Nutritious meals, quick!

Maybe it's because I like food that I don't find it a challenge to prepare meals everyday for my family.

Breakfast is usually very simple -- a few pieces of toast with butter and jam.  Lunch is usually leftovers from the night before, or sandwiches if we are out and about, or jacket potatoes with an assortment of toppings.  Dinner is the main meal in our home so it's the one that I cook from scratch every day.  On Sunday the importance of the Sunday Lunch takes over so I spend most effort at preparing a full roast on that day.

Even though I enjoy preparing and cooking food, I don't want it to take over my life by spending more time in the kitchen than I have to in order to prepare a decent family meal.  I manage this in a few ways:

1.  Meal planning.  I have a weekly menu plan so I go grocery shopping with a full shopping list once a week, and I get everything I need on that trip.  This saves me time and cost since I buy only what I'll need to make meals for that week.

2.  Work fast.  This comes with practice.  Just like everything else, one gets good at what one does all the time.  I have had about 10 years of practice making meals in my kitchen, so I know where everything is and how to substitute ingredients effectively when they run out.  Speed also comes with familiarity, so I am reasonably fast when I work in the kitchen.

3.  Limit meal preparation time.  When I plan my meals, I make a mental note that each meal will not take more than an hour to prepare.  Again, Sunday Lunch is the exception but for the rest of the weeks we have relatively simple meals.  I learned most of my meal ideas from food magazines such as Easy Cook which has very clear instructions to make speedy yet delicious meals.

The application of the above three points have worked consistently to provide quick, delicious, and nutritious meals that meet my family's dietary requirements.  If you struggle to find time to cook while teaching your children at home, I hope the tips above will be useful to you as they have been to me.  If not, you are always welcome to consult the other homeschooling mums for other ideas.

This series is growing!  We have two new contributors to the series: Erin from Seven Little Australians and Counting, and Nicole from One Magnificent Obsession.  Please head over to see what they have to say about how to manage cooking and homeschooling at the same time:

• In Plating Up, Erin shares how the key for her family to successfully juggle cooking is organisation.

• Nicole talks about Realistic Meal Planning for Homeschool Moms and shows us how to avoid eating Chik Fil A every night.

• Lucinda lets us in on How to Ensure Your Kids Eat Healthily When You Don't Enjoy Cooking.

• Julie shares her Strategies for Cooking Healthy for a Family and tells us about five strategies for preparing healthy meals when time is an issue.

• Chareen shows us how she is Homeschooling and Cooking a Healthy Adventure for her family.

• Bernadette reveals her Hippie Method: Food Philosophied, in which she tells us how she makes easy, delicious, and (relatively) healthy food from scratch - almost every day.

• Savannah has a Cooking Tip for the Home School Mom which promises to show us that even if you don't enjoy cooking there are ways to conquer the "What's for dinner?" question without calling Dominoes!

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 5/7/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #16
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: May 10, 2013
4) Collage Friday - A Big Change and A Big Sale!
5) TGIF Linky Party #75
6) Creative Learning #14
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One That Was a Roller Coaster
8) Share it Saturday - Sensory Play Ideas
9) Sunday Showcase - 5/12/13

Spring is for...

1.  Watching butterflies sunbathe...

2.  Looking for spring flowers...

3.  Looking at/for baby animals...

4.  Long walks and more time outdoors...

5.  Being with friends and having good fun outside...

6.  Learning in nature, naturally...
Being a city girl, I did not grow up appreciating nature.  Therefore, I am very glad that I get a second chance to get aquainted with nature when, early in our homeschooling journey, my research included child development which led me to discover the importance of being in nature via Last Child in the Woods.

Being in the woods and taking long walks in the countryside are part of our regular family activity, especially in the warmer months.  As this is part of our family time, I refrain from having a structure around it.  For structured nature learning, we do regular nature study by ourselves and Forest Schools with other homeschooling families.

The Forest Schools have worked very well for us for a very long time, as each session has been very flexible and varied in terms of the level of structured activities and required participation from each child.  We get to meet and interact with different types of families, as well as meeting children with different learning needs.  The space in nature and flexibility of activities cater to a wide spectrum of abilities, which I find to be very useful for Tiger to experience first-hand.

For example, our home learning environment leans towards being very academic so I am very glad to see Tiger interacting very well with and enjoying the friendship of children who may be less academically inclined yet who are stronger than he is in non-academic areas.  While I am pleased that Tiger shows academic potential, I want him to be participate in situations that will expose him to ideas such as:

1. there is more to life than academic training,
2. that we can learn to communicate effectively with different types of people, especially those who have different views and abilities from us,
3. that everyone has something unique to contribute, if they choose to do so. 

The unstructured part of Forest Schools provide an ideal situation for such learning to take place.

Sometimes Forest Schools sessions are a little bit more structured.  During structured sessions we have learned to find and make symmetry in nature,

find shapes in nature,

measure the actual height of trees,

make tools and toys from natural materials.  Tiger has made charcoal pencils, bows and arrows, and pea shooters.

7.  Simple pleasures in the garden...  digging, gardening, contemplating, wondering.

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Homeschool Mother's Journal: May 3, 2013
3) Hobbies and Handicrafts - May 3
4) Collage Friday - Taking Time to See Beauty
5) Homeschool Review
6) Spring Carnival
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We're Wrapping Up
8) Hip Homeschool Hop - 5/7/13

Any Room for Extras?

I think that when we consider how much extracurricula activities is suitable for our children, we can approach it from different areas.

From a Philosophical Point of View
For children who go to school, extracurricula activities usually means all activities that happen after official school hours, and are subjects that are not covered within the official curriculum.  In England, this usually refers to:

1. any activity that takes place before 8am and after 4pm from Mondays to Friday;
2. any activity that takes place on weekends, bank holidays, and school holidays;
3. 'discretionary' activities that parents have to pay extra money for their children to participate in.

I have just had quick look into several prominent English school's websites to check the types of activities they classify as being "extras".  The list include:

• performing arts (theatre, dance, instruments)
• hobby/interest-related clubs (sports, debating, cookery, chess, photography, film making, fishing, philosophy, pottery, gardening)
• field trips

Nowadays in our homeschool we make no distinction between 'extras' and 'core'.  This is because we have increasingly embraced the view that learning is an integral part of our way of life.  In our waking hours, we experience no separation between the times when we are learning and those when we are not, since we don't limit ourselves to how we learn, what we learn, where we learn, and who we learn from.  When something looks/sounds interesting, Tiger and I will go and check it out regardless of whether it is part of our current 'plan'. As a result, we spend about half of our time learning outside at different venues, from different people, about different things that don't necessarily tick any "academic subject" boxes.

I must point out that we did not start off on Day One being so flexible and freewheeling in our homeschooling approach.  The change has come about in response to Tiger's maturity, capabilities, and developmental needs.

At this stage of Tiger's educational life, I believe that a wide exposure to different ways of learning is necessary for him to be informed of the many different choices to getting a rich and fulfilling level of self-education.

From a Financial Point of View
Going out to attend activities costs money in terms of food, travel expenditure, and activity fees.  Therefore, I exercise discretion when choosing activities for Tiger to make sure we get the best value out of every pound we spend.

My decision process from a purely financial aspect is very straightforward: I will only pay for us to attend an activity if I feel that we are getting superior value out of our attendance.  Examples of this are the drama classes and team sports that Tiger attends regularly.

From a Time Management Point of View
Even though we are very flexible in our approach such that we have no specific "learning targets" to meet, I am still very conscious of the amount of time we spend on traveling to and from activities.  I tend to restrict our regular traveling times to within 1 hour of driving each way or within 30 miles radius of where we live.

In the recent years there has been a noticeable increase in the number of homeschooling activities that are made available to us, some of which are very tempting.  However, to avoid spending most of our time running around from one activity to another, I have had to learn to say no to many of them.  We find that our most effective learning experiences (for now) come from the one-to-one interaction at home at Tiger's own pace.  Therefore, while we welcome the variation that outside activities add to Tiger's overall education, I am always in the process of streamlining our selection so as to give ourselves time and space to rest, or to simply do nothing.  I don't feel that it is necessary to fill our calendar with external activities, especially when those activities compete with the time that can be spent with family or time that we need to get to know ourselves.


Lucinda from Navigating By Joy has joined us as a contributor to this series starting from today.  As always, each contributor has her own take on this matter.  Therefore, I encourage you to visit each of them at:

• Lucinda ponders about Homeschooling and Extra-curricula Activities - How Much Is Too Much?

• Bernadette is clearly Just a Homebody, as she makes suggestions about picking and choosing what's best for your family and your life season.

• Chareen's view is that It's all about a Science of Relations as she feels that it's not about how busy but about building a memory.

• Julie shares the Benefits of Extracurricula Activities since she feels that they are good for kids - mostly.

• Savannah gets us thinking about how you choose when and where your children (or even you) participate in extracurricula activities in Extra Curricula Activities and Family Goals.

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/30/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #15
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: May 3, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Taking Time to See Beauty
5) TGIF Linky Party #74
6) Creative Learning #13
7) Friday Flash Blog #16
8) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We're Wrapping Up
9) Share it Saturday - Homemade Mother's Day Gifts
10) Sunday Showcase - 5/4/13

When You Give a Boy a Tin Geometry Set...

The other day I bought a geometry set for less than £3 at a stationary sale, and left it on the table.  Guess what happened?  Tiger saw it and became really excited when he realised that it belongs to him.

The following was what I saw:

What was he doing?  Drawing circles, apparently.

Tiger became more adventurous in the following days, still pouring over his tools:

His designs also got bolder as a result.

All this while, Tiger didn't ask me anything so I just let him get on with it.  It was only when he showed me his work that I realised that he was teaching himself the measurement of angles in relation to a circle.  I have mentioned angles in passing so it isn't totally unknown to him, but I like how he has shaded the different parts of the circles to highlight their corresponding angles (90 degrees, 180 degrees, 360 degrees).

Tiger was tickled when we walked past a sculpture of Issac Newton and saw him doing exactly the same thing:

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 26, 2013
3) Hobbies and Handicrafts - April 26
4) Collage Friday - Reading, Selling , and Recommending Books
5) Homeschool Review
6) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We're Counting Down the Weeks
7) Math Monday Blog Hop #97
8) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/30/13

Maths in Our Home

I remember the pain of learning mathematics through rote and drills when I was growing up.  When I decided to homeschool Tiger, I was determined to find a way for him to enjoy the beauty and fascinating nature of the subject.  I am convinced that the road to mathematical appreciation and understanding need not be painful, intimidating, confusing or boring.

For a start, Tiger could recognise patterns before he could talk.  Pattern recognition is an important element in mathematical thinking as almost all mathematical concepts can be simplified into patterns.  I remember that day very well.

Tiger was about 13 or 14 months old when one day he frantically pointed to a brown shape in a book that I was reading to him, then desperately tried to tell me something as he pointed frantically to the other end of the room.  I didn't know what he was trying to say.  In his desperation, he toddled to the other end of the room and pointed to the same brown shape in a picture on the wall.  I hadn't even noticed that brown shape until he pointed it out to me.

From then on, he showed great interest in patterns and shapes so I casually introduced tactile materials to support his exploration.

One of the major influences that Montessori's writing has on my understanding of education is in the area of mathematics.  Her writing convinced me of the importance and necessity of using tactile materials to aid a young child's understanding of mathematical concepts in a concrete manner before moving on to the more abstract planes.  For example, numerals such a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ..... mean nothing to a young child unless he/she can see and touch the quantity.  The lack of a foundation in understanding concrete concepts in mathematics is, to my mind, what makes the subject so incomprehensible to many children, including myself as a young child.

I remember meeting a very concerned mum whose nine-year-old daughter struggles with number sense in the private school that she attends.  The mum described how she tried to help her daughter with her maths homework and felt despair when her daughter could not answer the question "What is half of three?".  After struggling with this question for a long time, the little girl finally wrote the top half of the number 3, followed by the bottom half of the number 3, i.e. what looked like two brackets.  I felt very sorry for both of them, as I recalled my own struggle with maths, so I gave that mum a few examples on how to help her daughter get a solid understanding of what quantities represent before she worries about numerical symbols and operations.

Bearing in mind the need for a strong grounding in concrete concepts before progressing to abstract ones, I started to look for a Montessori-inspired, manipulative-rich math curriculum for Tiger's elementary school years and came across RightStart Mathematics.

We started using Level A when Tiger was five years old and he enjoyed this programme's use of games, colourful manipulatives and slow pace.  To him, maths lessons felt like playtime with interesting objects.  For the first two years of the programme, he was only exposed to numbers, quantities, and addition.

Although I believed in the strength of the programme, I was becoming a little concerned when I saw that other maths curricula were having children do complex division within six months.  Nonetheless, I stayed with this programme since it has worked so well for us.  All of a sudden, Tiger seemed to experience a sudden leap in his maths understanding.  I have no doubt that the previous two years had laid a strong foundation that had enabled him to do that.

Only when I became certain of Tiger's interest and competence in basic arithmetic, was I more willing to venture further away from the scope and sequence of RightStart Maths, so as to explore certain topics deeper and/or in more lively ways.  From then on, our maths lessons have become less about going through the motion of completing any particular curriculum or following any standard, but more about seeing connections and understanding mathematical relationships.

For other homeschooling parents' perspectives on mathematics, please visit this series' other contributors:

• Julie, who ponders on the question Why do we study math?  She also shows us some ways in which math is used in our society and shares with us activities that have real life application for children.

• In Doing 'Rithmetic, Bernadette gives a fairly traditional and uncomplicated look at doing math.

• Chareen asks the question, Should we teach math to young students?

• Savannah shares her tips for teaching math in Math and Tears; When Mom Learned a Lesson.

This post is linked up to:
1) Math Monday Blog Hop #96
2) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/23/13
3) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #14
4) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 26, 2013
5) Collage Friday - Reading, Selling , and Recommending Books
6) TGIF Linky Party #73
7) Creative Learning #12
8) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We're Counting Down the Weeks
9) Share it Saturday!
10) Sunday Showcase - 4/27/13

The Italian Experience - The Shakespearean Link

In studying about Italy, Tiger and I began discussing about all the stories we know that were set in Italy.  Somehow our discussion led to Shakespearean stories.  We then listed the stories from Tales of Shakespeare and identified the locations where the stories were set.

Interestingly, 9 out of the 20 stories in the book were set in Italy:

1. The Tempest - Milan, Italy
2. A Midsummer Night's Dream - Athens, Greece
3. The Winter's Tale - Sicily, Italy
4. Much Ado About Nothing - Florence, Italy
5. As You Like It - France
6. The Two Gentlemen of Verona - Verona, Italy
7. The Merchant of Venice - Venice, Italy
8. Cymberline - England
9. King Lear - England
10. Macbeth - Scotland
11. All's Well that Ends Well - Paris, France
12. The Taming of the Shrew - Padua, Italy
13. The Comedy of Errors - Sicily, Italy
14. Measure for Measure - Vienna, Austria
15. Twelfth Night, or What You Will - Albania
16. Timon of Athens - Athens, Greece
17. Romeo and Juliet - Verona, Italy
18. Hamlet - Denmark
19. Othello - Venice, Italy
20. Pericles, Prince of Tyre - Tyre, Lebanon

So we set to locate the proximity of the different cities on a map:

 

After Tiger has read the book, we discussed briefly about the concepts of comedies and tragedies, and grouped the stories into either category.  Tiger's favourite story by far is The Taming of the Shrew.  He is tickled by Petruchio's character and wit.

After reading the story, we watched a very good BBC animated production to see it come alive:

However, nothing beats watching the actual performance at The Globe.  Tiger remembered laughing so much throughout last summer's performance that it was well worth the time and cost to be there.

You can have a feel of what the performance was like from the clip below:

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/23/13
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 26, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Reading, Selling , and Recommending Books
5) Homeschool Review
6) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We're Counting Down the Weeks

The Italian Experience - Masks

Since Marco Polo's father and uncle stayed in Venice for four years after their first trip to the East before they set off again, we thought we would spend a little bit longer in Italy to learn more about the country, as well as to better prepare ourselves to embark on the epic journey.

 

We learned about a specific type of theatre in Italy called commedia dell'arte.

It is very similar to the English Punch and Judy puppet show where there is a standard set of characters.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, Punch and Judy evolved from commedia dell'arte.

After watching National Theatre's introduction above, we decided to watch an actual Italian version that introduces each character and the relevant theatrical masks each wears:

I bought two pre-made masks from a craft shop and asked Tiger to choose one mask to be decorated as a theatrical mask, the other was to be a Venetian carnival mask.  For ideas and inspirations on how to decorate the carnival mask, Tiger googled "Venetian carnival mask" and looked through the search results.

Once he was happy with his research, he started to paint each mask with an undercoat:

The undercoat took a day to fully dry.  Next, I laid out all the materials I could find for Tiger to start decorating his masks: sequins, ribbons, craft precious stones, feathers, yarn, crepe paper, craft aluminium foil....etc.

Then off he went.

Theatrical Mask

Carnival Mask

This post is linked up to:
1) History and Geography Meme #70
2) Virtual Refrigerator
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 19, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Delight Directed Learning and a Super Morning Routine
5) Homeschool Review
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - April 19
7) April Culture Swapper
8) Look What We Did!
9) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One After the 2:1 Conference
10) Creative Kids Culture Hop #3
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/23/13

It is also featured in Homeschool Review and