my attention and energy at the moment are

the kids
Of course. Beautiful, smart, funny, engaging, energetic, hilarious and infuriating by turns, my babies take up by far the most of my time. And most days I love it. At the moment I'm using a more 'Classical' approach to the education bit, and it is working well - it satisfies my own need for actually feeling like we are 'doing something', but because it is very literature based it's not boring worksheets or make-work and the kids like it. Miss6 is still the only one I really require to do any work, but Miss3 hates to be left out and begs to do maths too... so what's a Mum to do, except bring out the flash cards for her too? MrBaby will be Mr1 next month. Boy has the last year flown by!

SHEAF
If you mosey over to this blog you'll find our local home education support group. I've been neglecting this blog in order to look after that one.

NCHENZ
And I recently somehow found myself on the committee for the National Council of Home Educators. Which has been kinda busy this last couple of weeks with lots of adminy type stuff.

And that's about it, really.

See you next time!
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pik n mix

I thought I'd do a quick catch up on the last month's events - how the baby is doing, happenings in the land of home education, what actually happened to our Jesse tree...

Okay, so, the previous post was all about how I was going to be super-mum and bake cinnamon ornaments every week for our Jesse tree. Yeah, well. It turns out that super mum doesn't actually live here after all! Who'd a thunk it?

So instead I printed off the ornaments and readings from this site, laminated them for future use, drew an outline on a big bit of paper and voila - this year's Jesse tree. Not too shabby, and a whole lot less stressful. The plan is that by next year I'll have a fabric tree with velcro dots all ready and waiting. But we'll just see how that goes, won't we?


Here's our wee fella. Just too cute for words. I'm starting to wean him off sleeping in the front pack. My body is too decrepit to carry him around 24/7 and my knees have been protesting for a week or so, and now my left hip is giving me gyp about it, so it's time that he learnt to sleep in the bassinet during the day and not just at night. Sadly, he doesn't think so! Yesterday worked out well, with him even resettling himself for one sleep - an hour and a half! But today he thinks he should be asleep on ME and is very indignant about being put down in another room. He'll get over it. I'm surprised at how much more energy I have from not carrying 6.5kg of baby around all the time. But I'm also a bit sad that our snuggly newborn has moved onto his next phase already.

Here are his big sisters reading him stories while he couldn't care less cos he's in his Jolly Jumper! I must remember to pack it for when we are up north these holidays. Miss5-and-almost-6 had the idea to read to him first, and deliberately chose a babies' story about animals so that he would find the experience educational. Miss2-and-almost-3 is 'reading' aloud her favourite Hairy McLary book for him, because anything her sister can do, she can do too!

Which brings me to the next photo. Miss5-and-almost-6 found that the grapes we had bought at the supermarket had seeds in them, and wanted to plant them. So she carefully spat out the seeds, got some potting mix and little pottles and planted them all nicely somewhere outside. Miss2-and-almost-3 clearly couldn't see the point in messing around with potting mix and little pottles... or even in removing the seeds from the grapes. And she figured she'd try it with tomatoes too.


Our last stop on our photo tour of the month is the not-class photo of the home educators group that I belong to. We got together at one of the local parks for a picnic and mess-around, and to take a photo of everyone who made it that day.

If they look a little droopy and bedraggled it's because they are. It poured with rain the whole time, just clearing for about 2 minutes during the photo-taking before bucketing down again. It wasn't terribly cold - just very very wet. Thankfully there are little shelters with roofs and seats for us mums to sit in and keep ourselves, the food, the bags, jackets and shoes, and MrBaby dry. The kids loved it. It's not often they get to play outside and get soaked to the skin, warmish rain being very unusual here.

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Interview with John Taylor Gatto

Break out your tinfoil hats, people!

This interview with John Taylor Gatto is fabulous. If you've never come across this perspective on schooling before, you will be rolling your eyes at his breathtakingly nutty conspiracy-theorist ravings.

And then you will begin to wonder if perhaps he has a point afterall...


An interview with John Taylor Gatto

A couple of things you may like to keep in mind:
1. Until the end of WWII, eugenics was not a dirty word - it was considered a noble and patriotic pursuit throughout Europe and the US
2. Even though NZ's schooling history is different to that of the US, the current trends, goals and ideals of schooling and educational theory are often American in origin.

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keeping on keeping on

Yep. Still pregnant.

For a general pregnancy/quilting obsession update, see after the cut...



The final few days of pregnancy suck. (Oh please let it only be "days"!) I feel like I've been in the early stages of labour for about 3 weeks now - I get a couple of hours of proper contractions here and there - strong enough to stop me in my tracks and get the wheat-sacks out - but just when I'm thinking it might actually be ready to roll it all dies down and goes away. Very frustrating!

I'm not sure what's worse - worrying that when I finally decide that I am in labour I'll be 10 minutes away from pushing it out and have to give birth in the carpark - or the other nightmare scenario of turning up at the hospital thinking that I've been labouring well for a while and must have made some progress to find that I'm only 2cm and have hours and hours of work still to go! My midwife plans to do a 'stretch and sweep' on Friday (the 40 week mark) so I guess I'll find out then a little more about the state of play.

As far as 'schooling' goes, we've gone ultra-unstructured the closer we get to the baby's due date, so the kids' 'work' has mostly been colouring in, role-playing with dolls and puppets, reading, chasing the chickens around the yard, helping Daddy cook tea... just generally living life.

As far as 'what do you do all day?' goes, I've discovered hand-piecing patchwork and am now subject to a whole new craft addiction I had been carrying on with piecing a quilt that my Mum had only just started (having finished the other one), but found the paper-piecing technique to be tedious, and the colour-scheme she chose to be dull and boring. So I checked some quilting books out of the library for inspiration and found one which has step-wise instructions for hand-piecing using a running stitch (instructions are great - Jinny Beyer doesn't even assume that you've threaded a needle before). This is much much much faster, so I've set Mum's 'boring quilt' aside and am making a bright scrap-quilt using random bits and pieces from my fabric stash. I plan to use the 'Squares and Triangles' pattern from this book by Lynne Edwards (also from the library), but have just started by making the random-fabric four-patch blocks so there's room to be flexible with my final pattern if I change my mind!

I never thought I'd enjoy hand-piecing. But it really is more convenient than machine piecing. I'm sure the machine would be tons faster - but I just never get around to sitting down in front of it. Hand-piecing is easy to do on the couch in the evenings, and in odd moments here and there, so it actually gets done.

Other than that, we're just hanging around waiting for the baby to be born. It all feels a bit surreal, really. I've been organised and ready for almost too long now - I'm starting to un-organised again (taking things out of the hospital bag because I need them for something else, the bassinet is somehow not made up properly anymore, the 'baby' corner of our room has had a few piles of non-baby stuff stashed there 'out of the way'...)
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I'm back!

2 year olds should not repeatedly press the power button of the computer!

It leads to the family not being able to even boot up said computer. Which means, in this household, that there is no internet, no email, and (most importantly perhaps) no DVDs.

Fortunately we could still play the Wii, so all was not lost. But it has been an odd week.


It started with the death of the computer (long live the computer!). Fortunately we have a wonderful friend who potters around with the actual hardware of such things for fun. So it has been returned to us in full working order, and luckily, with no memory loss! Yay! No catastrophic data loss! It even remembers my log-ins for things - which is more than I can usually do. It only needed a new motherboard, CPU, power thingie... (no, I don't really know what they do - Merl has tried to explain it, but I confess that my eyes glaze over a little).

Then Merl went to Wellington for more work stuff. Inconvenient. He'd only been back for a week, and was requested back at 'head office' again - at short notice (like, a phone call on Friday to say 'be here Monday morning'). Usually we have at least a couple of weeks notice. Anyhow, it was only a couple of days this time - not a full week like it normally is. And I have friends who are raising children all by themselves all the time, so I should just suck it up. But I do miss him when he's gone. Especially at the end of a long day. AND there was no computer to play DVDs for the children at the witching hour, either.

But all was well, as he returned home Tuesday evening.

Wednesday was great - I felt full of energy and pottered happily around the place. We visited my aunt in the morning and had a good natter over coffee while Miss5 hung out with my uncle outside, setting up their bird-feeder. Then we came home to a freshly cleaned house (I am the only full-time Mum I know with a cleaner - but I just can't quite seem to feel guilty about it!) and got stuck into some actual school work! (I know! shock! actual lessons!). Miss2 had found a CD in my 'teacher box' with a fire safety song on it, so I followed their interest by producing the Teachers Manual for a fire safety unit (provided by the Fire Service) and we made a big poster about fire, and discussed safe and unsafe fires, and how important it is to 'Get Out, Stay Out' if the smoke alarms go off, etc, etc. And then after lunch we made bird feeders ourselves, and I re-hung the auto-feeder for the chickens at a better height for them (I will post more about this in a chicken post later in the weekend I think). I even cooked a real dinner! Wednesday was great.

Thursday was a bit different. I woke in a bit of pain - sore lower back, a bit achy, hadn't slept well, that sort of thing. Then the ligaments in my belly were agonisingly sore for most of the morning - not easing up when I lay down or anything. So I spent the morning on the couch with a couple of wheat-sacks, while the kids engaged in 'self-directed learning' with colouring and reading and finger puppets and all sorts of things. I noticed that I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions. On and off. No real pattern. Nothing to worry about. Probably. I'm only not-quite 32 weeks pregnant, so it can't be... It'll be fine... sweetheart, can you go through to Mummy's bedside and bring me the pregnancy books from the bedside table please?

Hmmm. Symptoms of pre-term labour are - lower back pain, contractions (usually falling into a pattern and getting stronger), lower abdominal pain. Hmmmm. I'm probably fine, I say to myself. There's no pattern there.

Later in the morning I notice that I'm having a 30second contraction about every 10 minutes. But after about 5 of them they go away. So that's okay, I say to myself. They've stopped now.

I have lunch and return to the couch. I end up by having contractions on and off the rest of the afternoon - but still no pattern to them - but I'm starting to get a little more concerned - so when talking to a friend in the early evening on the phone I ask her what she thinks.

She, very sensibly, thinks I should have phoned my midwife hours ago. So I apologetically phone my wonderful midwife (who is flying out of the country on her holiday the very next morning). All her back-up people are busy. She sighs and says "you really don't want to be in labour now - they'll ship you out because NICU is full". I say "I know I don't want to be in labour now - how can I make sure that I'm not?" And she says "well, you'd better meet me at the hospital right now."

The upshot being that, I was hooked up to the monitors for long enough for her to decide that I might be in pre-term labour, and go and get authorisation to do a swab-test for it. I never knew there was a swab-test for pre-term labour, but there is. It's really expensive so they don't do it unless they think there's good reason. It's a check for some sort of fetal factor which, if present, indicates that labour is likely within the next couple of weeks. Cool, huh?

And I was 99.4% likely to NOT be in pre-term labour. Which was absolutely wonderful and my midwife and I happily went home at 11pm. (She to do the suitcase packing that I'd interrupted). But she did warn me to take it very easy over the next few weeks because the test does have a small margin of error, and I didn't want to risk anything.

So today was another day on the couch. And, thankfully, we have a computer again and the girls spent the afternoon reacquainting themselves with Asterix and the Berenstain Bears before we tottered out to the library about 4pm.

So that was my week - how was yours?
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Mathematician's Lament

This is a wonderful article about the beauty and art of mathematics. It's a 25 page PDF document, so go grab a cuppa and prepare to have your concept of 'maths' turned on its head.

This is an absolute must-read if you're planning on conveying any sort of 'maths-learning' to anyone else, and an important read even if you're not!

The Mathematician's Lament, by Paul Lockhart, 2002

Short bio of Paul Lockhart here

Don't Read more...

Outdoor Hour #5 - making a list

As I was sitting down to read over the suggestions for our next Nature Study, I remembered that I hadn't as yet shared our previous Outdoor Hour. About a week and a half ago we looked at the Outdoor Hour #5 - making a list.

You may recall that our focus topic is 'rocks'. The task for this session is, briefly;

Pick one item in your focus area to study, turn to those pages (in the Handbook of Nature Study, by Anna B Comstock), and read to your child about that subject. At the end of each section, there are observation ideas for each subject and these observation suggestions will be the parent’s reading assignment this week.(see below) As you find things in your focus area, keep a running list in the front or back of your nature journal of those items.

Then, during the walk, to quietly observe anything we came across, but paying special attention to items in the focus area.

On this occasion, we went for a walk around the block. Miss5 requested a visit to the playground but the wind was bitterly cold so I restricted our outing to once around the block.

According to Miss5, we heard "chickens bok bok", "trees rustling", "a tiny sparrow chirping in a tree", and "noisy cars".

We found a lovely white stone with orange markings through it, just over the road from our house. Miss5 coloured in an outline of this once we got back home, and discovered the joy of coloured-pencils (which allow a much closer colour match than felt pens).

Passing one house, which is under construction, we saw a trench cut in the ground, which allowed us to see the layer of topsoil, and the layer of clay beneath. And we saw many retaining walls made out of igneous rocks.

Miss5 also collected a handful of different leaves and a couple of flowers for our nature journal.

For the readings, instead of using the Handbook, I read out a short passage about igneous rocks from the book Geology Rocks by Cindy Blobaum. I borrowed this one from the library for its "50 Hands-on Experiments!", and have been very impressed with it. We'll be more likely to use the Handbook when we come to study some of the more 'alive' bits of nature, as Comstock's treatment of Geology is quite cursory.

The Geology Rocks! experiments associated with 'igneous rocks' seem worth doing too - looking at the effect that cooling rate has on the formation of crystals in a substance (using molten sugar). This will (hopefully) demonstrate why some igneous rocks are shiny and glass-like, while others are coarse and grainy, when they both started out as magma. I plan to do this with Miss5 tomorrow, and (weather permitting) go on an igneous-finding walk later in the week - but we shall see how the week pans out!
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catch-up on the week that was

My goodness! Has it been a week already since I last posted?! How time flies when the whole family has a tummy bug...

But we're all better now. The bug only lasted 2 days for me, and even less time for the rest of the family, although I have stayed fairly wiped-out for the rest of the week. Thank goodness for the 'self-directed learning' approach to home educating! It's enabled me to notice all the learning that Miss5 (and Miss2) are doing, even on the days when we don't do all (or any) of my planned learning activities.

For instance...

Today Miss5 spent a good 10 to 15 minutes reading poetry aloud to Miss2 - noticing for herself some of the different ways that words can be used, and some of the different layers of meaning in the poems. Her favourite is called "The Chameleon" by Roger Stevens (from the Poetry Alive! Footprints in the Butter anthology), which you really have to see to appreciate, and I can't find a copy on the 'net. But essentially it is the word "tree" repeated many many times, as a 'shape poem' in the shape of a tree - and the words "you can search all day but you'll never see the chameleon hiding in the" hidden within the myriad "tree"s. This appeals to her on many levels and it's neat to see her enjoying poetry all on her own initiative.

She has completely devoured a book on Cleopatra which I got out of the library. I had decided it was possibly a little old for her and put it aside to just take back to the library,but she found it and read it before I'd realised. So we have had a couple of discussions about how even grown ups can make bad choices, and just because famous and royal people did things, doesn't mean they were good things to have done (like... extra marital affairs, suicide, murder, that sort of thing). Which are good discussions to be having, I just wasn't really anticipating having them with my five year old. I've heard her announcing "Hey (Miss2)! Let's read our History Books! Here, I'll read this one, and you read that one." Then she gives Miss2 a less-favoured book on Egypt from the library, and they both lie on the floor with their books in front of them, reading away (or, in Miss2's case, just doing whatever her big sister is doing). Miss2 will occasionally announce "Hissty book!"

Lots of colouring in. This is all colour experimentation ("hey Mum, when I mix orange and purple, I get brown!"), social studies (various costumes being appropriate for different roles), realism vs interpretation ("I'm just going to do MY birds like this, even if God does his differently"), and narrative composition (she makes up stories that attempt to unify the different pages of the colouring book into some storyline that makes sense).

Playing with her sister. This is big for things like negotiation of personal boundaries, sharing, being considerate, self-defence, thinking ahead (putting delicate things out of reach), a sense of perspective (Miss2 pulling a bookmark out of a book is not the end of the world - we will find the chapter again), forgiveness, graciousness, and other important life skills. I am really impressed at how well they play together, given that Miss2 is definitely in 'toddler mode'.

Playing outside. This week she has brought in lots of leaves and flowers and is starting to notice which trees the different leaves come from. She found a small branch with some dead leaves on it this week and was able to tell me which tree it must have come from, based on the type of bark. So her observation and problem-solving skills are improving. Also lots and lots of trampolining and some tree climbing has got to be good 'physical education'.

Playing games. The maths skills acquired when playing card and dice games are fairly obvious - but its the sort of thing we do for fun on our family nights, rather than as a formal schooly lesson.

So there you go - all that on top of: learning how to write the letters 'c' and 'o';reviewing the other letters she already knows (i,l,t,u,w,j,y,n,m,r,h,b,p,k - we learn them in 'families' of similarly shaped letters); learning about 'odd' and 'even' numbers, and why they are called odds and evens; acquiring cultural capital through our read-alouds of Black Beauty and various Fables and Fairy Tales; and generally running around and having a good time with the other kids at our local weekly home educator's get together (which we don't get to weekly, but really enjoy it when we do!).

The only thing I'm a little disappointed about this week is that we didn't get a Nature Study done (we did do one last week, I just haven't blogged it yet!). The weather has been okay - I just have forgotten to take my iron tablets more often than not this week and my brain has largely been out to lunch and my body has been lying down and falling asleep whenever it thinks it can get away with it.

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Outdoor Hour - focus on rocks

In this week's Outdoor Hour (#4) we are encouraged to pick a focus topic, to give our Nature Time a bit of direction for the next few weeks. Given Miss5's obsession with bringing home pocketfuls of rocks, I thought that would be a good place to start.

We went for a wander around the neighbourhood. We live in a hill suburb that was part of the post WWII housing boom in this country. I had a pretty good idea that if we ventured down one of the roads cut into the side of the hill we might get to see some exposed rock and perhaps discover what sort of rocks lie beneath our neighbourhood.


Sure enough, we found this lovely cutting only a block from our house. The road cutting is at least 40 years old, and possibly more than 60 (the suburb expanded in the 1960s, so the road may have gone in then, or it may be from the early days of the suburb in the mid 1940s).

Close-up of the rock layer

We've got no way of taking a rock sample, since we don't own a rock hammer or pick, and after emailing a geologist friend of mine, we aren't going to buy one. They are expensive pieces of equipment to have on hand for what might be a passing fancy in a 5 year old! However, she did suggest that a heavy household hammer and a heavy duty chisel in the hands of an adult would do the trick for most rocks, being careful of flying rock chips and shrapnel (i.e. wear safety goggles!).

So as yet, the rock remains unidentified, but at least we found it!

Then we wandered around to a nearby playground. The kids chased a magpie, rolled down the grassy hill, played on the swings and merry-go-round and generally had a good time.

While walking we also stopped to use our ears and heard little warbly birds which we think were probably silvereyes/waxeyes - since they were the birds we could see in the tree close to us.

Another fun trip out!

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Outdoor Hour - Autumn tree study

For this week's Outdoor Hour we continued with the studies in the order they were written - meaning we're up to #3 (starting to draw) - and we took Barb's advice and incorporated study #36 - the seasonal tree study.

Miss5 chose the ornamental cherry tree that we can see from our living room window. This is a great tree for climbing, and is also where we hang the bird feeders in winter, so is one of the girls' favourite trees. The aim is to follow the tree through the year and note how it responds to the changing seasons.

It was a beautiful Autumn day, and we spent most of the morning outside soaking up the warm (but not hot) sun, and using all of our senses to study the tree and its surrounds.
Miss5 even drew a picture of the tree in our nature book! Usually she refuses to draw, as her perfectionism rears its head, and she wants to colour in an outline that I have drawn. Which is completely fine - we all do new things when we feel confident enough to try. I usually make some comment about it being her drawing, and not to worry too much if it isn't quite how she wants it to look in her head - which she usually completely ignores and simply re-states her position that I should draw it and she should colour it in. Which is what we usually do, since I don't want it to turn into a big "issue" - it's hardly the end of the world if she doesn't draw things free-hand! As Anna Botsford Comstock says, no child should be compelled to keep a nature journal.

So I was pleasantly surprised when she decided to draw her own picture of the tree this week. If I recall correctly (it was some days ago now), she said something along the lines of "everyone is bad at something when they first start learning, aren't they Mum?", which I gently reassured her was correct - and that the important thing was to enjoy what you're doing, and the more often you do it the better you become.
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Queen Cleopatra #2

Life is full of silly coincidences, isn't it?

This week a Facebook quiz told me that the Shakespeare character I most closely resembled was Queen Cleopatra. Now I have actually never read Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra (although it is sitting on a bookshelf less than a metre from me), but I understand that the comparison is, um, unlikely. But who am I to question the accuracy of a Facebook quiz?

The concidence of this week was that we finally got around to making a Cleopatra wig!

Miss5 has had an interest in Ancient Egypt on a long, slow simmer for 2 or 3 months now. It started with a chapter book about young Cleopatra which captured her imagination. The fires were stoked with the arrival of a box of books from my sister, which happened to contain the Egyptian Queen Beauty Book, from the British Museum. I've already blogged about her milk and rose petal bath. We've also made a sparkly Egyptian dress.

Miss5 has been asking for some time now to make the Egyptian wig described in the book. But the instructions said to start with lots of black or brown wool, proceed to make lots and lots of plaits and then attach these plaits to a head band.

Miss5 can't plait yet. Now I may be the worst homeschool mum in the world, but I'm just not going to sit down for an entire afternoon plaiting wool, when I know that even if she sat beside me and learnt how to plait she would completely lose interest after about 5 minutes.

So I'd been pondering it for a while when the solution came to me - polarfleece! Polarfleece doesn't fray at a cut edge, so it is perfect for making fringing out of - and what is a wig, if not a long fringe? So, one excursion to the fabric shop later, we had the supplies. They didn't have black fleece, so we settled for brown, and Miss5 chose a very sparkly trim as the headband - fit for a princess indeed.

Tadaa!

She really is excited - she's just trying on her 'sophisticated' face

And of course, Princess Clary had to have a turn too, because she wants to feel what it is like to have hair

Miss2 getting in on the act

Miss5 was so excited that she wore it for the rest of the day, and Daddy was very surprised to find that we didn't have Miss5 in the back seat of the car - Royalty had accompanied us to collect him from work!

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Outdoor Hour Challenge #2

This week's Nature Study was to "Challenge yourself to take another 10-15 minute "excursion" outdoors in your own yard again this week. Before setting out on your walk, sit with your children and explain to them that when you remain quiet during your nature time, you are more likely to hear interesting things..."

We spent about 15 minutes sitting in the backyard near the tree house, just listening to what we could hear. Well okay, I spent it sitting. The kids explored the 'jungle' section of the garden, but they were fairly quiet and we did keep stopping to see if we could hear anything.

Miss5's comment was "but I want to go for a walk - there is not as much nature in our garden as there is outside the gate!" But her mean ol' Mum had had a terrible night's sleep and was really only capable of wandering out to the garden and sitting on the chopping block. We'll go for a walk next week maybe!

Once back inside (and after lunch) we sat and had a think about what we had seen, heard and felt while outside (as suggested in the study).

One word for things you heard
bells, birds, chickens

Two words for things you saw
blue sky, grey sky, brown leaves

Three words for things you felt
rough brown bark, splintery smooth wood (the saw horse), soft green grass.

Nature journal
We are keeping a family nature journal this year, with Miss5 perhaps keeping her own volume next year. I did the writing and drew some outlines and Miss5 happily coloured in things that we'd seen and heard, adding in her own little pictures as needed.

I'm enjoying this series!

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Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

I've found a lovely resource for Charlotte Mason-style nature studies.

The Handbook of Nature Study blogsite has got over 50 once-a-week Nature Studies, each lasting about 20minutes, based on Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature. (available free online here).

Each of these studies is called an Outdoor Hour Challenge, despite them not lasting for an hour. So this is our new regular posting - our participation in the Outdoor Hour Challenge.

The site creators recommend doing the first 5 studies, then joining in with the current challenges, so at this stage that is the plan.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #1

First, I ascertained that the reference book for these studies is not available at our local library. Then I checked its availability for purchase. My oh my the current exchange rates have put a damper on my 'just buy it from Amazon' plans. 6 months ago the NZ dollar was buying 80cUS, it's now buying about 48cUS. Not pretty. So despite my distinct preference for paper books over electronic books, I pursued the electronic option. If, after a few weeks, I decide that we'll continue with these studies, I may seriously consider buying it then.

I dutifully did my reading from the book, and was so taken with her viewpoint and opinions that I bored Merl silly by continuing to read bits out to him while he was trying to read a book :)

On Tuesday the kids and I went for a walk to the local park/playground. This is a fairly utilitarian green space with some swings and a see-saw and three young trees. All the way there I was gently calling attention to things in the gardens we walked past, to the complete lack of interest of my children.

When at the park, I decided to pick up a few of the autumn leaves that had fallen from the young trees, thinking that if Miss5 didn't get interested in anything then at least I would have something to investigate.

Happily, on the way home, she collected a rock off the road, so that was brilliant.

At home, we sat around the table and looked at the things we'd collected, and generally just chatted about our walk.

That night I found a couple of online field-guides to identify rocks and trees, and the next day we investigated the rock. Miss5 had recently read the Magic School Bus Rocky Road Trip, so we had a look at their discussion of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, then used the Rock Key to id the rock - Basalt!

Cleaning the rock from surface dust etc

Some of our tools

The next evening I identified the leaf as coming from a maple tree, using this guide, and passed the information on to Miss5 (which failed to rock her world, given that she had never been interested in the leaves to start with).

In all, a successful wee study. Miss5 was quite interested in investigating the rock (her favourite bit was using the magnifier that Grandma had given her for Christmas), and we've begun a 'rock collection' in an egg tray, as recommended in the Magic School Bus book. She has always come home with pockets full of rocks and gravel whenever we go anywhere, and now we can at least see something to do with those stones (other than sneak them out to the garden, or getting annoyed when a pocket full of gravel ends up in the bottom of the washing machine!). Perhaps it will encourage a level of discernment about what stones actually get brought home... but that might be too much to hope for.

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Albatrosses

Forgive us our absence! We are currently on holiday in the North Island of our beautiful country, but will be home before we know it. Merl is up here for work, so this time we all decided to tag along and catch up with friends and family living in the capital.

But this post is not about Wellington - that will wait for another time! This is all about our trip to the Albatross Colony that is just out of our home town. This was another of those brilliant home-educating 'school trips', organised by one of the other home edding parents in town - like our trip last year to the Aquarium.

The kids started off in the 'education room' had a wonderful introduction to the birds who live/visit/nest on the headland (from left, the Yellow Eyed Penguin, the Spotted Shag, the Stewart Island Shag, the Little Blue Penguin, the Red-billed Gull and the Northern Royal Albatross). We discussed which were endangered, which were declining but not currently at risk and which were doing just fine at the moment. The Albatross and the Yellow Eyed Penguins are the endangered ones, and are hence the ones which everyone wants to see the most.

After this intro, the kids were split into two groups, as the observation room for the Albatross has a limited capacity. We were in the first group so proceeded to huff and puff our way up a fairly steep hill to the observation room. Miss2 made a valiant effort to walk all by herself, but at one point was making two steps forward and one back, so I carried her most of the way.

It was worth it.


Here is a parent and their chick - the only one of my Albatross photos to turn out okay. Three nesting sites are visible from the observation room, and we were fortunate enough to see two parents feeding chicks while we were there, and super-lucky to be in the right place at the right time to see one of them take off to fly out in search of more food. The parents share the feeding of their chick - often leaving it alone for a day or more while they go looking for food. The chicks are huge, but as a species they are not well adapted to deal with ground-dwelling predators like dogs - explaining why this site is the only mainland nesting site of Albatross in the world. All other nesting sites are on remote islands.

After returning to the education room, and spending some time looking at the information around the place
-about plastic pollution and how Albatross often mistake it for food - feeding it to their young and sometimes poisoning and starving them to death as a consequence,
- playing with a set of scales and a model real-weight chick to see how the rangers weigh them to check on their progress
- looking at a world map to show the different Albatross species and their distribution around the globe
- etc
we were joined by the other half of our group and took a walk down the hill to Pilots Beach. Again, Miss2 needed to be carried quite a lot of the way, which in my increasingly ungainly pregnant state was getting to be quite a mission. Thankfully one of the other Mums, whose kids are older, offered to carry her back up the hill! 2 year olds are a substantial weight (especially our two year olds), but the push chair would not have been suitable for the terrain so we were left with few options...

Still, again it was worth it!


This is a fur seal, sunning itself on the beach. If we were insane we could have gone right up to it and touched it. As with all wild animals, however, seals need a good deal of respect. They may look like awkward lumps while on the land - but they can still move fast, and they are heavy. They're not usually agressive - just playful - but humans generally don't like to play the games that adolescent male seals play with each other! So we gave this one a good 3 to 5 metres space and made sure not to get in the way of its escape route to sea. It responded by serenely ignoring more than 40 curious human intruders to its beach. Very civilised.

Human access is only allowed to about 1/2 the beach so that the seals and sea lions (which have only just started to visit again, after an absence of some years) have some space to lie about unmolested.

No sea lions were there that day - but I remember them from when I was a kid. Sea lions are huge. And not to be trifled with. (like the Dread Pirate Roberts...)

Along this same beach there are heaps of Little Blue Penguin burrows, which the penguins return to at dusk. We didn't see any penguins this trip, but I have seen them in the past, and they are very very cute. Again, though, it's important not to get in their way - not because they'll jump you, but because they'll just stay in the water and wait for you to go away, leaving their chicks going hungry in the burrows, while the parents get colder and tireder in the water.

After slogging it back up the hill to the Albatross Centre (with Miss2, thankfully, being perfectly content to be carried by this other, wonderful Mum), we met for a brief re-cap in the 'education room' and then sat and nattered over lunch. The nattering was good, as I got to meet some new people (or rather, I, being the new person, got to meet some of the old hands), and got to know better some I had only met once or twice.

Just to top off a wonderful day, I saw one of the Albatross flying around over the car-park when I went out to get our lunch from the car. Brilliant. In all the times I've been out to the colony over the years (but, admittedly have always been too cheap to pay the fee to see the nesting sites) I have never seen one flying. And that day I got to see it twice.

Magnificent.
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The Fresh Prince lied to me

It turns out that 90s sit-coms are not reliable sources of historical information. Who knew?

I clearly remember the moment, sitting at home after school watching the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air finding out something about African American identity that he didn't already know. He was suitably humbled and even granted his namby-pamby cousin a degree of respect for knowing something that he didn't.

You see, the Fresh Prince had thought that negro spiritual/gospel songs were simply ways of bouying themselves up, of giving themselves some hope for the future, and some way of taking their minds off the hell on earth in which many of them lived. But no! His cousin (whose name completely escapes me, so I'm going to have to google it...Carlton!) Carlton knew the true history, and then Will Smith and the entire audience did too...

You see, the story goes that many of the early negro spirituals were 'code songs', giving precise directions and instructions for escaped slaves to find their way along the Underground Railroad - of safe houses where people would give them shelter and help them escape to the north/Canada.

I have loved this story for years, and whenever I hear or sing one of those classics like 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot', or 'Wade in the Water', I'd remember the secret purpose of those songs. I would thrill in the daring and terrifying escape plans, and the communication from field to field as a song got passed along. I never found out any more about it, but that little snippet was enough to fire my adolescent imagination.

The other day we had a CD of Sunday School music playing and there was one song which went

The animals went in one by one
There's one more river to cross
something something rhymes with one
There's one more river to cross

There's one wide river
And that's the river of Jordan
One wide river
There's one more river to cross

The animals went in two by two...

Which I thought was odd. The story of Noah's ark and the animals has nothing to do with the River Jordan. So I thought it must be one of those special songs. I thought that I would finally find out more about these secret code songs, for which I assumed there would be a whole pile of information. Which led me to the internet, of course. Which led to the shattering of a really good story.

Because, you see, there is absolutely no evidence that spirituals were used as precisely coded instructions for anything. All 'reputable' historians who have looked into it have sadly concluded it was a nice story but have placed it into the 'urban legend' category, with the first references to it arising in the mid-20th century. The other type of historian have continued to talk about it, but mysteriously fail to include any reference as to the source of their information.

Which makes me a bit sad.

But in the process, I have learned some more about the Underground Railroad, of which I was utterly ignorant (aside from knowing its name). I also found The National Geographic's Underground Railroad game, where you are a slave seeking to escape from a Maryland farm in 1850. Duly bookmarked for when the kids get old enough to not have nightmares about it.

I have also learned that 90s sit-coms starring teeny-bop rap artists are not reliable sources of information. Who'd a thunk it?


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Science on the Brain

Science on the Brain is a site we've spent a bit of time at lately. Miss4 loves watching the videos, and although we've never actually gone ahead with any of his suggested further experiments, I've filed them away in my head for future reference.

Marshall Brain is also the creator of the How Stuff Works website, a father of four, and an enthusiast for how technology works and what science can mean in every day life. Science on the Brain is a collection of short videos (about 5 minutes) aimed at primary school kids, giving demonstrations of scientific principles and offering suggestions for further exploration.

Topics include measurement (your own height, lung capacity, jump height etc), insulation, why you need salt to make ice cream, what yeast eats, how far is a lightyear and a bunch of other stuff.

Highly recommended.
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cumulus clouds and sheep

Yesterday morning was a very slow start to the day, so we dropped Merl into work in the car, because the bus was long gone by the time we'd finished breakfast.

Driving around the harbour we could see the whole harbour basin filled with cloud, but the hills around it were in bright sunshine. It was very cool.

Miss4 began a discussion on what type of cloud it was. (She's an avid 'Magic School Bus' reader).

Miss4: "That's a stratus cloud, because it's so long and thin... there are other types of cloud, like cumulus and cumulo-nimbus clouds. Yeah, cumulo-nimbus clouds are when the wind comes along, takes the top of a cumulus cloud and the whole thing gets big and dark - that's a storm cloud. Cumulus clouds are big puffy fluffy white ones..."

Daddy suggested that Cumulus clouds look like sheep

Miss 4: "Yeah, just like sheep. But without the legs. And they're not alive."

I'm glad we got that straightened out.
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toast and the spanish armada

Miss4 likes to make shapes with her toast at breakfast, on the odd occasion when we aren't having porridge.

This morning I was vaguely aware of the running commentary of the shapes of her toast, as she created a different object with each bite...

Look! A big boat...now it's a shoe!...a gun. bang bang! I'll shoot you (miss1)...

That's when my ears tuned in more closely, but the toast changed shape again before she got too involved with the gun...

Now it's a little boat! Gunpowder (shake shake goes the toast), and now fire!, then the boat gets launched whooosh towards the big Spanish ships. Here's Elizabeth's little ships, and over here (appropriate gesture) are the other ships. Whooosh goes the wind and blows the fire ships towards them. Oh No! the Spanish ships can't get away. Crash!

And there you go. The bare bones of the Spanish Armada's defeat at the hands of Elizabeth I's navy in 1588. Brilliant.
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pottery

This school term we've been able to join with some other home educators for a fortnightly pottery class. Here's Miss4 showing me which bowl is hers.

We spend a couple of hours every other Friday morning at the pottery club rooms. Miss4 spends the first hour inside with the clay, while I follow Miss1 around giving her scraps of clay to play with as she sits up at an unused wheel and pretends to throw pots, or rolls balls of clay, or generally starts touching things she shouldn't, climbs step ladders to the sinks, opens cupboards, touches other people's works... and occasionally runs around outside in the sun. The second hour is more or less the same except that the smaller kids from the class are kinda done with the work and they all hang out together outside, climbing the bush-covered bank behind the clubrooms, building 'campfires' and generally having a blast.

I've gotten to know one of the other Mums quite well and we generally find time to sit and have a natter and some morning tea (she brings coffee in a thermos and I bring bikkies - a mutually beneficial arrangement).

The tutor is really good with the kids, and copes very well with the large age range. There are two 4 year olds, a 6 year old (whom you can see with Miss4 in the photo), a couple of kids about 9 or 10, and about four or five in their early teens. There's one of those "what a small world" stories about me and the tutor - her husband is a cousin of my father-in-law, which we discovered more or less by accident when she called in to collect Merl's Grandma to take her to the airport. I would go into more 'she said, she said' detail but it would get long and rambly and pointless (trust me, I've already written it out and deleted it!). Anyhow, she's very good at getting the kids to make stuff with the clay, enjoy the process, and doesn't insist that they all sit down and be quiet while she explains stuff the kids don't think they need to know. (She gets them started and is great at jumping in with needed information once the kids realise they need it - and doesn't mind explaining it again individually later)

We've got one final class remaining for the year, so that's when we get to see how it has all turned out. I'm really excited to see the results. I think Miss4's coffee mugs are going to be way cooler than my 'ugly mug' that I made when I was a student. Read more...