Christmas Popcorn

Littletree is pretty excited to be celebrating Christmas this year – she decided to decorate a tree, so we found a fallen branch outside and set it up for her to decorate

We don’t have all that much in the way of decorations, and not much of a budget to buy any, so we took a tip from my lovely friend Gramma Miri (who makes the most amazing custom-made Spirit Hoods) and made Popcorn Garlands to decorate around.

The first step being, of course, making popcorn

But as these things do with Littletree, everything turns to science. She observed the popcorn popping, and wanted to know how it works. YouTube delivered some fine slow motion shots of popcorn popping, which, of course, led us down a slow-motion videos rabbit-hole

But we did eventually make it back to popcorn, and naturally there has to be quality control.

Rigorous scientific testing of every aspect of the popcorn…

Littletree finally stopped eating long enough to actually thread some onto string and make garlands

yay!

And it looks great on the tree

Littlecat

Littletree is getting into acting lately, and has taken on BooBoo – a cat that occasionally visits us - as her study. Personally, I think she’s nailed it.

Or, alternately: Doctor! Help! My daughter thinks she’s a goat cat!

How long has this been going on for?

Ever since she was a kid kitten.

Back in the Swim

Just getting settled back at home again, and we’re off to home school group. The last meet up was at this awesome place called Island Quarry, which is a sustainable living arts centre formed around a lake in an old bluestone quarry that was abandoned in 1980.

It was really cool, and well worth a visit if you’re heading into Byron Bay for any reason.

The kids had a great time exploring the surrounds, swimming, kayaking and jumping off the cliffs.

 

There were even some crazy backpackers jumping off the high 20-metre cliffs, I managed to capture some video.

And this all counts as educational… just a study on the practical applications of gravity, right?

Shana Tovah

Littletree’s Shana Tovah greeting

Happy Jewish New Year :)

Littletree’s been brushing up on her Hebrew…

Bon Voyage Littletree

Littletree and Purple left for Israel, so I’ll be home alone for a couple of weeks. It’s going to be the first time I’m not with Littletree on her birthday!

We had to get up at quarter to ridiculous to get them to the airport on time, but we were blessed with this awesome rainbow along the way.

roadside rainbows

I miss my little girl already, but we still get to talk on Skype a lot. They’re in Bangkok now for 2 days before flying on to Tel Aviv. I’ll join them in 2 weeks.

Balinese Music Workshop

This week our homeschool group hosted a Balinese music workshop with a traditional orchestra including gamelans – it was totally awesome!

The kids had a great time helping to set up

and then listened as the instructor taught us about the instruments and we learned a few words in Indonesian

We got a quick demo of all the instruments, and then it was time for the kids to have a go

They had a great time making a tremendous cacophony which eventually sounded like good music, here’s a short clip about halfway through (they did get better, but I didn’t film it)

Now we’re busy packing to go to the Australian Rainbow Gathering, not sure when I’ll get to post again :)

Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue

Sponsored by Nuffnang

We scored a promotional pre-release copy of the new Tinkerbell movie on DVD, which Littletree was really excited about. If you hadn’t noticed, Littletree is really into fairies (wonder where she gets that from?) and like most kids, loves getting cool stuff in the mail.

We sat down all together with some other neighbourhood kids to watch the movie, which is the latest instalment in the “Tinker Bell” series of movies about the fairy’s adventures before she met Peter Pan and the lost boys.

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue is the story of how a little girl called Lizzy, who is appropriately obsessed with fairies, catches Tinker Bell, and thus learns about fairies first hand – quite an unschooling moment really.

Of course there’s an action-packed adventure involved with all the other fairies – Silvermist, Fawn, Rosetta, Iridessa and Vidia embarking on a magical rescue-mission to save Tinker Bell and then to save all of fairy-kind.

Littletree really related to the character Lizzie, and was then inspired after the movie to begin a fairy project of her own. She went out to the fairy path we made in the garden and started making little fairy picnic areas and nice places to entice faeries in.

Littletree even made an extra serving for fairies with the new miniature tea set I bought her.

Littletree has already watched Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue another couple of times; she’s really loving it and we were so lucky to get a copy as it won’t be released on DVD till the 15th of September :D

Unschooling Conference Talent Show

I finally got the videos from the Unschooling Conference talent show edited and uploaded. The whole show was fantastic, I enjoyed it immensely – I would love to have filmed the whole thing, but I just have a couple of clips.

Here’s Littletree’s act – I only filmed half of it, and sadly the audio isn’t so great – you can mostly only hear the clapping and backing music; the lyrics are a bit hard to make out. Basically the song was one she made up about how the world is in danger and it needs saving and god gives her the magic to save nature with music.

Here’s a mixed clip of a few different acts

you can see more pictures from the conference at http://flickr.com/groups/australianunschoolingconference

Hula Hoop-la

Littletree started going to circus classes in town last month. She loves the hula hoop best. I went along to watch this week – I was amazed at how good she is with the hoop; even hooping while walking over the balance beam, and doing two and three hoops at once!

Here’s a little video clip of her hula hooping

Nestlé – Voiding Your Right to Water

I’ve talked about boycotting Nestlé before, and you might have noticed the links I have on this page. I’ve been refusing Nestlé products for more than a decade now.

I knew Nestlé was a deplorable company, but I stumbled across an interview clip with the CEO of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck, and I have to say, I had no idea just how terrible these guys are.

Brabeck starts off by saying that organic food is stupid.

“Today people believe that everything that comes from nature is good… A good example is the organic movement… but organic is not best. After 15 years of eating GM products in the USA, not one single illness has occurred from eating them to date.”

Which is a bold statement to make, considering the mountains of evidence contradicting him.

But then he goes right off into saying that the concept of access to clean drinking water as a basic human right is a radical, extreme notion held by NGOs. I had no idea the UN was a radical, extreme NGO.

“Water is, of course, the most important raw material we have today in the world… there are two different opinions on the matter; the one opinion I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution. And the other view says that water is a foodstuff like any other, and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value.”

What a coup! Not only should everyone feed their babies with Nestlé formula, but they should pay for Nestlé bottled water to mix it with too. Unless you listen to radical, extreme NGOs like the United Nations, and chose to BREASTFEED, which is safer, healthier, and free.

Anyway, the interview is so outrageously shocking it’s almost comical. Unbridled Capitalism at its best! You can see the tape here: 

I don’t believe that my boycotting will really make a difference to the company’s policy, but I personally can’t support Nestlé. I won’t go into it all now, but you can read HERE to get more information if you’re interested.

I’m off now to drink some water while it’s still free, and perhaps enjoy a little air before the price rise hits.

Tap!

One of Littletree’s friends gave her a pair of hand-me-down tap shoes, which Littletree is completely enamoured with.

She doesn’t really know how to tap dance, but she’s been avidly watching YouTube videos and practicing.

Express Yourself

I’m leaving today to drive down to Victoria for the Homebirth Australia conference, so I’ll be gone for a week. I’m pretty excited to see Anne Frye speaking.

But just to tide you all over till I get back, here’s one of Littletree’s recent songs, it’s all about expressing yourself, and only believing what your heart tells you, rather than what other people tell you to believe, and taking charge of your own body and life. :D

Ice Skating in Wonderland

Yesterday I organised an outing for our Home School group to go Ice Skating.

Littletree was ecstatic! She’s been begging me to take her ice skating ever since the last time we went (18 months ago) and the time before that (two years ago).

I took Littletree around one circuit,

and then she was pretty much good to go – she had the hang of skating on her own, more or less.

She had a ball, going around with various friends

It was great that a whole group of us were there – it meant I had a load of witnesses for when I went ass-up and fell. It was quite a spectacular; I was pretty much standing still, and somehow managed to slip backwards, got completely airborne and came down hard, flat on my back and head. Ouch! Then I managed to fall over again, trying to get up. It was pretty funny though.

The cold meant there was a lot of haze in the air that we couldn’t really see, but shows up nicely in the flash. Littletree and her friend, Princess had a hot chai to keep warm, and then a big group of high school kids arrived, so we decided we’d had enough and left.

Since Littletree had also been begging to go to the big cinema to see the new Alice in Wonderland in 3D, and my main argument against going was that it’s really far to drive to get there (the same argument I use against going ice skating – it’s 90 minutes from our home), I decided to get the most out of our trip, and we went to see the movie after the ice skating.

It was showing in a massive shopping mall – I think the biggest mall I’ve ever been in, times 100! It was scary. Thank goodness I had the foresight to photograph where I’d left the car so we could find it again! We were there a bit early, so we played “spies” around the shops – I would pretend to be shopping and the girls were spying on me.

The two girls LOVED Alice in Wonderland! I have to admit, it was a pretty fun movie. I’m a Tim Burton fan, though I prefer his older stuff, but I also have a thing for Helena Bonham Carter – she makes an excellent Red Queen.

After that, we did the long drive home, exhausted. I’m still aching!

Little Acrobat

Littletree is getting really into Gymnastics and acrobatics. She’s been practicing every day, especially since we were at the Rainbow Gathering and she was hanging out a lot with people doing acrobalance, and juggling and stuff.

Littletree really wants to go to gymnastics classes, but I haven’t been able to find any in our local area, so for now, she’s just on her own, doing tricks.

Here’s a little clip of her practicing

Tomatoes… inconceivable!

Littletree started reciting lines from a cartoon she’s been watching, Charlie and Lola.

She’s got all the lines down pat, accents and all. So accurately that at first, I thought she was watching the cartoon!

At first I might jump on the thought that she watches Charlie and Lola too much, but the reality is that she doesn’t watch it all that often, and I myself have a tendency to memorise quotes from films after only one or two viewings. Then I sit around for hours with my friends quoting and reciting endless quotes from Monty Python or The Princess Bride.

Littletree got the idea that perhaps since she’s so good at doing voices she could be an actor in movies. We talked a bit about what that entails; as soon as I mentioned having to always do exactly what the director says, she changed her mind!

Still, it’s a useful skill to have :)

Happy Solstice

It's the shortest day of the year! Littletree has been waiting for the start of winter for ages.

This year we celebrated by having a dinner party. I invited some friends over and made a special feast following the Chinese tradtion of consuming "yang" foods at the winter solstice.

I made ox kidneys in a mushroom sauce, served with Purple's Arabic spiced rice and dahl with a salad.

Preparing the kidneys was an involved process, starting with making organic stock 8 hours earlier. We bought the kidneys from the local organic butcher, and I followed a recipe from the book Nourishing Traditions.

Starting with cutting the kidneys up and soaking them in lemon juice (fresh lemons from my friend's tree) while the stock was simmering in the pressure cooker. Then I browned them in organic butter, set them aside to keep warm in the oven, sauteed mushrooms and then made the sauce - stock and red wine, reduced by half, creme fraiche added and reduced again, finally the browning juices added and simmered some more.

The whole process took most of the day, but the end result was delicious! It was my first time eating kidneys, and I was surprised how good they were. Though possibly that was also due to the preparation process.

We had a great evening, and enjoyed a bottle of "Bulls Blood" wine with it.

The next morning the local market was cancelled due to rain, so we all went down to the cafe to hang out and it turned into a spontaneous jam with a bunch of my friends.

Here's a video I made of the jam:

I had a fantastic Solstice, and ended up feeling empowered and gorgeous :)

Hole in the Wall

People often ask how unschooling works, and the main questions are generally centred around two things - how can children socialise if they're not in school, and how can they learn if they're not being taught.

The socialising question is one for another post, but anyone who knows my child, or even reads my blog would see that it's really a non-issue. Humans are social creatures, and children are born socialising. I don't see any reason to stifle that natural impulse by putting them in school ;)

As to learning, it's really about the same answer. Humans are born with a deep thirst for knowledge, and a profound ability for learning. The best thing we can do is to get out of the way. Children learn such a phenomenal amount of stuff - without being taught - before they ever get near a school.

One resource that I always want to point people to is Sugata Mitra's talk about the Hole-In-The-Wall project on the TED site. It's a fascinating video - a little long, and the best bits start maybe 7 minutes in, but the synopsis is that Mitra set up Internet computers in remote villages in India, where the children had virtually no schooling and no instruction in English, and left it alone. In very short time, the children not only taught themselves to use a computer and browse the Internet, they taught themselves English.

When Mitra came back to one village to check on the project, the first thing these children, who had previously had no exposure to English, said to him was, "we need a faster processor and a better mouse".

"We found that six to thirteen year olds can self instruct in a connected environment, irrespective of anything that we could measure."

"It was a demonstration of what a group of children can do without adult intervention."

"Primary education can happen on it's own."

"Learning is a self-organising system."

Essentially I believe that this kind of learning can happen all the time, with all children. My aim is to raise my child with love and respect, supporting her to follow her own learning. But mostly we're just having a lot of fun :)

Fill in

While the chicken soup really helped, I've still been coughing all week, feeling a bit sorry for myself and all that, so I haven't posted at all, sorry.

and I still don't have anything to post, so I'll entertain you all with a cute picture of Littletree with the lace parasol she found in a hard rubbish collection on the street (we washed it)

Purple playing flute in the park at our local homeschool group

The ever-gorgeous Química making me dinner

Purple and Littletree dancing (note the awesome incidental colour coordination)

And funniest of all; me solving a Rubik's Cube in under 2 minutes. Yeah, I know, 2 minutes is hardly a record of any sort (I think in this one it's really like 1:50 or something), and I'm really out of practice.

I learned to solve the cube in Africa, Purple told me a few tricks, and then I traveled from Cape Town to Cairo by hitch-hike, bus and once a boat, with my cube, and any time I was waiting for a ride, I would practice solving the cube. By the end of that journey I got really good at it!

Now we're all preparing for my birthday party - I'm celebrating my 30th tomorrow evening! (though my birthday is on the 17th)

Belly Dance

I'm finally getting settled in at home, and getting over the jet lag. It's been really nice to hang about with friends in the village, and Littletree is so happy to be home.

She's been practicing her belly dancing a lot, especially since Purple bought her a belly dancing costume for her birthday

The video is a bit dark, but you get the idea.

l

Last night we went to a little party at a neighbour's house (well, actually Littletree went with some friends, Purple and I just wandered down to check on her after a couple of hours), and they had a harp there, which Littletree spent ages playing on, while singing her current favourite song:

Earth my body,

Water my blood,

Air my breath and

Fire my spirit.

So now she really wants to get a harp. Not guitar or violin as previously desired. Ah well. One day when I'm rich ;)

Home School Camp

We went away for our home school group camp this weekend, which was a wonderful finish to a crap week :)

The camp was at a caravan park on the beach at Brooms Head, about 2.5 - 3 hours south of here. We packed up the car on Friday morning and drove down with Princess and Queen.

Brooms Head is a beautiful camp site, we had spaces to set up right on the beach, overlooking a beautiful lagoon.

It was pretty windy, but the weather stayed fine and sunny the whole time, which was lovely.

The experience totally concreted the idea of living in community for me. We were about ten families, and for the most part, the kids were all running around together, doing fun kid stuff, learning and having a fantastic time. They were totally free, and there was always enough adult eyes kept on them that I didn't have to worry about hovering over Littletree every minute.

The kids played a lot on the beach, exploring, collecting cool shells, rocks, seaweeds, sponges, urchins and starfish, building sandcastles and running around.

We all had some nice swims in the lagoon, which was perfect, as it provided a nice safe area for the littlies to swim in without waves or deep water. There were loads of big pelicans that we got a pretty close look at as well.

The kids also loved the steep grassy slope that rose behind the camping area. They spent ages rolling down the hill, and then sliding down on their boogie boards.

They also set up an elaborate roadworks game with toy witches hats and stop signs and stuff. It was great to see how the kids worked out all the rules of the game. They even played for a while at setting up a little roadblock on the driveway past our tents. The few drivers that came through were happy to play along :)

We did another weaving workshop, which was great, I made a little basket out of copper wire that Littletree propptly commandeered as her own.

Funnily, there was a playground at the camp site, but it went mostly ignored, the children shunning the swings and slides in favour of scrambling around the rocks and exploring the beach and playing in nature :)

We had a great weekend and I'm glad to be home and enjoying the sunshine.