It's been cold around here lately. Lots of indoor activities and I was back to our interesting booklet of "Thinker's Keys". The exercise we chose this time is called "The Interpretation". You take the description of an unusual situation and then think of some different explanations for the existence of the situation. The example they give is this.

Your neighbour is making large circles in his backyard by pouring sump oil from a can.

And here are some sample explanations you could think up.

1.  He is a disguised alien and is sending cryptic messages to his friends in outer space.

2. He considers himself to be an alternative artist and will soon be rolling around in the grass, attempting to create an environmental masterpiece.

3. He has had a fixation for circles since his childhood, and later will be seen dancing around the circles in the light of the full moon.

As you can see, these are a stretch of the grey matter for children and adults alike. I sat there with the kids while we tried to make up possible explanations for all sorts of wild scenarios. We can invent some of our own when we exhaust those in the book, but for now, we have enough to keep us going for a long time. A few that we tackled are,

Give three possible explanations for:  All the oceans have turned orange.

Give three possible explanations for:  The Prime Minister is standing on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge holding a meat pie in one hand and a boomerang in the other.

We had all sorts of fun with that second one. One of Emma's suggestions was, "He is trying to show that a pie is more yummy than a boomerang."

Logan wrote, "George Bush and Tony Blair came for a sleep-over. While they were playing "Castles, Cowboys & Kangaroos" he was defending his territory and eating dinner at the same time.

As I played along, here's one of my suggestions. "A worldwide publicity campaign has been started in which every world leader must stand in a prominent spot bearing some of their national icons to be photographed. John Howard chose the boomerang because it's light and brought his lunch up to eat with him."

We also came up with, "Huge monsters have invaded Australia and everyone has to run for cover as fast as they can. John Howard has bagged the highest spot in Sydney over water for himself, hoping the monsters can't swim. He's taken the boomerang in case he needs to defend himself and the pie in case he needs to deviate a monster's attention by feeding it."

And "The pressure of being Prime Minister has gone to his head and he's threatening to commit suicide by leaping off. He's going to belt himself over the head with the boomerang if anyone approaches to talk sense into him, and use the meat pie to fling into the person's face."

Apart from being silly with these, we celebrated Andrew's 39th birthday by taking the whole family out to tea at Fasta Pasta, where we enjoyed a nice hot tea and some luscious desserts. Mars Bar cheesecake and Mint Slice mousse that just melted in our mouths. It was a Friday night and we finished off with a drive through the city lights in the warm car. I love doing relaxing, out-of-the-ordinary things every so often.

Last night I borrowed "The Pursuit of Happyness" from Blockbuster and watched it. I love Will Smith's acting and this was certainly a tear-jerker. It made me feel very heavy-hearted for salesmen and homeless people. I think it's the sort of movie that can help us appreciate our own blessings. Of course the ending was satisfactory, although after all their hardships, I would have liked to have seen him and and his little son enjoy a bit more of the good life before the movie ended.

Meanwhile, I'm steadily reading through the pile of books I"ve acquired from both the writer's and homeschooler's conferences, one of my favourite things. So winter has passed quite comfortably so far.

This year we seem to be moving into a "proper" winter again, instead of the mild, dry one we had last year. The country has been so anxious for rain, it's the first time I can remember that we've had a rainy week and nobody I've heard has been complaining about it. It's a real praise point! Here are some of the things that have happened around our place recently.

A new juicer

This is one of my favourite things. On Saturday I bought a fantastic machine that can juice both hard and soft fruits and vegetables so that we can make our own fresh juice. You feed in the chunks of fruit and veg, the juice gushes out of one side and left-over pulp falls into a catching container on the other side. Brilliant invention. We experimented with apple juice first. Then I gave Emma pineapple, mandarin and watermelon, which turned out to be delicious. Next I tried something ultra healthy - apple, carrot, fresh red beetroot and ginger. However, that one was not so successful. I mean, the juice was certainly successful enough but not the flavour. There was a bitterness about it that needs to be sweetened somehow. More experimenting is required. Sometimes I go a bit overboard on healthy ideas.

Poor Emma's joke falls flat

After visiting my parents near the city on Saturday afternoon, I came home and had a short lie down in the early evening. When I got up, only Logan was in the house. He told me, "Emma wanted to go to the shops with Dad."

I asked, "Did they take Blake with them?"

"I suppose they must have because he's nowhere about."

Then, after half an hour or so, we heard the car come home. Emma was first in the door with a big smile on her face, waving a chocolate bar. I asked a silly question. "Did Blake go with you?" meaning it to be just a rhetorical question. But she put a blank expression on her face and said, "No." Then Logan and I straight away went into full panic mode. We started tearing around yelling, "Blake!" Emma started laughing and said, "I'm just joking. He is with us." When Andrew and Blake walked through the door I rushed to pull Blake close to my heart (yes, I really did feel that dramatic). He started patting my face and saying, "Don't worry, Mummy." Logan was shouting at poor old Emma for making him so worried, and I told her never to do that sort of joke again. Then she got upset and went off crying because she really didn't mean any harm, so I went and calmed her down too. And all the while my legs were still rubbery and my heart still thumping. It doesn't take much for a full blown fear reaction to take control.

An illustrated safety booklet

This is something the kids began making on the computer, complete with their own funny graphics. They have instructions like, "Don't sunbake without sunscreen or you'll shrivel up like a pizza" and there is a picture they've drawn of a slice of pizza lying on a beach towel with a binkini on. Quite funny and they enjoyed themselves. In fact, I don't think they've finished yet. It's good because while they're hard at work on it, Blake sits on Logan's knee carefully watching. He really benefits from having them at home and not at school.

Night in the Museum

Andrew and the kids borrowed this new-release movie to watch a few nights ago. I didn't think it'd be my cup of tea and I was concerned about the others too, as it sounded too much like a horror movie. However, it turned out to be pretty good and we all enjoyed it. It's more like a big history lesson than a horror movie. The story is that Ben Stiller's character, Larry, gets a job as a night-watchman in a big natural-history museum, and he's amazed to find that when darkness falls, all the exhibits come to life!" I think Ben Stiller is a very funny actor but I haven't come across many of his movies that are really suitable for children so I thought I'd chalk this one up, being the first.

I was surprised to find that my daughter seems to have made great strides in her Maths without any intervention from us. Not so long ago, she was having trouble with the value of numerals. Her dad and I would explain about units, tens, hundreds and thousands in every way we could think of, but still the penny refused to click.  Now suddenly, Emma can read any large number before her, which means that she's also able to work quite big addition and subtraction sums that include carrying numbers and borrowing from the previous column. I couldn't believe it, because I knew I could take no credit.

Emma told me that her understanding is all due to her battery-operated Barbie Cookbook. This was one of birthday presents from last November and my dh and I both thought it was a bit of a rip-off at the time. I remember saying, "$50.00 for a dozen or so little recipes, and we could buy a whole cookbook full of them for $2.00." However, Emma had been very anxious to have one and we wanted to make her happy. Her older brother gets fed-up with Barbie's tinny voice continually saying, "Now add one cup of flour and stir..." But it seems that all that time, Emma has actually been learning the value of numbers and other Math concepts all by herself. The recipe book has a little calculator gadget included, which gets little girls to push buttons until they reach 500grams, 1/2 teaspoon, 250mls, and so on. She's certain this is what made her understand number values. So the toy that we all thought was a bit of a nuisance has actually helped make our job easier.

It's another of one those pleasant surprises I've had from time to time since we started homeschooling. Maybe Emma felt under stress whenever Andrew and I tried to show her what to do, but when Barbie shows her, the pressure is off and she's just having fun. I've decided yet again to never underestimate the possible educational value of anything in the house.  

We did drive into the city to see that exhibition. It was called "National Treasures" because many items of interest from all of the library archives around the country were brought together and taken on tour. Some of them were quite interesting. One of the highlights was Ned Kelly's helmet, with several little round impressions from bullet holes in it, proving that the life of a bushranger was obviously quite stressful. Living in the twenty first century, it's easy to wonder why young men might've chosen a rebel's lifestyle that included so much danger. Back in the mid 1800s, bushrangers were a scourge on the highways, "pesky as rabbits" as I read in one history book. But my dh reminded me that back then, there was no Social Security  or welfare payments, so they might've felt driven to it. A tough old time in which to live in many ways.

Also interesting were some maps sketched by Captain James Cook as he navigated along the east coast in his ship, "The Endeavour" along with the big thick ship's log he was keeping. There was a cricket bat that was owned by Sir Donald Bradman, one of our most famous sporting legends, a shirt that was worn by the poet, Henry Lawson, and a convict's uniform complete with ball & chains.

Before we went in, a lady offered the kids some worksheets to complete, which involved answering short questions about some of the exhibits, and she promised "a prize" at the end. The kids were reticent, as they've had negative experiences with worksheets before, which I'll explain in a minute. In the end Emma took one and completed it with Andrew's help, but Logan declined.

About three or four years ago, while I was pregnant with Blake, we were in Ballarat with the kids on our first holiday as homeschoolers. We visited a wonderful "growing" maze. Its walls were grown from tall hedges and vines with all sorts of bright flowers smothering them. Before we entered, the man offered the kids one of those worksheets with the promise of a prize at the end if they completed it correctly. Both of them were keen to give it a go. We carefully looked out for each of the hidden objects along the maze but one of them, we just couldn't find! Logan in particular was desperate to move back the length of the maze and search in all sorts of places we might have missed, because he didn't want to miss out on the prize by just one question. We traipsed up and down for an extra 45 minutes just to find that last wretched clue, but it still eluded us. Logan and Emma were frustrated. In the end we went back to the gift shop and admitted to the man that we hadn't been able to find it. He told us that we were on the right track and sent us back to the area it was. I forget what it was, except that it was very obscure and many others had difficulty finding it too. But Logan and Emma were delighted to think that they had a second chance and they'd still get their prize.

When we returned the worksheets, the prizes turned out to be pieces of paper with simple little puzzle mazes sketched on them. The kids thanked the man politely, but when we got to the car, they vented their spleens. They were really let down because after all of their sweat and toil, the prize wasn't worth having, in their opinion. Logan completed his in a flash and then screwed it up. "At least they could've given us an ice-cream!" So ever since then, although we've been offered worksheets from several different venues, Logan and Emma have regarded them with suspicion. And usually that suspicion has been warranted. So Logan very rarely chooses to do them anymore. (I have to say, we would have remembered that maze with complete pleasure except for the lousy prize on the worksheet. I can understand that they can't spend too much money on prizes, but when tourist destinations choose to embellish their attractions with little extra features, perhaps they should think it through to make sure that they really will make a good impression.)

As for the prize that Emma won from "National Treasures" on Thursday, it was a couple of bookmarks with some of the features on them. Not bad. One of the better prizes we've come across.

A few people commented that they were interested to read more of the "Reverse Thinking" lists exercises. I'll post the complete list of exercises here, along with their study categories. We haven't done them all yet but intend to get around to them because they're easy to set up and good fun.

List 10 places that cannot be destroyed by humans (The environment)

List 10 things that you will never see in Australia (Or your own country. This is national history)

List 10 outer space objects that we cannot see in the night sky (Outer Space)

List 10 things that could never be placed in the water (Under the Sea)

List 10 materials which are not used in the construction of a motor vehicle (Transport)

List 10 foods you have never eaten (Food)

List and draw 10 dinosaurs that have not yet been discovered (Dinosaurs)

List 10 presents that you know you will never receive at Christmas (Christmas)

List 10 sounds that you will never hear on the telephone (Communications)

List 10 sports that you know you will never play (Sport)

List 10 animals that you will probably never see in your life (Animals)

List 10 occupations that robots will never replace (The future)

There is space at the back of the workbook for us to invent our own. The best part of exercises like this is that they are probably reasonably easy to think up when we've exhausted all the ones in the book.

Before I leave, I thought I'd also type some good acronyms that we've learned to help memorise several different sequences and facts.

1) The clockwise order of the compass points

Never Eat Soggy Weet Bix  (North, East, South, West)

2) The colours of the rainbow

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain  (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet)

3) The planets in the Solar System

My Very Energetic Mum Just Served Us Nine Pies (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto).

Then Logan's granddad phoned him with an alternative to this that he liked better:-

My Very Expensive Mercedes Just Stalled Up Near Prospect.

However, as you've no doubt seen on the news over the past year, Pluto has recently been demoted from its title as a planet. This has caused a bit of an uproar, especially among young students. When we visited a small planetarium in the city recently, the walls were plastered by letters from children asking, "Please will you restore Pluto as a planet? We like Pluto." And while I was listening to the radio while driving, a letter was read out by a fellow who reasoned, "Where will it end? If you lose Pluto, what makes the other planets more deserving?How about Saturn? It's just a ball of gas, after all! Why should Saturn stay?" I don't know the answer to this, but we're going to visit our city museum and Art Gallery this week because there are a few good exhibitions there. One is about Leonardo da Vinci. My older nephew went to see it and said that it's quite interesting and interactive. The other is a display of artefacts that were owned by famous historical people, such as the mask of Ned Kelly. Talking of Ned Kelly, it's ironic that he's one of our most famous figures in folklore, yet he was an outlaw and a ruthless criminal. We're looking forward to whatever else might be on display and I might write about it if there's anything of special interest.

This is an exercise from the booklet of "Thinking Skills" we were given by the homeschooling lady when she visited. The reasoning behind it is that students are too often required to regurgitate endless lists of facts. Using words such as "cannot", "never" and "not" in sentences urges people to think deeper and in different way. They suggested such lists as,

Name 10 things that you could not clean

List 5 sounds that you have never heard

Name 10 things that you could not photograph.

The one we tried the other day was "List 10 places or things that cannot be destroyed by humans."

It proved to be quite a brain stretching exercise. We came up with such things as heaven, black holes, the iron core of the earth and the deepest depths of the ocean (although we did wonder whether oil spills and toxic waste would have an impact on this). Daddy was hovering around in the background picking holes in our ideas. When someone suggested the atom, he immediately reminded us that atoms certainly can be split. That's what atomic bombs were made for.

I suggested that a thought couldn't be destroyed by humans and my oldest son instantly disputed this. He said, "Of course it can. All you need is a rifle to shoot and the thinker of the thought is dead. So bye bye thought." But then his Dad pointed out that  if the thought had already been thought before the thinker was killed, perhaps the truth of the matter is that you've destroyed the thinker but not the thought. It was getting pretty deep. You never know where an exercise like this is going to lead.

I think one thing that appeared on Emma's list took the prize! Logan and Emma had been in one of their bickering moods. She was getting uptight because she felt that he was criticising all her ideas. So she wrote, "Logan's meanness." He didn't quite know how to respond to that. I could see him considering his options. If he responded with, "Of course that can be changed by humans, don't be so dense!" or something like that, it would prove her right, that his meanness could not be destroyed. Yet the alternative was that he had to be nice, which he didn't feel like doing. So he ended up just laughing and I think he thought her idea was the best too.  

My oldest son just turned 12 on February 4th. We've found that on other years, the birthday celebrations get swallowed up in the beginning of the school year combined with hot summer weather so this year, we had two total surprises for him. His extra-curricular activity is archery. For the last couple of years he's used the bows and arrows at the archery range. We hadn't thought of buying him his own until we knew that he was serious about the sport, because even the cheapest are quite expensive. He's proved that he is serious, so we ordered him his own and went to pick it up for him.

Then on the evening before his birthday, my husband had arranged a laser-skirmish session down town with Logan's cousins, uncle and a group of friends. We drove to my sister's place to pick up her boys and meet everyone there, and Logan was certain we were just going to have tea with their family. It's good when surprises pay off.

Apart from the birthday planning, I thought I'd just post a simple little homemade paint exercise we discovered in a new book. Emma and Blake both thoroughly enjoyed it and I was surprised by how well it actually worked. Here's the recipe and process.

Tempera Egg Paint

coloured chalk (brighter the better)

muffin tin

egg and some water

spoon & fork

old bowl

hammer or round rock

paintbrushes and paper

1. Break off small pieces of coloured chalk and grind them to powder in an old bowl with the hammer.

2. Put the coloured powders into separate cups of the muffin tin.

3. Crack the egg and separate the yolk from the white.

4. Put the yolk in a clean bowl and mix it with 2 teaspoons of water. Whip it with a fork until the mixture is frothy yellow.

5. Add spoons of egg-water to the powdered chalk and stir with a paintbrush until you make a smooth, runny paint.

6. Now use the egg tempera paint to make a painting.

This is something I've made up for our family. It's not the sort of mad cow you might be thinking of. The letters stand for Make a Difference, Change our World. For as long as I can remember, I've found the idea of making a difference in the world very attractive. However, I used to think most significant difference-makers seemed to be doing BIG things, like discovering fantastic new drugs, embarking on huge missions to third world nations, doing flamboyant protests about environmental issues, or marching with placards to the steps of Parliament House. This frustrated me because I felt that I really wasn't making a difference in my own quiet way.

Over recent years I've broadened my opinion to include smaller actions. Having children has helped me understand that there are many simple details that anyone can do to make our world a nicer place to live, adults and children alike. Just because they are simpler and easier than the BIG things I mentioned above does not make them any less significant. In fact, even though they are simple, many people choose not to do them, so those of us who do do them are making a definite impact in our world, whether or not we're acknowledged by others. I like to think of them as little embellishments that make our lives into works of art. Something like a hem of lace around the border of a skirt or fine details on an oil painting. In fact, when you think about it, these little actions might have the potential to inspire more difference-makers to get to work simply because more people will think, "I can do that too."

We've put together a little list that we can add to as we go along and I want to challenge the kids to do a simple action every day. Here it is:-

Write thank-you notes

Write encouragement letters

Pick up any litter you see

Leave places better than you found them

Hold doors or elevators for people

Drive with courtesy and let others in (I always appreciate it when people flash their lights to tip me off that there's a speed camera up ahead but I wonder if this act of kindness is bordering on the illegal)

Return shopping trolleys

Decorate house with lights at Christmas

Share uplifting stories

Plant something

Hug, talk, sing or play with a baby

Really listen to your children when they're talking

Play with children

Meet friends for the occasional morning tea

Keep an uplifting blog

I found a great recipe on a condensed milk can. It's simple enough for kids to make and tastes far, far more scrumptious than it deserves to be considering how quick and easy it is to throw together. And I'm sure it's much healthier than commercial ice-creams with all of their extra flavourings and colourings. I can guarantee that it definitely tastes better than most.

600 ml cream

395gram can condensed milk

200g dark cooking chocolate, melted

1 teaspoon ground ginger.

1/2 cup white choc chips.

Melt cooking chocolate. Combine cream, condensed milk, dark chocolate and ginger in the large bowl of an electric mixer. Beat until thick and creamy. Cool slightly and gently fold in white choc chips. Freeze until firm.

And that's all. Enjoy.

Here's something we've been having fun with. When "The Lady" came to visit a few weeks ago, as I shared in a recent post, she gave us a great booklet full of ideas to get our brains working in more unusual ways than usual, a bit like a mental work-out. It's called "Thinker's Keys" and one of the exercises is called, "The Commonality" You decide upon 2 objects which would generally have nothing in common and try to outline some points of commonality between them.

Because of the time of year it is, we used their suggestion from the Christmas category. Find the commonality between blowflies and wrapping paper. At first the kids were saying, "Those two things have absolutely nothing in common," but after a good brainstorm session, I was surprised by what they came up with. Here's the list:-

They both make a noise

You can find them both in our house in December

They're both annoying when Mum needs to tidy up

You may find either of them on a block of chocolate

Little babies may try to stuff either of them in their mouths

Both come in more than 1 colour

Both can be shiny

Both may be spotted in shop windows

Both can be destroyed

They have both been the subjects of songs

They can both land on you

It took a good bit of thinking to come up with all of these and in my opinion, this exercise lives up to my criteria for fun homeschooling ideas. In case I haven't outlined this criteria before, they should be simple, should require minimal setting-up time, should be fairly challenging and should be enough fun so that it doesn't occur to the kids that it may actually be classified as "work".

Here's another one. Find the commonality between a woolly mammoth and a pair of scissors (from "Dinosaur" category) At first we thought that one would be even harder but Logan and Emma were in the groove by then. Without giving the whole list, they thought of things such as,

Both may be unwelcome at an Art Gallery

Both may injure your flesh

You can't run with either of them

Both have sharp parts on them

We often have a few arguments. Emma suggested that both may have fur and Logan objected that scissors don't have fur. She argued that some people may sew fur covers for their scissor handles and he said that he's never seen scissors with fur handles in his life! Then Emma got mad at him and Logan said, "But she's saying silly things," and the exercise wound up soon after that. It still got the thumbs-up from me. One of the things I've learned over the last few years is that disagreements are a fact of life and bound to crop up, whatever we're doing. I can only attempt to "Keep Homeschool Fun". 

This is a fantastic stunt that you just have to try. It's essentially a Science experiment about acids and alkalis but I think it's more like a spectacular party trick. It takes five minutes or so to set up but it's very simple and I can guarantee, the results are well worth it!

You Need:

Three glasses

Red cabbage

Bicarb soda

White vinegar

Hot water in a bowl

Secret Preparation:

1) Put a teaspoon of bicarb soda into the first glass and fill to near the top with water. When it has dissolved it should look colourless.

2) Chop up a handful of slivers of red cabbage. Soak them in hot water for about five minutes until you have a purple liquid. Strain this into a second glass.

3) Fill the third glass to the top with vinegar. Of course, it'll look colourless.

To Perform:

To begin with, keep the glasses out of sight. Begin your spiel like this.

Once upon a time, the Emperor Julius Caesar invited his friends Brutus and Antony around for morning tea. "Let's have a drink," said Caesar. "Here's some water for you, Brutus!  (Produce glass 1 and place it to the left)

"And here's some water for you, Antony."   (Produce glass 3 and place it to the right.)

"And I'll have some blackcurrant juice"   (Produce glass 2 with the purple cabbage liquid and place in centre)

Brutus said, "Oi! Why have you got blackcurrant juice while we have to make do with water? I don't want water! I want blueberry juice!" Said Caesar, "Alright, then you shall have some."   (Pour some purple juice from glass 2 into glass 1. The 'water' will magically turn blue)

Antony said, "I don't want water either. I want strawberry juice!" Then you shall have some," said Caesar"   (Pour some of the purple juice from glass 2 into glass 3. That 'water' will magically turn red.)

Brutus said, "Actually, I think I'd prefer strawberry juice as well." Caesar said, "No problem"    (Pour some of the red glass 3 into glass 1. It will turn red too.)

"In fact," said Caesar, "I think I'd prefer strawberry juice too."   (Pour some of the red glass 3 into glass 2. Now all the glasses will be red)

What happened?

Pouring into the first 2 glasses is easily explained. Red cabbage juice turns red with acid and blue with alkali. When you poured the strong acid (vinegar) from glass 3 into the weak alkali of glass 1 (bicarb soda) you overwhelmed it. So the solution became mostly acid and turned red. The same happened with the strong acid and the indicator in glass 3.

I've often had problems getting my kids to sit down and do bookwork. Consequently, I worry about the development of their handwriting and written expression. What's more, I hate the effort of having to argue with them to get them up to the table. It makes us all crabby and tired. So, as I think the secret of "Natural Learning" is to get them working without realising that they are actually doing work, I've tried to come up with some "fun homeschooling" ideas to make them want to work. These few have been big hits with my family. I doubt if you could find another boy who hates doing bookwork more than my 11 y.o. son, so as he enjoys them, I'm sure others would too. I'll write them down in case anybody else would like to try them. (If your kids are like Logan, just don't call it "bookwork")

1) Whose diary?

Once, Logan had borrowed a huge "Star Wars" comic book from the library, and in it was an extract from Darth Vadar's diary. It went something like, "I can't make up my mind whether or not to tell Luke that I'm his father. I think I will. I wonder how he'll take it." I forget most other details except that it was very funny and we all had a good laugh. So we had the idea to get the kids to write diary entries. It went over so well that they both keep asking to do the "diary" thing again. Here's how it goes.

Write several well-known names on slips of paper to place in a hat. They can be musicians, scientists, fictional characters, Biblical characters, people you've studied, the sky is the limit. Each person takes a slip of paper and has to write a fictional diary entry by the person whose name they draw out. It's always fun when we read them out. The funny thing is, Logan always used to hate it when anyone would ask him to write anything about himself or what he did over the weekend, yet if he's writing the diary of Guy Sebastian or Neil Armstrong or King Saul, he has a fantastic time. So what's the difference? "Writing about myself is boring," he says.

2) Once upon a time...

This is a game about the beginning of books and if you've ever played the game "Balderdash" it's just a homemade adaptation.

Select several books from your shelf. Then every player makes up what they think sounds like a good first paragraph and writes it on a piece of paper. One person writes down the real one. Then he/she reads each one out randomly, including the real beginning. The others vote on which one they think sounds like the real beginning. You get one point if you guess the correct one and two points if somebody guesses yours and the game lasts for as long as you like. This was also a big hit with my children.

3) A strange meeting

We tried this one in a larger group that comprised Logan, Emma, my two nephews and two of their friends. It's excellent in large groups but would also work in smaller groups. Each person writes the names of two people on separate slips of paper and they are all placed in a hat and mixed up. Then each person randomly selects two from the hat. They they have to write a little story or dialogue about what happens when these two people meet each other.

We ended up with some really strange combinations. One of the older boys ended up with Harry Potter meets Little Miss Muffet (Emma's contribution). Frodo Baggins meets the Queen was another one. There was quite an age range of players from Emma, aged 7, to Jarrad, aged 16, and it was a hit with all of them. I don't know of many other games that would fit them all so well.  

By the way, I'd love to hear any others, if anybody has any good ones. One of the great things about blogging is the pool of ideas I come up with at times.

Last week we had a 3-way debate (because I wanted to be in on it too. I used to love debates when I was younger.) I argued, "It is better to be a kid than an adult or a baby." Logan argued, "It is better to be an adult than a kid or a baby". And Emma argued, "It is better to be a baby than an adult or a kid". We recorded it on our VCR and had two rounds. Round 1 was to present our sides and Round 2 was refute the arguments of others. It was a "lesson" I didn't have to cajole them to complete and turned out to be a lot of fun.

Another thing we've started as an "Art Appreciation sort of lesson is to carefully study one work of a famous artist, then turn it over and write how many things we remember about it. I think this is a good tool for adult's memories to be sharpened so I had a go along with the kids. I also asked them to try sketch a famous piece of art from memory. The first one they tried was part of the Sistine Chapel fresco by Michelangelo where God breathes life into Adam. That proved to be quite good fun too. I read out a bit of a biography about Michelangelo. I don't know if the kids cared for it all that much, but I thought it was interesting. I love the story about how Michelangelo took it upon himself to carve the statue of David out of a flawed block of marble that nobody else would touch. Then, when his masterpiece was unveiled, they asked him how on earth he managed and he replied, "It was easy, I simply carved away everything that wasn't David."

My husband is now a few weeks into his course. He catches a bus to the city before the crack of dawn to link up with another bus in the city to arrive at his college by 8.00am. He's not the only one who has to get up early. I have to drop him off at the bus stop in the dark, but am already familiar with the routine. Most times, the kids are still asleep when I get back after five minutes, but once, Blake was already up sitting in the loungeroom with Logan, and as soon as Logan saw that I was back, he went back to bed. Blake is real earlybird by choice and not by circumstance.

My family like to do Science experiments, but we've tried so many elaborate ones that haven't worked, that "Mum's Science flops" have become a household tradition. However, we find some good, simple ones from time to time that I really like. These are in the category that if we can manage them, anyone can, and their results are quite effective.

1) Potato Slices.

Fill one cereal bowl with fresh water and another with very salty water. Place a potato slice in each bowl and leave to stand for several hours. Take the slices out and compare them. You'll find the salt water slice has withered and shrunk. This is because the cell walls of the potato allow plain water to pass in and out freely but do not allow the salty water in. The potato slice in the salty water shrinks because liquid leaving the potato cannot be replaced.

2) Psychedelic Milk.

This one is great. Pour some milk into a breakfast bowl, drip in a few drops of four different coloured food colourings (or at least more than one) then add one or drops of dishwashing detergent. Watch carefully for several minutes.

The surface of the milk has a sort of skin called surface tension which is broken when detergent is added, causing the milk to swirl around. Adding colour allows us to see it happen.

3) The bouncing raison.

Drop one raison into a glass of fresh lemonade (it can't be flat). It will sink, and then when it gets to the bottom it will rise again. Then it will sink and then it will rise and so on. Looks really weird.

The raison rises when bubbles form on it because the bubbles float to the surface dragging the raison with them but at the top they burst. The raison is now heavier than water and sinks to the bottom again where more bubbles form on it which ..... and so on until there's no fizz left in the drink.

These are the type of thing that happens when you aren't actually planning a lesson of any kind but are merely going about your daily life. Only after the event does it occur to you, "There was a lesson in there. That would have been a perfect opportunity to mention a Science parellel to the kids, if only I'd thought of it." On the other hand, second hand descriptions don't do them justice. It's really the sort of thing that has most meaning to the person experiencing them, but I suppose we can be alert and recognise when our kids are experiencing similar things to point them out. Here are a few that have happened to me.

1) The "Fight or Flight" response. The effect of adrenalin on the human body. Some time ago, before Blake was born, I was having a relaxing bubble bath with a book one late afternoon. Logan and Emma were playing in the backyard of the house we lived in then, and I could hear their happy voices as a pleasant background sound while I soaked.

Suddenly there was a humungous "BANG" followed by a scream. I remembered a heavy old panelled wardrobe we had standing against the wall of the carport. My heart leaped into my throat. I was certain that it must have fallen on one of them and it would cause a serious injury, and maybe even squash them flat as a pancake. I jumped out of the bath, snatched a towel and raced outside dripping, trying to yell, "What happened?" but my vocal chords had frozen. There were two little faces looking at me. "What are you going on about? It was just part of our game."

"But what was that horrible Bang?"

"Just the neighbours slamming down their garage door."

"OK, I'll go back to my bath."

So I did. But when I sank back into the warm water, my heart was still racing, my eardrums were thumping, I could feel blood racing through my vessels and actually felt sick in the stomach. These were just the sort of symptoms I'd been describing to Logan while we were reading about the fight-or-flight response and the impact of sudden huge doses of adrenalin on the body. Interesting, but I would have preferred not to be a human guinea pig.

2) The link between a person's brain and their taste buds.

This one happened just a few days ago. I'd made a nice batch of potato and leek soup. Shortly after that, Andrew went into the kitchen and mixed up a pan of hot custard for dessert.

After tea, I walked back into the kitchen and saw an empty saucepan on the stove with a yummy looking creamy yellow substance in it. I thought, "That's the soup. It was delicious so I'll just have the scrapings."

I put the first spoonful into my mouth expecting the potato and leek flavour, but instead, got something sweet and more rubbery than I'd expected. I cringed and threw down the spoon because my first response was, "Yuck, what is this stuff?" I instantly realised it was the custard, so picked it up to finish it off after all. My brain had expected something savoury and rejected the sweet flavour until it realised the mistake I'd made. Then it was quick to tell my tastebuds that it was alright after all.

3) The effect of something stationary when you're expecting motion.

This one happened to me just yesterday. At our local shopping centre, there is a conveyer belt sort of escalator which takes customers and their trolleys up to the top car park. Having bought a few groceries, I walked over briskly, set my foot on it, and almost toppled over. The thing wasn't moving. They'd stopped it for repairs. I'm so used to stepping straight on and being carried all the way up, it really put my whole body out of whack for a moment.

4) The effect of heating a matchbox car.

This is another one that occurred while I was in the bath some time ago. It was a winter day and the window was slightly open. As I soaked, I began to smell a very unpleasant odor like old tyres. I thought one of the neighbours must have been having a very rotten burn-off. Then Logan called out, "Mum, Emma's posted one of my cars through the grills on the heater and it's on!"

So I came out to fix everything up and found a very flat, almost liquidy red pancake of a matchbox car.

I'm glad that one ended up OK. It could have been serious. Thank heavens for smoke detectors and little boys who are on the ball.

Looking out for Accidental Science experiments is fun and I'm sure there must be many more that we've all experienced collectively. I can almost imagine setting up a little booklet if I ended up with enough. Hmmm, maybe some day...

With the half year of practise we've now had behind us, I can see that the relaxed/natural/unschooling approach, whatever you like to call it, actually requires a bit of ingenuity on the part of parents to get kids to do activities of educational value without actually knowing or considering it to be "work". I'm still learning on the job but it's suiting us better than the old style of dragging them to the table kicking and screaming all the way. (Well it wasn't as bad as that but often used to feel like it). I'm still writing my weekly wrap-ups although I haven't been posting them here as I used to do earlier in the year. I'm beginning to classify different activities under headings for my own benefit and it's been great fun. So here are some of the things that have been happening recently.

1) Science Experiment. To make a plastic substance out of milk and vinegar. You heat one cup of milk over the stove until it's hot, pour in a quarter cup of vinegar and stir until a thick substance separates from a more liquidy fluid. Then you strain the lot through an old hanky, form it into a ball and leave it at room temperature for a few hours until it hardens. This demonstrates chemical reactions that happen when something is heated, in this case, the milk.

This was actually a flop for us, as many of our science experiments often are. Instead of ending with plastic, we got a thick, curd-like substance, but as it looked interesting, so we were happy with that.

2) Bible Study game. I thought of one which I called "Fathers and Sons" I call out the name of any Biblical man and they have to write down the names of any of his sons (or daughters) they can remember, for one point each. You can see that there is pretty good potential for points if somebody remembers all 12 sons of somebody like Jacob. We had a bit of fun with this but the game was not without tears, as my 2 older kids are quite competitive and fierce with each other at times.

You can do other variations such as "Brothers and Sisters". It's good because all you need are paper and pencils.

We tend to be a game-based family at the moment. We have Spelling games, old favourites such as "Celebrity Heads" or UNO. We've been borrowing stacks of interesting books from the library which I read with the kids. I've been reading "Milly Molly Mandy" and the Little House on the Prairie series to Emma, along with a book about old fashioned toys which has resulted in quite a fascination with her. There is a Museum of Early Childhood somewhere in the city which we'll visit soon and hopefully reinforce what they've learned.

I'm often referring to my "Unschooling Handbook" for ideas and having a challenging, but fun time. I'm always on the lookout for different, interesting and fun ideas which are fairly simple, because we're not complex people, however much I wish we were.

Have a great week everyone. 

We are halfway through our first school holidays for the year. For these two weeks I'm letting the kids relax more than usual but, like an attentive relaxed homeschooling mother, I'm on the look-out for all the interesting things they choose to do.

Logan has read lots of books on cricket and Aussie Rules Football. He's read Asterix comics and Star Wars novels. He watched a documentary about the Bermuda Triangle along with the mini-series that's been on. On Easter Sunday afternoon, he played a big football game with the extended family on his father's side of the family. On Easter Monday, he got involved in a game of Dungeons & Dragons with my sister's two boys.

Emma always finds all sorts of creative things to do. She's been drawing lots of pictures and sewing pretty shapes onto a bookmark she's making and painting some cards. A few nights ago, her cousin visited for a sleep-over and the girls decided to make a shopping-centre out of paper. So they drew all the different shops onto little pieces of paper, then used craft sticks and staples to put it together as a mall and cut out some little figures to walk through it. At times like this I really love the unschooling aspect of our lives. I'd never dream of asking them to tackle anything as ambitious as a paper shopping mall. The idea wouldn't have even occurred to me, but if it did, and if I asked Emma to do it, she probably wouldn't even want to. I like letting them go off on tangents with their own ideas and carry them through to completion.

Sometimes I still have moments of worry over whether their handwriting and spelling are up to scratch, but I'm confident that we'll get there. I used to worry about all sorts of things when I was in my teens and twenties. I'd worry about whether I'd get a good job or ever get married, and then whether I'd stop having early miscarriages and have any children. I used to worry myself sick about these things but everything worked out. Now that I have a great family and an excellent time homeschooling, I think what a waste of time all that worry used to be when I could have been thinking happier thoughts.

At church last Sunday, I had an unexpected little insight into how well homeschooling works indirectly. I was out helping with the babies aged 1-3. We call them GEMS (God's Emerging Masterpieces). My little two-year-old boy was the only one who sat at the table for a long time colouring his picture of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, using all sorts of different colours. He covered the whole page and later, we noticed that every single little sheep had its own colour and he kept between the lines. And he holds his pencil really well and nobody ever taught him. I think Blake is already benefitting from the homeschooling lifestyle because he's so used to seeing his brother and sister do their work and sitting at the table with them. I'm never going to underestimate the value of good habits rubbing off on little babies again. 

For awhile, my daughter has been urging me to include some games in our Christian education curricula. I thought it was a good idea, but we don't have any. I figured maybe we could purchase some board games from the Christian bookstore down in the city, but thought I'd have a go at making up some of our own first. So I got out some little slips of paper and had a go. Yesterday was our trial run of the first two.

1) Bible "Who Am I?"

This took ages for me to prepare. I wrote eight to twelve clues on several individual pieces of paper, then read them out to the kids to see how many people they could guess. I tried to include a good number of familiar, easy to guess folk from the Bible (like Jonah, Noah and Jacob) as well as some more obscure ones who might be more challenging (like Ishmael and Boaz). It took about two hours to write them all down and only about twenty minutes to play, but it does have scope.

Logan's verdict - "That was easy." He scribbled down each name after hearing only a few clues.

Emma's verdict - "It was OK." She couldn't remember all the names and found it a bit frustrating at times. Emma is a person who remembers pictures and faces easier than names while Logan is the opposite.

2) "Say Five Facts"

This was a cinch to get ready and even more fun to play. I simply wrote a variety of names on little cards, placed them face down on the carpet and the kids took turns to turn one over. They had to state five facts about whoever they turned over. We had some funny results and did lots of laughing.

"Jacob, OK, he was the brother of the hairy guy (they forgot the name Esau for the moment), he made the hairy guy a pot of stew, he stole the hairy guy's birthright, their father blessed him instead of the hairy guy, the hairy guy got mad and set out to kill him."

"Ham - OK, he was one of Noah's three sons, he sailed on the ark, he didn't cover his father up when he got drunk, his son was called Canaan, and ahhhh, he has the same name as a very yummy sort of meat made from pig that we put in sandwiches."

We all had a good time playing that one and chasing after Blake, who stole slips of paper and raced off as fast as his little legs could carry him, laughing, several times. "Hey Mum, Blake's got Abraham and Goliath!"

What struck me is that a game that took five minutes to prepare was more thoroughly enjoyed than one that took two hours. I'll definitely be adding more names to that one and playing more often as our regular Bible study lessons and reading continues.

The Envelope idea from a few posts back is working although it had one mishap. Logan had filched it from the drawer, intending to put a surreptitious little fold on a top corner of the Immunity card and Emma caught him at it. She started yelling and trying to snatch it away from him. It turned into a tug-of-war and ripped at the top. So I put the cards in a new envelope and placed it up high. So far, Emma has been saying, "Can we do the Envelope?" and seems to be enjoying everything that comes from it, even choosing to ignore immumity and do some work instead. However, she hates it if Logan selects immunity. Little sisters seem to like watching their big brothers suffer. Even he has been going along with the game and not complaining when he picks out something like handwriting.

We've played a few games of Scrabble lately because my Mum and Dad gave us their old Scrabble set, still complete with all 100 tiles. I'd forgotten what a great, all-round game it is. As well as improving vocabularly and spelling, the kids are exercising their Maths skills when they add up their scores. It's what I call a real lesson when you don't realise you're having one.

One hot afternoon when we were stuck by the fan, we played a lot of old memory stretching games. There was the one where I place ten or twelve small items on a tray, get them to study them and then try to work out which one (or two) have been removed. We also did the old game where you have to add something extra onto what the last person has said. The first person says, "I went to the shop and bought an apple" and the second person says "I went to the shop and bought an apple and a hairbrush" and so on. One thing I realised is that I'm not as good at it as I used to be. Perhaps having kids does kill off some of your grey cells after all, or perhaps I just used to try harder when I was younger.

I've been planning a new book and thinking of some great story ideas. I love it when I get ideas in my head and just want to take off with them. I've also been listening to a lot of Billy Joel music this week. I find that listening to music puts my mind in the frame to work and this week, I'm in a Billy Joel mood. I'm talking about his older stuff from the 70s to mid 80s so perhaps I'm showing my age a bit here too. It always surprises me when teenagers, like my 13 and 15 year old nephews, don't really know much about artists like Billy Joel or their music.

Blake's birthday is tomorrow. He'll be two years old. We all went to K-Mart and bought him some presents which I'll wrap up later when he goes to bed. There's a Wiggles guitar that plays music when you push buttons, a dancing car and a soccer ball. His brother and sister had just as much fun looking as he did. Tomorrow we'll have a McDonalds breakfast and let him romp on the playground there and later catch up with some extended family.

See you later.

I'm feeling a trifle gloomy. This morning we were expecting a visit from our landlord to renew our contract and Andrew was late driving back from Logan's archery lesson with him. So I had to sit making chitchat with the landlord, which I find nerve wracking, and then when Andrew did get home, we were told that our rent was going to be raised. I think that's what's made me gloomy. Just recently, I've been trying to earn a bit more spending money with book sales and school talks to get us ahead. I've felt as if I was really making an effort to step out of my comfort zone and now it'll just be eaten up in higher rent (sigh). Sometimes it feels that we can never get ahead. However, it's just a normal, everyday sort of problem that we'll just have to deal with. I have to remember to be extra happy for wonderful blessings like a strong, healthy family.

Anyway, I've come up with what I hope will be a brainwave for schoolwork beginning next Monday. I sometimes think that although my 2 older kids love accumulating general knowledge by listening to me read and studying different texts together, neither of them are too keen on actually picking up their pencils for written work and will shy away from it whenever they can. I'm not totally happy with this because I think it is important that they can express themselves fluently and intelligibly in writing. They know that they ought to have practise, so to make written work into a bit of a game, I've devised "The Envelope" This is a normal envelope filled with slips of paper making the work into a selection process. Each morning, I'm going to have Logan and Emma take turns closing their eyes and selecting a random slip of paper. Whatever is on it will be their individual quiet task for half an hour or so.

The slips of paper include:-

Handwriting practise

A few exercises from "Practise Your English Skills"

Writing a book review

Silent Reading

A few pages of Maths

Working on their stories or creative writing

and finally, for a dash of fun, Immunity! Whoever draws out the slip of paper which says, "You've won immunity" will be able to please themselves and do whatever they please (which would possibly be Play Station for Logan and making up pretend games for Emma)  

They are both quite excited about taking this approach and I'm looking forward to it too, although I can foresee a time in the future when I announce, "We have the envelope" and they'll gripe and groan. We'll have to see how it goes.