Duties of Parents

Life has been busy over the last few days but I wanted to write about this. We were talking with some friends who recommended the booklet by J.C. Ryle, The duties of Parents and kindly printed us out a copy. The booklet is available as a PDF or read aloud as an MP3.

This is a valuable read for Christian parents; thought provoking and convicting. Christian parents certainly need God's help in their parenting and the prayers of others.

It has some splendid pithy phrases:

If you would train your children rightly, train them in the way they should go, and not in the way they would.

Recommended- a booklet that I need to refer to again and again.

Summer reading or not

Ten years ago, I would have loved to write a post about summer reading. My eldest two children read easily and voraciously. Writing about their summer reading would have meant writing about lovely lists of books and what to do when it just wasn't possible to keep up with finding sufficient reading material. I love books and this was fun. Book lists are great and I'm hoping to write about themlater in the summer.

But fast forward, ten years and summer reading is more difficult. Children who either can read but don't like to or who would love to read but have found learning to read anything but easy. Adding to this a little one who is interested but, not surprisingly,  would prefer me to read to him than to read books full of CVC words (those simple three letter words with a consonant, vowel and consonant such as cat and dog).

This isn't an uncommon situation and some boys, especially, can be less keen on reading.

So what am I planning? The library reading scheme offering, this year, is called Creepy House which is off-putting to say the least. So not the library.

Well the plans are a bit varied but involve

• reading aloud-I'm often not so consistent about this in the holidays but really need to keep this up. Perhaps extending the read aloud at bedtime. 

• Audio books, hopefully, from the library. Ideal for car journeys. Enid Blyton's Famous Five series is a hit with the younger two. Michael Murpurgo's Adophus Tips was also well received.

• Poetry picnics

• Visiting places associated with books. It is often surprising what can be found locally or what may resemble places in books.

• DVDs-OK this isn't reading but two of these children loved the DVD of Bleak House. These are children who either just wouldn't have wanted to read the book, yes, we tried or just couldn't have managed it, no, we didn't try. For the second of these children, this led to a request for me to read a simplified version aloud and another viewing of the DVD along with loads of discussion about favourite characters, saddest moment etc. This discussion was all child generated.

• Possibly a children's show related to a book. This really depends what is on but the younger two have enjoyed a performance of the Snail and the Whale.

• Pure picture books and picture puzzle books. The Edwardian books by Edward Goodall are some of our favourites.

• Strewing books and magazines. This seems to work especially well with recipe books!

• Books with text but also plenty of pictures. Usborne have some lift the flap books with detailed pictures and a little text. Other books like this include Stephen Biesty's Cross Sections and A slice through a city by Peter Kent.

• Comic books  such as Asterix and Tintin especially seem to appeal to boys. They can be obtained in several languages so can be a gentle way to keep up with other languages!

Please feel free to add other suggestions.

This is linked to Summer reading for boys on the Schoolhouse Crew blog.

Outside art

We looked at a picture of Andy Goldsworthy's picture Hole in leaves sinking in the Usborne First book of art. This book is a great resource for me as a non-artist. 

The book suggested going on to make some outdoor art. Younger Daughter looked at the picture made with stones and shells in the book then went on to make her own art.

This was the sun-I'm afraid that a few days ago we chalked on the patio and so some of these have a numerical background!

Rainbow over land

Flower

Cloud with rain falling

In the meantime, Youngest Son was making his own outdoor art around his "well".

A happy and easy creative afternoon!

Summer, organisation and plain tiredness

The summer break is here in a few weeks but break is a bit of a misnomer. Formal home education might have finished for the year but there is the catching up with housework, decluttering, planning for next year, cleaning, gardening, decorating; not to forget the trips out and informal education, also known as education by stealth. All this needs time, energy and planning.

Last year, I was tired and well, we didn't really do as much as I had hoped, intended or really should have done. Being wishful, I will be full of energy for the summer but being realistic, I won't! Also being realistic, I'm probably not the only tired home ed mother out there.

This is my plan. It may or may not work. I'm hoping that the first week will be a complete break and then perhaps some pacing and organisation may help.

1. A planned week with a day for a trip, a day to see friends, another for the house, another for the garden and a final day especially dedicated to stealthy education. Stealthy education might get as exciting as a library trip but there might be a few other, not too exhausting activities! There are a fair few ideas but probably less get up and go.
2. Dedicated evenings for planning. 
3. Planned sleep. When I was a junior doctor, I managed on very little sleep but now five hours means that not so much gets done!
4. Planned time to read for me, and the children. That means planning a time to read aloud to the children and finding a bit of time to recharge with some books: Christian books, history and probably a bit of fiction.

Any other suggestions are gratefully received and please tell me that I'm not the only tired mum out there!

June Inspiration

We are enjoying the kittens and the recent sunshine.

Whilst here, in the UK, most of us haven't finished for the summer, this is the time for thinking about curriculum for next year. Growing home has a thoughtful post about why curriculum choice might not matter as much as we think it does.

Frugality seems important to almost everyone, at present. Claire, at Angelicscalliwags, who is a constant source of inspiration, is writing a weekly series about trying to pay off their mortgage. This is full of ideas and has links to sites and books. 

On the subject of frugality, this is a useful post about making vegetable broth, or stock. We've made our own chicken stock for a while but that never provides enough stock for all the soup we make so this came in useful. Having made the broth as described, today, I've experimented with making this in the slow cooker. Yes, I cheated and didn't use organic vegetables but well washed ordinary ones. 

After I had written my post about being an older mother, I found this reflection about being a new Dad at 47.

My son told me about this fascinating demonstration of pyrex disappearing. We tried this and it worked! All to do with refraction.

We placed this pyrex dish in a larger pyrex dish full of vegetable oil.

Picture from above the dish, looking through the oil onto the grainy appearance worksurface. The pyrex dish is to the right of the spoon.

I love the way that it is easy to explore facets of science with everyday objects. There are more science ideas on my home science board on Pinterest.

Modelling blood cells

As part of our studies in the Apologia book Exploring Creation with human anatomy and physiology, we've been learning about the blood. We used a couple of hands on models to illustrate this.

We used the instructions from the book, with some UK modification to made a model of the blood.
First, we put plasma (golden syrup) in a jam jar then added 

• red skittles for red blood cells
•  one white jelly bean for a white blood cell
•  white sprinkles for platelets.

The downside of my version of the model is that golden syrup is so dense that the "cells" floated on the top.This version is the prototype that I used at home with Youngest Son.  I re-did this model for the group but then used vegetable oil as plasma which was less dense so the "cells" tended to sink!

Red skittles aren't the best model for red blood cells:

• they are the wrong shape 
• they have a big white S on them.

Not quite right so we made some playdough red blood cells. Doughnut shaped without a proper hole in the middle. The shape is of course, properly, known as a biconcave disc. 

Yes, this is orange not red!

I taught this as 

• bi- two as in bicycle and biplane
• concave as in cave

We made one rather amorphous white cell with light blue playdough and some platelets with cream dough and put them, along with red playdough red cells, this time, on yellow card for plasma.

The hands-on activity seemed to be appreciated and hopefully, will make the subject more memorable.

Next time, is the heart so now to find some more ideas!

Older Mothers

Whilst I'm not a record breaking older mother, I've had two children since I've been forty. Yes, I'm Varifocal Mum. 

In many ways, having children at older ages is not different to having them when younger but I found there are a few subtle differences between having children in my twenties and thirties and having babies at 40 plus. 

Do visit My Joy Filled Life to read the rest of my guest post on Older Mothers as part of Mom2Mom Mondays.