Leaving Unschooling Behind

  Ah, unschooling. You seemed adequate for many years, but then the flaws started to become apparent. Most of the skills that are supposedly picked up automatically just weren’t-and not through lack of resources or exposure. The girls wanted to write stories and letters, but their handwriting and spelling was below their needed level, so they would get frustrated and give up. They were reading many good books, but had no internal filing system to sort out and categorise what they were learning. Oods wanted to learn Latin and violin, but you can’t really unschool either. The clones were becoming feral children, spending all day on the trampoline or in the sandpit playing pretend. Shorty needed more structure, more repetition, to allow him to master his basic skills. And I was looking at all of that time essentially wasted, thinking, ‘They could be learning so much more’. Which apparently is me projecting unfair expectations onto them based on my insecurities, and not at all based on me thinking that my eight year old really should be able to spell ‘because’ and write it without a reversed b. Because she wants to.

  So I did my usual reading blitz, and we’ve now totally shaken up our home education. The kids get a say in what they learn about, but generally they have an insatiable desire to learn about everything. In the last year they have learnt an incredible amount, and they’re incredibly proud of themselves. They’re challenging themselves and meeting the challenges. Their pretend play has always been varied and complex, but now it’s so educated-seeing Frosty, at 4, re-enact the Iliad is very impressive.

  I’ve noticed that they’re much more content. Arguments are rare when they have their minds challenged and hands busy. This goes for me too-I always felt kind of useless wandering around, giving a bit of assistance here and there, but generally feeling like they didn’t need me. And i’m having the most fantastic time. Not many adults get to fill in the gaps in their learning, and i’m finding it all insanely interesting.  I can see how incredibly useful the chronological history, the formal grammar, and the phonics has been to me already. This sort of stuff may not be on most school curriculums, but it’s the sort of thing I find myself using regularly (and feeling cheated that I was never taught it). And the more I give them, the more they want. Two weeks into this year’s work, I was feeling frazzled with our new workload-and they were asking me if I had anything else they could do. Like Chinese, and poetry, and can I please find some more maths puzzle books for them to do? They want more of everything (except dictation, which they believe is evil torture even as they acknowledge how useful it is to them).

  I have come to the conclusion that unschooling just isn’t for us. Looking critically at my experience, I can’t see how it works effectively for anyone over toddler age, if your goal is to have a well-educated child. I have also come to the conclusion that childhood is by far the best time to learn as much as you can, while you’re young and hungry and have no other commitments, and it is my job to make it easier for them. Unschooling seemed a bit like requiring your children to reinvent the wheel-sure, you can saturate them with words, and lots of kids will pick up reading all by themselves. But it seems a cumbersome, difficult process to require them to puzzle it out when you could sit an eager child down and do some phonics instruction, explain how English works, and have them reading in a tenth of the time. (And so that’s why that’s exactly what I did, and i’ve had three five year old readers so far. Frosty is working on it, and Shorty runs to his own timescale, incomprehensible to the rest of us). I never understood why unschooling seems to require your child stumble around in the dark, until they have their lightbulb moment and can finally puzzle out exactly how Latin verb endings work after much frustration-why not explain it and have them memorise them, and that’s that? Or, to paraphrase Ruth Beechick (because I can’t find the quote), why expect them to be creative when they have nothing to be creative with?

  Unschoolers tend to portray any curriculum work as a violation of freedom, but when it’s by choice, it can be wonderful. Seeing the unbridled excitement and pride of my girls when they finished FLL 3 was wonderful-they had worked hard and achieved something because of that. What a valuable lesson. They have in no way lost any freedom. They have hours every day of total freedom, and now they appreciate it because they feel they’ve earnt it. They have a balance between time they’ve scheduled for learning and free time, so they appreciate and value both much more than ever before.

  So, unschooling? Been there, done that-not impressed. We’re too motivated and eager for that. Bring on the bookwork!

My family is weird

  While transferring photos from the camera to my computer, I came across this.

  Lols, holding a chicken chopping-block style, on the table in front of a photo of the husband holding a chook on an actual chopping block. This table is in the kitchen-thankfully not the one we eat at. On questioning, this is because they wanted to see if this rooster (bought as a day-old brown Leghorn, but most definitely is not) is a Rhode Island Red. The only photo they could find of our mature Tasmanian RIR roosters were harvest day ones. So they were comparing.

  Conclusion-we don’t know what he is. And the hatchery (Darling Downs, aka Peak Poultry Supplies) is ignoring us, so I guess we’ll remain ignorant. Sadly, after we pick out the sub-standard appearances from our purchase, we’re only left with about 12 breeders in the three colours. These seem perfect, so we’ll cross our fingers that we don’t get any funny-coloured throwbacks when we start hatching them.

Unradical Unschooling

  When we first decided to home educate, about 7 years ago, I did what I usually do upon gaining a new interest-I read. I read my way through every home ed book in the Tasmanian library system (there’s many, the wonderful place) and fell in love with unschooling. With a houseful of toddlers, it worked for us. Then, about 5 years ago I noticed more and more popping up online about radical unschoolers, so I investigated. Basically, it’s about removing all limits, rules and expectations. The child decides everything, and trust is the buzzword-just trust that your child is doing exactly what they need to do, right now, even if you don’t understand why (even if it’s killing related, completely clashes with your beliefs or involves 14 hours a day on the computer). That when you get in touch with yourself, and your true way of being, you would understand, that you would be free! Then the world will be a better place, populated with ‘free’ people.

  Well, call me a reject, abjectly out of touch with my true self, because I really don’t get it. Oh, I thought about trying it, but I never accepted the reasoning behind it. It sounds all lovely and wonderful, but it’s like every other extremist viewpoint-all dressed up in flowery language and sounding suspiciously religious (you just have to believe, to have faith, to let go, then you will be truly free). It doesn’t respect the family’s value systems. And of course, there’s lots of criticism of schools. While I don’t see many positives in the school system, I also tend to distrust beliefs that need to knock their opposites down for them to climb up-if it’s as good as you say it is, it’ll speak for itself.

  I finally realised that I really don’t like the philosophy because we’re technically not child-centred. We’re family-centred. There’s seven of us in this tribe, and we all need to get along, which means we all need to take everyone’s needs and wants into account. I’m happy to cater to every whim of a three month old, but as they get older they learn to compromise too.

  Old fuddy-duddy that I am, I believe in bedtimes, for their and my sanity. My kids eat what they are given. They contribute to the running of the household, the garden and the animals. Screen time for them is non-existent (and nearly non-existent for me, I practice what I preach).And sometimes i’ll make them do something, even if they think they won’t like it. Usually, after the initial push, they enjoy it. (A recent incident with Sparkles and handwriting practice comes to mind. She said she didn’t want to, I said it wasn’t optional. Fifteen minutes of copywork later she was ecstatic to see how much she’d already improved, and now happily does it regularly). Sometimes you need a kick to try something-and when the kick is given by someone who knows you well, it’s usually a kick in the right direction.

  RUers seem to believe that if a child must fit to some of the parent’s needs, that the parent is selfish and enforcing their will upon the child. It seems to me to be a sure recipe for stress, guilt, and the extension of extreme natural parenting philosophy (which also seems to be a sure recipe for stress and guilt). And if I have to honour every decision of my child, what is that saying about my knowledge and experience? I definitely don’t know it all, but surely nearly 30 years of life counts for something? The kids certainly seem to think so-they trust my judgement and respect my recommendations, and are generally happy and eager to see what I suggest. In return, if they have a go at something and hate it, I don’t force them to continue.

  Over the past couple of years, i’ve found myself adding a qualifier when asked which education method we use. ‘Unschooling…………but not radical.’ Unschooling seems to have gained more and more of a radical aura, to the point where most people who once would have called themselves unschoolers seem to be using the term ‘natural learners’ instead. Unfortunately, unschooling now seems to mean the extreme end of the scale-no rules, no schedule, no educational goals.That is completely not us, and to be honest I really wouldn’t like people to think that it was.

  However, after the initial raves, RUing seems to be losing popularity. I’ve started to read accounts of people who have tried it and found that their lives descended into chaos and their kids were unhappy (such as Owlet-there’s also good comments there). Most people seem to adore it when their children are young, then by the time they’re reached about 8 they’re looking to add a bit more structure (usually at the child’s request). I think it’s because toddlers can generally pick up what they need to know in their everyday life. But when they start wanting to learn more complex skills and knowledge, structure really helps. It also helps Shorty, who doesn’t pick up much intuitively, and requires more repetition and graded increase in difficulty to really master a skill.

  Anyhow, I don’t even know if we could call ourselves unschoolers anymore-I have a houseful of academics now! But i’ll save writing about those changes for another day.

Unschooling horseriding

  Pony Club would freak if they saw our method of learning to ride. It goes like this.

  -Acquire pony and gear. Ignore saddles, but wear helmet.

  -Catch pony (can be tricky), bridle up, have sibling hoist you up with assistance from milk crate.

If you try to catch me, I will run.

-Hold on while wily pony goes straight into a canter. Extra points if you don’t fall off when she deliberately goes under a low tree branch.    

-After a week or so, and a few bruises, you will be able to stay on without holding the mane for dear life. Congratulations! Now you can learn how to steer. And maybe even stop!

  This is basically where they’re up to now. The girls can steer, and sometimes they can stop. Mareea has a hard mouth, so they have to haul pretty hard. Sometimes they’re still holding on for dear life, but they’re improving at an exponential rate. I learnt to ride ‘properly’ when I was a child, learning proper posture, rising to the trot, and all of the excruciating details. I don’t remember ever just going out and riding independently, for fun. Not surprisingly, that love was killed fairly comprehensively, and i’m still not a very confident rider. My kids may never win any awards at the show, but they’ll be able to ride well, and ride hard. And they will continue to love it-which is the most important thing in any endeavour.

  I don’t imagine we’ll stay at one horse for long either. We regretfully had to turn down a gorgeous buckskin brumby colt foal last week, as we didn’t have a yard to keep him in to tame him. But we were all keen to have a shot at taming and training him-when we want to learn anything we’ve found it’s best to throw ourselves into the deep end. We haven’t drowned yet.

Home ed-as it is now

  I wrote this post a few months back, and it got way out of hand very quickly, to the point where I just had far too much to add to it, and gave up. So i’m just going to publish it as it is. So think of it as ‘home ed-as it was four months ago’!

  How do I sum up the natural education of five children in one blog post? Just cataloguing one day would be a mammoth read. We still unschool, and most likely always will-it’s so perfectly suited to our life (and my hatred of and inability to keep to schedules and regimentation), and the sheer amount they learn about a huge range of subjects is mind-boggling. I have finally gotten rid of all school-mind, relaxed and accepted that yes, unschooling really DOES work for young children. Meanwhile, the kids happily got on with it, as they always have. After our travelling we’re sticking close to home and enjoying our comforts while we can.

  Our most useful thing lately has been this whiteboard, picked up from a closing-down sale. The many things that are read, commented on, then lost in the million other same things can now be recorded in the lounge room and re-read until they’re stuck in those little heads. They choose what they’d like to put up there, like the poem, Auslan and Word Spy stuff below, and we change it every week or two. Yes, they enjoy rote learning when they decide what to learn.

   Before it’s taken off the whiteboard I copy it into the Family Fact Book-so anything they know was on the board, but just can’t remember, can be looked up.

  Narnia has also been the obsession for the last three months or so. First the audiobooks, then the BBC miniseries, all accompanied by Narnia guidebooks (and of course, a set of the actual books). There have been discussions and investigations on religion, cinematography and special effects, and the contrast between movies and books and why they have to differ. There has been endless roleplay-my kids will never miss a chance to live in pretend-land. Frosty with his very enthusiastic stick-swords does try my patience though, especially when he’s Peter and his unsuspecting brother is the wolf.

  History is another big theme, which is extremely interesting to me as I know virtually nothing about it. It just wasn’t covered at school. It started with a lift-the-flaps Roman town book and has snowballed from there into ancient Egypt and the Vikings, with the girls planning their future travels to ancient ruins all over the world, and Oods learning some Latin. Everyday life is the interest here-not so much the rise and fall of empires as how they built their houses, what they ate and what they believed in.

  Language in all it’s forms is another obsession-but not so much the Auslan, which i’ve been rather slack with. The Word Spy books have sparked much language play and interest, contributing to the interest in Latin and therefore Rome (it’s all connected somehow!) Secret languages and codes abound, and little symbolised signs and notes are appearing everywhere. I’ve no idea what they’re doing, and they like it that way. Because it wouldn’t be a secret language if I knew it.

  Lols and Sparkles are now fluent readers. They seemed to do this secretly, they didn’t want all the instruction that Oods did. Just the basics, then they were happy to decode the rest themselves. I’m still not exactly sure how well they’re reading, but they seem to be able to read books around the calibre of Aussie Nibbles just fine. Oods is reading Harry Potter at warp speed, she’s definitely following in my reading footsteps-she hasn’t hit my speed yet, but at the rate she’s going she may actually overtake me one day.

  Craft for the girls has progressed to making real stuff, with much less mess-I knew it would all finally be worth it one day! I still have two little confetti making boofheads who make an insane amount of mess, but at least I know that light at the end of the tunnel is not a train. The girls took it upon themselves to learn to knit and can all do so, and the clones have just learnt how to form stitches in crochet. Oods, meanwhile, crocheted me a pair of slippers completely from her head that fit me perfectly-meanwhile, the one I made her is too big. Yes, I have been outperformed by an eight year old, and yes, I am proud (and only a tiny bit miffed, promise). I really, really need another sewing machine, because I often have to wait to use mine. Bags, skirts, shoes, doll clothes, gauntlets-you name it, they’ll hack up some fabric and have a bash at making it completely from their heads-and it usually works. 

   They take it in turns to cook independently, with most recipes coming from their heads. There’s been some interesting food made, but they seem to have the basics of cooking nailed down now, and can turn out cakes, biscuits and breads of acceptable quality. I really like this one, because them cooking saves me some cooking. And what is a more important skill than cooking? Except maybe gardening, which has been mostly abandoned to the husband now the cold weather has hit, although Lols (his mini-him) still gets out there with him.

  The boys are about equal ability at the moment, and I think Frosty may have overtaken Shorty in the academic stakes in the last month or so. I treat them both as three, and forget that Shorty is actually six and ‘should’ be reading. Ha! Good luck with that! They do lots of drawing, tracing and colouring, as well as many hours of wrestling and whacking stuff with sticks. Whoever said boys and girls are the same had never actually exposed themselves to children.

  Finally, the natural world remains a constant interest, with more Attenborough documentaries, some snake handling and a wildlife show complete with wombat fondling recently. Jackie French’s kangaroo and wombat books are on the library shelf right now.

The kids still don’t use the computer, we still don’t have a television, so we’re still Amish sympathisers-but looking at all the above, who has time for that junk? I stand firm on my low-tech stance, figuring there’s far more worthy and interesting (and real) things to do, and they’ll pick it up easily and quickly when it’s time-just like we did. And yes, I apply the same rules to myself too! Internet once a week works just fine for me-I prioritise the most useful parts and ignore the rest.

Shorty turns 5

  Ah, our little Peter Pan. The years keep turning but he remains delightfully compact and innocent. He is my romantic, always picking me flowers and telling me how much he adores me and how beautiful I am-the total opposite of the husband so i’ll savour it while I can!

  The husband wins first prize for handmade present this year, with a lawnmower. Now whenever we mow we have two little boys following us around growling with their own implements.

  I decided to finally tackle a shirt-I must say, it was much easier than I expected. I saw this fabric on sale over a year ago and immediately thought it would be perfect for Shorty and bought the rest (about 2m). Excuse the wrinkles, he wore it straightaway and spent the next day pestering me about whether it was dry-this is straight from the line, in the few minutes it had off his back.

 

  It fitted him perfectly, and i’ve enough left for another one in the next size up. I did have full plans to use proper buttons and buttonholes, but as he hasn’t mastered using them yet decided a zip would be better for independence. 

 

  Terribly, i’ve left this post so long i’ve forgotten what the girls made him. Luckily Oods remembered to photograph her pirate ship.

For cake, a lemon meringue pie. The first i’ve made, but definitely not the last-both clones were groaning in ecstasy, savouring every last mouthful. No, I didn’t do the crust properly either, i’m lazy like that.

Lols and Sparkles turn 6

  Ah, my not-so-tiny clones are already six. It’s so very hard to believe they both fitted inside me at once at one stage. Unfortunately (for them, not me) they didn’t wake up to a flock of geese and a horse in the backyard as they were dreaming of. Luckily for them we weren’t rained in this year-last year ended up being costumes from the cupboard and anything goes because we hadn’t been able to leave the property for 7 days beforehand.

  The age of six is the magical age of Learning to Sew on the Machine. So they both got a decorated box full of sewing goodies, like scissors and retractable tape measures, and a few metres of fabric each. Plus, I made them each a pincushion from a Vegemite jar. To say that they were excited about reaching this milestone is a massive understatement, it was all they talked about for months. And they made me sew with them for hours, just like their big sister did last year.

  Because the pincushions just didn’t feel like i’d made enough, I broke out the hooks for a beanie and gauntlets.

  Gauntlets in action, she’s since felted them to shape them somewhat. My sole gauntlet in variegated pink/brown/yellow will probably never get a mate now-rainbow is infinitely cooler.

 

  Oods made them this incredibly awesome playscape thingy for their farm animals from the base of a fridge box. From each other, Lols got a stuffed felt parrot, and Sparkles got the cotton wool/pipe cleaner sheep in the paddock below.

A peacock cake for the bird-obsessed Lols. I gave her a nature book and told her to bookmark the ones she liked, from her initial 400 or so she narrowed it down over a few days to a peacock, although the birds of paradise came a close second. Food colouring and toothpicks seemed the safe way out of this one, I was having nightmares about 27 different colours of icing and swirling them all appropriately.

Sparkles wanted a cheesecake, but seemed deflated it was plain on the morning, so I did a quick horse for her. No, I don’t have a springform tin so we just hack them out.

 

  Sewing, some face painting, and many hours in their imaginary Twinland with each other added up to what they declared to be a perfect birthday-these two are so easy to have. I hope they keep that contentment forever.

Chickummyjig

Our two resident Chickummyjigs certainly live life to the max. They were birthday presents to the youngest and oldest last year. Frosty wouldn’t touch his for a month though-he just cried and threw it. I must ask Oods if hers ever managed to hatch her eggs, and what came from them.

Maybe even mini-chickummyjigs, as they have been busted canoodling.

And they play a mean game of junior Monopoly (on her own handmade embroidered cushion too, courtesy of Oods).

  Yes, I am very pleased when they obviously enjoy things I make!

  If you’d like to make one too, head over to Myrtle & Eunice for the freebie pattern and tutorial.

Winter pants, part 1

One nice pair of pants each to wear over this winter is the goal-made so I can let them down next year to wear again, as with our short, mild winters they have no chance of getting worn out.

  First up, Shorty, as he didn’t have a single pair of going-out pants. He asked for blue and red, and I stuck to plain for a change. I kind of wish i’d done something more exciting now! These were made to vintage pattern Simplicity 5395, with added pockets, and have been named his Disco Stu pants because he looks very ‘70s in them.

  Next, Oods, who also had nothing her ankles didn’t hang out of. As always, she wanted over-the-top, and this is the result of me toning down her ideas (purely so I can do them in a reasonable amount of time). They’re made to the Dortje pattern from Sewing Clothes Kids Love, with the waist taken in. The extremely curved seams gave me some grief, but now I have another skill to add to the list. The brown is reclaimed from a pair of womens pants the op-shop were giving away (they had tonnes of free stuff earlier this year, so I stocked up), the red dotty cotton is the scraps from the Christmas skirts, and the floral drill i’ve had for years and was desperate to get rid of.

  

  I’d place the rear pockets higher next time and make the legs slightly narrower, but apart from that it’s a good, if rather time-consuming pattern.

  Third up Frosty-just because i’ve been wanting to make rainbow striped pants for ages. They worked! All fabrics are from the cupboard, all except the orange was op-shopped.
 

The twins have picked their fabrics out, so hopefully they’ll be outfitted within the fortnight. And probably for under $15 total in materials, for all five kids. I went to the shops last week to have a look at how much kids pants are-over $20 a pair! And they’re UGLY! It makes me very thankful for my sewing obsession.

MORE babies ?!?!

  It’s like a maternity ward around here sometimes-thankfully, it’s not me anymore! Three babies were born to our single mum guinea pig last week (dad was murdered by the cat a couple of weeks back. Oh the drama. The cat has been rehomed.)

  And I must say, I have ceased whinging about birthing my big-headed lastborn. Guinea pig babies are massive! I honestly don’t understand how they got out of her. I did wonder if maybe we’d somehow not realised she’d given birth for a couple of weeks, but that’s impossible given how much she’s handled.

  The kids have $$ signs in their eyes, plotting the money they’ll hopefully have in six weeks and what other animals they’ll buy with it, eagerly awaiting the next local trader book to see just what’s up for grabs…………

Oods turns 7

  Please remind me, the next time I decide to make something completely new for a birthday that is fast approaching, that it is a bad idea. This bloody doll took so many hours, and so many hours more than expected. Definitely more hours than the book made out, and by the time I was half-done I was regretting my decision not to make a Waldorf doll (only made because the floods came, and I didn’t know whether the stuff I needed to buy online would arrive in time). 

  So, hello Blossom, as she was christened by her young friend. I made her using the patterns in The Complete Pattern Book of Soft Dolls, and The Fairytale Doll Book, both by Valerie Janitch. I used one dolls head on anothers body. She is about half hand sewn, which I totally suck at, and couldn’t predict from the patterns and instructions-one reason I got so grumpy at them. She was meant to be more of a Feral Sheryl type doll, but on the birthday eve i’d had enough of wrestling with the slippery stuff needed for her fairy outfit so went with the safe cotton option of a pioneer type dress. Doesn’t really match the rainbow dreadlocks, but oh well.

  Luckily she was well-received, she’s carried around a lot and gets taken to bed each night. Oods is not as keen to make her clothes as I thought she would be-she’s having a break in enthusiasm for sewing right now, and has only made her one ribbon skirt.

  She was not as well-received as her other present, however.

An umbrella.

  Yes, an umbrella. Something she had been coveting for months-so much in fact, that when we ran into Santa while out, an umbrella was her request. (Along with a rocking horse and a new workbook from the other two girls-yep, my kids are deadset weirdos. So pleased).

A marble cake, with requested icing writing (also not my forte) was the cake of choice. Yes, we really do call her Oods all the time.

  A trip to the rockpools rounded out the day, with much chasing and capturing the local wildlife, but of course leaving them unscathed (except maybe mentally). This guy was so angry!

Frosty turns 2

And my baby is two. Surprisingly, I wasn’t sad-the only way is up from here, methinks.

For the grass-maintenance obsessed boy, a whipper snipper from the husband. He doesn’t put this down, and yesterday was following my around while I was mowing, tidying up my edges. For hours. Can’t wait until he’s big enough to do it for real.

From me, some bodgy jewellery. More because I couldn’t bear the thought of a birthday going by that I hadn’t made something for. I also got him a couple of Spot books, because he is obsessed.

This, from the twins-his very own phone. He adores it (he’s also phone obsessed, and yells at me every time i’m on the real phone to give it to him, no matter who it is). He goes to bed with this regularly, and I can often hear him remonstrating his siblings ‘Be quiet, i’m on the phone!’ (Don’t know where he gets that from………)

We’re also going against the Woman’s Weekly-style cakes-mainly, because although they look great they taste like crap. With our kind of everyday diet, a butter cake with buttercream icing is unbearably stodgy and rich. Enter the banana cake with cream cheese frosting-a much, much tastier alternative, and very suited to a kid who eats at least three bananas a day. I think it actually has a better crumb than the buttercakes, so if any of the other kids wants some fancy sculpture work i’ll give it a shot with this.

One down, four more to go in the next three months or so. Eek.

Note to self:

Never leave paper patterns i’ve drafted on the dining table. Even if i’m exhausted after a frenzy of creativity, it’s already tomorrow and all I can manage is to stumble to bed. Because Murphy’s Law states that the children will wake, see paper, tape and scissors on the table and decide they are there for cutting. And I will stagger, bleary-eyed, out to the kitchen in the morning to discover my precious pattern is now in 32 pieces and needs to be disassembled from craft projects and reassembled into the outlines of a pants leg, then completely redrawn and cut.

I have been warned.

Today.

  Mother's Day. Last year, it did not happen. We'd just moved here, we were putting in huge days trying to settle in and fix everything and it all seemed too hard. So we just ignored it. The kids are rather confused, because they know there should have been another one, but they haven't yet twigged on to the fact that we just skipped it last year.

 

And for them, every occasion is an excuse to craft. Stuff the cards this year, they decided a banner would be better. Each letter is decorated with something different from the property, from bark to fluffy grass seeds to garlic chives. It's so gorgeous. It's hanging in the lounge room. I also got the requisite brekky in bed, now they're older i've been upgraded from burnt toast with massive wodges of unspread butter to quite passable scrambled eggs-the first one I haven't had to choke down with the husband sniggering at me in sadistic pleasure.

 

 My posy of flowers, grown by them in their very own fairy garden.

It was also an excuse to get some gardening done-well, I pottered around doing not much but the husband was busy. I did totally reorganise the seed collection, which is shamefully huge. We can't stop buying them-the potential! Now just to grow a reasonable number of them..............

 We also broke our record for frogs found in the trees' watering pipes, nine swam to the top in this one next to the lilly pilly

.

 

And while there was a craft day had by all the children (is there any other sort of day to be had?) G outdid herself with her fairy tipi. I love older kids. She spent over an hour on this, working out how to assemble it and putting it all together. I'm going to have to point her in the direction of fairy furniture making materials and ideas tomorrow. Note the fluffy grass seeds on the ground.

The sign she created for it-it's hung on the top using some knotted grass. 

I also altered some boring jeans for myself to make them super-funky, but i'd lost the camera by that stage so they'll have to wait to be shown off. I'm getting my groove back now I know i'm not going to be changing sizes every week!

Hope everyone had a day as fantastic, idyllic and full of love as I did.

Desk, schmesk

Who needs a desk and a uniform when you have the great outdoors, your bikini and gumboots?

Taking pretend cooking to a whole new level

Roast chicken-lucky for Spartacus the plastic in the door broke long ago!

The homemade baby-10 months in.

Well, time has flown and my baby is now 10 months old-he's even taking a few steps. And he is still a homemade baby! I've been meaning to put in regular updates of this project, but life and all..........We haven't bought anything new for him, and he's cost us less than $200 all up. The original plan was to try for three months, then six, and it's just been so easy we've carried on.

I admit, it's pretty easy for your fifth child-we have lots of hand me downs. But then again, our sole present this time was a couple of 000 bodysuits which the monster outgrew by two weeks old-by the time you pop out number five it seems it's old hat and nothing special. Most people should be able to sustain themselves on presents alone for their first!

So, what have we done?

-We've bought him no new items (clothing, toys, furniture etc). I've made him a couple of things, but only with fabric I already had in the cupboard (which is admittedly not too limiting......). I've bought a couple of clothing items from op-shops, and been gifted with a few bags of hand-me-downs.

-He's completely cloth, he hasn't worn a disposable. Very happy with that, as that's the one everyone says you can't do. Ha! All of them have been hand-me-downs or made by me-again, not too limiting as I had three in cloth at one stage and he gets all my experiments. He has a terribly complicated stash.

-He's breastfed, yes I finally achieved it! He has used two tins of organic formula. One for sanity saving for me, and we're using the second for mixing with food-no fridge means no EBM storage and i'm not too keen on the idea of milking myself daily at the kitchen bench.

-It cost $95 to get his tongue tie snipped. Eek, but worth it.

And that's it.  Proof that babies are only expensive if you read and follow the baby books, and therefore 'need' gazillions of gizmos.

I speak for the trees!

Our block has about 300 avocado trees on it. This was rather peripheral to our decision to purchase, but we did decide to look into it to see if it would be worth putting the effort in to get the rather neglected trees back up and producing. After many phone calls and much research, it isn't. Avocado's time as a high return crop is over, there's no way to do them organically and ours are infested with phytopthera and anthracnose. Luckily I haven't seen any signs of fruit spotting bug or fruit fly as we're going to have enough problems with disease spores in the soil and dams as it is.

So, D took his axe and we all played at the Lorax today-he was obviously the Once-ler and the kids were all being the Lorax, yelling 'I speak for the trees!' and pretending to knit Thneeds. We're hacking down the section of them that's closest to the house, as that's where we'd like to put the beginnings of the food forest and the permanent chook run. The quicker we get them out the quicker we can start to rehabilitate the poor soil and plant some pioneer legumes and a green manure. The kids all picked the ones they could find (they're hidden in there above) to feed to the chooks-none of us eat the things.

Now, normally i'm a tree fan, but chopping these down is immensely satisfying. They've been nothing but stress as we've chased down the DPI and other places for info trying to make the best decision. Plus, a lot of them are like this rather pathetic specimen-as the roots rot the branches die back to match the root area. D has been able to push over or uproot a couple of them.

I've never been so glad that something failed!

The cakefest is over

I'm beginning to think that i've set myself up for an exhausting few months every years-all five kids birthdays fall between December 30th and April 5th. Add another week either side and you also have the husband's birthday, Christmas and Easter-but at least I now get a break until December!

Shorty had a pirate ship cake for his third birthday. It was pretty quick and easy to assemble, but I gave up on getting black icing-I wondered beforehand how successful tinting white icing black would be, and I don't think you could without twelve bottles of the stuff. As it was the icing started sweating black liquid whenever it was out of the fridge for a couple of minutes.

My task before the next round begins is to find a better replacement for butter cream-one that is easier to use and doesn't taste like animal fat! Since I stopped eating meat butter tastes revolting.

We also didn't do the handmade presents this year-we've had too much on our plates lately and some things had to give. But I will definitely be reinstating it from now on, giving shop presents is very unfulfilling and the two of the girls actually asked where the presents were that we'd made. No more babies so we can get back to normal life!

My little genius

Tonight, the kids wanted a mint leaf each-the horrible things were still hanging around in the fridge from my birthday cake. So D pulled the bag out and there were three left. 'OK' he said to the kids, sitting them on the bench. 'There's two of us parents and four of you kids-how will we share three mint leaves?' With barely a second's hesitation Gabrielle replied 'Chop them in half and then there'll be six!' I am so impressed-she's two months shy of five years and this is about the fifth example she's given us of being able to work out fractions. She can do basic addition and subtraction, and even added up 8+4 the other day-in her head, no fingers or manipulatives required.

The bit that impresses me the most is that no-one has ever sat down with her and attempted to teach her maths. Never. We do a lot of cooking with all its half and quarter cups, and we talk about maths we encounter (like adding up all the bits of fruit we have, or dividing up items so everyone in the family gets some), but that's about it. But they just seem to absorb everything intuitively, process it all then apply it properly-they don't need to be 'taught' in the conventional way, simply exposing them to lots of different things really does do the trick.

I was so dismissive of unschooling to begin with. How on earth could simply being give you an education? Don't you need textbooks and tests, rote learning and spelling lists, and experts to tell you what you 'should' be learning at each stage? But since deciding to try unschooling (after all, they're so young that if it all fell apart it wasn't going to put them behind-they're still not supposed to be at school) i've gained a lot of confidence in it. Kids really do just learn massive amounts from being given quality items and experiences and some basic guidance and explanation-and what's better, it's all retained. They want to learn it so they do, and because they're applying the knowledge in a practical way it sticks with them. It's given me lots to think about in relation to my own education, but i'll save that one for another day. For now i'll just continue to wallow in pride at what my kids can do :D