Respecting our own human-ness

I went to a conference earlier in the year for women who home educate. The best part for me was the anecdotal advice I gleaned on the edges of conversations and presentations.

One particular point stuck. It was about recognising our own personality and wiring as we parent. Creative people need to keep being creative as they do whatever family life requires of them. Movers need to move. Some people can't think while there is a basket of dirty laundry waiting to be washed. People caring for small children who need a nap need to make sure they get one. Introverted folk need to be realistic about their capacity for constant interaction. Some people need to put a date with silence in the schedule. Some people need to wake up to a slow coffee. I'm sure everyone has one element that makes a disproportionate difference to everything.

If we ignore our build and pretend we are infinite, living as if the world is dependent on us, then we will not last long. We are dependent creatures.

This isn't about getting everything we want ("me time" makes me feel very ill). It is working out what we need so we can keep functioning (even joyfully!) for the good of others.

I have worked out a few things which easily get sidelined, but which help me persevere more cheerfully:
1. Time reading a bit of the Bible and talking to God each day (apart from the moment by moment dependence).
2. A novel nearby, to escape into when an odd, empty five minutes appears.
3. A creative project.
4. Time to plan and write each week.
5. Afternoon rest time.

a little sanity knitting project (it's a baby sleeping bag)

To do these things, I have to leave other work undone for a while. But we could work 24 hours in a day and still never get things conquered. We need to pause the constancy, recognise our limits and invest in perseverance. Anyone for a cup of tea?

(I have worked through similar themes, mostly depression, on Women Bible Life. This post is a starting point.)

Some weeks...

We've all been sick and tired and volatile. So, the kids have watched a lot of DVDs. No, actually, they have just watched a lot of How to Train Your Dragon. Every time I tried to read something aloud, my body and patience gave way. It felt like a giant, but unavoidable, waste of time. Across the sick week, there were little surprises which reminded me that even slow, sick weeks can't stop the learning.

When I was finally able to turn off the screen, the kids had another set of shared stories to play with. Mr 4 has been inspired to construct some props based on the film. Mr 8 is interested in the extra footage about the animation process. Miss 6 was happy to walk away from the movie when she spotted me hunched over some watercolours. We had a nice, spontaneous, still life painting experience. The story is laced through pretend play, conversations, Lego constructions and drawings.

I need to be on the couch and sick every now and again, to see that kids are great learners even when I am sick. I do prefer our usual routine, though!

The studio evolves

Here are some photos of the studio, just to document the changes and the reality. A reminder that this is what we started with:

Below is a glimpse of how it looks most of the time. Since the kids appreciate the space, they are generally alright about cleaning it up. Our next step is some display wires running across the room, to hang artworks and objects from. No one has quite settled into a particular project. We are in the "experimenting with materials" stage. We need to keep tinkering with the storage so that space can be clear for making.

Current reading

Well, I haven't quite finished reading the other items I was working through. All the same, I have another couple of titles which I am reading.

Give Them Wings: The Experience of Children's Literature Edited by Maurice Saxby and Gordon Winch, Sydney: Macmillan 1987
Following my last reading list, a dear friend recommended this book of essays. It is a lovely mix of usefulness and inspiration. I expect it will be a plunge pool I dip into regularly. I can't resist sentences like this,

Children are indiscriminate readers, it is argued, and the avalanche of published mediocrity makes it possible for children to have a steady diet of indifferent books, and such a diet will produce emotional and aesthetic acne. Maurice Saxby (1987) The Gift of Wings: The Value of Literature to Children in Give Them Wings: The Experience of Children's Literature p.11

Saxby goes on to make the point that a wide diet of literature will grow children to value and prefer good literature. Quite apart from the point, I had never thought of emotional and aesthetic acne before. Quite a fun textbook!

I am still reading Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child by Anthony Esolen. I bought a Kindle version. It is entertaining, but I feel I have to play mental gymnastics to follow his argument. I am a bear of little brain these days, so that is tiring. It is also a different perspective from the Project Based Homeschooling, so I am constantly measuring each against the other. This is a great thing to do, but sometimes it is better just to pull out a picture book with the kids.

For joy, I am reading Australian Christian Life From 1788: An Introduction and an Anthology by Iain H.Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, 1988.

Australia has a bizarre and troubling history. It is sobering and encouraging to read the stories of some who loved Jesus here, in the middle of the mess. I am also finding that the more I read about Australian history, the more spills into conversation with my kids.

For the record, my reading is creeping along slowly, with stolen minutes while feeding a baby, or ten minutes before I fall asleep at night. Many of these books will be long term companions.

Sibling Christmas gifts

We are in the era of building meaningful family traditions around what is significant for our family. Commercial Christmas is not special to us, but Jesus is. We're convinced we've got more reason to celebrate, and more reason to ditch the excesses, than people who don't yet see what a big deal Jesus is. So, we love a simple but substantial Christmas. In our tradition building, I am often stealing other people's ideas.

A new friend inspired me with her own family's gift giving tradition. She is now in her twenties. Since childhood, her parents have given each child in the family 1 pound to spend on each family member for Christmas. (My friend is from the UK and my Aussie keyboard won't let me access the 'pound' symbol easily). The siblings would then go hunting through second hand stores for a gift for each of the other members of the family. Sometimes treasure would be found; sometimes just a laugh. Since I am quite attached to Op-shops (that's what we call charity stores here), I thought this was a fabulous idea worthy of adoption.

We have allowed our kids to spend $1-2 on each member of our household, meaning each child gets around $6 to spend in total. They get to enjoy the relational value of giving gifts, without unnecessary expense. They are (slowly) learning to think about the personality, tastes, needs and joy of others. They have to be creative problem solvers and pace their own spending. It is also pretty fun, apart from when the two year old has trouble with delayed gratification. It's all part of the memory making.

If you are looking for some substance for the Christmas season, you can find all sorts of things on Harrysdesk and 168hrs.

Internet safety

image from here

Our laptop stays on the kitchen bench. Using the computer is a collaborative activity in our family. The ipad is similar. Even still, we're conscious that we need to think much more carefully about internet safety as our family grows rapidly around us. Please share anything useful!

This confronting article was circulating a while back. It is well worth the read. It is easy to underestimate the dehumanising effects of  pornography and its impact on person-hood and relationships. Protecting the vulnerable is getting harder as we walk and eat and breathe and sleep in the digital cloud.

I am seeing the need, in our family, to feed non-screen interests. Sitting down with the internet is not a healthy way to deal with boredom. Idle, purposeless roaming is a habit us grown ups need to master every so often. Wouldn't it be better to help our kids master that habit early?

Research by the Oxford University neuroscientist and former director of the Royal Institution, psychologist Susan Greenfield, has found that intense internet use alters brain chemistry, encouraging instant gratification and making young people more self-centred.(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135203/Jamie-13-kissed-girl-But-hes-Sex-Offender-Register-online-porn-warped-mind-.html) 

If this is true, then parents are going to have to be tougher and more stubborn than their child's habit. And if this research is reliable, then the greater the intensity of internet use, the harder it will be to change. Acting in love is going to mean some conflict and our kids won't like us all the time. But we love them more than we need them to like us, right?

1981 The same but different

This is an episode of The Phil Donahue Show from 1981, complete with ads. A friend shared a link to this on facebook recently. It is fascinating, amusing and at times, a little disturbing. The discussion about home education; the objections, the responses, the methods, the misunderstandings are all so familiar. I appreciated reading some of John Holt's work a couple of years ago, so it was interesting to see him participate as a guest on this episode. This clip is from the John Holt Growing Without Schooling site.

The kids' studio

Inspired by Project Based Homeschool; Mentoring your Self-Directed Learner, by Lori Pickert. I've been brave. I'm learning to say "yes" to my kids' creative projects. My reason for saying "no" was usually because the materials were packed away in a cupboard. I am mostly doing fifteen things at a time and didn't want to multiply my work. I didn't want to deal with what might happen when five children and new media find each other in a confined space. If I'm going to be a "yes" mum and stay sane, then our set up needed to change. Our dining room is now a studio.

The floor is tiled. It is next to the kitchen, so I am able to work and be near the action. The materials are all visible and reasonably easy for the biggest kids to reach. The floodgates of inspiration can open as we gaze on those jars of paint and brushes and wax and paste and buttons and markers and empty frames. 

The tv cabinet is now storage space. The four biggest kids have a desk each in this room. My old favourite lounge is there for when I want to read aloud, or nurse the baby, while they make. There is a series of boxes ready for collage and crafting. It is an easy way for the kids to sort and put away scraps. Everything is old, reclaimed, or from the charity shop (which is the case for most of our furniture). After using the space for a while we will add in any necessary shelving and hanging/drying/displaying racks. It's a living design project for the kids and us. 

The fun thing has been letting the kids take ownership of their own little studios within the studio. They have chosen what they want on their own desks. The label printer was discovered and most objects have been labelled. This was a good little self initiated exercise in writing for Miss 6. Mr 8 is keen to build a bit of a cage around his desk to keep toddler fingers out. We're still discussing the terms on that one!

It is so much easier to let the kids be creative when the space is committed to it. Once again, time is also the factor. Pulling out paints only works pleasantly when we are not going out soon after. An uncluttered schedule makes space for so many good things.

Unexpectedly, I have found that I am happier with a creative space nearby. It is less predictable, but I get to watch the kids do beautiful things. I'll keep you posted!
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Learning to empathise with new writers

I really want my kids to feel comfortable writing. There is something about writing which untangles thoughts. I can't think something through thoroughly without writing about it in some way. There is also the outwardness of writing. Words let us open our mind to others. Writing gives thoughts permanence.

But most of us don't start writing with ease. The more we write, the better writer we become. It takes practice and it takes time. Calm, unhurried time. Writing is driven along by purpose. None of these things can be fast tracked.

Writing is complex. Thoughts need to become words. Words need to be strung into sense. Sense needs to be knit into a sentence and another and another. The sentence needs to get through arms, hands and a pencil onto a page. The pencil needs to make marks on a page which make sense to someone else. There are a thousand rules, from the sounds which are formed when they combine in different ways, to the order which words ought to march in, to the punctuation which set the pace of those words.

And, when it is all new, it is hard to remember all the parts at once and by the time you get to the second word you have forgotten what you were trying to write in the first place and it is all very stressful and you know you have made a mistake so you will stop because this is not working and not fun and you are not sure why you have to write anyway when all you want to do is go and finish your cubby house in the lounge room.

Deep breath.

I had always assumed a child who is great with verbal language, and a ravenous reader, would love to write. At the same time, I imagined that a child who took more time to become a fluent speaker and reader would find writing more difficult. It's wonderful how often chlidren turn our assumptions upside down.

I have had to learn to slow down and study my kids when it comes to writing. I am learning where their writing stress points are. I am discovering which contexts and purposes generate a fruitful writing experience for each individual. When they are having a writing experience they feel good about, I need to make sure I don't fiddle with the delicate ecosystem the happily writing child is growing in.

It is precious to have a friendly relationship with writing. We're working on small goals so that it's not unnecessarily laborious. I would rather do a little bit of cheerful writing related work with children regularly, than a stressful slab. That way, it is more likely to become something they just do everyday, like reading and eating and brushing their teeth.

I have tried a few things which have been positive:

• Not tackling every aspect of writing at once. Treating skills separately. Handwriting. Typing. Composition.
• Choosing a favourite sentence from a favourite story and copying it.  While reading The Hobbit, riddles were favourite things to copy. We only did this once or twice a week for a couple of months. It was enough to help our son feel better about handwriting. It was a nice way to linger in well crafted phrases too.
• Sitting with a child as they narrated a story. I would write it down exactly as they spoke it, without corrections. This is good for children who are not yet reading or writing, but also for early writers. That way, hands don't have to keep pace with brain. Very fun for the scribe too!
• We would read back the narrated story on a different day. The child would notice irregular sentences. This introduced them to the concept of editing and drafting. It lets them approach their text as the author and the reader, scribbling all over a page as words are rearranged, removed and replaced. This is something Donald Graves was keen on.
• We have some story telling cards, which the kids would lay out (as many or as few as they wanted). They order the pictures to create their own plot. Then they would tell the story as they went.
• The three biggest kids began telling each other stories and recording them on video. This was fun. This allowed composition to happen away from the hand writing and conventions of written language. It also didn't require me to sit down and write.

Mostly, we are building our friendship with writing as we read a lot of great books. I'd love to hear writing experiences others have had!

The Barefoot College

This is a fascinating story of education being done differently for the good of some of India's rural poor. The Barefoot College was founded by Bunker Roy. You can listen to an interview with him here. 

Kids answering their own questions

I have really enjoyed reading, Project-Based Home Schooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners. Lori Pickert succinctly (and with much more experience than me) articulates the views I've been forming over the years. I won't summarise her work, since it is worth looking at her blog and the book itself.

As a result, I have a few new habits I am working on. I have already mentioned that I think it is important for children to learn to ask good questions. The complementary skill is to be able to pursue answers to their questions. I got to practice this with Mr 4 year old the other day.

Mr 4 loves belts. Belts make him happy because they allow him to carry swords and daggers. He recently lost his precious belt. There has been a time of grief. At a visit to the second hand store, he found a new (old) belt. We bought it. Outside the store, he tried it on and realised it was too big. He was a bit emotional. I almost stepped in and suggested we take it to the leather shop to get more holes punched in it. But I had just been reading this,

Remember to let your child's ideas take precedence. Try to maintain a calm, open attitude and allow him to own his own excitement and interest.
Don't take over. Don't flood him with your own ideas; write them in your journal and save them for later. You may not need them, or your child may come to them on his own. Or, your child may have better ideas – ones you never anticipated. He may take his learning in an entirely unexpected direction. Keeping track of your own ideas can help you stay alert to possibilities, but make sure your child is focused on his ideas, not yours. Let him make the discoveries, and let him chart his own course. Project-Based Home Schooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners pp.86-87

So, I shut my mouth and calmly asked for his ideas to solve the problem. There was no real hurry to find a solution. It was a great opportunity where his motivation was high and he could test all sorts of ideas until he found one which worked for him.

At home, Mr 4 raced to the stationery box and pulled out the hole punch. This did not work. Again, he was a bit emotional. As I fed the baby, Mr 4 talked through some other ideas he had to make holes. He tried (carefully?!) stabbing the belt with kitchen scissors. It did not work. He considered finding a needle from his sister's sewing bag, but it could not be found.

At this point, I asked if he could think of anyone else who might have suggestions. No ideas. So, I asked what the belt was made from. As he felt it, he realised it was the same as the stuff we got from the leather shop recently. Then, he put the information together and realised we could ask the people at the leather shop for information and help. But Mr 4 wanted holes in his belt immediately.

Next, I "wondered aloud" about how we get holes in other hard surfaces. He looked around the room and talked about how we make holes in timber. He suggested a "screwdriver". So, without saying what I thought of his suggestion, we decided to look at the tools in the garage.

And there it was. Mr 4 spotted the power drill. We worked out what we would need to put under the belt and took it inside to see if the power drill was our solution. I helped steady the drill while Mr 4 went to work. The drill worked wonderfully and Mr 4 was satisfied being able to lead himself through a complex problem to a solution.

The biggest challenge for me was to stop myself saying, "That won't work because...". The other challenge was saying, "yes" to the messy, unpredictable, meandering process. I'm glad I went with it. It was a buzz for both of us. Small steps to a new habit, I hope.

"Children want to write"

I can't remember hearing about the late Donald Graves before. I found an old book about his Australian tour in 1980. Published in 1981, it's as old as me.

I resisted the urge to dismiss what looks out of date and found wonderful guidance and reassurance. It is helping me to mentor my kids into written communication in a way which doesn't kill their confidence or love for communication. You can read an article by Graves here. I have found the following observation to be true in my older children,

Very young children, ages 5 through 7, have very little difficulty choosing topics, especially if they write every day. As children grow older and experience the early effects of audience, even under favorable learning conditions, they begin to doubt what they know. From that point on, all writers go through a kind of doubting game about the texts they produce. They learn to read better and are more aware of the discrepancy between their texts and their actual intentions. If, however, overly severe, doubting teachers are added to the internal doubts of the child, writing becomes still more difficult. From here.

We often panic about the mechanics of writing (handwriting, punctuation, spelling, grammar) and hurry children through what could be a really rich learning process if we gave them time, space, freedom and encouragement. I will post in the near future about what I am doing to develop writing with my kids.

I was reading an interview with Donald Graves and like his response to this question. It sums up my teaching and learning aspiration; learning alongside my children.

Q: If you had to choose one thing teachers should do when teaching writing, what would it be?

Donald: Write yourself. Invite children to do something you're already doing. If you're not doing it, Hey, the kids say, I can't wait to grow up and not have to write, like you. They know. And for the short term and the long term, you'll be doing yourself a favor by writing. All of us need it as a survival tool in a very complex world. The wonderful thing about writing is that it separates the meaningless and the trivial from what is really important. So we need it for ourselves and then we need to invite children to do what we're doing. You can't ask someone to sing a duet with you until you know the tune yourself.

So, my first step in helping my kids grow into writing is to slow down and write myself.

On my reading list

I have some reading to do. I thought I'd share it in case anyone wanted to join me. 

• A research paper about the academic and social effects of home schooling in Canada and the United States, downloaded from here.

• I linked to Project Based Homeschooling yesterday. I am looking forward to reading the book on Mentoring Self Directed Learners. It's on my Kindle ready to read.

• Reading Literacy, Families and Learning has motivated me to read, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, by Anthony Esolen. It is also on the Kindle.

Now, where are my glasses and where is my cup of tea?

An accidental curriculum

The other day, we wandered through our lovely, old, understated, unpretentious town centre. We stopped to chat with the lady who works at the leather shop. As we left, she kindly sent us away with a free bag of scrap leather. All sorts of hides from all sorts of creatures, in many colours and textures.

Since then, we have been plaiting whips, wearing leather head bands and collaging leather artworks. We now need to go back and ask a few technical questions about tanning and manufacturing.

This accidental experience has added another coat of mental paint to our understanding of things we've been reading lately. It's fun to stumble into learning and experiences we weren't expecting.

Similar, but different, is the "curriculum of curiosity" in this post. I would love for our learning life to be more like this. But my sanity is only welcoming so much curiosity at this stage. And that is fine. It's nice to have a picture of what we'd like to grow toward.

The power of boredom

It's hard to be with bored kids. It brings out the worst in them and the grown ups.

There is an assumption that parents ought to entertain their children. I'm not sure where it came from, but it seems to be a default setting that parents feel responsible for amusing their kids and kids often expect to be amused. Wherever it started, advertising certainly feeds it and feeds on it.

It is especially tiring to be with a person, or people, who lean on you for amusement all day every day. So I refuse to be amusing. I love to relate with my children and do things with them, but I refuse to fix boredom. It is my children's own responsibility. It is a life skill they need to learn. I couldn't home educate if I felt I needed to entertain five children all day. But it is a messy skill to learn.

Our culture assumes boredom is bad. We're a busy society. Perhaps slowing down feels like failure? We're also an amused society. People make lots of money from fueling an insatiable desire for amusement. We confuse amusement with happiness and are led to believe that we can buy it. It starts in babyhood, with thousands of toys which do all the playing and performing for the baby. I guess it takes new forms at every stage of development and every stage of life.

Have we dis-empowered kids by training them to rely on complex objects and other people for amusement? Have we taught them to depend on goods and services which need to be bought? Have we robbed them of the opportunity to work out how to amuse themselves freely? Have we accidentally taught them that the imagination is not enough, that it is boring?

On the days when the children are twitchy and bored, I am trying to see the great opportunity before us. If  we slow down and let ourselves get bored, then we have made space for some interesting, creative and unexpected skills to grow.

Trevor Cairney has a great post on Stimulating Children's Imaginations: Creating Time, Freedom and Space

What Do We Plant When We Plant The Tree?

What do we plant when we plant the tree?

We plant the ship, which will cross the sea.
We plant the mast to carry the sails;
We plant the planks to withstand the gales --
The keel, the keelson, the beam, the knee;
We plant the ship when we plant the tree.

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
We plant the houses for you and me.
We plant the rafters, the shingles, the floors.
We plant the studding, the lath, the doors,
The beams, and siding, all parts that be;
We plant the house when we plant the tree.

What do we plant when we plant the tree?
A thousand things that we daily see;
We plant the spire that out-towers the crag,
We plant the staff for our country's flag,
We plant the shade, from the hot sun free;
We plant all these when we plant the tree.

                                       Henry Abbey (1842-1911)

We have been enjoying this poem. I wonder what we are planting as we parent? How exciting and terrifying!

Zines: Kids taking charge of their own writing

I hardly know a thing about zines. I was never cool. It's pronounced, "zeens", if you are as ignorant as me. Zines are little, independent, low budget, self-publications. A bit like a photocopied blog, from an era when blogs didn't exist. They can be about anything, usually combining images and text, and then run through a photocopier. Black and white mini magazines ready for an audience.

In trying to understand the zine, I found a handy little tutorial on how to make one from a single piece of paper. The idea is, you can do the layout of the entire zine on one page, whip it through the copier and fold into a booklet. It fits in an envelope, ready to post to all your eager, cool fans. Ours are micro, as I only had A4 paper. Click here for a complete tutorial.

image from experimentwithnature.com

It appears that children write best when they initiate and care about their own project. I have started folding a batch of zines so the kids can make up their own little publications. One child in particular is quite into it.

I wonder if we can make an Advent Calendar out of 25 zines...or maybe Christmas card zines?

Learning super powers

I'm learning that education is built from really basic bricks, but which ones are essential? What do our children need to learn? There are some things which technology and a changing economy are making redundant. So, what is absolutely essential, regardless of change?

At the moment, I think our kids need to be able to read, think, imagine, evaluate, and communicate. 

So, they need to be able to read. I mean more than decoding words. I mean enjoying making sense of what someone else is communicating.

They need to be able to imagine. They need to be able to use what they have read and experienced in the past to see what is real and true and to have an expanding picture of what may or may not be possible.They need to be able to find new ways to solve new and old problems. 

They need to be able to evaluate. A world of rapidly increasing information and communication demands that our kids be able to work out if something is important, true, beautiful or useful.

By "communicate", I mean taking whatever is at their disposal (words, print, imagery, actions, objects) to say whatever they need to say to someone who can benefit from it. Kids need to be able to write, to be able to put words together in a way which is meaningful to themselves and someone else. They need to be able to talk, listen and ask good questions. 

Skills. Super powers. Tools to chip away at life with.

Will they always feel like they are learning super powers? No. Sometimes skills start to come before motivation. At the same time, the way we learn these skills must not slaughter kids' pleasure in using these skills. I am finding this is something that someone else cannot teach us. It's not the same everyday. It's not in a curriculum we can buy. It is a product of studying our own children and trying out new things together.

I'm finding that becoming fluent in these super powers is messy, relational, unpredictable, sometimes ordinary, sometimes spectacular. The skills grow in fits and starts as they are used. The skills are learned in a culture of joyful doing; fun reading, eager talking, attentive listening, inquisitive questioning, wild making, free playing, real writing. 

Next time we are labouring over that word or sentence or problem, I'm going to remind my kids, and myself, that we are growing super powers.

What is on your list of "essential things for kids to learn"?

image Nail and Twine Photography

What is school for? Seth Godin on education

Seth Godin writes great stuff. I haven't read enough of it. I won't summarise what he's on about, you can easily enough look at his blog and work it out.

After enjoying Godin's insights for a while, I was glad when a virtual acquaintance sent me a link to his manifesto on education. You can get a copy in a version that suits you, for free, here.

Good questions: Science and history

Our approach in home education is not so much to shovel content into our kids, but to help them develop skills to find and make sense of "content" themselves. Asking good questions is at the heart of this approach. History and science are disciplines which rely on asking good questions.

I have appreciated  The Christ Files: How Historians Know What They Know About Jesus, by John Dickson. Among others, it is a book I will be reading with my kids in years to come because of how it models historical inquiry. Although written by a Christian, it doesn't smell of reactionary self protection. In fact, it is not trying to prove anything. As the subtitle says, it explains how historians, from all sorts of religious (and non religious) backgrounds, know what they do about Jesus. And, it is accessible for people who don't earn a living in the history department of a university.

Here is a short clip I also found useful as summary of our own approach to Science as Christians. We will be making lots of use of the Centre for Public Christianity,  for our history and science learning in time to come.

Make your own Ranger cloak and cross bow

As I mentioned here, we have stumbled across all sorts of interesting things from reading the Ranger's Apprentice series. The eight year old is keen to make his own Ranger cloak using this pattern,

 

Soon after starting archery, the eight year old found a design for making a (harmless) paper cross bow. Here his finished product.

Here are the instructions

An 8 year old's accidental history of weapons and warfare

Our 8 year old started archery classes earlier this year. Dozens of home ed kids have a class for an hour and a half each Tuesday. He had been desperate to learn for months. I had postponed the activity for some time, feeling like it was a bit obscure, and not really one of those essential life skills. But, it is so cheap and convenient, that I thought we could afford to have a go.

On the eve of starting, some friends (who also home educate and do archery) suggested he read the Ranger's Apprentice series, by John Flanaghan. So we found the first book and he started reading. He ploughed through them, and Steve set about trying to catch up, to 'supervise' the reading experience. The joy of reading races between father and son are the stuff of another post.

The boys eventually persuaded me to join in. Ranger's Apprentice is a real page turner. The first book starts like a fantasy, with some mythical creatures. As the series progresses, Flanaghan switches into a much more realistic mode. The settings are all fictionalised, but resemble the environments, races and cultures of Europe, North Africa, Asia and the British Isles.

It is set in a pseudo medieval time frame, but with post modern values and politically correct attitudes (and quite a few Australian idiosyncrasies). So, a whole lot of anachronisms really! The writing and descriptions become repetitive, but each plot and setting in the twelve part series is so different that I couldn't resist them.

The great thing about this reading experience was the ongoing conversations between Steve, the 8 year old and I about the books. Even the weaknesses were a catalyst for learning and developing our own thinking and writing.

One thing we all especially loved were the details and explanations about weaponry, training, tactics and strategy in warfare. Flanaghan managed to teach us a whole lot about real historical developments and technologies through a completely fictional world. It so happens that the bow and arrow are the primary weapon of a Ranger, so it has fitted beautifully around our new archery class.

Quite conveniently, last week, we enjoyed a morning with a medieval re-enactment group. Kez documented it here. It was fun to have all sorts of weapons, fighting and technologies demonstrated which were familiar to us from our reading. It added another dimension to our web of learning.

Then, we have jumped on YouTube to find more of the same. Here is a favourite.



Ranger's Apprentice has inspired some creativity. I'll share that later this week.

Is school obsolete?

An amazing story and fascinating research. Inspiring for our own parenting. Inspiring for our interactions with children in our communities, local and global.



TED

Birthday cake cheating

I do not love baking. After a few years of feeling guilty for being so unenthusiastic in the birthday cake domain of life, I learned to cheat. My new rules are simple:

1. Buy a cake that people would like to eat.
2. If necessary, ice with pre-made icing.
3. Dump a whole of of visually exciting stuff on top.

So, here are a few birthday cakes from the last couple of years.

All the cakes have been simple, delicious, low cost cakes bought from a bakery nearby. Lamington cake, butterscotch cake, apple tea cake, red velvet cake, mud cake, Jam and cream sponge. Anything.

A tower of bakery cakes, stacked and secured with bamboo skewers.

Pre-made icing with food colouring added.

Cake mountain iced (note the rugged waterfall spilling down the side!).

A pile of treasure chocolates on top for the toy dragon (seen here from behind) to sit on. That is what dragons do, after all.

After cutting, kids just chose their preferred layer of cake (as opposed to having a tall skinny piece of three types of cake).

This was a plain, iced bakery cake.

Roses from our garden arranged on top.

Old tea cup and saucer, with toy bear seated inside.

A few silver cachous scattered for sparkle.

Our trusty bakery had this one decorated already. 

I added the butterfly and the silk petals (from the discount store)

Yes, this was excessive! I bought the top three layers from the supermarket (oh, red velvet cake is delicious!), Again, all held together with skewers.

The bottom, square layer is my trusty gluten free layer (a favourite choc/hazelnut cake). This is the only part I baked, if you call using a Thermomix baking!

Chocolate ganache poured over it all. Maltesers, sprinkles and smarties added.

We gave a lot of cake away after the party.

Each of these were very quick. I just made them up as I went along, which I found far less stressful than following someone else's design.

The other idea we tried once, was baking several plain cakes, then letting the birthday child cut them up and arrange them into a structure of their own choice. We fixed it in place with skewers. Then, they iced it and decorated it with lollies themselves. It was good for the preschool aged child who was into construction craft. Can't find the photo though...

The beginning.

Steve and I are learning how to learn again. Parenting is great for that. This is a place for us to share resources we are finding useful. Let's see what we discover...

image by Nail and Twine Photography