After exploring a Victorian town, we looked inside the homes of the Victorians:
and what they did for leisure:
Even after reading so many books about how the Victorians lived, we feel that we have learnt a fair bit more about the actual home lives of the Victorians from the documentary below:
There are also many Victorian houses, such as Audley End House,
dotted around to visit where we can see the interiors as well as some
of the toys that the Victorians used to amuse themselves with.
We decided to try our hands at making a few simple Victorian toys:
An interesting fact we learnt about the Victorians and their toys is how simple the mechanisms behind many of the toys are, yet they are full of simple fun and ingenuity, such as the following simple down-the-ramp box that uses the simple principle of shifting weight:
Another example is the simple wind-up toy made out of a spool, a rubber band, and a match stick:
This December we have been gearing ourselves up for a Victorian-themed Christmas to go along with our reading of A Christmas Carol. Since the Victorians are part of the UK National Curriculum, there is an abundance of related activities and events to attend all year round, so we went to one at Audley End House that is conveniently themed Victorian Christmas. We attended one at the same venue last year too, so it probably is an annual event that is held there at this time of the year.
You know you're off to a good start when you see Father Christmas around and you hear joyful carols being sung. Not only did we hear the popular Victorian carols, we also learned about the wassailing practice that used to take place. As a bonus, we got to hear one of the popular wassailing songs:
In the main kitchen, we saw how busy the servants were at preparing food for Christmas dinner:
We even saw pheasants being grilled in the very authentic Victorian kitchen:
Outside the house, we learned about the history of falconry, a popular sport of the upper-class in Victorian times.
There were live demonstrations by the hawks and the falcons of their superb hunting skills:
Dotted around the place were the old-fashioned carousel:
and a few Victorian games where people can have a go at.
The Victorian games look deceptively easy, what with the entire game consisting of a few balls, poles, buckets and rings. Tiger soon found out for himself that these games are not as easily played well as he had initially thought them to be.
No Victorian event would be complete without Punch and Judy!
This week we have been indulging ourselves scary stories.
Individually, Tiger has been reading horror stories written separately by Ted Hughes and Brian Jacques,
while I have been enjoying reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and following the book discussion that took place at the AO Book Discussion (which can be found by joining the Ambleside Online Forums).
W also let ourselves be entertained by more-humourous-than-scary Victorian ghost stories,
and making a not-so-scary skeleton puppet (named Jonathan by Tiger, in honour of a friend he made at last year's science class):
We also read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow together. I first read the story to Tiger as a bedtime story a while ago but I decided that we ought to do a little bit more than mere reading to learn more from the story. Therefore, this week we shared the reading of this story by reading alternate paragraphs to each other and writing down every word that we were unsure of. We filled both sides of four A4 sheets by the end of the story! We then looked up each word and satisfied ourselves that our vocabulary has increased through this process of slow reading and not skipping over words that we haven't fully understood.
Following the word study, we discussed the story using the lesson plan here and also watched an animation of the story, which met with little enthusiasm from Tiger due to its inevitable abridgement and adaptation:
I agree with Tiger that much of the beauty and nuance of the language in the original written story has been lost in the film adaptation, even though the above is one that I found to be least offensive in this regard. Tiger is still annoyed by last year's experience whereby the film version of The Witches made several alternations to the original story, which he found to irritate more than entertain him . I think that means we shall stay with reading the original books rather than watching film adaptations, suits me just fine.
Although I did not succeed in getting Tiger to enjoy the animation of the story, we did, however, got quite excited when we came face-to-face with the headless horseman! Unlike Ichabod Crane who could not wait to get away from the headless horseman, Tiger and I gazed at him and walked around him several times (I would have touched him to find out where his head was, if I thought that was appropriate), admiring him and our good luck at meeting him. I certainly didn't know he was going to be there!
At dusk, we entered "The Haunted Hollows" and were greeted by three talking pumpkins:
We took our time and walked the trail twice just to admire the various Halloween decorations that were put to good use.
The event was very well organised, especially after it got
dark, where the lighting was used to create a very spooky atmosphere. We took the "ghostly castle tour" where we were told stories that happened within the castle related to:
apparitions of servants who used to work in the castle and atristocrats who used to live there appearing in certain rooms in the castle;
the secret corridor that led to a flight of stairs where a servant girl, impregnated by an aristocrat, was murdered to prevent the scandal from emerging;
the organ in the small chapel that sometimes plays by itself;
a room where another servant girl was bricked up alive.
I am going against the grain this year: I am NOT planning any specific activities this December. It has been liberating and eye-opening for me to see how and how much unscheduled learning happens when we just 'go with the flow'.
2. Mothers Who Embody Courage and Determination
Tiger has been attending a weekly hands-on science class since September. The class is held in a small church hall so the mums always sit at the back of the class quietly until the lesson is over, unless they are helping their children with a particular tricky part of the experiments. As such, there is very little chance each week for the mums to get to know one another beyond recognising one another's faces.
The sessions for this year have ended so one of the mums has kindly invited everyone to her house for a social gathering. It was at this gathering that I felt I have gotten to know these ladies much better, and I am very glad for that.
For example, I had no idea that one mother has managed to guide her son from being diagnosed as fully autistic (i.e. no speech, no eye contact, mentally delayed) at age two to being mildly socially awkward at age 14. This boy is currently preparing for GCSEs in biology, physics and chemistry. After listening to her amazing experience, I felt a profound sense of respect for this woman. Behind her meek, quiet appearance is a spirit of steel and courage.
It was only in the relaxed environment of the gathering that I got to know that the majority of the mothers here are single parents bringing up children on their own with little financial help from their ex-partners. Most of them are also having to cope with children who have special needs, e.g. diabetic, Aspergers, dyslexic. I don't know the ins and outs of how these mothers find themselves in their situation of becoming a lone parent, but I listened with respect and admiration to every story of the battles they have had to fight to get the support their children need -- financially, educationally, and medically.
Since Tiger has never been to school, I thought he would not share this childhood experience with the 95% of children his age who go to school. Although it is not a big deal to us whether he takes part in a Nativity play, I sometimes wonder whether he might have liked, when he becomes an adult, to be able to say something like, "Yes, I have fond memories of being the donkey lying in the manger in my Year One Nativity play." Well, you never know, do you?
Thanks to a new set of homeschooling friends that we've made this year, we were invited to take part in a Nativity play -- well, it's Tiger who has the part of a shepherd/narrator. My job is to take him to the premise, be part of a supportive audience, and socialise with everyone.
We had a group of 15 children, aged two to 12. The children memorised their lines beautifully from a script written by one of the very talented mums. The play was interspersed with Christmas carols played by a few children in their various instruments (trumpet, flute, recorder, oboe).
Waiting for their turns during the full-dress rehearsal.
Despite only meeting a few hours before the actual performance, the children were ready for the actual performance after three rehersals. The children's level of concentration and dedication to this project, their ability to work together, and the older children's ability and willingness to look out for the younger ones during the 25-minute production really shone through. What a fantastic group of children! I feel very privileged to have witnessed all the goodness in these children with my own eyes.
4. A Victorian Christmas
We are about half way through reading and listening to A Christmas Carol.
There are usually many Victorian Christmas activities available in various parts of the country around this time, and since the era ties in with the book that we are reading, we went to one to experience the jovial atmosphere of a Victorian Christmas.
There were diplays of Victorian toys, Victorian games, street musicians, street performers, and Victorian crafts. We found the hand-turned busker organ to be absolutely fascinating:
The event being of a Victorian theme in December, there was also a two-person street performance of A Christmas Carol:
As it was a two-person production team, they had to adapt much of the story and summarise it into a 20-minute play. Tiger enjoyed watching the performance in spite of its obvious adaptations. It's interesting for me to see him respond differently to adaptions made at a live performance than those made for films. I'd be curious to see his response to a film version of the story, when we watch it at some point.
5. A Bedtime Lecture
Tiger
is a very animated child and his bedtime routine has always taken
forever because he always has a lot to say when he is in bed. After
I've read him stories and kissed him goodnight, he always has something
he's excited about to tell me. It may well be his delaying tactic, but I
feel obliged to stay for an extra 15 minutes because he does often have
genuinely interesting things to tell me just before bed.
This week's bedtime topic of interest is computer networks.
Mum: (kissed him on the forehead and about to switch the lights off) Goodnight, darling. Tiger:Mum, do you want to know about computer networks? Mum: (hesitatingly) Umm... I don't know. Do I? Tiger: Yeah, they're very interesting. I'll show you a few diagrammes quickly and you'll understand them in no time. Mum: Well, ok.
That was his cue to sit up in bed in his dressing gown and start explaining to me how different networks work.
In
the 30-minute session, Tiger educated me about the different switches,
routers, how LANs (local area networks) and WANs (wide area
networks) can be designed and how they work, as well as how they can be combined in various ways to make
efficient cross-border networks. The mini lecture was delivered with
numerous hand drawn diagrammes to illustrate his examples:
I
vaguely remember studying two IT-related modules at university, so
Tiger's diagrammes and explanations made some sense to me. What I
enjoyed most in the session was his enthusiasm to share what he has
learnt so far.
Much to my own surprise, despite my non-plan it has been a very busy week filled with rich experiences to nourish our hearts and minds. I wonder what is in store for us next week.
