Living & Learning Update # 3: Origami, Fall Outside Nature Challenge

Origami

I have been greeted by this sight every morning for the last several weeks. SA(8) and JJ(6) are obsessed with origami. Earlier this fall at a yard sale I found what I thought was a package of origami paper for a dollar. This origami paper turned out to have folding instructions on the back of each page. The boys have been making their own square "origami paper" by cutting printer paper, and have been making many of the designs.

I am amazed at how skilled they have become. We did origami as our "handicraft" last year at some point, and it was very difficult for them at first. Now they are doing quite complex folds, making paper tulips and elephants and cranes. They have definitely left me behind! (This is making me feel better about myself, since I am failing to teach them a handicraft this term.) I must say, though, that the mess they create is terrible, especially since their instructions are loose-leaf and not in a book.


Fall Outside 2016 Nature Challenge
This "adventure" is put on by Dawn from Mud Puddles to Meteors. The challenge is to get outside in nature for 15 minutes every day of  this month. November can be so cold and grey (and it was, this week!)! I knew I needed the kick in the pants to get the children out every day. There was quite a bit of foot-dragging at the beginning of the week, but by the end the boys were getting used to the cold again and enjoying being out in nature. On Thursday we lit a little bonfire, and that was a huge hit. They stayed out for a couple of hours that day.

 We are also doing some little drawings on a calendar to chronicle our month with nature. I love MM(4)'s poplar leaf!

Reading

Here is my youngest book lover AJ "reading" The Gingerbread Man. His favourite book, though, is One Summer Day by Kim Lewis. It has a little boy of about his size who, like him, plays peekaboo, and likes to get his shoes and coat on to go outside.

In other reading news, I finished reading William Steig's Newberry Honor book Abel's Island aloud to the bigger boys. They loved it, and the pictures really enhanced the story for them. I enjoyed it, but I did find Abel a bit eccentric at times, and the story ended rather abruptly. William Steig is an interesting author. I don't like all of his children's books, and I don't find his art all that charming (children like it, though), but he has a few books I absolutely love. Amos and Boris definitely goes into my top 10 picture books of all time. Another one I love is called Yellow & Pink, which is a quirky parable about intelligent design.

In my own reading, I am almost through Elizabeth Goudge's Scent of Water. I am enjoying it, but not as much as I had hoped. My expectations were too high, and the deficiency is in myself. I can only explain the problem in MBTI terms. I am not "iNtuitive" enough for this book. As an ISFJ, I have put some thought into how I interact with other types. The "N" types are the ones most likely to mystify me. As in this case, this is usually in a good way (I stand in awe of the way someone sees the world and communicates about it.), but sometimes it is in a not so good way (I am completely mystified by the way someone thinks...they seem to be ungrounded in reality.) I think Elizabeth Goudge is an "NF" type. Her writing is very evocative. She does put a lot of sensory detail in her novels, but it is all about the feeling her description creates in you. Any attempt to recreate the scene (whether in a movie or in real life) would be disappointing, because it's not about the details, it's about the atmosphere. Does that make sense? Any other "S" types out there that get what I'm saying here, or does this sound crazy to you? The feelings I get as I read are lovely but nebulous, and they drift away from me. The truth that comes through sometimes in this novel is beautiful but almost always startling to me, as it seems to burst forth out of almost nothing (there is no logic, no natural progression to it). I'm not at all saying I didn't like the book, just that I didn't feel quite at home in it.

I should say that I think most of the best novel writers are "N" types, and very few of them make me feel like outsiders in the worlds they create. Marilyn Robinson is another very strongly intuitive type, and I think her books are wonderful. I am not like her Lila, but I love her and stand in awe. Even L.M. Montgomery, who speaks so much of kindred spirits, does not make me feel as though I am not one. (After all, she lets Diana Barry be one, and Diana does not "get" Anne all the time either.) Elizabeth Goudge creates a sympathetic world between her intuitive type kindred spirits --Mary, Edith, Paul-- and the ordinary people really don't matter all that much in her world. Perhaps this is why Goudge is so very loved...all the "N" type readers feel like the characters are kindred spirits, and her way of thinking and imagining feels like home.

So end my jumbled musings...

Handicraft and Music Update

We're well on our way through term 3 of Ambleside Online's Year 1. Towards the end of last term, we really slowed down on some of the "extras". This had something to do with being nine months pregnant and having baby AJ at the end of January. This term, though, we are doing great! We are still not doing enough nature study, but I plan to make up for that this summer. There is still so. much. snow.

Handicrafts
I am so proud of myself for actually doing some non-cooking/baking handicrafts this term! In case you haven't picked up on this yet, I am emphatically not into arts and crafts. However, I have pulled out the paper and the origami book and we are folding paper once a week together. Stephen has gotten in on the action as well and made the boys some very cool jumping frogs.

 Now I know you're wondering about how "real" this craft is. Charlotte Mason handicrafts are not usually of the useless, throw-away sort. However, having done it for a few weeks now, I wish I'd done more of this as a child. I am not the sort of person who can look at things and understand how they are made or how they work. I think folding paper may really begin to develop a child's relationship with physical materials so they have a real understanding of how things are designed and made. I am confident that origami will be the first step to paper sloyd for us.

So far, we have created little boxes, boats to float in the bath tub, and 3D houses. The boys are still not doing these on their own...they do the first few folds, and then need help with the tricky parts. Maybe I need to find a simpler origami book so we can find some projects they can do completely on their own? But anyway, we're having fun with it, and we're actually doing something, which is more than the nothing we were doing before.


Music
I mentioned in November that my 6- and 4-year-old boys were still not singing on-key. I'm so happy to be able to say now that they have made progress.

I began with "so" and "mi". I would sing those two notes and ask them to listen and hold it in their mind. Then I asked them to sing the same notes, and they did! They were perfectly in tune and had beautiful tone. We did that several times. Then I introduced them to "Up and Down," a song I stumbled across on YouTube from Jolly Music. For some reason they absolutely loved this simple, two-note song. We played games with it. A few times we held hands and put our hands up and down with the words of the song. Other times I would sing the first "up and down" and point at one of them to sing the next bit. They can sing the song perfectly on tune, as long as we don't try to sing it together. Somehow the effort of listening and producing the right note can not be done at the same time yet.

Next, I started to point out the so-mi interval in the hymns we were singing. "Jesus Loves Me" begins with so, mi, mi, for example. I sang songs in solfege so they would start noticing the different notes in the songs we sing every day. Both of them are starting to be able to produce a line of a hymn. This is still as long as we don't try to sing on-key together. Still, echoing and alternating lines is fun. We are learning "Nothing But the Blood of Jesus," and that particular line repeats several times in the hymn. So I will sing all the other lines, and let one of them at a time sing "Nothing But the Blood of Jesus." JJ(4) does especially well with this.

Today I began to try to get us singing the same note together. When I started the note and asked them to join in, SA(6) could not seem to find it. So I sang the note so we could hear it in our minds first. Then I got SA to start, so we could join in with him. That worked much better.

I should tell you that MM(2) is doing all of this with us. His learning to sing is as natural as a bird learning to fly. It's funny to me that this is an area where my youngest is the most skilled, followed by my middle child, followed by my oldest (not counting the baby, of course!). But I'm feeling confident now that they will all get there. Maybe I'll have a boy's choir here before long. :)

Baking with my Boys

Sometimes it seems like every other mom but me is helping their preschool children paint, cut, glue, apply glitter, and sculpt. Oh, I've made several recipes of play-dough, and we have paper, crayons, pencil crayons, markers, scissors, and glue. (The glitter seems to have mysteriously disappeared.) But that's as far as it's gone for me. The boys take it (or do not take it) from there.

I've been feeling a bit less guilty about that since I've started reading Charlotte Mason (Let them play outside, she would say.). I've also begun to think about the things I do love to do with my hands. I am not devoid of creativity, even though I'm not that handy with paper and scissors. One of my favourite things to do is to bake. I don't usually get too fancy (I save my creativity for the flavours), but if I am going to be artistic, it will usually come out in my baking. I think that for me, this is going to be the arena of crafting creativity to explore first with my children.

Today we made Honey Cakes, from Cook it Together by Annabel Karmel.

First we made the cupcakes. I had the boys help me with everything they could do...measuring ingredients, dumping them in the bowl, mixing them together. When they had been baked and cooled, we made marzipan bees and flowers to decorate them.



SA "painted" most of the bees with chocolate (we used a Ziploc bag with a corner snipped off), and JJ helped me put the sliced almond wings on. They both helped with the sprinkles.

They were ready in time for our poetry teatime. Somehow the poetry wasn't keeping their interest as much today...

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how often we will make things this special. We don't need to, though. All that needs to happen is that I take the time periodically to include the boys fully in my baking. It won't be a very efficient way to bake for me, but it will be an excellent way to teach them. I do love the Annabel Karmel book, not because I need it, but because ever since we brought it home from the library, the boys have been poring over it, deciding what to make. The illustrations show children making things, and they were very inspired.

Here is the recipe for the Honey Cakes. They were delicious...think cake that tastes like snickerdoodles with a hint of honey. The marzipan made them quite sweet, but the fun they had with it made it worth it this time.

Honey Cakes

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
4 tbsp. honey
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp. apple sauce
2/3 cup self-rising flour (I just added 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt to the measuring cup before measuring the flour.)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger

7 oz marzipan
melted chocolate
slivered almonds
sprinkles


1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin pan with 6 baking cups. Put the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Pour in the honey and beat everything together until fluffy.
2. In another bowl, beat the egg, vanilla, and apple sauce, then beat this into the butter mixture. Sift over the flour, cinnamon, and ginger.
3. Fold in the dry ingredients by running your spatula around the outside of the bowl and across the middle until everything is well mixed.
4. Fill the baking cups with the mixture. Bake for 18-22 minutes, until risen, golden, and firm to the touch. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
5. To make the bees, shape the heads and bodies from marzipan and gently squash them together so they stick. Cut out flower shapes.
6. Paint on the bees faces and stripes using melted chocolate. Push slivered almonds into the sides for wings. Press sprinkles into the flowers.