My kids could have been at school

Today we woke up with next to nothing planned. We decided to make the best of the winter by taking a picnic lunch and setting out to find some snow. We drove towards the Tahune rainforest and took the Hartz  Mountain turnoff.

It's all dirt road from the turnoff. We probably drove about fifteen minutes up the narrow road until we turned a corner and suddenly there was snow beside the road. There was no shortage of excited squeals from the back of the car. 

We kept driving until we couldn't go any further. The front bumper bar was dragging through snow and it was thick on either side of the tyres from 4wd vehicles before us. We left the car in the middle of the road and clambered out of the car to have a look.

We all threw some snowballs and climbed up the side of the road in the slippery white snow, loosing our footing when we weren't expecting it. Then we built a snow person and decorated it with bark, stones, and my scarf. Angus told us that the snow was "hot" which we assume was because his hands were burning from holding a little piece of it.

After we tired of snow we had to drive in reverse to get down again, there was nowhere to do a U turn safely in the snow.  We reversed a couple of km's and then found somewhere dry to turn easily. Then we headed for the picnic ground.

The picnic ground is such a pristine area, just outside the national park. We set up camp at a table there, ate our lunch, which was sausage sandwiches on homemade bread with baby rocket and home laid eggs with balsamic vinegar, chocolate and shortbread. 

Then we lit a fire using lots of wood that we found on the ground. It was quite wet so it took a good while to get it going, but once we did it definitely took the chill away. It was probably about 5C.  Then the big kids ran around and explored, finding lots of cool stuff down by the river for Stylish's frog tanks, and playing with toy cars, and Angus and A and I kept warm by the fire. Angus had lots of booby. 

In keeping with out new unschooling of food, I handed out liberal servings of shortbread biscuits as we headed to the picnic spot, and Spikee happily ate two home laid boiled eggs for his lunch.

THIS is why we moved here! In Sydney 20mins driving would take us to a large shopping centre ... here it takes us to a National park and in winter, to snow. 

l like unschooling!

I really like unschooling the kids! I've been a schooling mama and it just didn't gel with me.

I never liked washing and ironing uniforms, packing lunches that I knew only ever got thrown out or went mouldy before I could find them, homework fights, waking the baby to get to school for collection on time, having to hand my daughter over to someone else and needing THEIR permission to parent her between 9 and 3 and many many more!

What I like about unschooling, or natural learning, is that we can really plot our own lives. We can go for a day trip or a holiday when it suits us. We can get up as early or as late as we like, and the same goes for sleep. The children can learn about what interests them, and by following their instincts they learn about so many other things that I won't even attempt to list. I am the one who knows where my children are at, and I don't need to wait for a report card. I know that my kids socialise with lots of different children, that are all different ages.

In fact, come to think of it, I think I love everything about natural learning! And here's an update on all the things that have been happening lately.

Angus is now crawling and sitting up and babbling lots, and he is threatening to get a tooth. He loves playing with everyone, and is interested in the pets and all his toys. He loves having a bath with me and Spikee and his favourite bath toy is his bath book.

Spikee is learning lots about how computers work, and he likes doing lots of typing, changing colour and font, navigating his own way around youtube, and some dinosaur games we found on the www. He is still interested in geography and when last seen was wandering around with an atlas telling us where South America and Tasmania are, and that South America is much bigger.

Stylish has taken herself off to her first girl guides meeting this afternoon, with another little girl who unschools about two kilometres from us. She's also bee regularly attending rag rugging classes and making significant progress on her rag rug, which she seems rather pleased with. She's been doing lots of art, drawing horses and frogs, and last week she decided to write an essay about dart frogs. She wrote them most amazing essay, using an extensive show of vocabulary and scientific understanding. I asked her what she would like to do with frogs when she grows up and she told me that she would like to go to South America (possibly explaining Spikee's interest in that particular continent) and discover a new species of frog, and help to classify some other species. She then informed me that there are about 22 new species discovered each year. I am so thrilled with her plan!

Frogs, for a change

Here is some art Stylish has done lately. She's doing a very large project at the moment, documenting lots of Australian frogs and drawing pics of them all. Can't wait to see the finished product!

She is so good at drawing frogs she just copies the picture, these are not tracings.

Frogs and The Grand Prix

Spikee has been taking a lot of interest in car racing and he and Stylish have set up a big race track in the hallway. They spend hours picking the fastest car teams and having races, measuring winners with a ruler in some complicated fashion that eludes me completely. The Mr.Men obsession continues unabated, and recently when he had a cold he spent nearly all day in bed with either me reading the books or watching the stories on youtube. Since making daisy sandwiches he's developed a real interest in making his own sandwiches.

Stylish has been busy with her frog tank again. Yesterday she took all her hard earned pocket money, caught a bus by herself to bunnings, bought black silicone and foam expander, and then came home all by herself. I was so proud that she managed to navigate her way there! She even remembered to call me upon arrival. Last night she made a rocky background out of the expander, this afternoon A helped her to cover it with black silicone and peat moss. Apparently the moss will grow! So the tank should look really good one of these days, I can't wait to see the finished product. For now it's lying on its' side on the front porch, drying.

general happenings ....

Stylish has decided to start a new blog with animal information. I'll help her to do that tomorrow, stay tuned! She also has a new pen-friend which she seems to be enjoying. And she has recently gone back to her old on line game with horses, I'm hoping that now she's more de-schooled than she was when she first got involved with that, it won't take over her life like it did last time. Limits will be placed on it if it looks like it's getting out of control. I much prefer self set limits though .....

Apparently her male frog is calling early in the morning and waking her up, she's not impressed with his efforts  (I personally admire him, waking her up takes some effort!). We gave our old rat a few days to grieve, and then yesterday purchased a tiny little timid baby rat from some ghastly pet shop - it cost $20!!! Over the course of yesterday and today the poor wee thing is much less skittish, she's obviously not used to being handled. 

Spikee is asking more often about writing. He asks me to write a certain word, then scribbles over it, I figure he's heading for some more controlled efforts ... in the next five or ten years. He's also learning to read numbers, and gaining some competency bit by bit at number recognition. His counting is really taking off too! 

Yesterday he asked me if he could plant some seeds so I showed him what seeds we had and he chose some corn and peas, filled a pot with soil from the compost heap, dug little holes with his fingers, and the pushed the seeds in. He very enthusiastically watered them several times yesterday, and then again today. 

Tomorrow we're gonna be making a clock out of a lemon - don't ask me how - so we'll no doubt have pics to show off! And Spikee will be watering the garden again ... and again.

Summer taking over Spring

We've had some insanely hot weather for Spring, days nearing 40C and it's only Spring. Admittedly it's nearly Summer, but we seem to have bypassed Spring, which is a shame because I love the in-between seasons! Extreme weather is no friend of mine.

We have spent the week watering the garden constantly, and covering the more delicate of the seedlings over with umbrellas during the heat of the afternoon sun. The pet rats started behaving strangely this afternoon so we had to move them outside and spray them with cold water. They soon perked up and wandered about chomping on grass and other goodies.

Stylish has been busily decorating the indoor cage for the rats with hand sewn hammocks, and various things for them to climb on and rest in, they are loving life! And she learns so much from her little projects. Needle craft is such a useful skill, as is caring for pets, and providing all their sustenance, which she does with vigour!  

Her pet frog is starting to call for a mate. I think he should be re-named Pavarotti, but .... what would I know. Their names are Hansel and Gretel. She hopes they will breed and that she can sell them for billions of dollars. Owing to the fact that the two she has cost her $50 of her hard earned pocket money, I think it's possible that she can make something off their breeding habits. 

Spikee has developed a sudden interest in writing so I bought him a wipe clean numbers book and he is happily tracing the numbers (well, scribbling on them anyway). He amazed us all with his ability to circle certain things and draw lines between things that are connected - like a lamb and a ewe, a foal and a mare. He rather impressively understood their relationship of mother and child, which I was interested to see. Sometimes we forget how many things small minds can absorb in their daily existences. Who ever compared them to sponges was onto something. 

Watching the children learn by simply living reminds me each day that the natural learning process works! I know that I struggle with de-schooling myself, more than the children struggle with it, especially Spikee because he has never been institutionalised. I really wonder about how literacy develops without a structured system being imposed on the children, but from discussions that I've had with other parents .... it just does! How could a child grow to adult hood without learning to read in our culture? Our culture relies so heavily on reading and writing skills, that it would be impossible!  Having grown up with an English teacher as a mother, this is really departing from my own early belief system though, and that's why I often have questions or niggling worries. However in a recent discussion on a forum I frequent a member told me that an illiterate adult can learn to read, or learn the skills which make reading possible, in just 30 hours. With Stylish being fully able to read by the time she was pulled out of the institution, I never witnessed the amazing ability to self learn that so many natural learning families have experienced. I guess I just have to resign myself to a bit of waiting now that I have that information on board!

pics!

Another busy weekend!

This has been a busy week end! We did plenty of gardening as a family, and Stylish finished making the cover for her frog tank. We also put a lay-by on a heap of camping equipment for our upcoming xmas camping holiday! We are now the proud owners of a camp kitchen and a table with built in chairs. 

The frog tank looks amazing now! Stylish put so much hard work into it, and it really paid off. For some reason or another the lid that the tank came with (she bought it with pocket money, off ebay) was no good so she needed to make one. She did lots of research - google is her friend - and worked out that with some wood and some fly screen she could make a more suitable lid. It was an exercise in many areas .... but it was a PRACTICAL exercise in them, and she enjoyed it because she wanted to do it. The measuring is maths, the budgeting was maths, the whole process was artistic, it is a science lesson to care for frogs .... I could go on, but I will spare you.

After a trip to the local hardware shop to buy two planks of wood and a metre of fly screen, she set about measuring the tank, cutting the wood to size, nailing the planks together, and then attaching the fly screen. She was a bit disappointed with the finished product but I think it's great! She is unhappy because it is a tight fit over the tank, but it's not TOO tight at all! And it slides on tightly enough to keep the little froggies in!

The garden is going really well. We transplanted all our mustard and rocket seedlings yesterday. They're now in a big, was-unused, black recycling box, surrounded by organic sugar cane mulch. They seem to have transplanted really well. The only problem we had was the sun was too hot for them the last few days, so we put Spikee's umbrella over them and they were doing fine ...until our CAT SAT ON THEM!!! Suffice it to say he will NOT sit on them again because I have put bbq skewers all the way through the box. I suspect it will be an uncomfortable resting place now!

We also turned our compost heap into a new garden bed, planted rock-melon, corn, and pea seedlings in it, covered it in mulch and news paper and tied blue wool all around the patch to keep Spikee off it. We have started a new compost heap at the back of the garden and will aim to have it in use as a garden in the next month, as our current seeds sprout and get to a good size to go out into the wilds of the garden where there are snails, cats and children everywhere!

I feel like I spend my whole life saving water from our washing machine and carrying it out to the garden beds. We have an elaborate system of plastic juice bottles, and buckets, that I catch the water in, then I tip it into the watering cans and lug it out. It's a time consuming process, but I know that I've saved hundreds of litres of water simply by using our grey water on the garden beds.

garden pics

strawberries!

life goes on ...

This week has been a really productive gardening week. We've planted lots of seeds, and lots of our seedlings are sprouting enthusiastically. Two trays of seedlings (rocket, mustard, and bok-choy) will all need to be planted out either this week end or next. I'm pleased to say that some of our crop specifically designed for fussy eaters has started growing. These include rock melon, watermelon, strawberry, and corn.

Stylish has been busily organising life around reptiles and frogs. She recently obtained her amphibian 1 license, and bought (using her own pocket money that she saved) two dwarf tree frogs. She intends to use them for breeding purposes and hopes to earn millions. She's very enterprising, in an 11yr old kinda way! Her next goal is her reptile license, and a blue tongue or a bearded dragon, but we'll wait until we get home from our xmas fishing/camping trip to start worrying about that.

not neglecting our blog - no really!

We're currently in far North Queensland!

We decided we had to escape winters clutches and as such, have headed pretty much all the way up Australia! We have succeeded, it's Summer here, although the locals say it's cold. 

We're spending our days doing touristy stuff, like going to Cairns Tropical Zoo, Hartley's crocodile farm, and Dream World as we went through Brisbane. Spikee has been loving all the crocodiles, and so have I! I think Stylish is impressed too but she maintains her uber cool heading for teenage disinterest level in public. Although she did accidentally crack a smile when they had their photo taken with a baby crocodile, and Spikee was mesmerised, and positively BEAMING in the photo!

At night the kids run rampage in the garden finding frogs, geckos and *shudder* cane toads. I always knew there were lots of cane toads but seeing them is really something else. They are as revolting as their pictures suggest, ugly, warty, and unfortunate looking creatures. Stylish is hell bent on seeing a green tree frog in the wild and the womyn we're staying with says that when it rains they climb on her windows, so we live in hope. I'd like to see one too, apparently they're huge!

A few more quiet days are coming up, we're going to go to the local beach tomorrow, but I hear you can't swim at this time of year coz there are sting rays in the water. And fresh water swimming is out of the question when you've seen some of the gigantic crocodiles we've seen the last few days. The purpose of our visit to the beach is to find fire wood so we can have a BBQ, but I' m not sure how Stylish will take the non swimming news.

the frog!