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.
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.
I looked through Tiger's history homework last night before I went to bed, and saw that although he had written a summary of Mesopotamia well in terms of content and coherence -- a result I attribute to oral narration), his written narration is, well... sloppy. His writing transgressed a few points (such as poor handwriting, careless spelling and a disregard for grammar rules) that warranted a "This is unacceptable. You have to rewrite it." from me, which he was very unhappy about.
After breakfast, Tiger rewrote the summary in its entirety. I'll be lying if I told you that he rewrote the assignment cheerfully. No doubt he was seething with anger over the injustice of being made to write it a second time but he did it anyway, and the final copy was perfect. It just shows that the poor quality of the original piece of writing was not due to an inability to write well but was caused by carelessness.
Afternoon
We then headed out to a centre where we spent most of the day with many other home educated children and parents. I usually sit at a corner while Tiger attends his English and history classes as I like to listen in on what he is learning. Sometimes I read my own book and make notes in my commonplace book while listening to the lessons (a skill that I developed in primary school), but more often than not, I make write out plans for the following week. At the centre there is a waiting room where most other parents congregate as they waited for their children's lessons to end. I usually join them at lunch break to socialise while Tiger has his lunch with the other children in one of the other rooms.
After class, we stopped by the supermarkets to pick up some groceries and reached home at 4pm. I reminded Tiger that he had not started with his science homework yet so he buckled down and did a part of it (the other part he will complete tomorrow).
Evening
It was Tiger's turn to cook dinner tonight. He is capable of preparing dinner by himself now so while he was busy in the kitchen, I wiped all the non-carpeted floors in the house. Tonight's dinner was a modified version of Duck with Plum Sauce and Noodles. You might have noticed that we always modify recipes. It is because we follow certain dietary restrictions for health reasons.
Tiger was ready for bed by 8:55pm but he came downstairs in his dressing gown again (as he did on Tuesday) to draw a tank before he felt happy to go to sleep. I read to him again tonight and finished the second half of the Samuel Morse story.
Before I left his bedroom, Tiger announced that he will have a big lay in tomorrow. Hmm.
It was one of the rare sunny and warm day when we were enjoying the warmth of the sun in the garden when Tiger spotted the lone honey bee busying collecting nectar from flower to flower. As it was a little dopey, we were able to observe it very closely such that we could even see its body being covered by pollen and it carrying its pollen basket on its hind legs!
As is becoming quite a (good) habit for us now, we decided to have a go at drawing a bee in our nature journal.
We later learned from the delightful little book shown below that we have drawn the queen bee, with its curved sting.
As we felt quite hungry after concentrating on our drawings, Tiger went into the kitchen and made a honey cake while we listened to a rather appropriate (even thought it's about bumblebee rather than honeybee) piece of music over and over again.
As wonderful as the piece of music is, I won't recommend doing that (i.e. listening to the same 3-minute piece
over and over as we did) because now I can hear the music in my head all
the time, as if there were a real bee buzzing around inside! My propensity to hearing buzzing noise is not helped by us looking at the first 21 days of a bee's life while learning about the composer, Rimsky-Korsakov.
Tiger and I took more than six weeks(!) immersing ourselves in the poetic, meditative yet scientifically acute observational prose of The Life of the Bee, by the end of which we both learned a great deal about the fascinating behaviour of the bee and the intimate life within the hive. The scientific accuracy of the prose that was written over a hundred years ago is validated by a more current documentary.
I got hold of a beeswax candle making kit for Tiger to have a go at feeling and smelling beeswax while making a few candles with the instructions in the kit. The candles are incredibly easy to make and, according to Tiger, "very satisfying".
All is good until we started looking more into the current problems of honeybee survival. It seems that the bees have been in trouble for at least 10 years now, and if the trend continues, the entire food chain is going to be aversely affected.
Summer is not here yet but what we have been up to this past week or so is pretty much a preview of what I envisage our summer to be.
Plenty of Outdoor Playtime
When the sun is out (as it had been most of this week), Tiger spends much of his time in the garden, either playing, or doing some gardening work, or swinging on the rope swing that he made by himself.
If he was not in the garden, he could be found patroling the woods, or playing with other children in the hollow of a giant pine tree or in various playgrounds.
Being Physically Active
This year we see a marked improvement in Tiger's physical strength and stamina. It gives me a lot of joy to see my boy healthy and strong, especially when he had been relatively weak and poorly up till 18 months ago.
A few of Tiger's regular activities (climbing and tennis) will take a break in the summer but others (table tennis, off-road riding, and swimming) will continue all through the summer.
Plenty of "Food for the Soul"
It is no secret that Tiger and I go to Shakespeare's Globe every summer. To watch at least three Shakespearean play each year is a tradition that has been well established since Tiger watched Macbeth for the first time when he was six years old. Since we cannot possibly wait until July/August to visit the place again, we have gone ahead to catch the performance of The Merchant of Venice. We will watch a few more plays before the season ends.
Another venue that we love to go to is the Royal Opera House. In a similar fashion to watching Shakespearean plays, Tiger started his annual pilgrimage to the Royal Opera House when he was five, to watch the ballet set to Tales of Beatrix Potter. Compared to the ballet which always involves a lot of graceful movements, operas may not be the cup of tea for everyone. Nonetheless, Tiger responded very well to his first opera, La Boheme, when we watched it live a few years ago so this year we are getting more exposure to the operas again.
Don Giovanni seems like a good place to start, with its action-packed plot and Mozart's etheral music. To be honest, every opera I have watched is so full of passion (both in plot and in singing) that any opera will be able to keep a keen audience captivated, as it did us. With any luck, we might be back for a few more performances before the end of the year!
Plenty of Food for the Tummy
A consequence of hanging out with his mother who is very fond of eating good (i.e. not necessarily expensive but must be interesting) food, Tiger has a well developed appreciation for different types of food.
As a result, Tiger has been very keen to learn to cook at home. About two months ago, he volunteered to take over the responsibility for cooking our family dinner every Friday, which was welcomed and supported wholeheartedly by Tortoise and I. I supervised him in the kitchen for the first two weeks, giving him tips on a few basics of cooking and reminding him of safety rules. Now, he is able to take on the entire process from start to finish: from writing a shopping list for all the ingredients he needs (photo 1) to buying fresh ingredients (photo 2) to the entire cooking process (photos 3 to 5).
Tiger has gone from strength to strength in cooking over the relatively short period of time from when he first started taking over the responsibility for our Friday night dinners two months. I must say that I am very impressed with his progress and the variety of dishes he is able to make from scratch, all by himself. Below is a sample of his ever-expanding culinary repertoire:
The fact that he has even managed to cook rice just right (i.e. neither too soggy nor too dry) is very good going. Then again, one can argue that Tiger has the advantage of having eaten rice all his life so he knows instinctively what a properly cooked pot of rice should look and taste like.
InformalLearning
While I believe that children learn all the time in their own ways, even when the learning doesn't tick any formal curriculum boxes, I want to make a conscious effort to let both Tiger and I have a proper rest over the summer. However, just because I have saved some money by not signing Tiger up for summer classes, it doesn't mean that he won't learn things informally, just as he has done recently in a series of basic electronics workshops, which is cleverly disguised as toy-making (or toy-destroying, depending on your point of view) sessions.
In the session, the children did not use any textbook or any formal instruction. All they needed are their enthusiasm to learn (which is plentiful) and an adult who is willing to show them the ropes.
For us, the Christmas season starts when the following items appears in our house: mulled wine and mince pies.
Tortoise and I plan to train ourselves to become mince pies connoisseurs this year by tasting all the commerically available mince pies and then making a comparsion chart to show our results by Christmas. If this isn't an excuse for gluttony, I don't know what is... but at least our intention is to come up with a really useful chart at the end of our exericse to enable us to make a more informed decision about which brand of mince pies to buy next year. There is some good to this over-indulgence, really.
As for the mulled wine, it is my private acknowledgement of the arrival of the Christmas season. Tortoise can't stand mulled wine. He says it's because he doesn't like spiced drinks, but I suspect the real reason is because he doesn't drink cheap wine (that means anything less than £25 per bottle). To be honest, the quality of red wine used to make mulled wine is indeed sub-standard, but the mulled wine was introduced to me the first time I spent Christmas in England many years ago so for me, the drink has a very strong association with Christmas in this country, even though the first glass of mulled wine I had was ghastly due to it being over-heated. Every December since, I have drunk it purely for sentimental reasons and this has become my little private festive ritual.
Before anyone leaves this post in digust at our over-indulgence, let me just clarify that:
the one bottle of mulled wine (750ml) is to last me for 24 days, so a quick division reveals that, at an average of 31.25ml per day, I am grossly under-qualified to apply for membership to the AA.
I only do this from December 1st to 24th, not any other time of the year.
Luckily, it's not all gluttony and drunkeness here. We only indulge in the above in the "after hours", i.e. after Tiger has gone to bed. In the day, I continue my role as a hardworking, responsible parent by participating in wholesome activities such as: 1) baking
Our gingerbread family turned out whiter than normal because we used a traditional Victorian Christmas recipe for the "White Gingerbread" and we had used a combination of coconut flour and almond flour for our base instead of the usual wheat flour. The substitution did not go smoothly as the mixture was too crumbly at first so we had to tweak the recipe even more to make the dough hard enough to cut. In the end, the activity that should have taken us at most 30 minutes took two hours to complete!
All this time, I wasn't just standing around taking photographs. I actually helped to turn what was destined to become a crumbly mess into something edible. I bought two Christmassy aprons to put us in the mood of Christmas cooking -- one for Tiger, one for me.
2) making cards
I was originally very excited about the prospect of us showcasing different card designs this December. However, when we made a list of everyone that Tiger is to make cards for and the count totalled to 15 (aren't we popular?), we decided to be more realistic about our capability and stamina, and settled for learning to do one design very well.
We followed the instructions found here, with some modifications. Next year, we might attempt more design varieties but I am happy that, after mass-producing 15 cards of the same design, we have now added this design to our crafts repertoire and can produce it with our eyes shut, almost spontaneously.
3) music
This week we started to immerse ourselves in Bach's Christmas Oratorio.
Tiger was curious about this piece of music and its form, so we talked a little about the background of the music as well as its structure. Tis piece of music has been our background music this week and will continue to be so for the next two week. I am slightly surprised that Tiger does not object to having this piece of music playing in the background as he works, since we usually have no background noise when we are working.
We have also been very good about learning our first Christmas carol, Joy to the World:
Another surpise here is how enthusiastic Tiger has been about learning to sing it and the fact that he asked to sing it several times throughout the day!
4) Christmas stories
I found a gorgeously illustrated book to go with learning the carol, a good summary of which can be found here.
Tiger and I read the book together and had a little discussion about the basic elements of literary analysis (such as: setting, characters, conflict, rising action, climax, resolution, conclusion). Then our discussion took on a broader, somewhat philosophical scope to include: 1. homelessness
where we have seen homeless people
the fundamental causes of homelessness
where do homeless people go
how homeless people are treated or perceived
what, if anything, can people do if they become homeless
2. charity
whether it is universally applicable
different circumstances under which people choose to apply or not to apply charity
how charity can be manipulated or exploited
3. idealism versus pragmatism
given the current social climate, whether it is advisable to invite strangers into our homes, and if not, how else can they be helped
under what circumstances, if any, is the idea that "They brought it upon themselves." ever justifiable.
We are just beginning to discuss books in this way, as Tiger starts getting to an age when he is able to consider such questions in a meaningful way. Like the baking this week, our discussion took way longer than it would have been had we just read the book, but I feel the time was well spent and Tiger relishes at the new challenge of having to think a little deeper and harder about what he reads.
However, not all books are to be discussed as such otherwise the process becomes tedious so Tiger also read the following for his own enjoyment.
5) Christmas STEM
We looked at a few maths problems from the Chrismaths book that I mentioned in the Christmas curriculum post. The book's problems cover a wide range of ages (KS1 to KS3) so we started in the middle where the problems look more suited to Tiger's current ability but found them not overly exciting so we switched to working out the problems from this year's primary maths advent calendar.
One advent calendar led to another. We also looked at the 2014 Chemistry Advent Calendar to get our daily dose of chemistry snippets.
Halloween has always been associated with the darker archetypes of human consciousness. As such, I often find that whenever I think of science activities related to Halloween, I will end up looking at something quite revolting or disgusting.
Our Halloween dinner.
We first tried out a science kit that I acquired at the charity shop for 50p, and did a few of the experiments from the attached booklet. However, apart from the initial fun of stretching at the ready-made polmorphic slide, making our own slime ball, and playing a game of chase with the ready-made bouncy slime ball, I didn't think we have learnt much from the kit so I took it back to the charity shop. Maybe the next person will have more joy with the kit.
We realised that we learn best by actually making the slime/gloop/oobleck ourselves, in the old-fashioned way, using the tried-and-tested cornflour and water mix:
It is one of those cheap-and-easy way to keep a child entertained for a long time, and to have a hands-on experience with the intriguing transformation of polymer chains, which certainly beats just reading about the properties of polymers from here and here.
From our little success above, we wanted to know what would happen if we scale up our experiment (from using 1 cup of cornflour to using 7 boxes of cornflour). We filled two-thirds of our tub with oobleck, let it settle for a day and rest a glass bottle on its surface. The glass bottle tipped to one side after a few minutes, but did not sink further into the mixture:
We then redid the test with a few marbles, one of which promptly sank into the suspension while the others took a little while longer to do so, but all eventually sank in and we had to fish them out with our fingers.
While the sinking of the materials was fascinating to watch, it was the fishing out part that really demonstrated the dilatant (the mixture moves slower when an external force is applied to it) quality of the suspension.
If we had a bigger container (such as a small paddling pool), we would have made a non-newtonian fluid pool that we could walk on, like the one shown below, but we understood the principle behind it from observing what happened to the marbles in the above experiment:
What other gloopy things can we make with cornflour and water? Silly Putty, of course! It is really a mixture of white glue, borax powder, water, and cornflour.
Borax is vital to the stiffness of the Silly Putty (as opposed to the simpler oobleck mixture) as borax facilitates the formation of cross-links among the polymers, which in turn creates longer/bigger and stronger/stiffer polymer chains. Hence, the bounciness of the Silly Putty.
Finally, we turned out attention to the humble meringue, which is essentially made up of sugar and egg white. Did you know that egg white is about 88% water? The rest of it is almost all proteins (polymer). The act of whipping the egg white unfolds and stretches the protein strands (the process is called denaturing), which gives rise to the network of bubbles we see. As we further whip the egg white, the protein chains will overlap and form a long, stretchy surface, resulting in the stiff peaks that we look for when we make meringues.
We made four different batches of meringues to compare the differences in result when we made a slight variation each time:
egg whites at room temperature + cream of tartar + half a cup of white sugar
egg whites from the fridge + cream of tartar + half a cup of white sugar
egg whites at room temperature + cream of tartar + 1.5 cups of white sugar
egg whites at room temperature + half a cup of white sugar
The results are shown above:
the typical meringue: crunchy, slightly brown, with some air peaks, holds its shape well
similar to the results in (1) except that it has more air peaks
very white in colour, extremely crumbly, no air peaks, more like cookies, does not hold its shape well.
very sticky and flat, does not hold its shape at all.
Tiger writing his science report.
After such hard work (actually, our oven worked much harder than we did on that day with 4x90 minutes of non-stop baking), we relaxed by watching a documentary that explains how various materials such as ceramics, metal, and plastics work.
It started with our grocery shopping at the supermarket this week.
Although Halloween isn't traditionally celebrated as such in Britain, the modern festival has its origins from the Celtic/Gaelic practice of Samhain.
There are so many pumpkins and Halloween-related items in the supermarkets that one cannot walk past without knowing that Halloween is around the corner. I don't intend to make a big deal out of this festival because: (1) I don't like what the festival represents and its associations, and (2) I don't want to encourage the increasing commericalisation that comes with it. However, we do mark the festival in a small way at home every year, so we bought three small culinary pumpkins with the intention of making the most of them, as we did last year.
I made pumpkin soup and roasted the seeds with sea salt. The boys vehemently refused to touch the pumpkin soup, so I had the pleasure of having the whole pot to myself (over two days). I just looked through last year's post and realised that the boys have been very consistent with their dislike of pumpkin soup, and I have been persistently trying to feed it to them every year! In this household it's often difficult to determine which one of us is the most stubborn: is it the boys, for flatly refusing to taste the soup every year, or is it me, for trying it on every year? It's hard to say. Anyhow, nobody backed down, as usual. Maybe I'll give up trying to get them to like pumpkin soup next year.
After the unfortunate pumpkin soup saga, we moved on to the more agreeable activity of pumpkin carving. Tiger and I spent some time looking through the different pumpkin carving templates before deciding upon a goofy face, a scary face and a ghost (both templates came with the pumpkin carving kit we bought).
Since the pumpkins we have are small, I had to draw
the patterns onto the pumpkins with a marker pen instead of pinning the
templates directly onto them. In the process of drawing, I realised
that our pumpkins are too small to show the ghost pattern clearly, so I
persuaded Tiger to change that to the Hissing Cat, which I think has
simpler outlines which make for easier carving.
Once the outlines were drawn, I passed each pumpkin to Tiger for him to do the carving, but not before watching the instructions from Lucinda's daughter and from the following clip to get some ideas of how to do it perfectly:
Each year as we carve the pumpkins, Tiger is able to take over more of the process. This year, he did all the carving using the small serrated saw from the pumpkin carving kit. Now the three pumpkins are used as a centrepiece on our dining table. They look alright in the day, but they look best at night.
Tiger then said that he wanted to make some scones for tea, for he suddenly realised that it has been a few months since he last cooked. I reckon we would have starved to death by now if he were in charge of cooking in this household... Since we're working with pumpkins, we decided to make pumpkin seed scones by adding some pumpkin seeds to this traditional recipe before putting the scones in the oven.
Master Chef has been advised that his credibility will increase when he can spell correctly!
When the scones were baked after 20 minutes, and the table was set, we were ready for our Halloween Tea Party!
Would you like to have a closer look at what's being served for tea?
This week's special:
1. homemade pumpkin seed scones (see above)
2. roasted pumpkin seeds (see above)
3. liquorice tea (only because it comes in a purple box, which fits nicely with one of the Halloween colours)
4. homemade fig jam (It's so easy to make that Tiger asked why we hadn't done it before. I forsee more homemade preserves this winter.)
For accompaniment, we have a good few spiders and centipedes (plastic ones, of course) crawling about the table, with a fair number of tiny spiders crawling along the cobwebs on the wall and on our chairs. Marvellous.
Tiger did all the decorating, by the way.
Then, it's time to await the grand entrance of the boy wizard, who flew in on his homemade broomstick,
but not before zooming around the room to the music of Mussorsky:
Normally at poetry tea here, we sit around to eat and drink, and take turns to read out a few poems to each other. This time, we listened to the recitation of The Highwayman a few times instead:
This particular poem has been specially chosen to go with our Halloween Tea for its haunting theme, and atmospheric rendition of a fatal situation. The poem is a long one and it requires careful listening to appreciate its beauty and rhythm.
As an aside, some of you have asked me how much effort it takes for me to pull all the various themes together. Well, the following situation answers the question:
When Tortoise came home from work and saw our Halloween Tea Party arrangement, he was very impressed and commented on how much effort it must have taken to put it all together. Tiger replied casually, "Oh, it took no effort at all! We decided this morning that we wanted to have tea, so we went to the supermarket, got a few bits and threw them together. There's nothing to it."
There you have it, folks. According to the boy who's with me almost 24/7 and who witnesses how everything gets done around here , apparently it takes little to no effort at all. Thus, in my son's eyes, I'm indeed a lady of leisure. Splendid.
