Knitting

31 July 2013


This week, largely due to a long car journey, I have finished the cable section of my cardigan and am now working on the rib around the neckband.  I then have two button bands to knit, the underarm seems to close and a load of ends to weave in.  I am planning lots more projects in my head whilst I knit these last few rows.  I have loved this pattern and hope that the cardigan is a good fit when complete, it will get lots of wear if it does in our cold autumns and winters.  I may knit one up for my youngest too as the pattern is from baby to adult.

Despite reading lots two weeks ago this week I have barely read a chapter.  We have been busy elsewhere, outside enjoying the continuing sunshine we so rarely get in the summer.  I am falling into bed tired out rather than reading a chapter or two before sleep.

Joining in with Tami for this weeks work in progress and Ginny for Yarn Along a sharing of knitting and reading.

Moments...

29 July 2013

...this week of...

...happiness getting the garden weeded, a lovely afternoon with friends, my eldest having a friend over for a sleepover the first at our house.

...sadness at being laid low by sickness.

...creating raspberry jam, knitting my first complicated cables, Roman forts.

...reading The Devil's Acre by Matthew Plampin

...learning about numbers, Tudors, Dinosaurs, Evolution.

...thinking about my father in law who is in hospital.

...hoping my garden is alright whilst we are away this week.

...looking forward to spending time with an old friend this Sunday.

Connections

26 July 2013

I remember when researching home education reading about a home educated child going to a friends    house for a sleepover.  That one sentence put to bed the thoughts of others on the social aspects of education.  I was reminded of this as my eldest has had his first friend over for a sleepover last night.

When we told friends and family that we were going to home educated the most common question we were asked was, what will you do about the social side,  how are they going to meet lots of people like they do at school.  I was completely baffled by this as it was not something that I had even considered when thinking about home education.  I was more concerned about whether learning really could continue as it had been, child led, or whether I needed to start planning and researching to put lessons together for my children and about my own friendships, yes that's right my friends or lack of them.

The school experience is one where you are put together with all the children who are born within the same twelve month period.  You may have lots or nothing in common with them, this may be the perfect or worse environment for your child depending on their personality.  Furthermore whilst you spend a large proportion of you time with them there is actually little time to properly interact with them in a typical school day.  I would dare to suggest that the friendships between school children develop and flourish off the school premises rather than in it.

I don't remember having a group of friends whilst at school, there were children I played with but I rarely if ever played at children's houses other than those who lived on the same road as me and went to my school.  After I left school I went to uni, worked several live in jobs, moved around a lot, went travelling a lot and met lots and lots of people but made few if any lasting friendships, we were more like ships passing in the night.  I got married, found a good job that I loved and settled in the village I live in now.  When I became pregnant with my first child I did not seeking out other pregnant women  so when my child was born I knew no one who was also a first time mum,  I returned to work and was content with my life.  Then came the time when we had to decide about education for our eldest, at the same time I discovered I was pregnant.  I knew that school was not the place to send my eldest child, not right away, he would find the number of children in his class and school too stressful to allow learning to take place, the busyness of it would be too much.  So we didn't complete any forms to register for a school place and I gave up my job.  All of sudden I found myself at home with a young child and a baby and had cut off the only place I had regular contact with adults who I would not have called friends, but who I enjoyed the company of immensely.  I was slightly terrified,  I knew that if I my eldest was going to make friends I needed to too and it was likely to be mums I would be meeting up with, talking to and getting to know, this was totally new ground for me.

We took it slowly, my eldest and I, I am not sure who was holding whose hand in those early days.  We were often on the periphery of things taking tentative steps forward and then retreating to the safety of home to recharge.  We would go for days, weeks on our own.  We were finding our way.  I met some lovely people but it was like there was this line in front of me, a boundary that I could not cross to take things a bit further.  What I could not fathom was why, what was stopping me then it hit me like a hurtling train.  I remembered back to my six year old self, a friend who left, emigrated with her family, I can still remember her name and walking out of her house for the last time.  I spoke to my mum and realised very quickly that I had simply been afraid to make friends in the same way since because of how my parents dealt with that situation.  Perhaps they had not realised how important she was or perhaps they thought, as so many parents do, that I would get over it and move on after all children are resilient aren't they?  My feelings had been ignored, not validated so I had not thought them to be real, so friends were held at a distance, safely away so the hurt could not come back.

I have made peace with those feelings now and am slowly building friendships.  I am comfortable with a group of women in a way that I have never been in my life, I am not in the same place as some of them, but my comfort zone is getting bigger!  But I love where my life is right now, I cherish my time with my female friends and that when I need help and support I can and do ask for it.  We sit and talk and craft when we get together, we discuss openly so many issues that are important to us, we agree, disagree and argue. We laugh and cry together.

We are four years the wiser, my eldest and I, we have come along way in that time. He has friends who want to be with him and stay for a sleepover at our house, I have feel part of something that I hold dear and would be sad if it could no longer be.

Knitting

24 July 2013


Sometimes when you start knitting a project, even though you love the photos that entice you to knit, you fail to see that to complete it you need to knit and purl many long rows.  The body of this cardigan is 149 stitches of knit and purl for 16 inches, although I knit 15 as this will make for a better fit for me, which I thought I would never complete.  I have taken this with me everywhere this week even if I had only time to knit a row or two it has made the knitting, somehow, much easier to complete, I am a very slow purl knitter.  I had also forgotten that 15 inches of aran weight wool on 5mm needles knits up a lot quicker than using 4 ply on 3mm.  I have now joined the sleeves and have just started the first cable row.  I am really enjoying this project now.

I have finished reading the book I shared last week, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier which I loved.  It is the fictional account of the story behind the painting of the picture with the same name.  It is written from the perspective of the girl in the picture who is a maid in the house of the painter, Vermeer.  It is a wonderful book, one that I read in only a few days.  I have also read Why be Happy When you Could be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson this week.  This is an autobiographical story of the authors upbringing in Northern England in the 60s and 70s, adopted as a young baby this is a harrowing and honest story of her life with her adopted parents and the years hence including her search for her birth mother.  It is a story of hardship, no love, religion and emotional neglect despite this it is a wonderful read, one that I throughly recommend I will be seeking out other books by this author.  I am now reading a completely different book, The Devil's Acre by Matthew Plampin, set in Victorian England it is a story of intrigue, violence and mystery.  I am a few pages in and am enjoying it thus far.

Joining in with Tami for this weeks work in progress.

Home

23 July 2013

I have been reading a lot lately, those kind of books that you can't put down.  One of them has this wonderful passage:

    The Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade talked about home - ontological as well as geographical home - and in a lovely phrase, he calls home 'the heart of the real'.
     Home, he tells us, is the intersection of two lines - the vertical and horizontal. The vertical plane has heaven, or the upper world, at one end. The horizontal plane is the traffic of this world, moving to and fro - our own traffic and that of teeming others.
      Home was a place of order.  A place where the order of things come together - the living and dead- the spirits of ancestors and the present inhabitants, and the gathering up and stilling of all the to-and-fro.

Leaving home can only happen because there is a home to leave.  And the leaving is never just a geographical or spatial separation; it is an emotional separation - wanted or unwanted.  Steady or ambivalent.
      For the refugee, for the homeless, the lack of this crucial coordinate in the placing of the self has severe consequences. At best, it must be managed, made up for in some way. At worst, a displaced person, literally, does not know which was is up, because there is no true north. No compass point. Home is much more than shelter; home is our center of gravity.
     A nomadic people learn to take their homes with them - and the familiar objects are spread out or re-erected from place to place. When we move house, we take with us the invisible concept of home- but it is a very powerful concept. Mental health and emotional continuity do not require us to stay in the same place, but they do require a sturdy structure on the inside - and that structure is built in part by what has happened on the outside. The inside and outside of our lives are each the shell where we learn to live.


For the author, Jeanette Winterson, home was not a place of order or safety so when she was forced to leave at a young age she found that a small rug, she bought when she left, was her home, her map of all the places she stayed in in those early days after leaving home.

I read these few words four or five times when I reached them in the book.  I found them cathartic.  The home I grew up in was my centre of gravity, I had not been forced to leave when I did so but after I left I found myself moving often.  I lived in the same house for the whole of my memorable life until I left at nearly nineteen, before settling in my current house thirteen years later I moved at least twenty times probably more.  If I ever had to complete a form detailing everywhere I had lived for the previous five years I often had to attach an extra sheet of paper.  I always took the same few possessions with me for most of these moves, the few things that I could pack in my rucksack and, then when I came to own one, my car.  Each of the rooms I inhabited were the same the shape of the room and configuration of my possessions were different, but I now realise they could still be home,  like the nomads in the above quote that was my continuity.

It is also, I now realise, why when my parents moved recently, out of the house I spent seventeen years living in I did not feel any kind of sadness when I first visited their new home.  I dreaded that first visit, I thought I would find going to a new house, one that I have not and never will live in too strange but it was actually fine and still felt like a familiar and safe place.  It is filled with all the objects that are part of my childhood, that are familiar, that were my centre of gravity for all those really important years of growing up.  I hope I can provide the same for my own children.

Moments...

22 July 2013

...this week of...

...happiness watching and listening to my children playing together, river swimming, harvesting our first peas, my husband getting a job.

...sadness my husband returning to being an employee as self employment has not proved to be the right job for him it will mean some big changes for us when he does actually start the job.

...creating more picnics, lots of rows of knitting on a cardigan.

...reading finished Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, read the whole of Why be Happy When You Could be Normal by Jeanette Winterson I loved both of these very different books and could not put them down, now reading The Devil's Acre by Matthew Pamplin.

...learning about Romans, Archaeology, Greeks and Dinosaurs

...thinking about our plans for the rest of the summer and how we can fit everything in we want to do.

...wondering if the rain forecast this week is going to come, my garden really needs a proper water.

...hoping that we can fit in a visit to a local pick your own farm this week before everything is finished or picked!

...looking forward to visiting family next week and meeting my twin nephews for the first time.

Gratitudes

21 July 2013




Joining in with Taryn for her heartfelt Sunday tradition.

A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful.

This week I have been grateful for...

...the lovely flowers on the honeysuckle in my garden, the smell is divine and fills the garden.

...the sunshine enabling all my plants to grow.

...a chance to go river swimming twice this week, it is not usually hot enough where we live.

...time to read two books.

...a fun hot air ballon workshop at a friends house.

...a wonderful day at home, recharging, tidy, decluttering and chilling out.

...an afternoon nap when I needed a rest.

...reading stories to my children.

...filling our wood sheds with foraged wood ready for the winter.

...the lovely bookshop in our local town which has just opened, we have been with out one for over a year.

Rivers

19 July 2013

We have been swimming in rivers this week in an attempt to keep cool in the heat.  On Tuesday we made hot air balloons at a friends house but we struggled to get them aloft either because the paper we used was too thick and made the balloon too heavy or because the air temperature was so high it was not that different to the air in the balloon and it therefore was not rising.  To cool down from trying to fill the balloons by standing over a heat source, in already high temperatures,  we headed to a nearby river to cool down.  It was a great place to splash about, swim and generally cool down.

Today we have spent most of the day by the river, a different one to where we swam earlier in the week.  We had a long walk in from the car, 3km, but it is worth it.  We were joining one of our home ed groups so there were lots of adults and children about.  We were so hot from walking in the sun that the first thing we did was change and get in to cool down!  We spent the day in and out of the water, it was chilly so if you stayed in for any length of time you needed to get out to warm up before heading back in to cool down.  It was a great spot, you could swim, paddle or sit in the water depending on your preference.  I took a couple of fishing nets with us which were played with all day by various children, they used an empty lunch box of ours to empty their nets into to see what they had caught.  There were lots of fish and a few tadpoles amongst their catches.  We headed home tired and happy and could have stayed and played for several more hours but our tummies needed more food which we did not have.

I remember going river swimming with my parents and grandparents as a child, when the summers were really hot.  My youngest especially was in the water for most of the time we were there she fell asleep in the car on the way home and took herself off to bed when we arrived home, declaring she was too tired to eat.    I do hope that this weather continue so that we can have more days like today.

There are no photos accompanying this post as I failed to take my camera with me.  However even if I had I would not be posting them.  I have chosen not to post pictures of my children on my blog and I would not have had any pictures without children in them as they were in the water and all over the riverbank the whole time we were there.  I am also not sure I would have thought to get my camera out, we were all having such a wonderful time that it would have taken away the magic of the moment for me rushing to get my camera.  I have wonderful memories of today and that is enough for me.

Joining in with Friday's Nature Table over at The Magic Onions.

Knitting

17 July 2013


I have been knitting all sorts this week but mostly working on my Antler Cardigan which I really want to get finished before I start on Christmas knitting.  I know that if I don't it will not get finished until spring when it will be more than likely too warm to wear it!  I am nearing the end of the second sleeve, the body is progressing well too but still has a fair way to go.  It is actually great knit to do whilst out and about as the pieces are not too big at the moment and the yarn balls so big, 100g, that I do not need to lug extra yarn about.

I shared a hat I was working on a while ago and was playing the knitting game of yardage chicken, when you are not quite sure if you are going to have enough yarn to complete a project.  I did run out a few rows from the end!  So I searched on Ravelry to find someone who had finished a project using the same yarn who might have a bit left.  Well one lovely knitted replied to my messages and sent me  enough yarn to finish the hat, hurray.  Now that the hat is finished the weather has warmed up and I have yet to wear it, I knitted this for myself to wear on the cooler summer days and evenings, I am sure it will get used in the Spring and Autumn.

I have started a new book this week and can't put it down.  Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier is a work of fiction based on the painting of the same name by Vermeer.  The story is told through the eyes of the 'girl' a sixteen year old who becomes a maid in the painters household.  I am a few chapters in and am finding it a wonderful read.

Joining in with Tami for this weeks work in progress and Ginny for sharing of knitting and reading.

Balancing

16 July 2013

Welcome to the July edition of the Simply Living Blog Carnival - With Kids cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. This month, we write about keeping things simple with our kids. Please check out the links to posts by our other participants at the end of this post.
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When I became pregnant with my eldest I was working full time in a job I loved.  I worked throughout my pregnancy and went on maternity leave just before he was born.  I opted to return to work part time when he was nine months old, he attended a local nursery whilst I was at work.  I never felt rushed in the mornings as I had half an hour to do a ten minute journey to work and the nursery was on the way.  This worked for us for a few years until I got busier and busier at work.  I felt like I was trying to do a full time job in the eighteen hours I was at work. I was exhausted and knew that I had to do something about it as I was neither an effective employee or parent. As I could not resign from being a parent I realised that I would have to give up working.  This was not as easy a decision as I thought it would be.  I enjoyed the company of those that I worked with, as a parent I had met other mums but they were not like minded and I had yet to make any friends outside of work.   Then I became pregnant with my youngest and I knew I had to give up work as I was barely managing with one child, we also made the decision to home educate our eldest around this time.  When I walked out of work to go on maternity leave with my youngest it was a really sad day for me, because I knew I would never return and I was also anxious about where my future lay now.  I had worked all my life and always had my own income.

Now I know it is the best decision I could ever make.  It was really important to me that my child (when I had just one) was at the heart of our family.  It is still possible to do this when you are not with your child/ren all the time but you have to work much harder at it, when you are tired from being in paid work it makes it very tough.  My children are at the heart of our family and it is so much easier for me now that I am with them all day, every day.  This is far less exhausting for me and much simpler.  Had I continued to work I would have had to consider childcare for school holidays,  I would have had to take the youngest to nursery and the eldest somewhere else on the way to work, it would have made my life much more complicated.  I am sure that I would be able to cope with living in this way, but it is important to me that I am not coping, but enjoying life and, more importantly, being a parent.

We have also had my husband around alot for the last five years as well, as he became self employed around this time too.  This has made our lives very flexible indeed, we can do things as a family at our choosing.  However the work he has been doing has been slowly reducing to the point that our income has dropped considerably and we are dipping into our savings more and more.  He has recently applied for a job where he will return to being an employee if he gets the job it will a huge change for us as a family,  and I hope that we can find a new way to keep our balance and continue to keep things simple for us.

I feel that it is vital that each family finds what works for them.  I know of parents who work and manage their lives very easily.  I know of others who work and who find the school holiday arrangements a burden and a pain, I do wonder why they had children if they feel this way.  Whatever arrangements you choose I do feel it is so important to consider not only your own needs but those of your whole family when making decisions about work life balance.

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Thank you for visiting the Simply Living Blog Carnival cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. Read about how others are incorporating simple living and parenthood. We hope you will join us next month when we discuss celebrations!

Moments...

15 July 2013

...this week of...

...happiness celebrating two birthdays with friends children, the continuing sunshine, a day out in our canoe, finding the time to help my eldest sort out his bedroom which had become organised chaos!

...sadness that my husband has had to apply for a job as he is not finding enough work being self employed.

...creating more knitted flowers, a Roman soldiers shield, a knitted pig and lots of picnics.

...reading finally finished A Little History of the World and have now started Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier.

...learning more about Romans, wildlife of a local wetland area, dinosaurs and numbers.

...thinking about lots of ways we can enjoy being outside all year round, we spend a lot of time outdoors in the spring and summer but less so in autumn and winter.

...wondering if I need to get started on making Christmas presents soon, if I am to make them all in time.

...hoping I remember to pay my visa bill on time, I keep forgetting!

...looking forward to meeting up with friends this week that we have not seen much of recently.

Gratitudes

14 July 2013

Joining in with Taryn for her heartfelt Sunday tradition.

A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful.

This week I have been grateful for...

...salads, I love salads but it does need to be warm weather to appreciate them we have lived on them this week.

...a wonderful day out with friends to celebrate a birthday, the children had such fun playing with their friends for the day.

...hot summer afternoons spent swimming in our village outdoor pool.

...a local musuem with wonderful exhibits we sent a whole day exploring despite having been several times before my children love this musuem.

...washing drying quickly.

...the look on a friends child's face when she opened the birthday present I had made for her, I was concerned she would not like it but she kept in her hand for the next hour.

...a day out in our canoe with my family.

...being busy but not frazzled, getting out the house early enough to have a good day out and still have time to cook tea before the children are totally starving!

Wildlife

12 July 2013

We visited a local musuem today as it has an excellent Roman exhibition which the children wanted to see again following our recent visit to Hadrian's Wall.  Whilst we were there we just had to explore the rest of the museum and we found a wonderful temporary exhibition about a local estuary.  It is not somewhere we have visited before as it is a long drive from where we live, but this wonderful exhibition left us all wanting to pay the area a visit.  There were lots of examples of the wildlife that you find on the estuary which the children spend ages exploring.  We also picked up a booklet that we had seen mentioned on the Springwatch programmes that we watched earlier this year.  It has been produced by the BBC as part of their Summer of Wildlife project to get people reconnecting with nature you can download a copy here.





We are not really the target for this project as we already spend a considerable amount of time outdoors but I had a look at the booklet to see what it was all about.  It gives advice on how to get started and what equipment you might need.  There are twelve challenges for you to try which range from spotting nature as you walk to the shops, to going pond dipping, to building hedgehog houses, to taking part in nature surveys.  Most of the challenges are things that we are already doing but there were a few new ideas such as watching wildlife at dusk, we might need to do that when we are camping as if we were to sit outside for any length of time at home we would get eaten alive by midges!  The back of the booklet is a section that you can tear off and put on the wall to tick off the challenges as you complete them.  The children were both really excited about the booklet and challenges so we bought one home to complete.

If you are not confident to complete any or many of the challenges suggested there is a series of events run by the BBC and partners, all in the UK, which you could go to instead or as well.  We don't really need an excuse to get outside but now we have more reasons to spend the summer outdoors and for the really wet days and or evenings there is also a list of programmes that the BBC is showing over the next few months.

Something for everyone!

Linking up with Fridays Nature Table over at Magic Onions.

Garden

11 July 2013

I was reading a post that I wrote a month ago where I shared some pictures of my garden.  Until the last week it has been pretty cold, wet and windy in these parts so I was quite surprised at how my garden has grown and bloomed in the last month.  So without further ado here is my garden now, I attempted to take pictures in the same places but did not quite get all of them this time!

The top bed is a little greener now with left to right, cabbages, kale, onions, beetroot, carrots, turnip and shallots.  The strange looking stick in the middle is a homemade,  highly effective, bird scarer which is amongst the onions to stop the birds digging them up it is working....


The path up to the polytunnel is a mass of greenery, with potatoes and salad leaves on the left, and on the right the pea wigwam, rhubarb, the rosehip hedge in flower and a mass of strawberry plants which we have not planted and I guess were delivered to us by the birds....


The honeysuckle looks like wild hair on the trellis which now has a lovely carpet of creeping thyme underneath which you can just make out, the rest of the bed is a mass of plants, garlic and potatoes interspersed with self seeded salad leaves, red mustard, greens in snow and wild rocket....


The peas and beans are growing very slowly, I think this spot maybe a little too shady for them, although since the weather has warmed in the last week they have more than doubled in size...


I love the plant in this trellis, the leaves change colour in the sun, from green to white to pink in a rather beautiful variegation....


My neglected bed is an abundance of greenery, a Rowan tree, honeysuckle, euphorbia, hawthorn and underneath hundreds of wild strawberry plants, the birds love this part of the garden....


The pots on the patio are nearly ready to flower, above them is a wild and unruly honeysuckle which is also nearly in flower and the mint next to it has revived this year, last year there were a scant few leaves but I dug a lot of them up over the winter and it is back to its usual abundant self...


The green roof on the garage is in bloom...


Differences

09 July 2013

Welcome to the July 2013 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Learning About Diversity
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how they teach their children to embrace and respect the variety of people and cultures that surround us. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
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We humans are a diverse species we come in many shapes, sizes and colours.  Sometimes it would seem, when you read or watch items in the media, that being different is not a positive, there seems to be a desire to be the same.  Sadly this seems to start young and those of us that were bullied in school will, most likely, have been singled out for being for different.  I will never forget a comment made to me around the age of 12 about a friend of mine, why did I hang around with her, she's so fat, I was horrified on two fronts, firstly that anyone could say that about another person and secondly that being fat made you an unworthy person.

If we feel threatened our instinct is to defend oneself.  If someone feels threatened by another's difference their defence can manifest itself as a physical or mental reaction, hurtful words or actions.  The threat is sadly real to that person often due to a lack of knowledge, experience, respect and self confidence.  These are all things that we as parents can influence in our children's lives.  We can open their eyes to our diversity through books, documentaries and discussion.  We can bring people into our lives who are different to us and get to know them.  We can raise them in a respectful way by treating them as individuals, speaking to them as you would wish to be spoken to and listening to and validating their feelings.  We can provide an environment at home which will allow their confidence to flourish, letting them try things safely, giving help only when it is asked for, not comparing them to others and spending time with them and enjoying it not grudgingly.

These are not skills that can be taught, they need to be learnt slowly over time.  They need to be an integral part of family life.  I am confident that my own children are happy and confident with who they are.  That if they are not comfortable with a situation when they are with their friends they can, and do, say so and are respected for doing so, and when they are not they know that they can come to me and will be listened to and if they ask for it will help them out.

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Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:
(This list will be updated by afternoon July 9 with all the carnival links.)
  • A gift for my daugther — Amanda, a special education teacher for students with multiple exceptionalities, discusses at My Life in a Nutshell how she will enrich her daughter's life by educating her the amazing gifts her students will bring to the world.
  • The Beauty in Our Differences — Meegs at A New Day writes about her discussions with her daughter about how accepting ourselves and those around us, with all our beautiful differences and similarities, makes the world a better place.
  • Accepting Acceptance and Tolerating Tolerance — Destany at They Are All of Me examines the origins of and reasons behind present day social conformity.
  • Differencessustainablemum discusses what she feels to be the important skills for embracing diversity in her family home.
  • Turning Japanese — Erin Yuki at And Now, for Something Completely Different shares how she teaches her kiddos about Japanese culture, and offers ideas about "semi immersion" language learning.
  • Celebrating Diversity at the International House Cottages — Mommy at Playing for Peace discovers the cultures of the world with her family at local cultural festivals
  • Learning About Diversity by Honoring Your Child’s Multiple Heritages — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama looks at the importance of truly knowing your roots and heritage and how to help children honor their multiple heritages.
  • People. PEOPLE! — Kellie at Our Mindful Life is trying to teach her children to use language that reflects respect for others, even when their language doesn't seem to them to be disrespectful.
  • Call Me Clarice, I Don't Care - A True Message in Diversity — Lisa at The Squishable Baby knows that learning to understand others produces empathetic children and empathetic families.
  • Diversity of Families — Family can be much more then a blood relation. Jana at Jananas on why friends are so important for her little family of three.
  • Diverse Thoughts Tamed by Mutual Respect — Amy at Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work thinks that diversity is indispensable to our vitality, but that all of our many differences require a different sort of perspective, one led by compassion and mutual respect.
  • Just Shut Up! — At Old New Legacy, Becky gives a few poignant examples in her life when listening, communication and friendship have helped her become more accepting of diversity.
  • The World is our Oyster — Mercedes at Project Procrastinot is thankful for the experiences that an expat lifestyle will provide for herself as well as for her children.
  • Children's black & white views (no pun intended … kind of) — Lauren at Hobo Mama wonders how to guide her kids past a childish me vs. them view of the world without shutting down useful conversation.
  • Raising White Kids in a Multicultural World — Leanna at All Done Monkey offers her two cents on how to raise white children to be self-confident, contributing members of a colorful world. Unity in diversity, anyone?
  • Ramadan Star and Moon Craft — Celebrate Ramadan with this star and moon craft from Stephanie at InCultureParent, made out of recycled materials, including your kid's art!
  • Race Matters: Discussing History, Discrimination, and Prejudice with Children — At Living Peacefully with Children, Mandy discusses how her family deals with the discrimination against others and how she and her husband are raising children who are making a difference.
  • The Difference is Me - Living as the Rainbow Generation — Terri at Child of the Nature Isle, guest posting at Natural Parents Network, is used to being the odd-one-out, but walking an alternative path with children means digging deeper, answering lots of questions and opening to more love.
  • My daughter will only know same-sex marriage as normal — Doña at Nurtured Mama realizes that the recent Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage will change the way she talks to her daughter about her own past.
  • Montessori-Inspired Respect for Diversity — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells about her multicultural family and shares Montessori-inspired ideas for encouraging respect for diversity.
  • EveryDay Diversity — Ana at Panda & Ananaso makes diversity a part of everyday living, focusing on raising of compassionate and respectful child.
  • Diversity as Part of Life — Even though Laura at Authentic Parenting thought she had diversity covered, she found out that some things are hard to control.
  • Inequity and Privilege — Jona is unpacking questions raised by a summit addressing inequity in breastfeeding support at Life, Intertwined.
  • 3 Ways to Teach Young Children About Diversity — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama recognizes her family's place of privilege and shares how she is teaching her little ones about diversity in their suburban community.
  • Teaching diversity: tales from public school — A former public high school teacher and current public school parent, Jessica at Crunchy-Chewy Mama values living in a diverse community.
  • 30 Ideas to Encourage Learning about Diversity While Traveling — Traveling with kids can bring any subject alive. Dionna at Code Name: Mama has come up with a variety of ways you can incorporate diversity education into your family travels (regardless of whether you homeschool). From couch surfing to transformative reading, celebrate diversity on your next trip!
  • Diversity, huh? — Jorje of Momma Jorje doesn't do anything BIG to teach about diversity; it's more about the little things.
  • Chosen and Loved — From Laura at Pug in the Kitchen: Color doesn't matter. Ethnicity doesn't matter. Love matters.
  • The One With The Bright Skin — Stefanie at Very Very Fine tries to recover from a graceless response to her son's apparent prejudice.



Moments...

08 July 2013

...this week of...

...happiness spending three nights camping with the children, sunshine, a blooming garden, daddy returning home safely after a week away overseas.

...sadness that some good friends have moved away, we will see them less often now, the move was necessary for them but we at sad they have moved away nonetheless.

...creating bread by hand, cakes and biscuits, knitted flowers and a hat, sand castles and a tidy house!

...reading A Little History of the World by EH Gombrich.

...learning about Romans, fossils, light waves and numbers.

...thinking about wether I should take on a D of E assessment at the end of the month, it would be a big commitment and would mean I would have to leave my youngest for three nights and four whole days, she has never been away from me for more than a few hours.

...wondering why I can never remember to drink enough water in a day, especially in the current heat wave, I always feel better for it but....somehow it gets forgotten.

...hoping that we can fit in a day out canoeing this week, we have not been out for ages in our canoe.

...looking forward to a few weeks of being at home and being less busy!

Gratitudes

07 July 2013

Joining in with Taryn for her heartfelt Sunday tradition.

A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful.

This week I have been grateful for...

...sunshine, even if it doesn't last the few days we have had it this week have been restoring.

...a trip away with the children, camping.

...a slower pace whilst camping, I really needed it.

...being able to home educate my children and take them on trips when it suits us.

...time spent outdoors.

...the lovely homegrown salads we are eating.

...a new local veg box scheme which we have started to use, it is such good value and comes from a cooperative of farms five miles away.

...an afternoon with friends playing and walking by a river.

...swimming in our village outdoor pool in the sunshine.

Romans

06 July 2013


We love to read books in our house, they are often the first thing we reach for if we want to find something out.  When my eldest shows a real interest in a particular topic that usually means we have a large amount of books related to it strewn around the house, books that we own and ones borrowed for the library.  If I can find a suitable place to visit I will organise a trip out to consolidate the learning.  One of the recent topics has been Romans and we have visited various local Musuems which have small displays of Romans artefacts which have been found locally.  The place that we really wanted to visit tho was Hadrian's Wall a defensive fortification built at the edge of the Roman Empire.  It is thought that building started in around AD122 at the behest of the Emperor Hadrian, no surprises there, and stretches from the Solway estuary in the West to the Tyne river in the East a distance of 73 miles and crosses some wild, rugged and beautiful terrain.  We recently spent four days near a section of the wall, camping a short distance from the wall and near to the places that we wanted to visit.




We spent an afternoon at one of the forts on the wall, Housesteads, which would have housed a considerable number of soldiers and civilians in its time.  It is hard to imagine that many people living there.  The site itself has been extensively excavated giving you a good impression of the size of the buildings contained within the fort and the overall size of the fort itself.  We took a short walk from the fort along the wall itself, which is intact to height of about 3ft in this area, to a mile castle.  These were built at every Roman mile (approx 1500m) along the wall.






We also visited the fort, Chesters, which was a cavalry fort.  This had been less excavated than Housesteads but was no less impressive.  There was a wonderful bath house situated just outside the fort which showed what fantastic engineers the Romans were and how important sanitation was to them.  When you have a large number of people living in close proximity, as life would have been in the forts themselves, it would have been easy for disease to spread, I have no doubt that the bathhouses served to ensure that this risk was minimised.




On a day that was forecast to be wetter we headed indoors for the morning to the Roman Army Museum a interesting museum which had exhibits on the soldiers who are likely to have built the wall, on Emperor Hadrian and the wall itself.  It is run by a trust who also run Vindolanda a fort situated on Stanegate a roman road.  This fort and surrounding buildings, which we spent the afternoon exploring, was huge and has been extensively excavated by the trust.  There are regular excavations taking place each year you can read about them too!  The museum on the site was full of artefacts that had been dug up on the site which were a wonderful collection of items that would have been part of everyday life for those that once lived there.  There was also an exhibition on an amazing find, writing tablets, that had been perfectly preserved in the soil.  Despite the cold damp weather (cold enough to need hats, gloves, coats and scarves!) this was the best of all the sites for me and one that I will definitely return to in the future as it is likely to be different.


On our journey home we visited Birdoswold fort.  This was the least excavated of all the forts we visited but the site has been continuously lived on since the fort was built.  The old farm building is now a holiday cottage for groups.  We walked a section of the wall from here to an old bridge abutment which now stands in the middle of a field some distance from the river!  We had a long play by the river and found many fossils in the shale on the river bank to diversify our learning.

It was a wonderful place to spend a few days, we had a great time and learnt loads.  If you want to learn more about the Romans or add to what you have learnt its a great place to do that.

Outdoors

04 July 2013

I love to spend time outside, whatever the weather. It's a good job really as living in the UK we have great weather, it is completely unpredictable and means that you might have to wear hats and gloves in July.  I have spent the beginning of this week camping with my children on my own, perhaps I am mad, but no I don't think so.  I am happy being outside and confident in that environment so naturally I want to ensure that my children feel the same.

I had been looking at the weather forecast daily in the week leading up to us going away, not because I was considering backing out of our trip but to ensure that I had the right clothing with us.  When I was planning this trip a few months ago I invited another family to join us, they ended up booking a holiday elsewhere but I am pretty confident that they would have pulled out anyway.  The forecast was for cool temperatures, around 12°C, windy, light rain showers and full cloud cover everyday.  So I packed warm clothes, hats, gloves, scarves, waterproofs, thick socks and I also put in sandals, sun hats and light clothing we wore them all.  We had a day of sunshine and 18°C and another with strong winds, showers and temperatures around 10°C.  When it rained we covered up, moved inside if we could and enjoyed the weather.  When it was sunny we headed outside, basked in the heat and enjoyed the weather.  One evening it was really sunny and clear so after tea we headed out for an evening walk which the children loved.  We could see for miles, we were warm and happy and having a great time.

I noticed that the children were happy, really happy in a contented way there were no arguments, no disagreements, they talked things through in a way that made my heart melt.  After one day back at home it has all gone the arguments and disagreements are back.  I know there is a big drive to get people reconnecting with nature at the moment the National Trust published a report Natural Childhood last year, a movement called Project Wild Thing was launched recently,  the BBC has a Summer of Wildlife website packed with information and downloads to encourage us to reconnect with nature, the Woodland Trust has a wealth of information, ideas and downloads do free on its Nature Detectives website, and I know why.  When I spend more time outside than in I am a happier person and the last few days has proved to me that my children definitely are too so whatever the weather I am spending more time outside!