Fina's story

I've been lying next to Fina in bed. The others have gone to see the fireworks. I have an ear infection so I'm at home with little one.
I have been telling her stories, one of my favourite things to do. The simplest story intrigues and delights her. It is so cute!
After I tell her a story it's "her turn".
Her story went like this.

"One day there was a doggy. Doggy was a naughty girl. Doggy was sad.
Then doggy was a good girl and doggy was happy!" The End"

Sharing the quiet here at home...

Our Victorian Tea Party...

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As part of our history lesson we held a proper Victorian tea last week.
We cleaned out our china tea set and set about making some shortbread, and salmon and cucumber sandwiches. We also had some lemon slices cheese and biscuits, strawberries and cream, brandysnap baskets.
More wonderful Victorian Recipes here...
For tea we had a choice of Earl Grey, Darjeeling, Assam, Lap sang, Nettle tea, Chamomile, or Chai.

The History of Tea

Prior to the introduction of tea into Britain, the English had two main meals, breakfast and dinner. Breakfast was ale, bread, and beef. During the middle of the eighteenth century, dinner for the upper and middle classes had shifted from noontime to an evening meal that was served at a fashionable late hour. Dinner was a long, massive meal at the end of the day.

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Anna, the Duchess of Bedford (1788-1861) is credited as the creator of teatime. Because the noon meal had become skimpier, the Duchess suffered from "a sinking feeling" at about four o'clock in the afternoon. At first the Duchess had her servants sneak her a pot of tea and a few breadstuffs. Adopting the European tea service format, she invited friends to join her for an additional afternoon meal at five o'clock in her rooms at Belvoir Castle. The menu centered around small cakes, bread and butter sandwiches, assorted sweets, and, of course, tea. This summer practice proved so popular, the Duchess continued it when she returned to London, sending cards to her friends asking them to join her for "tea and a walking the fields." The practice of inviting friends to come for tea in the afternoon was quickly picked up by other social hostesses.

During the second half of the Victorian Period, known as the Industrial Revolution, working families would return home tired and exhausted. The table would be set with any manner of meats, bread, butter, pickles, cheese and of course tea. None of the dainty finger sandwiches, scones and pastries of afternoon tea would have been on the menu. Because it was eaten at a high, dining table rather than the low tea tables, it was termed "high" tea.

So you want to know How to make that perfect pot of tea?

Memories made of...Woodland wonders... Autumn treasures

Some more Autumn memories from this week...

We have been finding treasures in the woods and filling glass jars with, fruit, flowers, feathers leaves, pieces of an old wild bee hive and other such woodland wonders.

We have pressed a good many leaves to both identify, match up with the various nuts, shells, berries etc from our jars and still more to make collages with too!

Till then these jars make their own work of art upon my kitchen windowsill. It is especially lovely when the warm russet coloured sunshine that we get this time of year glints through, illuminating each and every leaf vein and hue.

Another lovely thing about the week has been the opportunity for learning outdoors.

Emmy and Bujana have used some natural materiel's from around the garden during their break times and have made a cute little scarecrow. I don't think he would particularly scare any of the bullish crows and starlings that congregate noisily in the treetops around our garden but he is a friendly addition to our flowerbed. He can certainly lodge their till spring!

An Autumn post...

Tilda's sewing

Emmy found this abandoned house sparrow nest in our conifer hedge. She discovered that the sparrow had used some of her gardening twine as nest materiel. It was laced with soft moss on the outside and so cosy inside!

Grandad with Boo and Peter rabbit!

Perfect Autumn fare. Warming vegetable Jalfrezi with boiled rice and Peshwari Nann bread straight from the oven.

Helping...

Dreaming.. Twirling...

Beauty

Jessica the spider...

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Autumn treasures...

High point of the day was our walk through the park. The sun glinted through the colourful trees as the leaves fluttered down around us like confetti.
We saw a sparrow hawk hover over our garden yesterday. Today we found lots of different leaves, seeds, cones and fruits and took them home for identification.
Low point of the day was when afternoon lessons I decided to clean the downstairs part of the house really thoroughly and as it was such a beautiful day set the children loose in the garden.
Five minutes into my well intentioned cleaning plans and Bujana had managed to chase Seraphina into the algae filled puddle of a pond that the cover of our sandpit has become since all the rain last week!
Grandad came to stay Sunday and Monday. He taught the girls lots of funny old songs! We also studied one of his favourite poems (at his request) Keats's Ode to Autumn. It's one of my favourites of all...

Ode To Autumn

Keats (1819)

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Beauty, and the Liturgy of Life.

I love it when I am put into other people's shoes, feeling and experiencing other people's temptations, ideas, sorrows, desires. I have become (over time) grateful for when this happens because it has humbled me so much, it has also caused me to sympathise with people I would have very quickly judged.
The other day I was driving through town. I had many different tasks to do, appointments, time constraints, on top of sleep deprivation and just general anxiety which I'm prone too get when stuck in town anyway. I'm sure I have sensation issues, lights, noise, crowds.... just effect me in a bad way, anyhow....
Emmy noticed this beautiful V line of geese, make it's way across the sun mottled sky above us and pointed it out to me.
Beauty has always been so important to me. It stops me hard. I am compelled by it. I have, on occasion, been caught frozen solid in the middle of a crowded street by a glint of sunlight through the branches of a tree, or forgotten my bag on a bench to wander into a little grove of dappled light on the path ahead.
But for some reason that particular day, the juxtaposition of this sacred ritual of flight in the heavens and the stress of the streets reacted toxically within me.
I felt nauseous and irritated.
I simply didn't want the distraction!
Oh, how beauty has become devalued in our highly industrialised world. We simply don't want the distraction. Everything has become streamlined to manage the practicalities of life efficiently. The sacred journey of the geese, the lichen of every green hue imaginable upon the bark of a horse chestnut tree, and the little spider upon the quivering leaf are left unnoticed by most. The deep truths that speak to our very soul within the natural world are not penetrated for the sake of gleaning a breadth superficial knowledge with the questionable agenda of our mental trawling.
Art always reflects it's society. These days even the art we see hanging out upon the walls of modern galleries has become almost utilitarian in it's aesthetic approach. Soulless and aspiring to look factory made, image after image betrays the mark of a Warhol print from his own pre fab style "factory" line productions.
In many ways, art has become about image rather than intent.
With the constant noise of technology buzzing around us and the demands of a life that turns upon it's dizzying axis, children (adults too) have very much, lost the ability to notice, to observe, to recognise beauty.
For economies sake houses are losing their individuality and workmanship. Products, estates, high streets and interiors emphasis the contemporary twin attributes of being streamlined and functional. Our cities are built, not to reflect the art and civilisation of a nation anymore, they are set into the hardened mould of capital gain.
But we humans are not soulless robots.
A thing done for nothing more than the sake of beauty is surely valuable indeed, within it's own right. It's usefulness or economy should not be it's primary reason for existing.
Is it ours?
The Bible tells us that we have been made to know, love and praise the God of heaven and Earth.
Problem is that these days, these high ideals have become relegated to the sidelines of life. The edges and the hard shoulders, for making small pit stops only when we break down completely.
Life is liturgy. It is discovering of the essence of God within all things. It is the fibonacci sequence within nature, ratio's golden rule!
It is harmony, both inner and outer. Yet we are losing segments of the sequence, we are messing with the DNA of the liturgy. The liturgy of life itself, the Word made flesh.
Noticing, observing and recognising beauty in the natural world around us and in the reflection of this in art was what the great philosopher's of the past saw as the very purpose of life.
Education and life wasn't about the repetition of tasks for the sake of both the individual and national economy, it was for the nourishment and expansion of the soul.
How many people take wonderment. How many people have been taught, or shown how through example, to take wonderment from the simple beauty's within nature.
Children, I truly have come to believe, need to been in nature regularly. They need to be taught the liturgy of life.
I'm glad Emmy noticed. It is becoming a gift, noticing. May I always be able to slow down, stop and stare at the sun glinting through the shivering branches of a city tree lifting it's leaves in praise from the 2 by 2 sqaure patch of dirt along the road.

My Bujana Boo

Bujana loves to take her pillow out of it's pillowcase at night. She tucks her feet into the pillow case and calls them her "tickles".
I'm constantly finding pillow cases all over the place!
Even so... I just love these little eccentricity's that childhood brings...

On the subject... Bujana has a new pet. She has always had a love for spiders... But this is different. She even tries to catch flies for Jessica.
Jessica is a spider that lives on a beautifully designed and oft demolished....ahem... web outside our window! According to Bujana she has a brother named Bernie who lives inside one of the clothes pegs on the clothesline and a sister named Amy who lives on one of the webs on our Christmas tree!
There is a cat next door who is always catching our garden birds and her name is Jessica too. Bujana said the other day with a look of concentration on her face as if she had been thinking about it for some time, that "it's not Jessica's fault that her name is the same as that naughty cat. Her mummy and daddy just called her that!"

From today... Recipe for smiles

Make a recipe for smiling faces with a few simple ingredients.

A little inspiration!

Some science fun :)

Mix well and serve straight away.

Arts n' Crafts and an... Autumn collage collaboration

Choosing scraps from National Trust magazines for our Autumn collage...

Fina's favourite part is cutting pretty little Mosaic pieces for all the in-between parts!

Autumn in essence, beauty and light hangs in a mosaic of scraps upon our door.

And while we're at all this arty stuff... Bujana made this cool lion mask out of some brown cardboard, yellow paint and wool strands the other day.
I love it so much I had to take a picture of it. Don't you just love that vibrant yellow!
What a friendly lion :)

Star Chart... motivating good behaviour, incorporating homeschool!

I made my own star chart at the beginning of this school year. It was originally, simply meant to be a visual way of recording all the stars that Bujana received for excellent work. Gradually I started to give her stars for excellent behaviour too. Simple as they are, these stars are prized by Bujana. She loves getting them and counting them up!
To help her with her times table I give the stars a value. We are doing 5 times table at the moment so each star is worth 5 pence. At the end of the week Bujana has to calculate how many pennies she has earned. We have a coin jar for loose change on our kitchen windowsill so after she works out her total she must make it up using the coins available in the coin jar.
This has proved to be a great motivational learning resource for her. So I thought I'd share it :)

Bird Table...

Emmy and Tani made this Bird Table the other weekend out of some broken palates. I'm hoping it will attract many different birds over the winter. It becomes so hard for them to find food during the bitter frosts we tend to get this time of the year.
It will be fun for the girls to keep a diary of the different birds that visit. We have put lots of different kinds of bird feed up to attract all the many kinds that live around our area.
Next spring we will put a bird bath next to it I think to optimise the birdwatching fun!

Poetry ... and what it takes to find your own unique voice in the world

We had a wonderful poetry lesson today.
We studied this poem by John Agard...

Half Caste

Excuse me
standing on one leg
I’m half-caste.

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when Picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas?
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather?
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem don’t want de sun pass
ah rass?
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
is a half-caste symphony?

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
Ah looking at yu wid de keen
half of mih eye
an when I’m introduced to yu
I’m sure you’ll understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu must come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu mind.

an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story.

I love this poem!

What I want very much for the girls is for them to have the ability to reach beyond their own experiences and see the world from many different perspectives.

There are so many things in the world that divide, create barriers, differentiate and categorise. The antidote to prejudice, ignorance, stereotyping and division is compassion through understanding another's position and their reason for that position.

I think that art, poetry and music have a wonderful way of being able to do just this.

Especially as homeschoolers and especially as Christians, I want the girls to be able to handle other people's truths. I want them to respect and be genuinely interested in other people who may come from a totally different background to them with completely different ways of understanding the world.

Sometimes, it's in the fearless acceptance of the authenticity of another's experience that we can be able to understand and accept our own.

Part of the reason why I love this poem particularly is that, in it's time, it pushed the barriers of poetic expression. It used a truthful, uncompromising voice blending, indignation, pathos and humor to bring a potent and poignant message to the multicutural table of contemporary life.

It can be hard for kids to be strong enough to find their own voice and use it. Often it can feel as if we are given only a limited number of frameworks to move within. It can seem scary to be true to oneself when that may mean working outside of the "accepted" social, intellectual and religious boundaries of our particular time and space.

When Emmy first tried to recite the poem, I noticed that she put up barriers almost as a reflex against what seemed so foreign, strange and different to her tongue.

I think this is part of what makes this poem so good though. Often when we come across someone of a different ethnicity we put up unconscious barriers. We react with unconscious prejudices.

As we discussed this she began to accept and respect the poem's voice and her recital of it began to involve her own interpretation and with it came understanding and internal integration between her own experiences and the poets.

The girls know only a little of what it means to be different. Their Dad came to England as a refugee. There have been vocal oppositions to the refugee and immigrant communities in recent years. However there is a big difference for them, no one pre-judges them based on the colour of their skin. This was something that made a big impression on Emmy today.

I hope to be able to introduce Emmy to many different poets, artists, writers, filmmakers and thinkers over the next few years. I want her to have a broad understanding of the world. This is one thing I think that home school affords children, an understanding of the real world around them, within a real life context.

photo credit: isolano.

Total Unschooling Week.... Day Five!

Dancing, playing princesses...

Colouring, reading...

Eating... (my fav!)...

Building, painting...

Counting... Sticking...

An unschooling week ended in pictures!

Total Unschooling week......Day Four...

Today we have been in a bit of a funk. (It has been providential that this was our unschooling/unscheduled week) as this flu that keeps going around and about our house has finally got me pinned down too.
I've had a bit of a sore throat for days but today I felt properly rotton :(
Matilda is still a little feverish since she was sick all over the bed (and floor and bathroom!!!) a couple of nights ago and Emmy has been feeling really icky since last night so there wasn't much done at all today really. But that's okay.
This morning I picked up this book and was greatly cheered by this little piece of wisdom about the Martyr of El Salvador Rutilio Grande...

"Previously he had felt called to set an example of perfection. Now, as he came to believe, what was demanded was an example of self sacrifice and loving service. "

Perfection I will always fall short of but I can try (however frequently feebly) to work towards loving service
And such is life when illness rolls through.

This morning we did a little reading of Saint Therese's Story of a Soul...
This part always gets me, it's just such a beautiful, simple, way of seeing it all.

"I often asked myself why God had preferences, why all souls did
not receive an equal measure of grace. I was filled with wonder
when I saw extraordinary favours showered on great sinners like
St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Mary Magdalen, and many others,
whom He forced, so to speak, to receive His grace. In reading
the lives of the Saints I was surprised to see that there were
certain privileged souls, whom Our Lord favoured from the cradle
to the grave, allowing no obstacle in their path which might keep
them from mounting towards Him, permitting no sin to soil
the spotless brightness of their baptismal robe. And again it
puzzled me why so many poor savages should die without
having even heard the name of God.

Our Lord has deigned to explain this mystery to me. He
showed me the book of nature, and I understood that every
flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of
the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the
perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy.
I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses,
nature would lose its springtide beauty,
and the fields would no longer be enamelled with lovely
hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord's living
garden. He has been pleased to create great Saints who
may be compared to the lily and the rose,
but He has also created lesser ones,
who must be content to be daisies or simple violets
flowering at His Feet, and whose mission it is to
gladden His Divine Eyes when He deigns to look
down on them. And the more gladly they do His Will
the greater is their perfection."

So today was spent vegging out reading books,
playing cards and watching some films...
Being grouchy, making up, having
cuddles, then starting over lol!

We have a huge box of apples (given to us a while back by some
kind friends)
just waiting to be turned into something Autumnal like a crumble
or pie so Bujana and I got to work peeling and chopping till we
had enough for the pot. We added a few woodland blackberries,
last of the season and full of inky black juice that stains the fingers a
glorious purple!
So Apple and Blackberry crumble for pudding tonight it will be.
Hopefully that will revive us all a little!

Back tomorrow for our last installment of Total Unschooling week!