our homeschool—our treasure trove

Our "school year" is almost finished… and what a year it has been. I haven't written a lot about it here, mostly because it's been SO SO busy. Finding time to write it all down has been like trying to catch shooting stars…imagine me, running about the grass, arms up in the air, trying to catch all that light in my hands. 

Many days and nights, I don't even try to capture it all. I just watch, my mouth open, dazzled and inspired. 

This year, my son was able to immerse himself completely in his juggling. He has worked so hard and improved so much! He has performed many times in his beloved circus space, plus at school fetes, music camps, our local city festival, at a big national festival and, just recently, he did his first solo show as part of a community review. What an amazing year he's had.

And what a thing, to be able to give (with the help of his trainers and mentors) the gift of time and training space to a boy who loves something this much. What an amazing thing, to watch how that gift has helped a boy completely blossom, to completely own the thing he loves, improving so much that big international jugglers are noticing him on YouTube and Facebook. His most recent video has over 300 views. What a thing. What a thing! 

I couldn't be more pleased for him. 

As for my girl? Well, this year, she discovered and fell in love with Scratch, a online computer programming application. She has created and posted countless animations, games, role plays, stories, and pictures. She has found a beautiful community of (cat-loving!) animators who "Get" her. And she has over 100 followers in the Scratch community. She LOVES it. 

Now, she's exploring Flash animation and Photoshop, developing her love even further. How awesome to watch her in her element, improving every day, exploring and creating her heart out. 

PLUS, she's now over 300 pages into her novel. Yes, she's writing a novel too! The best days for my girl are filled with writing, reading, dreaming, art-ing, animating, laughing, swimming, and singing (not that we are supposed to listen!). I am so glad I can give her time to do all that.

I am so glad I get to give this incredible thing—the gift of time—to my kids. I am so glad I get to say, 'Yes!' And, 'Oh, that sounds interesting!' And, 'Sure, go and do that!" I get to watch as they dive deeply into the things they love.

I get to hear all the things they want to explore, what they want to immerse themselves in; I get to learn all the things that make them tick and move and smile, the things that make them want to get out of bed. I get to hear about their discoveries. I get to sit and watch the movie they've made, hear all about the informational video they've just watched, see the art they've drawn, the animation they've created, hear the song they've just found. I get to sit in the audience or right by their side as they show me who they are. 

And it's like I'm standing with them in this incredible room—a treasure trove of secret drawers and boxes, with tunnels and wondrous things waiting behind curtains. Everywhere we turn there's something new to put in our pocket, something incredible to see and absorb. It's like the room is actually vibrating, like it's filled with notes waiting in the throats of birds. 

And we're so filled with the desire to Learn! and Discover! and Explore! and Make! that our room is sometimes packed to overflowing. Some days, we have to just stop and read a book for a day, or go swimming, and try our very hardest not to learn anything new, just so we can take a break. 

But we can't seem to help ourselves. The learning keeps finding us. The new keeps surprising us. Adventures keep beckoning. Life keeps on bringing us joy.

P.S.

bird by my girl…

from this week's exhibition with their art class
at a lovely gallery down town!

portrait by my boy…

art by the whole class…

(my girl's squirrel is on the top left
my son's watercolour landscape is the top right)

:)

month of beauty: together

So we've been pulled in, slowly, slowly, until suddenly I've realised just how much time we're spending in front of the screens.

An investment in a new iPad (SO exciting!) and the world of Minecraft started the big slide. Because I could call our time on each "educational," I didn't really see just how much time, and then more time, they've been taking up. It's been hours.

So much of the time has been truly lovely: movies and Minecraft houses have been made, Youngzine and Science for Kids websites have been explored, and juggling videos found. We've played games together and I've learned about the properties of redstone (a Minecraft thing. Very ingenious!) and how to shave a Minecraft sheep. 

But I've noticed how often the kids, my son especially, are asking to go on the machines. We come home from being out and it's only a minute or two before the question comes. "Just wondering if I could go on Minecraft / Dragonvale / Other?" 

It's as much of an issue for me as the kids. Words with Friends is a drug, I tell you. I need to go to a group and say, "I'm Helena. I am addicted to internet scrabble." Add to that Draw Something, and the fact I have internet at my fingertips even in bed, and the whole thing's like a black hole. I've been sucked in so hard I'm all spaghetti arms and shrunken head. 

So, I've started making suggestions, in the afternoon and evenings, when the day slows down and the screens start to call. Anyone for Uno? I say. Scrabble? Settlers of Cataan? Pictionary? Anyone? 

Right now I am craving board games like someone coming off a month-long diet of sugar screaming for carrots. 

(A totally realistic analogy! People scream for carrots all the time.)

I'm asking for more of "us" right now. More family time. Sitting together and not apart. I don't mind what it is, as long as we are walking away from those magic boxes with their seductive glowing lights and clever tricks.

We played Pictionary the other night. When I first suggested it, my boy thought I meant on the iPad and iPhone. No. NO. The real thing. With pens and pads and a board and looking at each other while we play. That game. 

It was fun and wasn't, too, because the kids aren't used to competing and the whole winning losing thing left them just a bit cold. I forgot how stressful that timer was, and how easily you can leave a team behind as you race ahead on the board. 

So tonight, when my boy asked to go on Minecraft… 

and I suggested a game instead…

and my girl suggested Pictionary…

my boy in turn suggested we play it like Draw Something. "Let's each pick a Pictionary word, then just draw and have people guess what it is." 

No winners or losers? Just happy drawing, all together? Imagine that.

Great idea! Thank you, dear iPad drug app! (maybe I was too hard on you back there…)

Anyway, tonight we sat and drew, for ages. 

It was so cosy. 

made and did and wrote and drew and played

This morning I thought, Today's the Day! 

Today's the day

for getting up and thinking about and writing a post

to celebrate

Stephanie's Saturday's Artist…

which is always fun and inspiring to check out.

And I'm not sure if I'm cheating, 

because here it's Sunday. 

But I thought, Stephanie won't mind about that! She's really nice. In fact I could even write this post on a Wednesday, and she'd allow it. She's wonderful that way! :)

Then I thought,

Did I already write a post that fits? I should probably check first. 

Hmm…

I looked and it would be an interesting squeeze…

(think 1 ugly stepsister plus 1 glass slipper)…

so the answer was No.

Then I thought,

Has there been much creating this week?

So I checked and peeked and 

I picked things up off the floor…

and I think

there kind of

HAS!

There were

 drawings by a girl 

and drawings by a boy…

the beginnings of felt dragons…

and two rockets…

one for Splotches the cat

(not the real one in the pic above!)

and one for Waffle the dog.

Plus

there was a finished Kitten World report 

complete with the world's most gorgeous, skiing kitten…

And there were

 jet packs 

and pottery tiles

and games…

All of them yummy.

But my favourite creation of the week?

The one made and given yesterday,

by the man I married 11 years ago…

detailing the date we're going to go on next week.

I think it's gorgeous. 

So I'd say some

Creating was done this week, 

for sure!

(In fact, I kind of wonder if Create is our blood type, like,

if you looked into a microscope at 

all of our insides,

you'd probably find all these little blood cells running about 

in berets, holding up paintbrushes

(perhaps one on some scaffolding, painting the ceiling),

and another little blood cell

musing over a composition or bent over a piano like Shroeder in the Peanuts cartoons,

and another 

little blood cell

scribbling madly into a notebook,

another with its nose in a novel,

another drawing cat cartoons…

All our insides buzzing with activity

as our little blood cells made and did and wrote and drew and played.

Yeah, I think 

the scientists would consider us

a medical marvel…

if only they knew!)

:)

Wishing you all

some beautiful

  

Creating Days!

favourite

Pottery class was at our house today!

An unexpected treat,

to share our space (which luckily had just been tidied)

with sweet, creative people

(and, of course, our sleepy dog…!).

Today was tile work,

so we learned about relief tiles

and we learned about tesselation (though it wasn't called that)

and we learned to measure our tiles so they could be the same size
(handy for when you're laying different ones side by side on whatever wall strikes your fancy :) )

and we learned about cutting away or adding on clay and creating patterns

and we learned,

again,

how lovely it is to make something from a simple ball of living earth.

Such as

a

cat tile

(and I wonder who would've made that? :) )

an elephant under a crescent moon tile

and swirls and more swirls…

Meanwhile, the cat watched through the window and dreamed…

and a garden crown was made…

and two car-loving boys,

one ten and one three,

who had only met a few weeks ago,

talked and laughed and shared

and

became

friends.

(my boy and his friend driving cars on the trampoline)

This photo feels magical to me.

It represents 

so much beauty,

the beauty of kids being kids,

pure and free and let BE.

It reflects 

the joy of homeschooling 

(and why I sometimes love it so much I could burst).

And it

simply made me

smile

all the way

through to my bones.

Which is a good, fine thing,

don't you think? 

dinner party

Today was a day for…

making cats!

Which wasn't our intention at all when the day began…

after all, we had sat ourselves at my girl's desk to
write and draw the instructions on:

"How to Make Zoomer: the World's Most Awesome (and Smoothest Gliding and Farthest Flying) Paper Airplane EVER!"

(as invented by my girl the day before…
who in turn was inspired by her new Paper-Plane-Making book)…

Well, we lasted about 3 steps.

'Cos it's hard to remember how you made such a thing of beauty! It's downright impossible to pin something so fine down to its parts.

At some point, having tried to work out which fold came first, and which came next
and having tried to draw the steps and describe them the same way the handy-dandy book did,
and having found it to be less fun than we imagined when we'd plonked ourselves down side-by-side at the desk,

we just looked at the Most Awesome-est Plane Ever, and said,

Well, it sure is a great, great plane.


Isn't it just?


Yeah. It sure is.



And then one of us found a set of feet, little plastic green feet, sitting on the desk…

What's this doing here? we asked.

Turned out it had arrived via the Big Sunday Clean-up of Yesterday, the one that made the house, if only briefly, look like this:

Well, the green feet had to have a body, didn't they…?

And right there on the desk was an empty black thread spool.

How it got there I have no idea. I certainly don't remember putting it there.

I remember clean surfaces, not empty spools and little green feet… so these must have been a gift…

because there too, on the desk, was a small grey marble

waiting—like the others—

to be turned into a cat.

Silly me thought it was going to be a person when we grabbed the blu-tac and stuck the feet
to the spool
to the marble

but my girl said,

it can be a cat!

So we grabbed the permanent marker and I drew a sweet little nose and upturned mouth… and my girl drew big eyes, whiskers and pointy ears,

and there she was…

little cat with green feet.

Who had to get a furry wool body too, and orange arms, and a fine long tail…

Isn't she lovely?

Then at that same desk, I found a frog. And gave it cat ears and a woolly tail…

And my girl found a cork which became a cork cat…

Just Like That

And then my girl made a fox (not quite a cat but SO cute) with a hairclip face and sweet fox tail…

And finally, a rock cat appeared,

as if out of nowhere…

Just in time to join his friends

for dinner.

Yeah. Today was the day

for

traveling 

freely

down unexpected paths…

finding gifts

and turning them

into something magical

together.

.

a (not so) quiet week

A quiet week on this blog can mean so many things…

Like it could mean

my thoughts crept up on me and ambushed me in the night. They chloroformed me and took me to their secret lair where they held me hostage for about 5 days. They stood over me and said words I didn't like. They poked at my dark spaces and made them come out. Then the dark and my doubts hulked over me and said, "So what could you possibly have to say for yourself?"

And I, having become tiny, said, "nothing."

Until…I took myself back to bed this morning and felt the dark wave rising. Then…slowly, and with one hand over the other, I listed the things that were good, about my life and about myself. I listed them and I gave myself permission to look at each and every one. And then…

I believed them.

At which point the dark stopped gleefully rubbing its hands together, and the negative thoughts looked startled and afraid.

And, when I sat up, opened the curtains of my room, and sat to play with the kitten, the dark and the negative and the sad simply

scuttled off.

A quiet week on this blog could ALSO mean

that we were very very very busy!

It could mean that

a boy played music at the mall again,

this time with his latin jazz buddies and his gorgeous dad

 (this man danced through almost the whole concert. Gorgeous)

A quiet week could mean

we had to go on a wonderful excursion to Jumbulla Aboriginal Discovery Centre

where we watched films,

painted dreaming stones (with symbols you can learn more about here),

saw Indigenous art and learned about hunting tools,

pretended to hunt animals with balls, watched a man tell stories about a spooky Hairy Man, drew patterned hands, and

learned how to pull a bush leaf without cutting our hands (and the leaf could then be used to weave baskets. Very cool).

What a great excursion that was!

(and three days later, this wonderful space closed down, 

because it just wasn't getting enough people in to cover costs… 

A huge shame. It was lovely there.)

A quiet blog week could also mean

my boy was busy finishing Life of Fred: Fractions! 

He worked so hard on those final chapters and Bridges. I sat with him the whole time, learning alongside him, helping him through the hard parts, bringing him Gatorade and mopping his brow… (well, okay, maybe not the last two). We were together as he answered the last Bridge question, as I checked over his answers and declared him DONE! and together as we hooted and hollered and whooped. My boy was so, so pleased with himself. That book got HARD at the end!

Then, he rested. And two days later, my boy decided to start the next Life of Fred book! It's Decimals and Percentages. A new workbook was bought, and both workbooks covered (with a hand-drawn copy of the Life of Fred cover). And a new adventure began…

A quiet week could also mean

we had to go to pottery class 

where beading was the order of the day!

these beads prepared earlier 

by our beautiful pottery teacher

And…

we had to go to writers workshop (not just one but three!) 

where kids chatted and shared stories and talked about books and poetry and where they 

wrote.

And…

we had to play all those games …

Doubles Wild 

Menagerie

(plus Zeus on the Loose, and our Family Math games, all of which I forgot to photograph!)

Plus

art and stories 

had to be created

by a girl (at her truly beloved desk)…

And 

a LegoQuest had to be attempted

by a boy who loves his Lego…

(Coral reef, complete with submarine and lost treasure!)

And finally,

music

had to be heard…

performed by Synergy Percussion,

in a hall in our much loved art gallery (which used to be the town hall I think),

and watched from the secret balcony above…

It was a magical show.

So,

a quiet week on this blog might mean 

I have slipped into sad…just a little (and not enough to stop all the doing)…

then found my way back out,

and it might ALSO mean

that our days have been bursting at the seams

with full

and fun

and learning 

…and joy. 

I'm so glad I got to live and breathe and see these overflowing days, 

because every single one of them was, and is, beautiful. 

Seriously. They always are

when you stop and list the good things, 

one by one by one.