Finding the Time

Turns out it's not that hard to find the time to write. My girls babysit for the neighbors four hours a week. If I don't mind being a rubbish mother and sending Snowy off to watch TV in my room, I can have half a day a week to write.

Turns out the hard bit is how selfish you get when you start to write. How you don't really care about anything but a line, an image, the rhythm of the poem. The things you take pleasure in as a mother disappear; the meal on the table, the story read cuddled up in bed, the sound of girls dancing and laughing.

Who is this mother, with her drafts and her mutterings, her eagles and her apes ?

from Zoo


1. It is difficult to hold
His gaze, my silver-back
Slave, melancholy; tester
Of my white pills, bitter,
On the tongue and in the brain.
Heart and lung; my drugged breath
Breaking open the sac of my disease;
His heart a loop of film. Electrodes.
The children kept from their mothers,
Caged. The loop a bracelet worn into him
Like rope, scars on the skin of his wrist,
His neck; the places he was tethered by
Or led by. How much does he remember
Of life outside the camps ?

I am wheat and braid,
I am wrapped in the Reich-flag.
I will never burn for him.


2. Your death over you, small
Mammal in the shadow of
Muscle and talon descending.
Dressed in your puppeteer’s black
You think you hold the hunter’s strings.
When the eagle no longer frightens you
That is your adulthood. Within it
You find something broken,
Summer-brittle as prairie bone.
              _________


Find more Poetry Friday here.

A Proper Homeschool Week or How Long Can I Keep This Up ?

Essays and speeches, the suffragettes, John Stuart Mill and his Reform Act amendment, shadow puppets on a stick, a theatre and 15 people  in my lounge room, geometry, money, four digit subtraction, Greek mythology, maps and treasure, chapters of Farmer Boy - doughnuts, more doughnuts, twisted, not round - and apples and popcorn and volume and mass and Lego, coded by colour and weighed, the weights added, 8.1 kilos of it. Horrible Histories, episode after gory episode, legs being chopped off, enrichment, autobiographies, words and voice and tone and punctuation. Exhibitions. On Sale: The History of Shopping. Nanny Piggins, the new book. Tennis practice out the front, a morning walk Low fat brownies, a pan of muffins oozing berries, a batch of butterscotch biscuits. Emails and plans and looking for felt to sew a new Yoshi and sewing a present and tidying drawers. Vacuums. Washing machines. Dinner and floors. Persuasion, talking about. Vitamins for teens. Appointments. Reading lessons. Reading books. Reading. Thinking. Slowing. Finally. Resting.

Please Come In and Look Through My Bookshelves

Because if I ever come over to your place, that's what I'd like to do, if you don't mind, and yes please, a cup of tea while I'm being nosey would be very welcome indeed!

I took five books off the third shelf down in the lounge room bookcase, the one made in Gaza and given to us by friends of our neighbours, unknown to us, who were moving house and who intuited - in some freakish, The Secret-like way, that I was sitting in my house thinking "Oh how I need a new bookcase!" and knocked on our door and asked us "Would you like a bookcase ?"

Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson is first in the pile. It's set in a Britain that is moving from the rural to the urban, from superstition and folklore to science and modern communications. Flora writes of her new life working in Candleford Post Office with a wry voice and a sharp eye  On visits home to the hamlet of Lark Rise, she chronicles the poverty, the humour and the despair of lives still lived as tenants and craftsmen. The women are dignified and resourceful; the country side is full of meaning and Flora writes with a deep love of place.  My guilty secret is that I love the TV adaptation of Lark Rise somewhat more than I love the book, and this, I fear, means I am shallow.

Underneath is Ron Pretty's Creating Poetry. Ron is a distinguished poet and publisher; he was one of my two lecturers at University. This was the textbook he sometimes taught from. I was young and arrogant and full of disdain for such things as lessons in poetry. Now, of course, I read with relish and have used ideas from his book to teach poetry myself.

Ah, the creative family by Amanda Blake Soule. No photo in case you are having a not very crafty and competent day and the cover - a well groomed mother teaching one child to knit while her baby explores the pencils  and her other child, in cute and quirky homemade clothes, draws - makes you weep...Ideas for family projects that bring crafting, connections and imagination into family life. Completely gorgeous -and useful for me, at one time. I was most successful with incorporating her ideas for 'Family Drawing Time' into our homeschool. We did our fair share of felting and knitting inspired by this book too.  The trouble with me is that I procrastinate. I bought this book at least four years ago and raced out to get a sewing machine so we could make some of the fabulous toys and clothes in the book. I used my sewing machine to make something 'crafty' for the first time this week. There is a problem with this book, and that's that Mrs Blake Soule has a life so crafty, so colourful, so nurturing, so perfect. If you are having a bad day, week, month or year, this book is less likely to inspire you to acts of gentle creativity than it is to cause you to self harm. It's only gotten worse. More children, more books, more  lovely projects on her website. I avoid it these days for mental health reasons, but, you know, if your health and ego are robust, I'd recommend this book with minimal hesitation.

Alice's Cookbook - a culinary diversion by John Fisher. Sentimental reasons only. It was given to me by my Grandma in 1978. I've never cooked from it, though how hard can 'Owl and Panther Pie' be ? Given how long it took me to get to the sewing machine, there's still hope. I may one day just up and cook Lewis Carroll's Oxford Marmalade. The Tenniel illustrations are a bonus.

My girls weren't as keen on this next book as I was. I bought The Turtle and the Universe by Stephen Whitt from the UNSW bookstore, the same day I bought my beloved Wolf Hall. It's straightforward really. It tells the story of the universe by linking the life of the turtle with the life of the universe. It uses analogy as a teaching tool and analogy is what I like best in science books. That's how my brain works, comparing one thing to another. I thought the girls would feel the same way. The girls don't feel the same way. Nevertheless, they have a science journal with diagrams of supernova explosions and narrations about radioactivity to show for the hours they spent listening to me read this enthusiastically. They did beg me to give them a break from living science books afterwards, but that's a reflection on my poor science teaching, not the book. The book is fab and I think you should buy it!


I'd love to know what's on your bookshelves, hint, hint and a jolly big hint. Next time I'll get back to proper homeschooling mama blogging and show you what's on my school shelves.

Intellego, We May Have A Future

Snowy likes maps. He liked learning about maps more than anything else we've done this year. We worked our way through the activities in my old Jacaranda Primary School Atlas; it's got a map of the world I used to dream and plan my travels, once paroled from school.

Now I'm not a curriculum person. There's a reason for that. Stroppiness. Also, a good dose of CM and a natural preference for living books. Ouch, I've been corrected on that one before! I mean books with a strong narrative. So for the longest time I didn't really believe in curriculum. 

However. I was clicking around the net one day last week, trying in vain to find a history project based on quilting and the Civil War, which I thought I'd bookmarked but hadn't, when I came upon  Intellego Maps K-2. I'd say it was an impulse buy, but it took too long for that. Password amnesia.

Anyhow, I talked it up to the boy over the weekend. He was vaguely interested. This morning he was downright squirmy as we worked our way through 'What I know about maps and globes' and 'What I'd like to learn about maps and globes.'

But then we got to the making of  treasure maps! I realise I could have arrived at the making of treasure maps without curriculum, except that I didn't. It took Intellego saying click here and do this next to think "Oh, a treasure map! What a good idea!" And that, I suppose is the point of curriculum; it's like the mama bird, chewing things up for you so everything is nice and digestible. Quite pleasant, really. I could get used to it.

I like the way this photo has books in the background.

We distressed the map to make it look old; snip off the edges, paint with a squeezed out tea bag, crumple, dry with a hair dryer.

Snowy drew a map using landmarks and co-ordinate clues.

Nice big sisters reading their first co-ordinate clue.

The treasure ( hidden in the letter box, otherwise known as B1 ) was two Milky Ways and a packet of gum.

Snowy hasn't enjoyed his schoolwork this much since...the last time we did maps. And thanks to Intellego, we'll be doing map stuff for weeks to come. Ooh, I could totally do an ad for Intellego...

Free Range Fail

 I was on the phone to my sister. She was talking about prams. The girls were talking to me. I heard them say they were going to fetch  L's newspaper; L is away.

I heard a door close. I heard a door open. I finished the call to my sister. I thought the girls were home.

The girls weren't home. It doesn't take ten minutes to fetch the papers from across the road. I thought they'd be out chatting to the neighbours. I put on some shoes and went out to see.

The girls weren't there. The girls weren't in L's front yard.

This is the point in the narrative where a good free ranger would think to herself: I wonder ? Perhaps they've walked down to the park ? I'll wander down and take a look

Instead, high on sudden adrenalin, I thought: They're gone. Someone has taken them. The default position of fear.

C went to look. They were in the park. I yelled, they cried.

Where were you ??
We told you - we were going to get L's paper and go to the park!!!

I didn't hear them. I missed that part of the message. I was listening to my sister describe her pram. I heard them say they were going to fetch L's paper. That's all. Nothing happened.

But my heart races like it did.

As Arwen would say, it's a fail. An epic free range fail.

Moving on From Narration - The Essay

Evangelical as I am about the brilliance of narration in shaping a good writer, in the back of my mind was a niggle of doubt; what would happen once Lucy's pithy, informative and dry-humoured paragraphs and pages were no longer enough ? Would I find we'd missed the essay-writing boat, somewhere back in 4th grade ?

As it turns out, no we didn't! And our ride down that particular river has been short indeed.

Day One - we talked about thesis statements. Lucy came up with three and chose one - that Aboriginal cave art should be conserved - as the focus of her first essay. She did some research to add to the knowledge she already had and wrote down three reasons supporting her thesis.

Day Two - Lucy worked on her introduction. I explained this to her as giving the reader on overview of what she planned to say in the main body of the essay.

Days Three, Four and Five - she began work on her paragraphs, moving from the strongest argument in favour of the conservation of cave art to the more minor. This she accomplished easily, having done paragraph length narrations frequently in the last few years.

Day 6 - conclusions are tricky. Lucy knew she needed to restate her case, wrapping up the points she had made in her essay along the way. It was far less tricky for her than I'd feared.

So, three hours over six days and she had it - a template for the essay in her mind and a completed essay we were both pleased with.

This week she's started work on  a real essay, for history class. It's pretty good so far, for a girl of 13 with only one essay ( but hundreds of narrations! ) to her name.

At the turn of the 20th century  most women had very few legal and political rights. They couldn’t vote in parliamentary elections and social restrictions often prevented them from doing the same things as men. Many women ( especially working class women ) wanted this to change. New Zealand had given women the vote in 1893 and Australia a few years later in 1902. Change in Britain was much slower so a British woman called Millicent Fawcett started the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, or the NUWSS, to campaign for women’s rights. By 1903 still nothing had been done and Emmaline Pankhurst, a middle class woman with radical parents, started another society; The Women’s Social and Political Union, which aimed to use extreme methods to get what they wanted. These two groups became known as ‘suffragists’ (NUWSS) and ‘suffragettes’ (WSPU). Though they each had different policies they had the same aim. The First World War, or the Great War, as it was known then, was what widened the split between the two parties. Ironically, women’s work during the war was what helped them eventually win the vote in the post war period.

A few changes had been made for women’s rights by the turn of the century but women still has few legal or political rights, especially in Britain. British women who were married could vote in local elections, but federal elections were still ‘out of bounds’.  Cambridge exams were only opened to girls in the 1860’s and Cambridge degrees twenty or so years later, but even then, getting a degree was considered unnecessary for a girl by many people so very few young women received a higher education. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 meant that married women could retain some of their property, whereas previously when a woman married, all her property became legally her husband’s. In 1907 county and borough elections became open to women, but some countries were more progressive. New Zealand women had gained the vote in 1893. A cartoon from the New Zealand Graphic in 1894 shows a New Zealander woman holding a flag with ‘Perfect Political Equality’ written on it, being helped onto ‘Parliamentary Heights’ by a male politician, decades before her British sisters would be in the same position. In the early 20th century Finland, Norway and Australia granted women the vote. Britain’s inability to act on women’s suffrage caused anger and discussion, particularly in women’s trade unions. “The question was women’s suffrage, and the year was 1905. Several years before ‘suffragette’ became a household word, the cotton workers of Lancashire were debating the controversial issue of votes for women in meetings at their factory gates, street corners and in town squares.”
 

Not perfect, but not bad either! And I'm glad, looking back, for all the time we spent on narration, for all the drawings and character sketches and skits and cities built in the sand pit, for all the letters, biographies, maps, time lines, flow charts and personal responses I encouraged Lucy to do and write; for it brought her here, to this term, this table, enjoying both process of the essay and her subject.

I'm working hard on the radical idea that what works for us isn't always the best approach for others; many ways to skin a cat, I'm sure. Today though, I'm glad to be the lady waving her narration placard in great relief...it works!!!

It Occurs to Me I Need a Camera. And Less Self Deprecation.

 The last camera I had ended its life dropped on its lens. Actually, that's also what happened to the second last camera I owned. If I want to take a photo, I have to ask my daughters - sorry Mum, can't find it - or my son - sorry Mum, no batteries.

If I had a new camera, I could have taken and posted a photo of Snowy and a friend making some very crafty 
peg and button racers.

Then I could have taken some more photos of the enthusiasm with which they experimented with ways of making those racers GO!!!

And if I wasn't so Australian in the way I play down anything we do, I could have also taken and posted photos of Snowy making homemade lemonade ( complete with recipe ) and Snowy baking jam tarts ( ditto) and his second playdate of the week - yes, I finally managed to meet the social needs of one of my children! I'm pretty sure it's a one off...

Then our week would have looked as hands on and crafty and peopled as it really was, and my blog would look like a proper home school blog and we would look like a proper home school family, instead of one who occasionally reads a book but vastly prefers a. thinking about  poetry and spending too much time on the net b. going to school c. playing computer games or d. actually, Lucy does look like a proper home school student. I should take some photos of her studying.

I might even write one of those curricula lists! Maybe...

Why We Homeschool - Then

During a thankfully brief mid-career crisis, I went looking for what I call my manifesto. I wrote it in my Steiner phase, so you'll have to imagine the coloured paper with curved edges, the cover sewn together with yarn...

It was a list of reasons to homeschool, prepared eight years ago, in anticipation of our first homeschool registration visit from an Authorised Person. I thought I'd have a fight on my hands and wanted to have my ammunition ready. As it turned out, our AP was a lovely woman who enjoyed looking at the girls' artwork and the books in our bookcase and was perfectly content for us to homeschool. After she left, I put the manifesto on the school shelf and it's been there ever since.

These were some of our reasons for choosing to homeschool:

to model life long learning
to have a child and parent directed education
for learning to be its own reward, without use of a merit system
to have the ability to tailor pace/depth of learning to child's age/interests/competency
efficient use of time
to use good literature as a prime learning tool
to encourage curiosity and the development of self-directed learning behaviours rather than obedience
to introduce subjects/ideas at age appropriate times
to have flexible schedules
to provide the opportunity to socialise in the community and not restrict interaction to same age peers
to include children in adult life as participants in paid work and volunteering
to participate in running of household and learn household skills
to have the opportunity to observe own spiritual practice if desired
to learn outside the classroom using natural and community resources

Rereading this list, I was surprised at how we'd met most of my initial goals, despite having had days, weeks and even years where I was unsure of how well we'd done in our homeschool experiment and despite changing approaches several times along the way.

We're at a crossroads this year. Arwen is trying school soon. Lucy is heading into the world of volunteering, work experience and independent study. I think it's time to update the manifesto, to state a new set of goals which incorporate, develop and add to the old.

It won't be as pretty. Word documents lack the homespun look of a Steiner notebook.Still,  I hope it will be a guide for me, as I head into the second half of my home educating career. And pretty or not, something to look back on at the next crossroads and to gain reassurance from. To see goals, ideas, philosophies all met, despite my imperfections and mistakes; to know the path leads to the desired destination, even with its detours and sometimes, its dead ends.

The Bell Jar is Middle Aged

www.poetryfoundation.org/article/242402

I can't believe they teach this novel in high school! That's just asking for trouble. I home school mainly to keep my daughters ignorant of SP's existence. However, this is a nice reflection on an iconic book.

So Who Knew ? Marcel And Me.

It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.
Marcel Proust