Hour by Hour

It's interesting for me to look back at last year's post to see whether and how our day is any different now so I've decided to join in with the fun at Simple Homeschool to record what a day looks like in our homeschool.  The link up will take place on Friday, February 14th. 


Between 7am and 8am
I was woken up by Tortoise kissing me goodbye to go to work.  I put my arm out of the duvet and felt the chilly air so I decided to stay in the warm bed a little longer.  Then, I remembered that I was going to write a post about our homeschool day so I jumped out of bed, in order to be able to say to everyone that I got up at good time instead of lazing in bed until ten o'clock.

By the time I freshened up, got dressed, made the bed, got to the kitchen, and grabbed my camera, it was about 7:17am.

I put the kettle on to make myself  a cup of coffee and to boil an egg.  My breakfast these days is one humble boiled duck egg, with an occasional cup of coffee.

I'm supposed to have stopped drinking coffee but I make an exception on days when I'm really woozy, and this morning was one of those moments.  While the egg was being cooked I switched my laptop on to answer emails and catch up on news.


Between 8am and 9am
By the time I was done with the first round of matters-of-urgency on the laptop, my egg was well cooked and the coffee was cold.

I added more hot water to the coffee and finished the egg.  Then back to the laptop to read more news, catch up on others' blogs, and start drafting this post.

Usually by now Tiger would have gotten himself up, but he didn't have a very good night last night (cold and cough) so I decided to let him catch up on his sleep and wake up naturally.  Meanwhile, I am planning out in my head what we would do today.  Right now I'm doing some research into the Chinese New Year Lantern Festival and ogling at the lovely Chinese New Year lanterns on Marie's post.  Ideas are starting to formulate in my mind...

Wait!  Did I hear a stir upstairs?

I held my breadth.  Tiger waking up means the start of another busy day of being 'Mum'.  Even after nearly ten years of being a mother, I still need to have the quiet stillness and alone time in the mornings to think about things and enjoy the silence.

The noise turned out to be the low rumbling of thunder outside.

How very strange.  We didn't use to get thunder in the winter, only in the summer. The weather here has become very erratic indeed.  Luckily we plan to start look into it again next week, once our Chinese New Year celebration ends on Friday.


Between 9am and 10am
I finally heard footsteps coming from upstairs.  Tiger is up.

I made some pancakes for Tiger's breakfast while he laid on the sofa waiting.  He really wasn't feeling too great.

After breakfast, Tiger went to do his morning chores. 

As I waited, I came across an interesting website that led me to a clip that gives me a glimpse of what some other homeschoolers might be doing:

Between 10am and 11am
After watching the clip, I decided to help Tiger with chores in the kitchen so that we can both start our day quickly.  Half the morning has past and we haven't done anything useful yet.  I'm not happy about this.

When the chores were ticked off, we sat down and made a list of the things that needed to be done, including outstanding projects that have to be completed.

Once we knew what's expected of ourselves (from the list), we sat down and started work.  We watched two episodes of Happy Chinese.  I paused the clips every now and then to explain new terms to him.  Tiger's Mandarin is improving rapidly, as noted from his increased ability to understand the conversations in the series.

Between 11am and 12pm
We had a break after the Chinese clips to drink water and to have a few minutes to ourselves.  Tiger laid on the sofa to read.

It turned out to be a very busy hour, with answering the phone call about a course enquiry for Tortoise, answering the door to a delivery, and answering emails about some field trips on offer.

By the time Tiger and I reconvene, it was already ten-to-twelve!!  Where did the time go?!

 

We hurriedly sat down to start on Tiger's Chinese homework.  We try to get the Chinese homework out of the way as early in the week as possible to avoid last-minute rush later in the week.

Between 12pm and 1pm
Nothing very much happened in this hour apart from getting on with Chinese homework.  There is usually quite a fair bit of revision to do for each new lesson before we would start on the homework proper

Each homework session takes a long time because we approach Mandarin learning in the traditional way, which is to make sure that Tiger completely understands each new vocabulary and text before we move forward to the next.  Every new character has to be practised stroke by stroke, in the correct order, until there is no mistake; each new word has to be pronounced in the perfect tone.  The reason I insist on this level of accuracy is because it is the nature of the Chinese language -- a stroke more or a stroke less will render the word incorrect, and the wrong pronounciation of a word can have a completely different meaning.

By quarter to one, we were both hungry.  Tiger was nearly done with today's portion of the homework, so I put the oven on to heat up lunch.

Between 1pm and 2pm
It was a quarter past one when we ate lunch.  Lunch was nothing fancy, just reheats from last night's dinner.

We usually take a break of between 15 to 30 minutes after lunch before we carry on with learning in the afternoon.  However, this afternoon Tiger decided to start working on a sketch for his bookclub's project straight after lunch.

He completed his draft shortly afterwards.  We discussed the draft in view of the project requirements and agreed that we would have to work on it some more tomorrow before we start putting the final drawing together.

Between 2pm and 3pm
We discussed a little about what we wanted to do for Friday's Lantern Festival.  I showed Tiger some of the ideas that I have found in the morning that we might want to do.  Then the sun came out!  We haven't seen the sun for days so we couldn't wait to get outside.

Between 3pm and 4pm
We ended up getting in the car and driving to another town to check out an oriental supermarket that I have heard about from a friend.  It was just as well that we went because we bought a few items that would come in handy for Friday.  The bonus was to know the location of the oriental supermarket so that we can get the specialised ingredients without having to go to Chinatown.

Between 4pm and 5pm
Once we arrived home, Tiger went straight to his room to play battles.  I reminded him that he still had a few more things to do before his 'school hours' are over, namely emptying the bins and doing a few Introductory Mandarin exercises on Memrise. 

Tiger completed the Memrise exercises just as Tortoise stepped through the door with a slice of carrot cake for me!  Blessed is the man who remembers to bring home treats for his wife!

After 5pm
It was time to cook dinner.  While the rice was cooking on the stove, I read aloud to Tiger who was playing battles.  Our read aloud normally happens at Tiger's bedtime, but as we have some catching up to do prior to attending the upcoming bookclub meeting, we've decided to have a few extra read-aloud sessions.  This was one of them.

After dinner, the boys continued their epic war game, which have been going on for days.  However, tonight everyone is not feeling well.  The germ has got to all of us, so we're all going to have an early night after having our cups of lemon-and-honey drink.

This has been a fun post to write, and I'm thrilled to see that two of my UK homeschooling friends, Claire from angelicscalliwags and Lucinda from Navigating by Joy, have also joined in the fun by writing about their days respectively:

• angelicscalliwags: A Day in the Life...
• Navigating by Joy:  A Day in the Life of Our Homeschool - with an 8 year old and a 10 year old

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/11/14)
2. Collage Friday - All About Love {and Ice}
3. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with More Snow
4. Simple Homeschool: Come share your homeschool day in the life!
5. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (2/15/14)

Eye on the Ball, Please! Part 4

This is the fourth part of a series of my termly plans from now until Easter (April 2014).  The first three parts are:

1. Ball #1: Language Arts
2. Ball #2: Mandarin
3. Ball #3: Mathematics

Ball #4: Science, Nature Study, and Geography
Weather
Before we took two weeks off from our normal schedule to celebrate Chinese New Year, we had spent some time studying the erratic weather in the UK this winter.  It appears that the flood is not letting up at all, so we shall resume our weather study next week.

Since we have studied about the rain (through the water cycle), which is the most obvious cause of the flood, the next topics to follow on from that will to be:

1. storm
2. wind (hurricane, tornado)
3. blizzard

I am looking to using the following book as the main source of ideas for projects and experiments but I shall also be using other resources online to support our study.

Our decision to study the weather is borne out of its immediate relevance to the current state of our environment.  Not only does studying the weather allow us to understand better the environmental crisis that is unfolding around us, the issues involve spans across multiple subject areas such as nature study, earth science, and geography, thus enables us to better appreciate the importance of looking at things from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Chinese New Year: Party!

Chinese New Year celebration lasts for 15 days.  The first two days of the new year are reserved for family gatherings and visits, afterwhich the celebration is extended to friends and the wider community.  

This year Tiger and I are lucky to be invited to a Chinese New Year party.  Although we are celebrating Chinese New Year at home, there's nothing like experiencing the real atmosphere of the festival by being with a big group of Chinese people.

It being a Chinese New Year party hosted by the Chinese community, there were many traditional forms of celebration that I was very glad to have Tiger experience first-hand.  

The party started with firecrackers, which requires special permit to be lit.  Firecrackers are banned in public in many parts of Asia due to its high rates of accidents, so we were very excited to be able to see and hear the firecrackers go off at only a few feet away from us:

The lion dance is a must at Chinese New Year, as the performance symbolises the bringing of good luck as well as wading off of evil, which makes a perfect way to start a new year.  We were very lucky on that day to be able to see watch the lion dance up close, and to witness the very auspicious ceremony of "cai qing" (采青) or "picking the greens".  This ceremony is a common sight at businesses during Chinese New Year, where the lions dance to bring prosperity and good fortune.

At the party, we watched many traditional Chinese performances, such as traditional instrumental music as well as traditional dances.

There was also an abundance of traditional Chinese festive food for everyone.  Tiger was thrilled to be able to taste so much traditional food at the party, as I am not able to make all of them at home.

This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/4/14)
3. History and Geography Meme: China activities for elementary
4. Entertaining and Educational - Chinese Paper Cutting
5. Collage Friday: Interest-led Learning Within a Classical Framework
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One Where We Kept a Baby and Still Got Stuff Done
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {February 8, 2014}
8. Chinese Activities Link Up  

Chinese New Year: Food from the North and the South

After the Reunion Dinner on Chinese New Year's eve, the Chinese people continue to eat special festive food on New Year's Day. 

One of the festive food that most people in the West associate with the Chinese New Year is the Peking Dumpling.  Dumplings originated from the North of China, where the custom is to prepare the dumplings on New Year's eve, then start eating the dumplings at midnight on New Year's Day.

I also made some dumplings for New Year's Day, although we did not follow the northern tradition of eating them at midnight.  The dumpling is such a versatile food -- it can be fried, steamed, or boiled in soup.

1.  Peking Dumplings or Jiaozi (饺子)

Ingredients:
DOUGH

• 450g organic buckwheat flour
• 450ml water
• flour for dusting

FILLING

• 450g Chinese leaves or white cabbage
• 450g lamb, minced
• 3 spring onions, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger root
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil

Method:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl, slowly pour in the water and mix to a firm dough.  Knead until smooth and soft.  Cover with a damp cloth and set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Blanch the cabbage leaves until soft; drain and chop finely.  Mix in the remaining filling ingredients and blend well.
3. Lightly dust a work surface with flour, knead and roll the dough into a long sausage of about 2.5cm diameter.  Cut into 80-90 small pieces.  Flatten each piece with palm of your hand, then with a rolling pin roll out each into a pancake about 6cm in diameter.
4. Place about 1 teaspoon of illing in the centre of each pancake and fold it into a half-moon-shaped pouch, then pinch the edges firmly so that the dumpling is tightly sealed.
5. To steam: put the dumplings in a steamer and steam for 20 minutes.
6. To fry: heat a little oil and shallow-fry the dumplings until golden brown on each side.
7. To boil: bring about 2 litres water to a rolling boil and drop in about 20 dumplings, stirring gently with chopsticks to prevent them sticking together.  Cover, bring back to the boil adn then add about 150ml cold water; bring to the boil again, this time uncovered.  Repeat twice more, remove the dumplings with a strainer and serve hot.  Store any uncooked Jiaozi in the freezer.

The Chinese New Year food from the south is quite different.  The Southerners prefer to eat a type of sticky rice cake made from glutinous rice flour.  This cake is called the New Year Cake, or "nian gao" (年糕).  As with many festive foods eaten during Chinese New Year, the nian gao is important for its symbolism.  The word "nian" in the original meaning of the stickiness of the cake (粘) has the same sound as the word meaning year or the New Year's eve monster (年); the word "gao" which mean cake (糕) has the same sound as the word meaning tall or high (高).  Therefore, when used together, the word "nian gao" also signifies the wish for yearly growth -- in wealth, status, prestige, and children's development.

2.  New Year Cake, or nian gao (年糕)

Ingredients:

• 450g glutinous rice flour 
• 225g honey 
• 350ml boiling water 
• 30g goat's butter 
• oil for frying

Method:

1. Stir the flour into a bowl.  Dissolve the honey in the water and slowly add to the flour, mixing to a smooth consistency.
2. Grease a 20cm cake tin with the butter and fill with the dough.  Steam over rapidly boiling water for about 2 hours.  Remove and invert onto a plate.  When cool, refrigerate, well covered, for at least 8 hours to harden.
3. To serve, cut the cake into diamond-shaped pieces and shallow-fry in oil on both sides until brown.  Serve hot on its own or with honey.

Since we didn't stay up to eat the dumplings at midnight on Chinese New Year's Day, we spent New Year's Day (January 31st, 2014) eating the food above, as well as catching up with the annual Spring Festival gala, which is a countdown programme shown on New Year's eve.

It is a four-and-a-half hour variety show that many Chinese people watch together after having their Reunion Dinner, that leads up to midnight on New Year's Day.  The programme is entirely in Mandarin so my readers who do not speak Mandarin may not understand most of the programme, especially the skits.

However, the celebration and festive atmophere are not bound by lanugage and can be enjoyed by all.  I have highlighted a few gems (songs and dance performances) from the programme that are not to be missed:

We also had a good laugh watching the langauge lessons from Happy Chinese.  Episodes two and three depicts the Chinese New Year, which is very relevant to us at the moment:

This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 2/4/14
3. History and Geography Meme: China activities for elementary
4. Entertaining and Educational - Chinese Paper Cutting
5. Collage Friday: Interest-led Learning Within a Classical Framework
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One Where We Kept a Baby and Still Got Stuff Done
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {February 8, 2014}
8. Chinese Activities Link Up 

Chinese New Year: Nian

Does anyone wonder why the most important Chinese meal takes place on New Year's eve, rather than on New Year's Day?  A very important reason has to do with an ancient story of how New Year's Day celebration came about.

The Chinese word for 'year' is 'nian' (年), which happens to be the same name for the ancient monster that used to terrorise people on New Year's eve.  Hence, the family dinner that takes place on New Year's eve ensures that everyone in the family is present at the same place to survive the terrible ordeal of facing the monster together.

Since the story is an ancient one, there are a few different variations but the gist of the story remains the same.

Therefore, on Chinese New Year's Day (this year it took place on January 31st), the Chinese people would celebrate having chased away the beast, 'nian', with a joyous fanfare of firecrackers, loud music and dances (through the lion dance and dragon dance), feasting, and good wishes to everyone.  Tiger got up early on Chinese New Year's Day and made me a card.  He took inspiration from the bowl of tangerines and drew a man eating a tangerine on the cover:

He was given a red packet with some money in it.  At Chinese New Year, the young and unmarried usually receives red packets from their elders or married relatives.

The red packet signifies a form of good wishes and protection from the elders to the youngsters.  The amount of money in each packet depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver, but the sum in each packet must always be an even number (but not contain the number 4, which is associated with death in the Chinese belief). The number 8 is extremely popular for the Chinese, because the pronounciation of the number 8, "ba" (八), is very similar to that of "fa" (发) which means to prosper.  The Chinese belief in numerology is another big topic on its own, but you'll get an overview of it here:

Just out of interest: the concept of lucky numbers is not unique to the Chinese.  Apparently, the West has its own idea of certain numbers being luckier than others:

This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/4/14)
3. History and Geography Meme: China activities for elementary
4. Entertaining and Educational - Chinese Paper Cutting
5. Collage Friday: Interest-led Learning Within a Classical Framework
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One Where We Kept a Baby and Still Got Stuff Done
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {February 8, 2014}
8. Chinese Activities Link Up 

Chinese New Year: Reunion Dinner

The most important meal in the Chinese year is the New Year's Eve dinner.  It is also called the Reunion Dinner because it is customary for Chinese people, regardless of how far away they are from their hometowns, to travel home to have this important meal with their family.  It is very similar to the concept of Christmas Lunch in England.

In ancient China and even some families in the rural areas where the tradition of many generations of the same family still live together or in the same village, the Reunion Dinner can mean a meal for up to 60 people.  It is always a time for feasting and togetherness.

 

I consulted the following book for recipe ideas.

Due to our dietary restrictions I have had to make certain improvisions and substitutions, so the dishes we had are not authentic Chinese dishes, but it's the best we can have while adhering to our food restrictions.

The dishes we had were:
1.  Boiled Thai Jasmine Rice

2.  Chicken with Lemon Sauce

Ingredients:

• 550g chicken breast meat
• 2 chicken eggs, lightly beaten
• 3.5 tablespoons tapioca flour
• 500ml extra virgin olive oil for deep-frying
• Juice from 2 lemons
• 200ml honey
• Slices of fresh lemon to garnish

Method:

1. Trim the chicken breasts, coat with egg and tapioca flour and deep-fry in hot oil, until golen.  Remove and drain.
2. Cut each breast into bite-sized pieces and arrange on a hot serving plate.
3. Heat about 1 tablespoon oil in a saucepan and mix in the lemon juice and honey, blend well and pour evenly over the chicken.  Garnish with lemon slices and serve hot.

3.  Five-Treasure Soup

Ingredients:

• 700ml stock
• 55g chicken meat, thinly shredded
• 55g lamb fillet, thinly shredded
• 55g bamboo shoots, thinly shredded
• 55g kale, thinly shredded
• 1.5 tablespoons sea salt
• 2 chicken eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon tapioca flour mixed with an equal amount of water
• finely chopped spring onion to garnish

Method:

1. Bring the stock to a rolling boil, add the chicken and lamb, stir to separate, then add bamboo shoots, kale, and sea salt.  Bring back to the boil and pour in the eggs.
2. Thicken the soup with the tapioca flour and water mixture.  Cook for a further 1 minute.  Ad just the seasoning , garnish with spring onions and serve hot.

4.  Roast Duck with Stuffing

Ingredients:

• 1 duck
• 3 tablespoons sea salt

STUFFING

• 115g glutinous rice
• giblets of duck
• 55g bamboo shoots
• 1.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon sea salt

Method:

1. Rub the duck skin with the sea salt.
2. Soak the rice in 175ml boiling water for 25 minutes.  Boil the giblets gently in water for 15 minutes and dice, along with bamboo shoots.
3. Heat the oil in a wok and stir-fry the giblets, bamboo shoots, and spring onions for 1 minute.  Mix in the sea salt, the rice and its soaking water and sea salt.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed.
4. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius.  Pack the stuffing into the duck cavity and close up the tail opening.  Place the duck in a roasting tin and cook in the oven for 30 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180 degrees Celcius and cook for a further 45 minutes.
5. To serve, scrape out the stuffing and spread out on a platter, chop the duck into bite-sized pieces and arrange neatly on top of the stuffing.

5.  Red-Cooked Shoulder of Lamb

Ingredients:

• Half leg of lamb
• 5 spring onions
• 4 slices of fresh ginger root
• 3 tablespoons of sea salt
• 115g of honey

Method:

1. Make sure the lamb skin is free of bristles and then score the rind and meat with a few cuts.
2. Place the meat with the spring onions and ginger in a large saucepan.  Cover with cold water and bring to the boil rapidly, skimming constantly.  Add the sea salt, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
3. Turn the meat over, add the honey, cover and continue cooking for about 1.5 hours.  Now reduce the liquid by boiling rapidly, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
4. To serve, lift out the meat and place on a deep serving dish.  Discard the ginger and spring onions and pour the liquid over the lamb.  The meat should be tender enough to tear into shreds with chopsticks.

6.  Braised Chinese Vegetables

Ingredients:

• 115g bamboo shoots
• 115g mangetout
• 225g Chinese leaves
• 115g beansprouts
• 1 red pepper, cored and deseeded
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon honey
• sesame oil to garnish

Method:

1. Roughly dice the fresh vegetables.
2. Heat the oil in a wok, add the bamboo shoots, followed by mangetout and Chinese leaves about 1 minute later.  Add the rest of the vegetables and stir-fry for about 2 minutes.  Now add sea salt and honey, and a little water if necessary.  Continue stirring for a further 1 minute or so, then add the sesame oil.  Serve hot or cold.

This post is linked up to:

1. Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #12
2. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/4/14)
3. History and Geography Meme: China activities for elementary
4. Entertaining and Educational - Chinese Paper Cutting
5. Collage Friday: Interest-led Learning Within a Classical Framework
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One Where We Kept a Baby and Still Got Stuff Done
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {February 8, 2014}
8. Chinese Activities Link Up