Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud! (until you have to scoop it out of your washing machine)

If you thought it was only hippos and pigs who have a natural affinity for mud, think again.
And no, don't ask about the state of my car...

But, hey, they're having fun! All that fresh air and exercise and space for creativity and exploration. Just think about all those poor school children in their neat uniforms sat down, being slowly and painfully tormented by the literacy hour [Yay, time to have a smug home educating mother moment] .

But I don't suppose their mothers have to have to scrape the grit out of their washing machine drum before they go to bed. And yes I scraped quite a lot out last night.

Ok, back to smugness (while I'm on a roll ...). Got our storm kettle working AND managed to boil a pan of milk on the top to make hot chocolate. Ok, so this was in the back garden and I could have just used the microwave, and the milk was full of ash because I blew in the hole in the bottom and loads of ash came out (ho hum), but this was FIRE! Crackly smokey sort of stuff that gets in your eyes and makes you smell like a Guy on bonfire night. And you can't poke stuff in a microwave (well, not with the same crackly smokey dangerous satisfaction and it's certainly not advisable to poke it with a metal fork unless you want to create your very own miniature firework display).

I don't think having a storm kettle will help our attempts at minimalist travelling. Whereas we used to just go out with a flask of hot choc and some cups (and a sack of other unrelated stuff which I wont list but would have fed/clothed/entertained a football team), today we went out with the storm kettle, a bag of dry kindling (it had been raining), a tabloid newspaper (to burn, not read), a tin of soup, a tub of hot choc, a tub of dried milk powder, a couple of cup-a-soup packs, plus a pan, tin opener, matches, cups, bottles of water, cloths to wipe everything over afterwards AND a camera and spare batteries to photograph the kettle in action. All I needed was a tent and a sleeping bag we would have been set for the weekend!

Do you reckon Ray Mears keeps all his gear under his shirt. Perhaps that's why he looks like he's built like a brick outhouse? Wonder if he's got a storm kettle stuffed up there..?

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Just been reading this with regard to the latest government consultation...
Have included an excerpt, (possibly not the best bit, but read the whole thing for yourself)

28 January 2009 The coming war against Home Schoolers

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/01/the-coming-war-against-home-schoolers.html

"And as long as it was just a matter of a few retired hippies and eccentrics keeping their young at home, which it was until very recently, home schooling didn't matter. But what is happening now is that many parents are taking their children out of state schools because a) they are being horribly bullied in anarchic classrooms and playgrounds and b) they have begun to notice that many of the schools aren't teaching them anything much anyway. - despite years of propaganda, stunts, gimmicks, 'specialist status', absurdly glowing OFSTED reports and allegedly improved (but fiddled) exam results.
If all the plumbers in your area were no good at fixing leaks, and kept flooding your kitchen, you'd teach yourself plumbing and do it yourself. The results couldn't be worse. Why not take the same view with schools? Why not just keep them at home and do a better job yourself? Of course this is impossible for couples who both trudge out to work every day. But one way or another there is now a significant minority of households where this isn't the case, where homeschooling looks like a serious option and may take off. I suspect the left-wing establishment want to nip it, hard, in the bud. Though of course I'm not prejudiced, and will wait with interest for the report."

Ok, more stuff to blog about but it's getting late and I'm too tired to continue with this displacement activity (perhaps I should try sleep instead?)

And 'The Booker Prize' goes to...Jack the dog!

The storm kettle has arrived!!

Jack seems to think we've bought him a new dog toy.

(And no, I don't normally keep camping equipment on the lounge floor)

Are you wondering why my blogging has suddenly become more frequent? Displacement activity of course...still haven't done my homework from last term's writing course (er, yeah, the one that was meant to be in several weeks before Christmas).

I can do the week-to-week writing stuff, cos that's fun, but can't seem to summon up enough mental energy to complete anything longer. Besides, with my short attention span, it's far more fun to start something and ditch it for something new the following week, than to persevere and stick to it. Ho hum..sounds scarily like my attitude to home educating.

We did something in a class the other week that was fun. We took a piece of writing that each of us had been working on, printed it out, cut it up into its separate words and then rearranged it to make interesting sentences. Here are some of the ones I came up with:

'Who am I? I rise with unfamiliar legs, waffle-dusting the fluff with each of my functional toes.'

'Coordinated clouds weave wooden skylarks in A minor'

'I notice that a metal head can strangle the line of aesthetic'

I quite like the idea of waffle-dusting with my toes, particularly if they are functional. I'm not sure how difficult waffle-dusting would be if you didn't have functional toes.

The original piece was a descriptive essay about 3 different beds. Most of the sentences were far improved in the muddled around product. Ok, so it was a bit dodgy in places where I had to try and make a sentence out of the leftover words (3 'and' s and 4 'bed' s and 1 'duvet'- not a great combination for exciting writing). But it's a fun technique to give 'added value' to writing - a bit like turning boring old potatoes into a pack of fab cheese and onion flavour crisps. And yeah, I write alot of potatoes...

So I now feel inspired to do something similar with the children (no, I don't mean cutting them up with scissors and rearranging their parts, though there are days when that might be tempting). I thought I might take some poems or song lyrics, preferably ones that they know fairly well, and get them to chop them up and rearrange them into something else. Of course I haven't told the kids that I'm going to do that.

Hmm...I'm not quite sure how to approach it with the kids. I have to totally not emphasise the possible educational slant (a guaranteed put-off). Though if I just leave some printed poems with a pair of scissors on the table, in the hope that a child might get the urge to cut it up and rearrange it, I'm not sure they would tune into my subtle approach. And of course the dog might just go and eat it. Or maybe (thinking really abstractly) the dog might tear up the piece of paper - scissors are kinda tricky without opposable thumbs - scatter it on the floor in a really artistic manner and make his own marvellous contribution to world of literature.

I need to get out more...

Some ambitions are rather tricky to fulfil...

Tonight we were watching 'Victorian Farm' (episode 3) on BBC iplayer as we missed recording it the other day. This episode's theme was home-made remedies, lambing and making fences (to keep the pigs in).

We were watching one of the men, bashing away at hot metal to make gate hinges for their fence.

ds2 said 'I want to be a Blacksmith when I grow up'.

To which, dd replied 'I want to be a Chihuahua'.

I'm so glad my children have high aspirations...

So what's so exciting about tractors?

I'm currently reading the sequel to 'Scenes from a Smallholding' which is - rather unoriginally - called 'More Scenes from a Smallholding'.

The author, Chas Griffiths, is involved with the Henry Doubleday Association (now known as Garden Organic). [I think i've mentioned the association before...if not, check it out at http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/ ].

He has a humorous way of describing life on a smallholding, charming and really fascinating. However, reading the books have kind of put me off the idea of ever having anything as ambitious as a wacking great piece of land.

Or perhaps that's just because Griffiths devotes a disproportionate amount of page space to the ins and outs of tractors. Tractors? zzzzzZZZZZZ....

If being a smallholder means that tractors become a daily obsession, then I guess I'll keep that as a little part-time daydream and in the meantime I'll stick to my allotment...

Dens, fires, bird tables, hills and views

What is it about dens that kids love so much? There are expensive courses you can send your kids on to build dens. There are also training courses for Teachers and preschool workers to enable them to enable children to make dens. What is it all about? Just stick a bunch of kids in the woods and 'bobs your uncle' they will most likely go and make a den. Or maybe that's just my kids...

But you have to admit, this is a pretty good den, made by my kids and their friends this week. It was very nearly sabotaged by Jack the dog and his best mate, a large lurcher-type who decided to that running over the roof might be an interesting thing to do. Dogs have a strange concept of 'interesting'.

So what else have we been doing this past week? Well, true to my non-resolution, on Monday we went out for a trip to somewhere we hadn't been for ages. And it was very muddy and uphill and cold. BUT...there was a good view at the top.

So, there I was, having gone all the way up this hill in the cold - have I already mentioned the UPHILL and COLD bit? - pointing out the fabulous view...and what do my kids say?

'I'm hungry, where are the biscuits?'

Perhaps I would have done the same at their age and perhaps my parents would have given me the same withering look that I gave my kids.

What do you mean 'where are the biscuits??!! Look at the view!!!'

I must be getting old. Turning into an 'old gimmer' as one of my friends would say.

The view at the top of the muddy hill. (The view that the kids didn't notice)

dd sat in front of the other view that the kids didn't notice

At the top of the hill the kids explored the woods for a while...

Ds2 chilling out on a branch (not looking at a view)

and we had a sliding down the hill race (though as you can see I was very skilful not to have my attempts filmed!)

The following day - i.e. after we walked at toddler pace back down the muddy hill and put everyone through the washing machine and got some sleep - the kids did some woodwork and made a bird table. It's just a plank with some edging and some cup hooks screwed in the side, but it'll be fab when we get it up in the apple tree in our garden. Ds2 and dd have volunteered to come up with a pulley system to get the bird table up in the tree and down again to restock it. Here's the progress so far:

Nailing in the edging (after the kids had sawed it into pieces). And no, we didn't even have to get the first aid kit out.

Putting in the cup hooks (the chain will be fastened to these, so the table can be hoisted up into the tree)

Painting the table with bird-safe preservative

And today, in between den-building, we had a go with a Kelly Kettle (we had a go last week, but um the fire kept going out)

These storm kettles (also known as Kelly kettles or Aussie Kettles or Irish Kettles or Volcano Kettles) work as follows:




'Made from aluminium it is essentially a double-walled chimney with the water contained in the chimney wall. Once the campkettle is filled with water, simply start a very small fire in the base, set the kettle on the base and drop additional fuel (twigs, leaves, grass, paper, etc.) down the chimney. The large internal surface area of the chimney heats the water very quickly.' (as you can tell I nicked this explanation from someone else, cos I couldn't explain it myself)




And it really works! We tried it today, lit a little fire in the bottom with some birch bark and a few twigs, and the water boiled in hardly any time at all. Not quite the 4 minutes that was advertised, but that's probably because getting damp twigs to light takes a certain amount of experience and quite a few matches and a bit of puffing...




This kettle belongs to a friend. I've now ordered one for our family cause I thought it would be fab for when I'm out with the kids in the woods or at the allotment. And its a good excuse to play with fire.

Don't tut tut me, it's playing with matches that you're not meant to do; playing with fire is fine. And playing with your food is ok too in some circumstances, but not when dining with royalty (apparently though I'm yet to test it). [I have met a duchess, but I didn't have dinner with her. And I once met Jimmy Saville, but I don't suppose I'd play with my food either if he invited me round for cucumber sandwiches. And he's a bit like royalty]




Where were we? Oh yes, playing with fire. Well, we've been having a bit of a fire week. Not only did we have a go with the kelly kettle today, but we also managed to light a really good fire too. A proper one with proper branches and all red and glowy (and rather alot of smoke too). All those years in the girl guides have obviously stood me in good stead. Move over Ray Mears...

A proper camp fire

Our next plan for a day out is to visit a local Roman Villa. It's in a field somewhere up a lane and it doesn't cost anything to go and visit it.

Ok...run through that again...a Roman villa in a field and it's free.

Hmm...if I put on my pessimistic head this probably means that it wont be the most spectacular thing my children and I have ever looked at. Being free doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a pile of rubbish (it might be a pile of roman tiles), but from experience these things are never quite as exciting as Time Team might make them out to be. 'Ah yes, here we have a small Roman buckle and we can learn a lot from this' [cut to fancy tv graphics creating whole Roman from a single roman buckle, including details about what he had for breakfast and whether he likes his eggs sunny side up and what size feet he has... you get my drift].



But, hey, perhaps I should put on my optimistic head instead. Yes, do a worzel gummage and screw on that optimistic head.

Ever tried sticking your head in a threshing machine?

Ok, an overtly educational day.

Today we ventured out to a museum that we hadn't ever been to; I don't even think we've been to the town before, so it was all a bit of a novelty. One of my (non) New Year's resolutions (cos my only resolution was not to make any resolutions) is to take the kids somewhere new or somewhere we haven't been for ages at least once a fortnight. So, big tick there then...(do I get a gold star?)

And surprisingly it was actually a cracking little museum; full of a whole mish-mash of stuff and very child-friendly.

It's not everyday one gets to stick one's head in a threshing machine (and lives long enough to have a milkshake in the cafe afterwards)

Brass Rubbing of King Alfred (apparently he had rather tricky feet)

The finished results.

(Er, I think that's meant to be an ancient sheep on the left - possibly called Dolly)

Ds2 builds a brick wall at the museum then starts to tell me about different sorts of bricks.

I love it when my kids know more about something than I do (unless it makes me feel silly).

Later as we walked round the town we took some photos and identified different types of local brickwork in the town centre, using our new-found knowledge of...bricks.

Herringbone bond brickwork (ok, so I knew that one before the museum)

Diamond bond brick design.

And yeah, there are lots of other designs with 'bond' at the end, though I can't remember the other ones. If you want to know more then trusty Wikipedia is a wealth of information on the subject... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickwork#Basket_bond

And a statue of King Alfred, looking quite chipper

considering his axe was vandalised over Christmas.

Ds1 had his camera too and was taking photos. 'I took a photo looking right up his skirt' he says. Ho hum..