Lists Again...

Stylish has requested some schooly activities so I've given her a list of things which she is eagerly ploughing through. Here's a few things she has to do.

• I gave her a project where she has to budget for everything she might need when she moves out of home, and told her she would be earning $545pw. She had to find a house to rent, write a shopping list, meal plan, list non food items her house may need, and a few other things. Then she had to work out what the cost would be it it were divided with a room mate.
• A heap of maths work sheets, including fractions, long multiplication, time telling, percentages, and times tables
• Some comprehension work relating to the book she is currently reading "The Horse Whisperer"
• A project about cells
• A volcano diorama
• A wave experiment.

See how it goes! I doubt she'll do it all, but it's keeping her out of mischief so to speak, and she feels like she's being productive.

Spikee has been doing lots of drawing and painting, and we've been reading lots of stories.

Angus is very close to crawling and is practically sitting up by himself.

The Importance of Secondary Edumacation

We've always noticed that there's a shortage of older kids at our homeschool / unschool groups. and I've been forming a bit of a theory about this over the recent days. Bear with me while I bash it out for you!

I've noticed that a lot of people seem to think that now Stylish is in highschool I'll get over my "phase" and do the "right thing" by sending her to school. But I'd rather chew my leg off. The more I think about their well meaning, IRRITATING commentary, the more I begin to see why though. People who think it's ok to homeschool for the primary years but for highschool kids NEED a proper, state sanctioned edumacation, have totally bought into the idea that without a leaving certificate, children will FAIL FAIL FAIL. And you can't blame them for that because the state puts out a lot of propaganda to support that.

I'd like to address that first, just quickly though, because I've already raved about it in previous posts - I think. Think back to your last job interview. Did the interviewer ask you how well you had done in school? Or did they just want to know what life experience you had which qualified you to fill the available position? A leaving certificate is useful - but not necessary - for entering university, but not much else. Home schooled kids (yes, even unschooled ones) regularly enter tertiary education institutions, and they do quite well (thankyou very much!)

So, that aside, why is highschool so terribly important? In my experience .... it's NOT! Children learn very little in highschool, that will serve them later on. They learn to hate study, they learn that learning is only important if it's about things the state deems necessary, and they learn to smoke cigarettes and use sexist, homophobic, racist language from sun up to sun down. However, primary school is an entirely different matter. In primary school, children learn the crucial skills of literacy and numeracy. Literacy is the backbone of our society, and numeracy is handy too. I should note here that that is the intended purpose of primary school, it's not always the outcome.

So, no. I'm not going to send my daughter to school now she's in highschool. She is naturally curious, and driven to learn at her own pace, about things that she intends to use in her lifetime. She learnt to read and write and count in a school (although probably mostly at home when I think of it!) and she's learnt everything she's actually interested in, and using daily, since she was removed from the institution. Stop stressing your kids out about exams they're never going to need the scores from, stop stressing about them remembering the useless facts they're not going to remember in two years time (probably even two weeks after the final exam). Teach them to cook dinner, grow vegetables, care for living creatures, manage money, and let them focus on what they're interested in. The world has enough worker bees, we really need some more free spirited queens! So my theory is that many people, even home schoolers believe that the most important stuff in highschool. And my belief is that this is simply not true.

I love my tall kid!

Stylish went to bed leaving the light on in the rumpus room, so I went in to remind her to switch it off and she was writing in her diary. She invited me to sit down and she read me some entries. I was so moved when she read me the entry from the night Angus was born, it was so funny, and so joyful that I was crying happily while she read. Although I did not give her the gift of a birth, I have given her the gift of being part of a birth. I know that, should she choose to have children, they will be born at home. I'm so proud of the young woman she is, she's smart, funny, helpful, thoughtful, and she can also be the complete polar opposite of all those things but ... she's a tall kid, we expect that.

Lately she's been taking more of an interest in her appearance and her taste in clothes is quite fluid. One week she likes flowery flowing things and the next week I have to fight her to get her into anything but skinny leg jeans. I refuse to buy the hideous skinny leg things, but if she takes her pocket money to vinnies and buys them herself I grit my teeth and cope. I find myself really liking some of her clothes and really detesting other items. The amusing thing is that if we go shopping together, everything I show her is AWFUL and results in multi syllabic use of my name ("mUuUuUm, omg you're SOOOO embarrassing!") but if I bring home the same item a week later she is often grateful, and happy to try it on with 50 possible accessories.

It's funny how we love our kids little and wish they would never grow up, but at the same time we burst with pride at all their new stages.

Hey, like stop dissing teenagers, like!

As the mother of a child entering the teenage years head first, I've decided to share some of my feelings about the way our society treats teenagers. We spend years forcing children to be independent, forcing them to sleep on their own, use the toilet, feed themselves dress themselves, sending them away from us for six hours a day and many other historically odd practices. Yet as soon as they hit twelve or thirteen and want to flex some of their independent muscles we start wishing they were babies again.

As a whole, society has unrealistic expectations of teenagers. People literally can't stand them. I have heard countless people complain about the behaviour they have witnessed teenagers exhibiting in public - or at home, but what people seem to forget is that teenagers are not adults, and expecting them to sit quietly, politely conversing. on the bus when there are members of the opposite sex present is insane! You may well be tired out from your day at work, and concerned with relaxing, but this is hardly the fault of the teenagers you encounter.

What people forget is that teenagers are just children, tall ones, pretending to be grown ups. No one batts an eye at a two year old pretending to talk on the phone or cook and serve food, so it baffles me that we don't grasp the need of adolescents to play. Play grown ups, with boy friends and girlfriends, play responsible people, able to confidently make their own decisions, play dress ups (in skinny leg jeans and makeup) and play at navigating their way successfully through life. When you see them engaging in loud, obnoxious behaviour, try to remember that they're probably on their way home to eat the food their parents have cooked, have their clothes washed (although they often don't see how dirty they are) and "chillax" on the sofa watching Channel V.

Another thing that strikes me as absurd is the way adults demand respect from a bunch of tall kids with raging hormones, that they offer no respect to in return. Respect is a two way street! I remember when I was a teenager I would sometimes encounter older people who were simply rude to me because of my age. Why on earth should a teenager behave respectfully whilst they are being judged and disrespected? Keep in mind that an adult struggles to maintain equilibrium under such circumstances, what skills is a teenager in possession of that enable them to respond calmly? I think rule number one of living in harmony with teenagers is RESPECT! Try to stifle your laughter at their undersized jeans and over sized sun glasses until they have left, eh?

If you have kids then you have probably realised that one day you will have teenagers. Try to look fondly, or at least with more compassion, upon teenagers when you encounter their strange play. Chances are that they aren't doing it solely to irritate you, chances are that they're trying to impress you with their astonishing maturity! Respect them, simply because they are people. and all people no matter their age, deserve respect.

AHHH!

MUM! I found your pasword mwah-haha, and I find out you put that embarrasing cable car photo up! AHH! DELETE IT or else! Currently drawing you a new frog, but that may stop! HUMPH.


DELETE IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

We love natural learning!

Spikee is really loving reading! Tonight we made him a dinosaur book. We printed out lots of pictures of dinosaurs and he coloured them in and cut them out, and I typed and printed "This is a " and then we glued it all onto paper and stuck the pages in a clear sheet folder. Now he reads it and points to all the words. He's very pleased with himself.

We spent the day building our hot house, and I can't wait to get a veggie garden up and running again. There's so many REAL, USEFUL lessons in growing food. We've also added some chooks to our family and there have been many opportunities for learning there! It seems that this is the perfect state for natural learning.

Unlearning in Antarctica

We've been in our new house for nearly three weeks now and there has been no shortage of unlearning. We've done renovating, acquired chooks, explored the town and surrounds and had a ball reconnecting as a family without time pressing down on us.

Stylish took to ripping up carpet and pulling out nails like she'd been doing it all her life. Then once we'd varnished and moved our stuff into the house she went faster than greased lightening to where she'd been hearing frog calls. She was well versed on the Arctic legalities pertaining to her favourite amphibians, and spent a good chunk of her pocket money buying a tank to house four Southern Smooth Froglets. She confidently informs me that the name is deceptive because they are actually bumpy and their scientific name is ..... I forget. Today we had a plumbing emergency which required the rose bush out the front be ripped up, it was then that we discovered two nests in it. One with tiny silver eye babies getting ready to fledge and the other with nearly ready to hatch blue / grey speckled eggs that are jumping about. We waited and waited but their mothers didn't come home so we seem to have acquired some new albeit temporary family members. Who knows if the eggs will hatch, I'm doubtful, but apparently they're black birds and they're a real pain so we are trying not to feel too bad.

Spikee has developed quite an interest in reading and is starting to recognise some words by sight and remember others when they're in an early reader book I found at the tip ship. He's also cemented counting to ten and is getting more confident reading the numbers. He's really taking to life in Antarctica and for some unexplained reason is starting to try a couple of new foods and on the whole eat better. Must be all the fresh air! The training wheels are off his bike now (one got lost) so that's another new thing, he's a little nervous but he'll be fine soon enough. His geography fascination continues and we have been playing cricket with a small rubber globe ball. He's just a happy chappy at the moment!

Angus is very chatty and can roll over (but he's not sure how). Soon enough he'll be up and crawling and we'll be baby proofing again!

Pics from The Journey South

The Guillotine

The Mechanic

life size full grown salt water crocodile

Corroboree frog breeding program at Taronga

In the cable cars

Pics of The Great Migration in Action

Driving a space shuttle

Learning about dizziness

At the zoo

Geography free styler!

Natural Learning our way to Antarctica

In the last three days we've travelled 1000 km from Sydney to Melbourne with three kids and a placenta. Quite an ambitious feat! We've driven through snow, crazy wind, pouring rain and narrowly avoided getting stranded by flood water and road blockages in Albury.

After leaving our house in Sydney we spent a further week staying with my father before finally leaving Sydney. We were like tourists in our own home town, we visited the museum and the Taronga Zoo and ate at our favourite restaurants. At the museum Spikee enjoyed the Search and Discover room which is more for older kids, he's obviously growing up! Lately we've noticed that he's fascinated by geography and he found a globe at the museum and happily pointed out South America, Sydney, and even Antarctica .... I mean Tasmania.

They had a blast at Taronga, saw too many exhibits to list them all and probably learnt something along the way. Stylish enjoyed seeing the Corroboree frog breeding programme and Spikee liked the lions and tigers. Personally I enjoyed seeing the crocodiles because they're my favourite animal (such cute and cuddly things!) and A enjoyed the Civet cats and regaling us with tales of how they eat coffee beans, shit them out, and are responsible for producing the world's most expensive coffee.

We had a farewell dinner at our favourite Vietnamese restaurant and Spikee actually ate something. He had a whole bowl of boiled rice, a vegetarian spring roll, tasted a bit of tofu VOLUNTARILY and then polished off the orange slices that were brought to share between all of us. We also had dinner at my best friend fro highschool's house, made sure to eat as much real Indian food as two people could possibly manage, and just enjyed being in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney for a week. It's a lovely part of Sydney. Incidentally, my father told me that the park I used to play at when I was growing up has now been named (by him) Ethel Turner Playground because she was a notable woman from Paddington and apparently all the other parks are named after men.

So after our final days of civilisation we left Sydney at stupid o'clock and drove to Canberra where we spent all day at Questacon while the rain poured down like I haven't seen in years. The kids certainly absorbed lots there. They loved the roller coaster ride, Stylish loved the Free Fall where you free fall down a slide, and Spikee loved the Mini Q area where the pretend bakery is, but this time he git absorbed in the mechanic area fixing a car wearing little denim overalls. We heard a fascinating dinosaur talk by Questacon's resident paleontologist who told us some really interesting things including a recent theory which states that all dinosaurs had feathers at one stage of their lives, and ripping the guts out of Jurassic Park movies telling us that the movie used deinonychus and not velociraptors. Velociraptors were only small but the creative license over rode truth because deinonychus is hardly a terrifying name even if they were a terrifying dinosaur. He also said that most of the dinosaurs were from the cretaceous period, not the the Jurassic period. He had a box filled with real dinosaur relics including a tooth from a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a claw from a velociraptor (which was actually about a foot long despite the size of the whole dinosaur).

Tomorrow we're heading to Melbourne Museum. We were planning to go to the zoo but it's too balmy and cold. Melbourne is in the grip of one of its' coldest Octobers ever and there was even heavy snow fall a few days ago. The last time I went to the museum here I was 19 weeks pregnant with Spikee. Then tomorrow night we'll be on the boat heading for Antarctica!

An Anniversary Slipped By ....

I just realised that we've been unschooling for two years! Two years and and about three weeks, not that I'm counting.

In that two years I can't tell you how much our lives and our world has transformed, and how I now feel there is real hope for my kids, not just hope that they'll survive the system and come out edumacated and with direction.

When we started, we were on shaky ground, fearful and unsure we were making the right decision. My daughter had to unschool and so did I, and I think I probably struggled with it more than she did. For a while there we took two steps forwards and one back, but then it smoothed out. Then periodically I'd encounter another stage of parental unschooling and have to wrestle it out mentally, usually blogging about it.

What are the best things about unschooling for us?

• knowing our kids are happy, safe, and interested in what they do.
• knowing our kid will learn REAL life skills
• seeing them pursue their own interests
• knowing they are only competing against themselves so they always try their hardest
• seeing them become themselves!

What would I change?

• NOTHING!!!!!!! Except I would start sooner.

Here is a photo of the newest family member helping pack. He's 6w 5d.

General Update From a Slack Blogger

The great migration is nearly beginning! Our world is in boxes now, and everyone except me is packing like mad. I'm sitting underneath a baby with my boobs out. The kids are a bit unsettled by it and the sooner we're on the road the better. The week after next will be nice though, we'll be free to just faff about in Sydney enjoying ourselves. We're taking the kids to the zoo and the museum and pretty much just slacking off after all the hard yakka of packing everything up, organising this enormous logistical adventure, and stressing constantly for a month.

This is going to be one hell of an adventure. We're not only over hauling our lifestyle, we're taking a really exciting road trip. We'll leave Sydney on about the 14th of October and travel to Canberra to take the kids to Questacon and the National Gallery. We'll stay the night there or maybe press on until Gundagai for the night. Then the next day we'll go the rest of the way to Melbourne and spend a couple of days enjoying the sights before catching the boat over night to Tasmania. Once there we plan on spending a night or two with A's parents before making the final stint to OUR HOUSE!

There's been plenty of natural learning here over the last little while, from a birth and a new sibling to maths, and tennis. Stylish has really enjoyed tennis over the last few months and she's made some nice friends there so it's a shame we're moving now.

She visited a friend of her Grandma's and found a tadpole last week. Spikee has been very interested in that. We have to let it go next week because we can't take it over state lines. Stylish tells me that there are only 14 species of frog in Tasmania which is very disappointing, moving to Queensland would have been a far wiser decision because they have 43 species there. Unfortunately the real estate there is pricier, possibly due to the greater number of frogs residing there!

I'll be without internet for a week or two during the great migration, but I'll have plenty to update when we finally have access again, so stay tuned!

A homebirth story!

What's been going on?

Well, there's still no sign of a baby at 42w and 4 days. But there's been no shortage of things happening so I figured an update was probably in order. the last week has been the week from hell! I've had a really nasty cold which has landed me with bad asthma and aches and pains from head to foot, and A has slipped a disk in his back so he wasn't able to look after me! We kind of struggled through, each of us doing what we could and everything else going by the way side. If it weren't for Stylish we would have been a lot worse, she really stepped up and helped out when we down!

The great migration is well under way, and we should own the house by early next week. I'm really excited about the move, and so is the family. It's going to be a huge change, leaving a city of several million, and going to a town with 800 people but in time I'm sure we'll adjust. The kids are very excited about getting chickens and a dog. There's a shed in the garden at the new house which we'll convert to a chicken coop. Some little nesting boxes and some insulation and a door will probably cut it, we want them to be free range of a day, and we'll keep them safe and warm of a night in their little hen house.

Yesterday was the first day in a week that we felt well enough to actually take the kids to the park. They had a lovely time running laps of various play equipment areas and trees and using the stop watch on my phone to try and beat their last time, then Stylish climbed trees and Spikee played at the base of them with his toy dinosaurs. A and I sat in the sun for as long as our varying ailments would allow, then we trudged home in time to collapse into bed with hot water bottles and rest up before forcing ourselves to organise food for dinner.

Stay tuned, there are bound to be more interesting developments in the coming days and weeks!

Unschooling In Action!

Today over lunch Stylish started chatting about something I had no idea she knew anything about ... GENETICS! She told me all about the dominant and recessive genes in rats, and what they mean for coat, colouring, and illnesses like tumours and respiratory conditions. I didn't earn anything about genetics until I was in year 10 at school and yet my child already knows more than I learnt. I really enjoyed genetics, I quite liked science in general, and it's so wonderful to see your child enjoying the same things you enjoyed, only VOLUNTARILY!

Spikee is still loving puzzles, and every time he does one I can see how he's getting more confident. Sometimes when he's not listening to me as I give him clues about where a piece goes I find it so frustrating. In those moments I find I have to really take a step back and remember that he is barely four years old, and to my brain it's obvious where the pieces go, but to his it's a minefield of possibilities! Seeing him get better and better at it each time we try makes me glad that I am able to take that step back, not show my frustrations, and just help him to over come his brain fuzz. He's always so pleased with himself when we finish doing a puzzle, and I've had to take quite a few photos of them.

Just pics

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This is the outfit Stylish sewed for her pet rat. And the rat modeling it.

Spikee laying in bed watching The Philosopher's Stone. At long last someone in the house likes Harry Potter, damn shame he's to young for anything past the first one!

the belly at 39w, and the birth pool as a back drop.

Blessingway!

Today I am 38w pregnant and my wonderful friends held a blessingway for me. I had the most beautiful day, and I feel like the way it truly blessed.

Here are a few pics.

Stylish decorating the belly in henna. We chose a design of the Egyptian Goddess Heket. She is the goddess of fertility and midwifery and she is a frog, so it had meaning to us both. She was a bit nervous about drawing the design on the day so she drew it in texta last night and then just went over it in henna today. She did such a beautiful job! The Eye of Horus is also included, this is a symbol of protection.

The finished product! I think it looks amazing. I'm such a lucky mama to have my precious eldest child draw such a fantastic design on my belly.

It didn't take Stylish long to locate the resident pets. It should come as no surprise to our viewers that the snake was her favourite ...

This is all the candles that will be lit by friends when I am in labour. Everyone brought one along as we lit them all together today.