Yeah, Yeah...I know, I know...

Okay.  So it has been...a while...since I updated.  A year, in fact. If this is a problem, I suggest you contemplate my productivity on a geological time scale...in which case, I come off looking rather prolific.

But let's not focus on the fact I'm averaging one blog post a year.  Let us instead focus on chocolate.  Because everyone likes chocolate and hey, it takes the heat off me.

It would be too hard to condense the activities of an entire year into a one post (other than to do what I usually do, and to cheat it with photos...which I withhold the right to do, mind...).  So I'm going to wax philosophical instead.  Because you all love that, and it goes well with chocolate.

The Wigster is now five.  Not sure how that happened, but there it is.  Here's a photo of it, covered in choc milk and looking five...

 As a five year old, it enjoys gymnastics, Lego, My Little Ponies and playing complicated games involving all three.

We have been making in-roads into our new life in Northern Antarctica.  Can't say there hasn't been the occasional bump in the road (and sometimes off the road), but on the whole, we are finding our way forward, while remembering to enjoy the scenery.

Enjoying the scenery.  It's such a good metaphor, isn't it?  Sometimes, scenery is all there is - so it pays to enjoy it...or at the very least, to take note of it.

Take our walk, the other night, for example.  It was quite late in the afternoon/early in the evening, and hyper-child was bored, and my furniture was under threat, so I suggested a quick trip to the park before dinner.

"Let's walk there!" suggested hyper-child.

I pointed out the darkening - but calm and peaceful - evening sky, and the length of time it would take us to actually reach the park, walking, but hyper-child was adamant.  She wanted to walk.  So we walked.  It was a nice walk, but by the time we got there, it was almost dark.  We looked for the platypus, and we did see where it was in the water by the ripples, but it was too dark to actually see the animal itself.  And it was too dark to make it to the playground.

So we headed home.  Amidst much in the way of woe from not-so-hyper-child.  Not screaming, wailing woe; rather, lamenting, moaning woe - the kind of woe where phrases such as, "Why...oh why did I ever suggest walking to the park?  Now my whole night is RUINED!" emanate with all the pathos of a Shakespearean monologue.  For about the same length of time as Hamlet contemplates mortality.

It's time like this the narrator (aka long-suffering mother) can take one of two paths.  She could gaffer tape her offspring's mouth shut and frog-march her home (and that thought never even crossed my mind, I swear).  Or she could commiserate, not at all through gritted teeth, and try to encourage the mournful protagonist (antagonist??  *cough*) to see beyond the failed playground attempt to the scenery of the journey.  Albeit it through the growing dark of night time...

Lucky for the narrator, on this occasion, the stars happened to come out.  You just can't get better scenery than that.  From the moment we spotted our first star - wow, what a perfect journey we had together.  The Wigster even managed to spot a satellite...which we then tracked across the sky, which also then prompted an amazing conversation about what was orbiting our planet, at that very moment - and the relative speeds of such objects in relation to the speed we were currently travelling.

We found Betelgeuse, which prompted a very cool discussion about what happens when a star goes supernova, and we both hope Betelgeuse will oblige us in our lifetime.  Then, we found the Pointer Stars and the Southern Cross, which prompted discussions on the Australian flag, the southern hemisphere, finding due south (and north, and east and west), and navigating by starlight in ancient times...which led to talking about how ancient people lived, and found their way across the earth...about how they lived in caves, or made homes or shelters out of animal hides...and how they had to make every single thing they needed completely by hand, using the materials around them...to cave paintings...to walking in the dark with your eyes closed and only using your ears and nose to guide you (she walked nearly 200 metres with her eyes shut, and managed to work out she was near the wood shed and cattle pens by smell, and identified 5 different species of bird, frogs and the sounds of the river and trees)...



It was almost a shame to come back inside, when we got home - to find ourselves so suddenly cut off from all that splendour in the dark, and that wonderful, inspiring conversation...

Anyway, our walk to the playground was declared the "best walk ever" - even though we never actually reached the destination.  I was also declared "the best Mummy ever," and Wiggy was declared "the best Wiggy ever."

That's my favourite kind of scenery.

(Oh, and we did make it to the playground the next day...)

What We've Been Up To

Lots to say, but no time to say it.  So I'll just upload some pics of what we've been up to.

Making her own dinosaur book

Typing on the computer using Word (bit hard to see, but she has copied the word "Compsognathus" - a type of dinosaur).  This was all her own idea.

Making dinosaur scenes out of construction paper and dinosaur foam stickers (great activity thought up on the fly by mother desperately trying to get dinner ready for hungry child!)

Part of birthday haul (yes - now we are three!)

Sleeping (rare, so photographic evidence was required)

Doing some experiments with motors and colours (parts came from a kit we bought at Scitech, which will be explored in more detail once we have moved)

Playing at the park

Writing our first word (oviraptor - a type of dinosaur.  Surprise, surprise!)

Helping Daddy wash the deck and patio

It's so much fun being 3!

Hatching A Dinosaur Egg

It appears penguins have taken...well...a bit of a backseat, since our visit to the Dinosaur puppet show the other day (which incidentally was amazingly good!).

Part of this is due to the painstakingly drawn-out excitement of hatching our very own dinosaur egg.

Please enjoy the following pictorial examination of the process:

Emerging the egg in water

(Note that the instructions then said to wait 12-24 hours for it to fully hatch.  With a 2 year old constantly hanging over it, asking "Is it hatching yet???")

The first crack appears (approximately 28 hours later)

It was at this point that the egg received the first of what can only be termed "invasive birth intervention" by the aforementioned 2 year old impatient dinosaur obstetrician:

Shortly thereafter:

One baby Muttaburrasaurus, a uniquely Australian dinosaur - although since Australia was nowhere near where it is today at the time when this lovely little vegetarian roamed the earth, perhaps our claim to him is a bit on the idealistic side.  Either way, he is a bit cute, and I'm happy he's ours.

Here was Muttaburrasaurus today, playing in some snow with his other dinosaur friends Stegosaurus, Velociraptor (don't ask), Spinosaurus and Baby Triceratops:

Note also at this point that the instructions required baby Muttaburra to stay submerged in his water bath for SEVEN DAYS to reach his full size. 

Niamh enjoyed the process so much - and the puppet show - that her daddy is taking her back tomorrow to see it all over again.  She has already announced her intentions to return with a blue egg this time...oh, and a green one...and the other egg the colour of which she has forgotten...

I love her new interest in dinosaurs.  And what a lovely unschooling week we've had, learning all about them!

If you'd like to learn more about Muttaburrasaurus, you can find out all about it HERE .

Trust

Today's musing is about trust - sparked by a wonderful little unschooling incident which reminded me why it is so important to TRUST that learning will always ...no...is always happening for your child.

Niamh has been really into the Happy Feet movies, lately.  I think I know them both off by heart, including all the songs, and most of the dance moves.  She does too, although her versions of the songs are as detailed as her comprehenion of the words she thinks she hears - and thus are 95% wrong, and endearing beyond belief.  I spend half the movie hiding around the corner with my fist shoved in my mouth while she sings her own versions of the songs, loudly and proudly as any two year old can.

As any mother who has been forced to watch and/or listen to countless repeat performances of any G rated movie, however, no matter how much you enjoyed it the first time (or even first four or five times), I must admit to a teeeeeeensy bit of resignation every time she requests it be played.  And by "resignation," I of course refer to the kind of resignation that prompts one to go to the shed, retrieve any item designed to pulverise and smash the heavy end of said tool repeatedly on the offending receptacle of entertainment.

 Anyway.  In a rare lull during repeats last week, I managed to drag Niamh away from the tv and to the shops, where she promptly found - joy of joys - a small orange and white box, upon which (yay marketing!) was a picture of one of the penguins from Happy Feet 2.  Negotiations ensued, and Niamh ended up the owner of said box, and its contents...which in this instance happened to contain three chocolate eggs with toys insides.  Specifically, toy figurines from the Happy Feet movies.  She has quite a collection, now.  They watch the movies together, and she re-enacts scenes using the figurines.  And I still stand around the corner, with my fist shoved in my mouth, because it appears that none of the figurines know the words to any of the songs in the movies either.

So stricken, earlier today, I heard plastic Mumble say to plastic Erik, something that made me prick up my ears and realise I was over-simplifying things.  "Nooo, Erik," said plastic Mumble.  "You're an Emperor Penguin.  You have black feet.  Sven is a puffin.  He has orange feet."

Huh? thinks I.  I never noticed that!  (I checked google, by the way, and yes, she is correct!)  But Mumble wasn't done yet.  "Puffins don't live in Antarctica," plastic Mumble told plastic Erik.  "They're Arctic birds.  That's north.  Antarctica is south."

There was suddenly a lot more room for my fist in my mouth, because my jaw had fallen on the floor.  But there you have it.  And so I bring this all neatly back to trust.  And if I am to self-reflect on this whole experience, I have to admit I had forgotten all about it.  While I was busy mentally smashing the Happy Feet disk into a thousand pieces, and worrying about being a bad mother for buying my child enough chocolate penguin-figurine-containing eggs to keep the Bunny out of business for several years to come, Niamh was busy learning a little bit more about our world.  Her teachers?  Two animated movies, and a box of cheap chocolate eggs.

Learning is always happening.  Sometimes, you just have get your fist out of your mouth and put your trust back in your child.

Long Time, No See

Phew.  It's been a while since I've updated here, hasn't it?  I'd love to be able to report that so much has happened.  But really, life has just chugged along its fairly familiar path, as it so often is apt to do while leaving us feeling busy, swamped and plain worn out - despite the fact that, upon reflection, we really have nothing to show for ourselves...

 I hope you like the title of this blog.  It came to me as one of those unnoticed idioms which you dismiss as a superficial attempt at humour, but only afterwards realise your brain was actually trying to send you a message.  But we'll get back to that in a minute...

We have been doing a lot of soul-searching lately, on a lot of subjects.  Top of the list is currently the kind of life we want for our beautiful daughter. You see, for a long time, I didn't see.  Well, I thought I saw.  Don't we all?  The part of me that likes to be right (which is, let's face it, the most ME part of me), was pretty convinced that what I was looking at was the whole picture.  You know, kind of like looking through a window from a short distance away...you might see open fields and clear skies and think, "I see the world out there," but really, you're only seeing a small piece of an infinitely larger reality - a chunk, a 'glimpse' as those in real estate like to put it (and we all know what that means when we read it, right!).  What you're really seeing, frankly, is a hell of a lot of wall and glass and, if you're lucky, a splash of colour which, in time, you may come to call "the whole world," because you've forgotten that any more of it exists than what you can see.  (Seeing is believing, anyone?)

As so many adults do (and have been trained since childhood to do), I mistook the view for the destination.  I wanted so much to believe in that view, too, because hell, it was the ONLY view, after all.  When you're faced with so much wall, a window is a lovely thing.  A refreshing possibility...the potential for a greater existence.

For a long time, I have loved the window.  Justifiably so.  It is easy to lose oneself in a beautiful view.  Windows offer potential, too.  The view itself can prompt much discussion, thought and planning.  It can take you in directions you hadn't previously planned.  Nothing better than a glimpse of what lies just over there to interest you enough to want to start a journey...to get you up out of your chair and really study the view.

The great thing about windows (I'm going to run with this theme today...I like it a lot!) is that they offer more than just a pretty prospect.  They let in light.  You can open them up and breathe clean, sweet air...air that fills you up and cleanses your mind and smells of things you never dreamed existed.  And if you only dare poke your head outside...wow!  What a world!  What a universe!  And all that is required to explore it is to pluck up the courage to unlock that big, imposing door and take your first tentative steps forward.

And in that spirit, and with all the hopes, fears and excitement of explorers in a brilliant new land, so we have taken our first tentative steps into the world Radical Unschooling.  Already, it feels so right that I wonder why I was ever content with just the window.

Long time, no see.

But the view is SO worth the wait!

Colour Month? No! Colour Life!

I've had a rethink on the whole "Colour Month" idea.  Why confine it to one month?  Why not one lifetime?  One can live a whole lifetime and not see ALL the colours there are to see, after all.

Roll on, Colour Life!

I have ummed and ahhed about what to write here the last few days ("dithered" maybe a better word - or, if I am to be honest, "procrastinated").  Ever known where you wanted to go, but weren't sure how to get there?  And I don't mean which route to take...well, I do...but I also mean the method; do you go by car, or bus, or train...or should you walk, or run...or hey, why not ride a horse...or a unicycle?  What if you really did know how to get there, but instead of just beginning the journey, you spent time dithering (my word for to today - it sounds so much more fun than procrastinated, or avoided) around getting in and out of your car, maybe taking the bus for one stop only, then walking back to where you started only to trip over the horse on your way to getting out your unicycle?

What if, after all that, you realised you were actually where you needed to be, and all you needed to do in the first place was to open your eyes and see that you were there?  And what you really needed most to do was to put the car keys away, tear up your bus pass and just trust that, you know what?  You are already living the journey.

It all sounds very philosophical, if you let it.  But it sums up a lot of what has been going on around here, for real, in the past few days.  Well, for much longer, even, than that...but perhaps the last few days has seen us reach a turning point.  Or a learning point.  Hehehe. 

Sometimes, trusting that you will arrive at your destination is as hard as taking that first step - whether that step be inside yourself, or against the external stream.  Sometimes, that same fear is so exciting that you HAVE to take that step.  You can't not take it.  Even if you have no idea where you're going.  Because you know it's right anyway.  You know it's where you should always have been heading...even where you've always been, although you never knew the name of the town.

I think the next few weeks will see us consolidate many ideas, dreams and philosophies into something huge.  It may not be to everyone's tastes.  And that's okay.  I can only ask that you choose openness and curiosity over close-mindedness and fear. 

Life, after all, is awash with many colours.  But only a very few of those are named in the rainbow we physically see.  Perhaps the reason no one ever finds that little pot of gold is because it was all around us to begin with, rather than hidden at the edge of a fleeting band of fading colour in the sky.

Process, Not Perfection

One of the things I really love about most natural learning methods, and in particular the Montessori method, is the focus on process, rather than perfection.  Too often we expect kids to just "get it" first try - to master a task to perfection without really coming to understand the whole of it...and that, at least to my way of thinking, is the opposite of how learning should work.  A lot of it stems from impatience - on our part, and on theirs.  This is a world driven by instant results, and children pick up on that very early in their development, like the little social sponges they are.

Natural learning methods, like Montessori, Unschooling and Waldorf are like a peaceful breath of sweet, mountain air.  The child sees the world stretching out before their feet and can explore it at their leisure.  They can touch it, taste it, smell it...manipulate it into something that makes sense to them.  No one is telling them to be perfect, to get it right, to be the best...to finish it now.  They are truly liberated, and in so being may move forward purposefully and with curiosity that is self-driven and self-rewarding.  They want to learn.  They want to understand...not because someone is forcing them to pass a test at the end of it, but because learning has become such an intrinsic part of their living that it is impossible to separate from their being.  How can you argue with that?

Children don't always want us to butt in.  They don't always want their mistakes highlighted.  Do you?  I know I don't!  Children don't always want our help.  This has been one of the toughest things for me to handle, because I am...basically...a control freak.  I admit it, freely.  I like things to work.  I like them to be right.  I feel...anxious when I see things going wrong. When I see Niamh not getting things right.  Oh no!  She can't count to thirty?  How will she ever cope with life?!!!  Ahem.  Well, you know what I mean, anyway...

And so it was with utter joy that I watched my beautiful daughter exploring the new activity I made her (inspired by THIS post at Tot School).

Pretty self-explanatory as to how it is meant to work:

I started her off with just 3 to explore, mainly due to space limitations on the table - she couldn't physically reach more than three!

Going pretty well:

And then...the final result...

Yep.  Okay, so it's not 100% wrong.  She did get all the pieces of the pear.  But you know what?  It doesn't matter one bit to me that it's not "right".  The activity wasn't about getting it right, first try.  It was about exploring.  It was about learning that she can twist the pieces different ways.  It was about learning order and disorder.  It was about learning that sometimes, you just get things wrong...and you know what?  That's great!  Because recognising that something isn't right...is exactly right!

Later, she tried a little 25 piece octopus jigsw puzzle.

And how did she go?

Ta-dah!  She was SO pleased with herself, and yelled, "Look, Mama!  I did it!  I did it!  They all fit!"

And that, my friends, is process.  To her, she didn't see the finished picture of the octopus as the goal.  The goal was getting the little pieces to fit together.  And they did.  Exactly the way she wanted them to.

She had so much fun with that puzzle.  She went back to it probably 10 times during the day to play with it.  And each time, she was eager to learn more, and came away happy with her achievements.

And a little later, another go with the fruit puzzle:

She knows it better than I do.  Process doesn't make perfection - it is the perfection we all are seeking.

And perfection tastes pretty good, too.

So many ideas from such a simple thing

For some time now, I have been toying with (warring with, might be a better turn of phrase to decribe the turmoil of my thoughts) the different educational options available to Niamh.  I was decided before she was even born that she would never, ever attend a state or public school.  I hold with neither the curriculum, nor the methods of teaching.  I won't go into why now, as it will no doubt be the subject of many future blogs...as will the two main methods we are exploring, Montessori or Unschooling, and which of those we eventually choose.  Whatever we choose, the path will be one of natural, non-invasive, child-centred learning.

To that end, Niamh has been attending a Montessori pre-school (0-3 year olds) once a week for over a year.  She loves the jobs, and has a blast going from shelf to shelf to see what is there each week.  For all my dreams of setting up a learning environment for her at home along similar lines, however, I have to admit, I have been a bit lapse.  We do have a child-sized area with shelving at her height, where all her toys and books are stored for her to use at will; we don't allow battery-operated toys and prefer natural, beautiful toys made of wood; we encourage her to do tasks herself (eg clean her own teeth, wash her own hands and face)...and I have made a few brief and rather pathetic attempts to provide her with Montessori-inspired tasks, manipulatives and puzzles.

Here she is with a basket of  number cards (1-20) I made for her to explore.  She is ball-obsessed, hence the theme:

(You'll notice the very non-Montessori mess in the background...)


The last few days, mama-guilt has taken over a bit.  So today, I got my act together and made her a pouring job - two small glasses, one filled with rice, one not, on a tray.  Frankly, it didn't go well.  She has never really gone for the pouring jobs at playgroup (kind of my reason for wanting to try it), and this was no exception.  She poured the rice a few times, then ran off to do something else.

Right, thinks I.  How do I make this fun for her?  Some pink food colouring and some pink and purple beads later, my little glasses of rice looked quite inviting (bad photography aside - it was very dark and the camera just wouldn't focus):

Well!  I am proud to report that it was a big hit!  She sat there for probably half an hour (not bad for a nearly 2 year old), pouring and pouring and pouring.  Then, she asked for a spoon.  And without prompting spent another few minutes spooning the rice from one glass to another:

From the look on her face, you can see how much fun she was having. At one point, she was shouting with excitement, "Oh, THERE'S a pink bead!  THERE'S a button!  THERE'S a purple bead!  I found FOUR!"

Then, she spent another good twenty minutes exploring all the beads inside the rice - and to do so, she had to use the pincer grip in order to extract individual beads from the glass!  Then, she happily sorted the purple beads into a small pile, and the pink beads into another pile.  (No prompting or intervening from me at all, other than to take a few photos).  Here she is holding her favourite pink bead:

Her hunger for learning just AMAZES and humbles me.

Who knew so much learning could come from a little glass of pink rice and wooden beads?

Montessori Monday - One Hook Wonder