May the Force be with Us

One of the key positives for Tiger in attending school is to have found a best friend in his class, a French boy, L, who shares his passion for all things Star Wars.  Tiger spent a whole day hanging out with L at his home (talking non-stop about Star Wars, according to L's mum) and also went to the cinema to watch the latest franchise movie:

Since I have not totally forgotten my previous role as a homeschooling mother, I then followed up with Tiger's interest by taking him to the Star Wars exhibition.

Given his current obsession with Star Wars, Tiger really enjoyed the exhibition.  I am not a sci-fi fan in any way but I have found the slightly philosophical theme (about making choices) of the exhibition to be interesting.  We had the opportunity to 'mould' a character by the end of the exhibition, and the below are our Star Wars characters:

Back home, Tiger whipped out the dot-to-dot book that I got him for Christmas and started playing with it.  Doing the dot-to-dot is nothing especially intellectual, but Tiger enjoys it, as so I, and doing what we enjoy is a good enough reason to carry on with the activity.

Besides, this is how we have always supported and will continue to support Tiger's interests, aligned with his increasing fleet of Star Wars models.

If you happen to be as ignorant about the various space vehicles as I am, here is a video that I have found to be useful to bring me up to speed with what the Millenium Falcon is:

Of course, one needs to know about Walkers:

Where does this obsession begin?  I trace it back to two Christmases ago.   Since then, Tiger has caught the bug, despite my best efforts to distract him from it.  When I saw that I could not save him from it, I let him immerse himself by reading all the related books we could get our hands on.

 

Having said that, I must confess that I struggle to see the importance of knowing the entire chronological history of Star Wars...

Slowly Making My Way Back

Hello, everybody!  Remember us?

Many things have gone on at the home front since mid-December, which explains my absence on this blog.  There has been much joy, with the birth of my new nephew thousands of miles away (which Tiger is very happy about since he is therefore no longer the youngest member in the family),

and Tiger recovering from his nasty ear infection in time for us to enjoy a wonderful Christmas with all of the family.

As if all these excitement was not enough, my little cozy world was, and still is, somewhat "shaken" by a few remarks and observations that I received both online and offline.  As though being hit by a wave of personal issues all at once, I had to take time off from blogging and from many other activities to think things over, to untangle each interconnected piece so that I can tackle each one effectively.

Meanwhile, one of the issues/topics that have come up again and again over the years in various forms is that of giftedness.  I intend to share more of our experiences very soon.  While you're waiting for me to get my act together, may I direct you to a few related posts that I have written over the years, particularly this one that was written in 2012?
 

Countdown to Christmas: Week 2

It has been a difficult week.  Tiger has been very ill with high fever and severe headache all this time.  It took three visits to the GP to find out that Tiger has a middle ear infection, which most likely resulted from his weekly swimming lessons.   There is no a lot to be done apart from taking the prescribed antibiotics and waiting for the bacteria to be gotten rid of.  The infection is a nasty one, causing such a spliting headache for Tiger that he (and consequently, I) has been woken up by the pain several times in the night for the past week.  Hence, all external activities have been cancelled, with Tiger spending most of his time lying on the sofa.  He is only well enough today to play with LEGO and his train set.

Compared to how active Tiger normally is, this week has been very boring for him as all external activities have been cancelled due to his being ill.  With all my not-so-well-planned December plans out of the window, luckily we have been able to manage some continuity with the daily unwrapping of Christmas-related storybooks.

  and rewatching a Christmas classic:

When he felt well enough to get off the sofa, we continued to look through the RI space-themed advent calendar, watched the second week of the Angel Trail, and made tin can lanterns that turned out to be very pretty.

At the very beginning of the week Tiger felt really terrible so in order to distract him from the physical pain that he was experiencing, my husband had the brilliant idea of introducing Tiger to a classic movie that he (my husband) has always wanted them to watch together:

No, Tiger will not be getting any Star Wars-related presents.

Countdown to Christmas: Dickens' Carol

We have read A Christmas Carol in the past two Christmases such that the book has become a part of our Christmas tradition.  This year, however, I think it would be a good idea to expand our scope a little wider by reading the other Christmas stories written by Charles Dickens at Tiger's bedtime so that A Christmas Carol does not become the only Dickensian Christmas story that we know.

However, even though we are not reading A Christmas Carol this year, we find ourselves not being able to get away from it totally.  As a result of Tiger being ill with fever most of last week, we found ourselves having a lot of time on our hands that we could spend on video watching.  To my surprise, Tiger watched the 1999 movie version without his usual complaint that most movie versions are poor substitutes for the original storybooks.  There have been numerous movie adaptations of the story, but the 1999 version is the one that stayed most true to the original, and it helps that Patrick Stewart (who played Scrooge) is a most excellent actor.
 

After we watched the movie, we thought we might as well review our knowledge about the origins of the story:

What I find interesting about reading/reviewing the same story each year is that not only does the story become part of our family's tradition at Christmas time, but my own understanding of the story grows with each reading.  This sense of getting to know a story at a deeper level with each passing year comes with no surprise.  What is perhaps surprising is how easily recognisable many universal human values, such as compassion and redemption, are in this very traditional, English story.  Then again, isn't that what every good classic story is supposed to do?

Another reason for us not being able to completely ignore A Christmas Carol this year is that it is currently being discussed in the BerkerleyX Book Club, which is another free MOOC offered by edX.  Tiger and I looked at the first week's coursework, which we felt has helped us consider a few points that we had not discussed in our previous readings. 

Countdown to Christmas: Week 1

The best way to describe our first week of Christmas countdown is that it's a mixed bag.

After announcing that I am not going to come up with 24 different activities this December, I found the advent calendar that my mother-in-law bought for Tiger when he was a baby and thought it best to take it out and use it before Tiger's childhood is over.  So, I stayed up on the night of November 30th to do some last minute brainstorming and managed to stretch my initial short list of activities to fill 24 days.

Since I have the habit of over-preparing than under-preparing most of the time, I wrapped the Christmas-related books that I borrowed from the library in Christmas wrappers to act as another form of advent calendar (just in case the other one doesn't work, for whatever reason), so that Tiger can unwrap one book each day to read a Christmas-related story.  That's the least we can do, if we don't do anything else for the month.

I really needn't worry, because the RI has a space-related advent calendar ready so we have been unveiling it each day, after I read aloud a section from our spine book for the month, The Christmas Almanac.  The book covers a broad spectrum of Christmas-related issues from history to traditions, both religious and secular.

There is a section in the book explaining the origins and different ranks of angels in the Western tradition which coincides with the weekly video of the Angel Trail organised by the National Gallery, so we watched the first episode of that.

The rest of the week was interspersed with the making of mince meat,

as well as mince pies.

We would have done more this week if Tiger hadn't been ill with high fever most of the time.  In fact, he spent most of the week lying on the sofa, recovering from nights of broken sleep.

He is still suffering from fever as I type.  We are taking him to see the out-of-hours doctor in a little while, since our usual GP does not work on weekends.  I hope next week will be a better week.


This post is linked up to Christmas In A Box ~ Week 1 Link Up.

Countdown to Christmas: The Beginning

Our countdown to Christmas has begun with the consumption of mulled wine and mince pies, as is my little personal tradition.

I started accumulating the mince pies from the supermarkets at the end of November, having forgotten that I had already done a survey of the various mince pies last year.  I was wondering what to do with the over supply of mince pies when my attention was turned to the homeless.

Ever since the extent of homelessness in the UK came to our attention in May this year when we studied about the Victorian poor, I have become more aware of the signs of the current rising food and housing crises around us, for example the increase in the number of food bank collection points in town and the number of people selling The Big Issue (a magazine sold by homeless people).  The trend is both worrying and upsetting.

We already make regular donations to the food banks and to the charity shops, but I feel compelled to do a little more this December.  I thought about volunteering at a homeless shelter over Christmas, but knew I would be too upset when I come face-to-face with real people who are in such a desperate situation, so this year I will just make donations of winter clothing and 10% of our weekly grocery to the shelter, including all the extra mince pies that I have bought -- although I seriously think that homeless people have bigger problems to worry about than having mince pies to eat at Christmas time.  Maybe next year I will find the courage to actually go and help out at the shelter.

Plans for December

With December only a few days away, I feel I ought to share what our plans are for the month.  I am going to call ours a 'December plan' rather than an Advent plan because we are not Christians, so I don't feel right about using the term 'advent' when we don't actually celebrate the days leading up to Christmas Day in a religious way.

In our own secular way, we honour Christmas Day as a major festival with our own family traditions, which include setting aside time each December to do something special.  To me, the significance of Christmas Day to the English side of our family is on par with that of Chinese New Year to the Chinese side of the family.

Since we are not calling our December activities 'advent' activities anymore, I feel a sense of relief that I don't have to come up with 24 different activities for us to complete in order to earn our place at the Christmas table.  I have come up with fewer than 24 activities because I would like to spend some time this year to observe the Dongzhi Festival (冬至), which is another important Chinese festival that takes place near Christmas Day.

Below are our Christmas-related activities for December, in no particular order:

• make Christmas cards
• make lanterns
• watch Christmas-related movies
• listen to Christmas music
• see Christmas lights
• learn to sing three Christmas carols
• learn to recite one Christmas poem
• decorate the house
• decorate the tree
• watch a Christmas-related documentary
• go for two nature walks
• make mince pies
• read Christmas-related stories
• draw Christmas-related drawings

I aim to be more diligent with blogging in December, so having a planned list of activities for the month will give me a good reason to do so.

Memories of Christmas 2014

Is it ok to still talk about Christmas?

Charlie, the only member of our extended family (on the English side) who is not publicity-shy.

I suppose it would be alright, given that there are 12 days of Christmas so strictly speaking, the festive season is not over yet...  Anyhow, I'd like to capture some wonderful memories of our 2014 Christmas so please indulge me.

After moaning about Sainsbury's bakery mince pies in my previous post, we found our 5/5 ones, from none other than Sainsbury's more homemade-look 'Taste the Difference' range!

A new variation comes to a close second of 4.5 out of 5, but as it does not contain the traditional mince meat, it does not strictly count towards the mince pie challenge.  However, as far as I am concerned, tasty food is always worth noting so here is a photo for anyone else (apart from me) who is interested.

I also made our own mince pies, since it's a bit of a family tradition here to make our own gluten-free version.

The mince meat recipe varies each year as it depends on our changing taste as well as the dried fruit that I happen to have at the point of making.  This year, I used a variation on the Victorian recipe found in the Victorian Christmas recipe book in this post.   I think I must have got carried away since I made enough mince meat to feed the whole village,

so I used the mince meat to make a Christmas crumble (by just adding a layer of mince meat to the usual chopped apples in a normal apple crumble) and Christmas muffins (with mince meat added to the ingredients).  Even so, I still two jars of mince meat left so I shall have to come up with other creative ideas to use them up this month!

We had a slight scare just prior to Christmas Day, with Tiger having a sudden high temperature two days before.  I thought we might have to stay at home for Christmas so I went panic-shopping on the 24th morning to get everything I could need to cook Christmas lunch -- there's nothing like a good old mad rush to gather all the ingredients for a complete Christmas lunch!  Luckily Tiger recovered by Chtistmas eve so we were able to spend the 25th with family, enjoying fantastic food and jolly company.

It was a good Christmas for us.  I hope yours was wonderful too!

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/30/14
2) My Week in Review #18
3) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with Christmas and New Year's

Food at Christmas Time

As we have been going on "Victorian" this December (well, as much as humanly possible), I have been serving up Victorian dishes to my family - much to the dismay of my husband, who is not very adventurous when it comes to trying new food.

The dishes above are mostly taken from the receipes found here:
1.  Roast Goose with Apple and Herb Stuffing (I substituted goose with duck)
2.  Kedgeree
3.  Baronet's Curry

They were very well received by the boys.

However, I cannot claim the same for the other three dishes though:
4.  Roast Goose (duck) with Stuffed Baked Apples
5.  Chestnut Soup
6.  Winter Salad

The recipes come from the following book.  The boys tolerated dishes #4 and #5, but they could not bear the chestnut soup even though they both love chestnuts generally.

It's all going horribly wrong....!!

Oh well, at least I tried to give them an authentic Victorian experience... although, I must admit that my one-woman effort at creating a Victorian dining experience is a long way off what a team can create:

Where I fail at in the historic department, I hope to make up for it in the contemporary division.  Remember my quest for the tastiest commerically-made mince pie in my vincinity?

I did try all I could get my hands on.  Gasp!  Don't even start on the calories!  Here's a list of what I ate:

1. Lidl's luxury brand
2. Sainsbury's bakery
3. Aldi's own brand
4. Farm shop
5. Tesco's own brand
6. Sainsbury's Taste the Difference
7. Tesco's Finest
8. Marks and Spencer's luxury brand

Here is the verdict:

Each brand is scored out of a total of 5.  There are a few interesting things to note in the result:

• For the sake of completeness, I would just mention that this year I have not bought Waitrose's mince pies (the 'Duchy' brand) which would have been endorsed by Prince Charles, no less.  However, I remember from last year that we were not wowed by it, as we had expected to for its price and its royal association.
• The biggest surprise this year is that we find mince pies from Lidl (a German supermarket selling discounted items) should be on par with that of Sainsbury's 'Taste the Difference'.
• Usually the food baked fresh from Sainsbury's bakery is superior to that sold on its shelves but this year we find the bakery made mince pies to be so terrible (too sweet, not enough mince meat, crust too hard) that we only managed to share half out of the pack of four and had to throw the rest in the bin.
• Tesco 'Finest' was unanimously our favourite last year but this year it has not done as well.  There seems to be a subtle difference between last year's and this year's mince pies so we wonder whether any subtle alteration have been made to this year's receipe.

With only three days to go before Christmas, I have some last-minute shopping and Christmas baking to do so I am taking a blogging break from now until the new year.  I wish every reader

A Very Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!

This post is linked up to:

1. History and Geography Meme: Original Illustrations, Example Using Beowulf
2. My Week in Review #17
3. Collage Friday: A Birthday, Buildings, Concerts & Christmas
4. Weekly Wrap-Up: The last one of 2014