Now it's getting Difficult

Last nights rehearsal was late.

Kookaburra went to bed extremely late.

Nearly 11pm.

Ridiculous!

It will be the same again tomorrow night and Friday night. There is rehearsal for the musical scheduled for Sunday and then the three nights again next week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then we jump into the two weeks of solid rehearsal of every evening. Right now, looking down the barrel of crazy late nights with my nine year old son I'm asking myself why we decided to commit to such an intense activity. Well, and I say this with a very tired sigh, I believe in exposure and opportunity through and through. It's my policy I suppose. Get us out there experiencing real life and real people and I guess real difficulties and the huge joys of real life. When we're done I'll rein us back in for a bit. Cushion us for a while and hide out at home once more finding a good rhythm again. We are going to need it desperately.

Life is so laughable and I'm really here forever as it's student. I spent three long evenings last week poring over materials and planning meticulously what I and my boys would like achieved this week and mapping it out and preparing right down to the the materials organised neatly in their baskets. I shouldn't have. I should have known. In my heart I did, but my dumb old head was in denial. The truth of our situation is that we need to take a break from our lessons. More than anything my boys and I and Dada over this busy time, we are going to need to connect richly and as much as we can.

We need siesta's!

And our great books.

And lots of crafting.

The Native's want to keep going with their lapbooks and I'll try to continue with their book studies , but everything else can happen naturally. And it really does, if I'm willing to let it - which is so very difficult for this brain washed old school girl.


So what has happened today was a fine lesson in doing too much - and it's fall out. The too much wasn't from planned lessons either, it came simply from failing to relax and replacing our lessons with busyness. Late this arvo I was spectacularly Bad! It still amazes me how I can still be rabbiting on at my little boys while a little part of me has stepped aside to watch the car wreck I'm inflicting upon us. But, I'll leave it there because my lesson has been learnt, my apologies made, tears wiped! And instead I'll move on to dwell on the great because the rest truly was.

This morning was brilliant! Relaxed and fun. So very natural and wonderfully happy. I should have kept on as I had begun and we would have been fine. Apart from their jobs and breakfast I let our boys do as they please while I figured out what to do with us - which obviously means clicking on the latest blog posts of crafty peeps. The Magic Onions latest post was about making an Easter Basket from felt. I sigh. I've been wanting to felt forever but it just isn't in my budget. But Marvelous Donni suggests using an old pure wool or cashmere sweater for felting and gave great simple instructions which sounded completely doable. Lacking such an item immediately on hand my boys and I, Kookaburra was particularly inspired by this project, headed to the op shops in search of such items. We wandered for a while in the thrift shop to no avail until Joy! as we headed upstairs our eyes alighted on a high shelf full of PURE WOOL BLANKETS - $1!!!!!! We're yet to begin the felting as we still need golf balls for the process, but it makes complete sense that felting old wool blankets is a frugal alternative and will open up this wonderful craft to us (me!).


The thing is though, I just need to reclaim those wool blankets :)




I'm a big fan of A Magical Childhood. So during my inspiration clicking this morning I popped over there for some fresh ideas on how to make today magical. Well number 2 was a great option:

'2. Let each child pick out something brand new to try at the grocery store. Look in the international foods and produce section for particularly fun and unique items.'


Too easy!


Hello Marble Marmor Dan Cake from Norway!

My boys incredulously stood there in the prepackaged baking ailse with lopsided grins across their faces asking if they really could choose this and eat it - numbers, preservatives and sugar laden horror :D! And Mumma said 'Yes' :D! It's nice to relax a little.

Today we had a stand still memorable moment.

Standing in the dairy aisle playing a clapping game I played as a school girl, with my little sons.

Did you play this too?

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea
(clap your own hands, clap right hands together, clap your own hands, clap left hands together, clap your own hands, clap your hands and your partners together straight on three times)
To see what he could see, see, see,
But all that he could see, see, see,
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea.



I found this chant and clap game in my great library find Let's Play - Traditional Games of Childhood. A beautiful book with easy and quick ideas for simple play.

Okay, so I'm learning, as always, that less is more. Quality versus quantity. For now I need to let a few things go so we can enjoy this special time while we get to be a part of something awesome.

We have a little saying we call to each other as we leave our home for work or play:

Nice Words, Gentle Hands, and Shining Face (be happy!)

I think this may be a wise mantra for me to bring into our home with a good focus on me as well as for my children :)

Bargain

i

'Seriously!'

'Only fifteen dollars? Are you sure?!'

This is the best kind of conversation to have at an op shop when we've just piled our wonderful finds onto their counter.

Op shop advice - avoid The Endevour, they've forgotten that they are a charity and that their goods are actually donations. There was a lovely lady's hat in there two weeks ago for sale at fifty-nine dollars! What the! Their prices do not reflect the purpose of the store. But our favourite op shop by far is St Vincent De Paul. Our goods totaled to nearly thirty dollars but once the lovely lady reached fifteen she stopped counting :D!

It's kind of funny that we've acquired new books as I'm in the midst of organising a huge curriculum clearance which I'll be listing with Aussie Homeschool Classifieds when I get round to it. But my view of a home learning environment, even if our boys were at school, includes access to plenty of great books on every imaginable subject and so I continue to haunt the op shops in the ever hopeful pursuit of that wonderful bargain to enrich our home learning. This doesn't make for a pretty home and I still struggle to be at peace with that but to see my boys pouring over books at five am leaves us feeling pretty chuffed.

They're interested and best of all, unconsciously, they are learning all about their wonderful world.

Oh! and I must add that I'm pretty proud of myself. Whilst at the art gallery today we were chatting for a little while with one of their lovely staff when she asked Kookaburra the dreaded inevitable question,

'What grade are you in?' (or to the trained Mumma ear, 'Why aren't you at school?')

He looked at me uncertainly and I replied calmly and quietly,

'Well, we actually homeschool so we don't need grades. We learn until we Know a subject and then we move on. We aren't graded by A, B, C's or worst of all D and F's because we don't fail and move on anyway. We strive to know and understand what we're learning.'

and then I added,

'He's nine.'

I know this isn't the best answer around but this is a huge milestone for me because I dread That Question and I really struggle to answer it in a way that I'm happy with :D!

My Mud Pie Kitchen Rules :D

I was in search of inspiration Friday night when I stumbled across the idea of a Mud Pie Kitchen. Brilliant! I thought back to my own childhood days hidden round the side of our house, scrapping together piles of dirt and fashioning them into all sorts of beautiful creations. My brothers and I often organised lavish weddings in the backyard and would adorn our festive mud cakes and biscuits with beautiful flowers and make heaping piles of 'salad' for our imaginary guests. Then my brother and I would marry and then we'd toss flower petals into the air to draw the nuptials to an end.

Saturday morning I shared my plan with Kookaburra and showed him the article. I read it aloud and he drank in the images. He was buzzed and so excited at the prospect of looking for his own pots, pans and utensils for making his own Mud Pie Kitchen a reality. We roped Kangaroo in and he caught the excitement bug lickety split real quick and we headed out to the op shops. Kookaburra is so cool. He knew exactly which op shop to visit and had described in detail the copious amount of needed items awaiting us there.

A great play like this had to be shared and we invited the Cool Cousin Crew to our Mud Cook Off. They rocked up mid-morning Sunday as the sky loomed darkly above threatening to split and wash away the potential fun.

Undaunted by the prospect of rain the kids all went out to the old barbecue and began.

We couldn't serve a banquet without cutlery and my attempts to have them wear shoes was quickly lost in translation. Wha.... What shoes?!

The rain has been ridiculous. The kids are standing in an old, cracked pond and it has rained so much it is no longer draining away to the complete joy of my crew. 'Can we really play in it?!', incredulously they ask.

And yet again here comes the rain :D

Kids play is their work. I sure wish it was mine :)

Kookaburra found jumping in puddles to be awesome fun except for when the mud splashed him in his eyes. Not so great.

Super, Scrumptious, Green Salad waiting to be served.

'No! It can't stop raining!', he yells crazily to the sky. 'Mum! I'll just pray for more. Please God, this is so much fun, may we please have more rain?!'.

Little mother very busy in her kitchen.

She looks aghast at her grubby, muddy sister and quietly says, 'You can't come into my kitchen. You're all dirty!'. Yep, I thought that was pretty funny too :D.

As the barbecue area flooded the scope of play increased.

Gradually the Mud Pie Kitchen Play began winding down, so to prolong the entertainment I injected some fun into it by providing a liberal serving of beans, lentils, chickpeas and whatever other dried stuff I had in the craft cupboard. The colours, variety and texture reignited the fun and the kiddo's continued on playing for quite awhile longer. Due to the wet clothes they're wearing, I'm not going to admit for how long they were out there. I'm guilty of erring on the side of delaying the inevitable when great fun is to be had.

As it was well after lunch I had the kiddo's do a tidy up. We weren't precious about it but nothing was to be left out in the yard and their concoctions were encouraged to be left as they are for the next time. In the next few days we'll check on the different brews to see if any of those beans and chickpea additions have sprouted.

Hot showers, soaped and scrubbed, hair washed and to the table for hot chips, followed by a Christmas movie. A Super way to spend yet another very wet Sunday.

These are the Days of Play

Well, it's all been pretty quiet event and action wise on this here south eastern front but my little natives have been anything but quiet and in fact have been a little loopy. The weather has been unseasonably wet but when the rain has ceased for the occasional few moments we have ventured on out and enjoyed the brief snatches of sunshine at the park or otherwise.

After cleaning out our house and shed so thoroughly (I've been on a spring clean and a 'if we haven't used it in x amount of time, pass it on' bend for about two months now, which naturally meant we abstain from thrifting trips for awhile) I thought that we deserved a peek into the Thrift Shops. And 'Oh Wow!' didn't we score :D For less than a twenty we went home with a heaping pile of quality books for mainly Kangaroo to enjoy and also unearthed an amazing array of 'new' dress ups for both Kookaburra and Kangaroo. And haven't their imaginations been on the buzz since.

The little Green cap Kangaroo is wearing in the pic above was from China's Chairman Mai Communist era, complete with the little red star. We explained the little hats origins to which Kangaroo took inspiration and played out going to war for the next few hours. He would sweetly kiss me and say tender goodbyes and walk slowly up the hallway to catch his train but would pause every few steps and lift his tiny hand up slowly for a mournful little wave and make me promises of a safe return before continuing slowly out the door. Such a fun little chap.

But as always Kookaburra returns to his fairly constant building projects. His current project he had pushed to the back of his pile about six months ago but has decided this week to give it another go. He pulled it out again and is so stoked by the new found ease with which he is be able to do this once frustrating task. Hooray for growing older :)

I love this $2 op shop find!!! I was hunting for something like this after we watched The Fox and the Child a few months ago for Kookaburra to carry around his notebook, pens and treasured items in, but the best I had been able to turn up isn't even a scratch on this fair dinkum leather satchel.

It's the sort of thing I imagine a small boy from the forties may have slung over his shoulder on his way off to school.

We read Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain which has inspired some great imaginative play but the sweetest of which was sharing hot cocoas with Christian before venturing back out to sea.

Rarely do I purchase fluffy's or teddy's from op shops but Kangaroo pleaded pitifully for his new friend Christian the Lion and justified and talked me into taking the crazy haired, immediately freshly scrubbed, much loved, dear new friend home. How on earth did he justify? Well, after I said no, he explained clearly and as calmly as Kangaroo possibly can, that this was in fact Christian the Lion. We first met Christian from the famous You tube video and secondly from two great children's books we found consequently because of the video, at our local library. I could then see his connection and so now Christian has come home with us and he happily joins another scrappy looking previously acquired feline named Duma. Together the cats are inseparable from our little mate Kangaroo's side. Except, I should admit, for today's horrified, frenzied, screaming meltdown moment when Minna , our mischievous puppy, pinched Christian and took off with him into the back yard. Christian was safely retrieved but Kangaroo was still admonishing poor little Minna for hours after!