Jamie Oliver

Check out this amazing TED Talk:

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food
http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html

So many things that are not right can be corrected in the home.
Empathy
Love
Respect
Cooking
Gardening
Freedom
Understanding our place in this world

Cafe ice

Was a lovely morning playing cafe. DD wanted to get me to buy her banana cake she made yesterday with Granny at her cafe.
(we often have to buy things like food or movies)
DS wanted to build using the milk boxes.
So he built her a cafe
Sweet

We were sitting enjoying the lovely cake when DS looked over at DD's 'baby'.
'where is my baby?'
I told him his bear 'baby' was still in bed. I'd just made the bed so I knew.
Off he rushed. I thought to bring his bear.
He came back empty handed
?
'he's still asleep' he rushed back inside and got the baby monitor...checked it was in in the bedroom then found a plug close to the courtyard where we were sitting in our cafe.

Hay fever really starting to bite

I have no idea how they go in school but its terrible.
Our son is the worst and he just does not understand what is going on. His behavior is terrible.
Now our daughter is starting to complain about a sore throat and her eyes are weeping and crusted.
It's grouse!
Just cruel tying to do things and really not enjoying them.
So I think tomorrow we'll hunt up a new "class room" which is not too hot and getting sun burnt. Think we'll have to visit every day

Colouring graph paper

We are loving this at the moment

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

Our daughter is really liking the 'rhombus' falling blocks

A break in the hay fever brings peace

Sunday morning...with small children in the house means you are up and off often before you want to be.

This morning was wonderful.

Our son has been really bad tempered and the usual word wise child has reduced to hitting and crying. Not happy family.

But the wind has stopped. Was driving me nuts. And the pollen is low.

This morning I could do my house clean in peace. Dave was asked to supply playdough for our boy to work on. Our daughter picked up a geo grid sheet I printed out yesterday and started to colour.
Both children extremely absorbed for the whole time my lovely husband cooked an Amazing breakfast!!!

I'm a lucky mummy

Unschooling gets hard too

This should be a big post but maybe I'll write more another day.
But today we all live life and for some reason some of us sail or fly through some areas and some don't

I don't go so well on keeping house but if you google The Fly Lady you may find some help if your like me.

I've only just started and like most things it takes time...but little by little we seem to pick up speed until we look back and wonder what was our issue.

I find unschooling hard but the other day while at Playcentre I listened to a mum try and write a learning story and she asked "what do I put in this box the follow on/what next?"
I used to question that too but now days I've got heaps of ideas and I feel that unschooling is hard to start off with but over time it works out and you know what to do.

I don't want a messy house but I don't want to waist time cleaning it when could be playing and learning with my kids

Thanks Nicola for the fly lady

Bush walk

We still are not focusing with out hay fever.
So off we go out in the bush where there I'd no pollen
Talked about leadership ;-) little miss 5 wanted to lead.
She took a lot in and started to show her bother things and not boss him.

Hay fever means we move "classroom"

We woke up this morning all of us felt rotten. Eyes,ears, nose and head. So we've moved to the beach. I think it will take a few days to wear in then we can start relaxing and doing stuff... But at the moment just enjoying breathing and seeing.

Knitting

Our daughter has shown an interest in knitting. While waiting for Dave to come home this evening I watched her knit well.
Well must provide resources she can make her own jumper for winter;-)

Something I'm enjoying is the development of her own colour likes...yellow and not pink like all the other girls. At ballet she did get questioned about a craft activity they all had to do...why is it not pink one little friend asked.

Old old songs for learning ;-)

Thanks to Graceful Girlhood for the link to these songs.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070120123327/http://www.acme.com/jef/singing_science/

Funny to listen to...could be helpful I don't know. Dave's just run away with his coffee.

My children like the water cycle so we may find a few others in here.

Watching

Our Sunday was mostly about clean up. We really needed to remove the rubbish build up in our garage to put our truck inside out of the sun.
When we first moved to our property we lived in the garage and we just put everything we had either in the roof or in the wardrobes and have not looked at it in nearly 7 years. The wardrobes had to go.
Both our children loved picking things up and asking questions.
They got board pretty quick though and I wondered if our daughter was upset as she was just sitting on the garden wall...still.
I wandered over and she excitedly told me she was watching a wasp make a nest.
We hugged and I left her too it
Later she was trying to draw the wasp and write the word. She's still not got the idea of sounding it out...but hey I never did I didn't know phonics...it's only now it makes a little more sense.

Schoolhouse singing to learn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5h11p-w4kY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Both my children love singing in the car. I try not to do long trips but if I get some more songs it might make it more fun.
So far we have jolly phonics and singing phonics... So what about these?

Spider

Both our children love bugs. We are lucky in nz having very few poisonous spiders so everything is ok to pick up touch and study.
My mum brought the kids some science magnifying cups which at the moment have a bumble bee and a rock in.
This web was on the toy tractor

Helping out

At playcentre lots of parents work through their course and often need children to work with. As our daughter is older she understands that the parents need children to work with them and stay.

We're doing Vaseline saucers and talked about what we use Vaseline for...putting it on the chickens legs to to help with mites. Or on baby's bottoms to keep them dry.
"will it come off?" worried look at the sink after hearing it was waterproof.

Orca whales

As a lead into our day I started talking about Moby Dick... Bit over the head.
But our daughter enjoyed coloring and cutting out...what was supposed to be a book but ended up a poster.

Once the poster was done we moved to Jean-Michel Cousteau ocean adventure
And first opening picture was the orca...wow both children captured and heaps of questions.
Wow it was mostly in nz just up the road and down in Auckland.

Brought tears to my eyes...must get free willy forgot about that one

Baby no fear

Anything she can do...so can I.
My son is trying very hard to keep up with his big sister.
Climbing up this new playground is only half of what happens.
He wants to write, sing jolly phonics, ride her bike.
Oh well

ABC

We've been singing the abc since I can remember and I laugh every time as lmnop become one letter all run together.
Today our girl was reading the bottom of the world map.
We did it semi together....and I and o were missing. She sounded them all out got a little stuck on r and made the phonic sound.
Why are I and o missing ... ?

We've also got the good old fridge set... But the cat loved batting them round on the floor.

Deduction and discovery

After our tango with "George and the Dragon" and a Hush Hour it was down the road.

We had to return a book long over due to the library.

We ended up in the park which has only two swings and a heap of placed rocks.

Around each large rock is a mowing edge of concrete. My daughter badgered my son constantly to hop off the swing and come and jump from the rocks... Bear Grylls style with lots of rolly pollys.

Once she finally got her way the both discovered some holes in the concrete. She asked what they were for....because adults are supposed to know everything right.

I had no idea so I used an idea from Sandra Dodd....I said they were from meteors.

She looked at me as if I was mad and said 'no it was not the right shape or colour'...she didn't say anything about the size but then again the whole understanding of size I'm sure comes much later on in life.

We looked and we could see that the round whole was formed possibly with a concrete drill bit going round in a circle.

'Ok...so what is it?'

I said I would keep to my meteor idea which I was told was not acceptable.

Jumping and playing on the next stone...looking at trees and shrubs taking leaves from one tree and comparing them to the next.

"Hey Mum this shrub is planted in the whole...have a look"

The ah ha moment for us all.

"So there are heaps of shrubs missing" she said"...5...what happened to them?"

I smiled and said the meteor must of killed them off.

George and the dragon

We started off our day with this story....

Both children were very quiet through the story which was odd. Normally they ask heaps of questions. I only had one..."Why is there a lamb?". I had to answer that I had no idea why.

So as I was trying to get two days of washing out they had the idea of building a castle. I had to break away to lift a few things up and help work out doors and how to keep the enemy out.

I then had to lift the large draw-bridge over which my son could not see over until his sister got a box for him to stand on. Yahoo.

So I had one Queen and one King...which then changed into my daughter being a knight...then she thought for a minute and swaped.

Then I had to make swords. I tried to make them as close as possible but my daughter said she just wanted it as a blade. Here I was worried that they would start bashing each other so it was to be outside.

My son went off to "kill the dinosaurs"

My daughter just wanted to make the beds for when my son came back from the fight he could go to bed...after the feast (of wooden vegetables) and cups of tea. She even had a healing circle aka hoola hoop for him to stand in which links back to the story.

Box building

How lucky are we to have friends who have access to heaps of lovely boxes!! I had ideas before we got these boxes but as usual the kids have taken it a different way...so many times.

We've had some great tunnels which even I had to have a go through. The poor cat who HATES boxes just about fainted when he walked into the play room...but even he had to have a go.

We've had a full on maze with side shoots.

We've had houses which the boxes were rooms.

We've used the boxes as building blocks...and discovered that this is great...but we need more boxes.