Bananana

Littletree’s circus troupe performed at the Tweed Valley Banana Festival last week. She had a great time, getting to see the Banana Festival Parade, and the crowning of the Banana Princesses and Queen.

The Banana Festival is kind of funny. They have a parade with floats, and a  great big banana drives down the main street, and people throw bananas around at each other.

Only this year, there’s a banana shortage, and while we are able to get local bananas from farm stalls in the area for around $4-$6/kg (still expensive for this time of year, when they’re usually under a dollar), most folk in Australia are going banana-less and unable to get bananas for under $13/kg. So while we’re lucky in that respect, bananas weren’t really abundant enough to throw around willy-nilly.

I used to live in a town a few hours from here called Grafton where they celebrate the Jacaranda Festival every year. It’s much the same festival as the Banana Festival, only substitute for Jacarandas. There’s a big parade through the town, they crown the Jacaranda Princesses and Jacaranda Queen, and everyone gets drunk and throws jacaranda flowers at each other. Roughly halfway between the Tweed and Grafton is a town called Casino, where they hold a yearly Beef Festival. They have a parade and crown the Beef Princess and Beef Queen. I’ve not been to Casino’s festival, but I imagine getting drunk and throwing steaks around isn’t my cup of tea.

Anyway, Littletree’s performance was awesome and she had a great time

Crystal Castle

Last week Homeschool group went on another adventure to Crystal Castle, where Gyoto Monks were building a new stupa. The kids got to make prayer wheels, join in meditation classes, and roll up sheets of prayers to go into the stupa

We finally had some real winter weather – it was only 15 degrees Celsius (59F) and cold rain! But the kids still had loads of fun exploring around the beautiful gardens and soaking up crystal energy

Our homeschool group has also started a few extra activities – a craft group for older kids, as well as weekly French and Spanish classes :) So Littletree is brushing up on her Spanish!

Meet May

The newest member to join the majikfaerie family – May. She’s a home-schooled girl, also eight years old, just like Littletree. May came to live with us for a while because her parents are on a three-month long seminar cruise in Hawaii, which is really boring for kids.

May and Littletree are getting on great. May’s parents are incredibly rich, so she doesn’t know much about living in a normal house, but we’ve been showing her how everything in the kitchen works, and how to do things like sweeping the floor and getting the fire started.

May is exactly the same size as Littletree, which is great, because May’s luggage didn’t arrive yet, so they’re sharing clothes and accessories. Littletree is totally ecstatic to have a kid her age staying with us; the two of them are getting along so well, making up songs and dances together, playing games, trying on clothes, building cubby houses… it’s loads of fun!

Yay for new best friends!

Ear piercing

Littletree got her ears pierced. She’s been *begging* to have it done for a verrrry long time. Being as she’s Brazilian, this probably means she’s finally a “real” girl. In Brazil, pretty much every baby girl has her ears pierced in the first day or two after birth, often before even coming home from the hospital. I was constantly complimented on my beautiful baby boy, and on correcting people, they insisted she can’t be a girl, because she didn’t have earrings. After all; how else can one tell boys from girls?!

Anyway, I insisted that we do the piercing with a proper piercing needle, rather than taking her to a shop where they use a piercing gun. I think the main reason people prefer to have piercing done with a gun is they get scared by the word “needle” (which we’re all sure is going to hurt), and for the most part, people don’t know any better. But talk to piercers and it’s fairly unanimous.

The gun is more painful, and less safe. You’re basically looking at the difference between the gun, which uses force to push a blunt stud through the earlobe, essentially ripping a hole in the flesh. Ouch! This means poorer healing, more pain and more chance of infection. It’s also very likely the piercing will create hard scar tissue and can create skin tags, lead to abscesses and other nasties. What’s more, the piercing gun can’t be properly sterilised between customers.

Piercing with a proper needle is quick and relatively painless. The needle is surgically sharp and hollow, just slides right through. If you’ve ever had an IV line put in, imagine having that done, and then imagine comparing it to putting the line in not with a sharp needle, but just punching in a blunt stud. Yikes! Proper piercing equipment is either sterilised (usually with an autoclave) or disposed of immediately. Healing is faster and cleaner.

Personally, I’ve had a lot of piercings done, my early ear piercings were all done with the gun by shop assistants in malls. Those ones, even 20 years on, and some of them that haven’t had any jewellery in them for 12 years, still have hard lumps in them that have a tendency to get infecty. The ones I’ve had done with a needle were significantly less painful, and all healed nicely – barely a sign of them now, years after I’ve taken them out.

Anyway, there’s a strong movement amongst serious piercers to have the gun banned, but that’s enough of a rant from me.

Littletree is very happy with the result; she looks so grown up now!

Whale of a time

Yes, it’s been a while. I am going through some personal stuff that’s… well, challenging. Haven’t felt like blogging, but life goes on.

it’s been a long, bitterly cold winter. Two weeks ago we went over to Byron Bay with homeschool group to go whale watching. Frrrrreezing!

Okay, well, the sun was out, and nice to bask in, so it wasn’t *that* cold

And everyone went in swimming without getting hypothermia! But still, it’s the depths of winter, I swear!

The kids drew in the sand, wrote messages, and played hopscotch

And we all hiked up to the lighthouse to see whales

Loads of fun, and entirely edumacational!

Here is an amazing picture of the ocean, where a whale had just breached, but I was too slow to snap a photo. So, yeah; just a boring picture of the water.

Still, it was very cool to see whales, and the kids had a super-awesome time

We even got a glimpse of the famed Byron Lighthouse Goat!

Trust

Littletree has gone on a self-imposed screen-free and sugar-free break, she asked me to hide her computer for a week and to put away her pocket-money so she can’t get sweets and asked me to get extra fruit and veggies.

All this came about while Purple was away in San Francisco for a couple of weeks earlier in the month. I think she just missed him a lot, and turned to spending a lot of time watching DVDs and eating “junk” food to fill in time. After about a week of watching rather a lot of movies, she announced that her head wasn’t feeling good and she was having trouble sleeping, and not feeling good in her body. She identified that it was because of spending too much time in front of a screen, and not eating well enough, and set about making a plan to get better.

Well, it’s been three weeks now, Purple is back, but Littletree is still avoiding sweets, and goes days at a time without turning her computer on. Today was the first time in ages she bought herself chocolates and sat down to watch a DVD.  Then she begged me to make a hearty veggie soup for dinner, with extra kale and garlic.

I’m so impressed with the way Littletree makes healthy choices for herself. She knows her body and is able to recognise what she needs, on her own. I firmly believe this is because she has a 100% unhindered, self-regulated diet. And most of all, because she is trusted.

Without going into the details of how it works, what it comes down to is having an intrinsic trust of the child. It's sub-consciously saying to the child: ‘Of course you'll make healthy choices and I absolutely trust you to do so’. From that, the child gets the message that she is trusted, and therefore trustworthy, and thus, can trust in herself to make the right choices - as all children will, given the right support.

I’ve been talking about this kind of trust all week, and struggling to really define it – it’s a kind of trust that’s bigger than ‘trust’; it’s something so intrinsic and whole-spirit. Then someone sent me this quote from Dr Jeremy Hayward:

"In order to communicate very openly with the world, you need to develop fundamental trust. This kind of trust is not trusting “in” something, but simply trusting. It is very much like your breath. You do not consciously hold on to your breath, or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature. In the same way, to be trusting is your very nature. To be trusting means you are fundamentally free from doubt about your goodness and about the goodness of others."

While the prevailing cultural belief in our society is that children are inherently bad; that they won’t behave “properly” and that if given the slightest chance, they’ll only get up to no good, be spoiled, or worse. Children are treated based on the notion that they need to be trained, restricted and restrained to ensure that they can’t act on their inherent “badness”. Any parent or educator who isn’t constantly vigilant to reign in the inherent unruliness of children will be seen as negligent.

Trusting in children is about coming from an intrinsic belief that children are inherently good. And they *are*. Children truly are good, and they will behave in the manner they are expected to – not necessarily in the way we tell them to with words, but in they way we show them they are supposed to act. For the most part, we show them that they’re bad and going to get up to mischief. We show them that they are going to fall and hurt themselves, that they will eat nothing but sweets and junk if given half the chance.

But with true trust, in an environment that models respectful behaviour, children are perfectly wonderful, social beings. They do the right thing. They learn from their mistakes, rather than being protected from making them.

I trust Littletree. I trust her to go exploring in the candy aisle at the supermarket. I trust her to know how high she can safely climb. I trust her to behave like a sane, healthy, respectful human being. And she does.

(Littletree on a climbing wall)

14% Green

I’m branching out!

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time quickly realises that I like green. A lot.

I am frequently dubbed “green lady” or “green faerie”. Because, for the past ten years or so, I’ve worn exclusively clothes that are green.

All my clothes are green – everything, right down to my bras and knickers. Well, I shouldn’t exaggerate; I don’t wear *only* green, I also wear Forest and Hunter and Sage and Emerald and Kelly green. Asparagus, Fern, Jungle, Moss, Pine, Shamrock, Bottle green, and occasionally Lime and Khaki.

My closet is a pleasing assortment of greens, it makes me happy to see all the shades, and feel like I’m in a lush forest.

People frequently give me green things; just because they’re green. Or they assume some random lost object they’ve found *must* me mine, because it’s green.

So when I went around the village on the weekend sporting a new pair of brightly-striped rainbow socks, it caused quite a stir! I love my new socks, and they are, in fact, only 14.28% green!

This could be the start of a revolution!

Science on the Beach

We had a super awesome homeschool group this week! We met down at our usual beach; it was a gorgeous sunny day with clear, blue skies. It was actually warm enough to take off all the layers and bask in the sun.

And there were dolphins swimming in the water, just a few metres from us!

There was a much bigger turnout than we’ve been having lately; lots of old faces came along as well as some recently-joined members, so we had eight families.

Bella organised a bunch of science experiments for the kids to do, which was great. Science is, of course, hilarious fun!

The kids learned about air pressure

And surface tension and heat. You can’t pop a filled water balloon with a lit match

Chemical reactions – so much fun that can be had with bicarb soda and vinegar!

How oils and detergents react

And made awesome swirly patterns in milk

Once all the organised experiments had been demonstrated and tried out, the kids went crazy having a great time trying out random ideas, messing with the leftover bicarb, vinegar, food colouring, milk and balloons.

The best part was seeing how a group of about 18 kids ranging in ages from 3 – 12 were all collaborating together. There was no need to remind anyone to share, no squabbles to sort out. The bigger kids helped the little kids, the little kids learned from the older ones. None of them felt they couldn’t or shouldn’t interact with anyone else simply because they were different ages or genders or levels of learning and understanding. It was just a group of kids having fun, and learning was purely incidental.

Eventually, they all ran off to build cubbies in the bushes, and whittle sticks, and build sandcastles, and fill balloons with sand to make “eggs” to put in “nests”, and splash in the water, and watch the dolphins, and run around enjoying the sun…

Hooray for unschooling!