Hiatus

hiatus n. (plural hiatuses): a break or gap, esp in a series.

Merry and bright

Wishing you all a very peaceful holiday and happy new year.

Christmasification

Its taken awhile but the spirit of excitement over the holiday has finally arrived in a smorgasbord of Christmas music, gingerbread and pumpkin. The girls made Gingerbread houses today. I used a recipe from Apples for Jam which makes a lovely lightly spiced cookie with a superb texture and easy baking. Though I intended there to be three houses when I doubled the recipe but it turned out to only be two and a handful of biscuits from the off cuts.

Its so nice to forget about the fact that you just hoovered and that the kids are eating about a ton of sugar as they nibble the decorations and just let them get on with the process. The lack of house turned out fine though as Esther and Jess loved making one together and Kitty and I did the other together.



Now if you will excuse me I have several layers of icing to scrub off the laminate floors...

Do as the Romans do

We've had a birthday in these parts which has been unusually pressured. Birthdays for adults (Matt in this case) are usually lovely, relaxing and peaceful affairs in our home. This year our children's plans for M.'s 36th (!!!) got bigger and bigger. And its all the Roman's fault.

It goes like this:

History studies for homeschool are done with all the girls together. We started with ancient Britain and have now reached the Romans in Britain. The chronological process has put a great deal of things into place for the children and produced an enormous surge of enthusiasm in their history lessons. It is all spectacularly thrilling.

However the girls unanimously attacked me with the idea of planning a Roman feast.Due to a surfeit of obligations and plans we put the feast further and further back till the only option was to combine it with M.'s birthday or leave it to January.

Kitty researched and planned the menu, Esther researched and planned our costumes and Jessica wrote a PowerPoint reviewing the history of the period. As planning moved forward it became more and more obvious that their vision outstripped my enthusiasm.

This is how it all turned out... Matt came in from working in the shed to be dressed by the household servant (me) in his tunic and toga. The dinner was being served in the triclinium where diners could recline on cushions around the "roasted swan" centerpiece of our meal (cake).

We had goat stew, pieceman bread, olives, bread, almonds, fruit, vegetables and (everyones favorite delicacy) stuffed door mice. It was delicious and admittedly easier than a roast dinner however... the cake. Oh the flipping monstrous cake. Not to mention the tunics!

It was spectacular Matt loved it, the girls were over the moon, and I am so glad to move on from the Romans. Long live the Saxons!

Happy Thanksgiving

The girls have been busily making decorations for Thanksgiving and I am so blessed to have my family around me today but I'm missing those 5000 miles away.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Gifting creativly

So as a follow up to my last post there is this: We make a set of these sketch books every year for Christmas and they are a perennial favorite! The gold stencilled version is what all our girls will receive and the titled version is what our young nephews will get this year as we are all going to be together for New Year.

These really could not be easier. I buy cheap A4 hard back sketch books this time of year. Last year I got nice ones for £1.99 each. This year I've had to fork out £2.50 each. The titled version is lettered by hand in pencil and then painted over (also by hand) but you could very easily use letter stencils to put words on your books. The stencilled version is new this year as I felt I'd worn out the titled ones for our girls over the last few Christmases. If anything the stencil is easier. You just need a piece of lace paper. A paper doily would work nicely but I've used some scrapbook paper that was not cheap at £1.80 for the sheet but it was so sturdy I've done three books and it could stand up to a lot more use still. Good quality acrylic paint works a treat but don’t be tempted to try the kid’s paints (poster or otherwise) on them as it flakes off over time and you will find yourself one day covered in chipped paint and the book looking rather less spectacular. I placed a letter cut out of the child’s initial under my lacy card and used a sponge to stipple gold paint all over the front of the book then the card and initial removed and voila! The spine was painted gold and when dry about an hour later I wrote in in black Sharpie each child’s name so that when being pulled off a shelf it would be immediately recognizable whose sketch book is whose. I haven’t painted the back as I think it’s easier for younger children to recognize front from back with a plain back cover- but I could imagine how much more glamorous a whole gold painted book could look!

Creativity spaces

One of the most astonishing privileges of being an adult is to observe the creativity of children with the insight of maturity. I recently had the giddy pleasure of watching several pre-school aged girls gathering grasses, leaves, ferns, etc to create dolls. Their mothers shrugged in bewilderment about where the idea had come from. As I watched them I noticed one child was particularly resourceful; she was not the oldest or the most clearly spoken but had rallied troops to her cause with her determination. In an attempt to engage and discover her inspiration I tried to help with the gathering process. She had a very specific selecting process which I could not discern but was very clear to her mind and most my efforts were examined carefully to be accepted or rejected with a finality that would make Sir Alan Sugar proud. It soon became apparent as my time with this group of children lengthened that this particular toddler was delightfully, startlingly creative. Having a conversation with her challenged my brain keeping up with her leaps in topic and relevance, and clearly many of the games played were of her invention.




Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that there are two motivations for creative behaviours: that of exploration and invention and to acquire comfort, pleasure and relaxation which revitalises daily life for the creative individual. I have often wondered if adult intervention in children’s activities tends to stifle creativity as we will (as humans) repeat the things we’re most exposed to and many adults have set patterns of behaviour and thinking long established. As an example of this in our home we have no television and get all our access to TV programming via internet players and DVD rentals; in our experience a TV show/ film/ etc. exposure tends to limit our children’s variety of creative play. We have bought toys which tie in with children’s shows (Bob the Builder comes to mind) which were endlessly and creatively employed until the TV show itself was seen and suddenly the context of the toys became clear and they were only played with in specific frameworks and Bob no longer played the role of Café owner, Cowboy, or Zoo Keeper… he was Bob, the builder. The observation of this human behaviour of imitation of the things we are exposed to is so ancient it is mentioned in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 15:33 where the disciples of Jesus were advised to avoid evil company as it would corrupt your own behaviour and again in Phillipians 4:8 where they are advised to dwell on only good things.



Part of our home life is the encouragement of creative thinking. At the younger children’s age it can be as simple as storytelling. More often we encourage the children to think about motivations of the characters in stories they read, or to think of an alternative way of working out a maths problem. I would argue however that the most important aspect of encouraging the children’s creativity is in actively fostering an attitude of observance and insight in the everyday. We try to explore our surroundings (home, wilderness, human interactions) with our eyes wide- viewing details with curiosity and thoughtfulness. I hope that by creating the space for creativity my children to look at the world perceptively and enable them to find an endless well of peace and reflectivity.