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.

An Autumn post...

Tilda's sewing

Emmy found an 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!

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!


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.

Beauty has always been so important to me. 

 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.



Yet beauty has become devalued in our highly industrialized world. 

Everything has become streamlined to manage the practicalities of life as efficiently as possible.

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. 

The mindful work of planting, growing, preparing food is replaced with convenience and empty calories.

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.

Aesthetics or beauty for beauty's sake alone is something many contemporary artists shy away from. It is not cerebral impressive, subversive or commercial enough. Or is it? I sometimes wonder if much of modern art is  a case of the emperors new clothes.

Image after image, installation after installation  betrays the mark of a Warhol print from his own pre fab style "factory" line productions.

Art, as many other things, has become more about image or brand than intention or integrity.



With the constant noise 
 ... of technology buzzing around us and the demands of a life that turns upon it's dizzying axis, we have lost the ability to notice, to observe, to recognize beauty.

For economies sake houses are losing their individuality and workmanship.

Yet 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?

  

 Every act of beauty is life giving. 

A counter to all that is dark.

It pulls back the curtain saying 

This is not the only room.

There is a garden too.

Clothed in green shoots and tender leaves.

Water it.

Life is liturgy. 

And the seeking of beauty reflected in the natural world is also the seeking of the blueprint of the sacred within all things.

It is the fibonacci sequence within nature and ratio's golden rule.

It is harmony, both inner and outer.

Yet we are losing segments of the sequence.

When we devalue the importance of beauty we are messing with the DNA that makes us both Human and humane.

Noticing, observing and recognizing beauty in the natural world around us 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.

"Mathematicians and physicists have a habit of using the words beautiful and elegant to endorse theories that are likelier to cleave to the nature of things because of their efficiency and soundness of structure. I would like to see language brought to a similar standard. If this were at all a philosophic age, we might be wondering why it is that beauty can test reality and solve its encryptions in the modest, yet impressive, degree our humanity allows. For me, this is a core definition of beauty: that it is both rigorous and dynamic and that it somehow bears a deep relationship to truth."  
Marilynne Robinson


May I always be able to slow down, 

...pause

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.

For in it's way, it is becoming a symbol of us all.


Click here for a wonderful documentary on why beauty matters

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 :)

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 optimize the birdwatching fun!

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

Finding your Unique Voice through Poetry

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.

Poetry is a great way of helping a child find their own unique voice. Every poem resonates with the soul voice of the poet who wrote it.

I particularly love this poem!

I want very much for the girls to have the ability to reach beyond their own experiences and see the world from many different perspectives. In this way poetry is a perfect medium for hearing the unique voices of individuals through history.

Poetry is a way of finding those common connections between people from all different backgrounds and points in time, while retaining the singular voice of the writer themselves.

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 multicultural 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.