On Monday we set out on our sponsored Bike Ride:

Ready to go

First pit-stop

Resting on our way home

Still full of beans

Home and happy

Well done!

Over £100 raised!

We changed our route to remove the need to put five people and five bikes in the car so we cycled from home to Kingston, along the river, and then home again: 22 miles in total. I was impressed that I could cycle so far - it's a long time since I've regularly used a bike - and even more impressed that the children could! There was not one word of complaint and, in fact, they were pretty excited the whole way and we are aiming to cycle from home to Waterloo - around 30 miles along the river- in the spring.

The Bicycle Ride.

We get on our bikes, our feet on the pedals,

At the end of this ride there shall be no medals,

Just a nice happy feeling, and family glory,

(Unless we all die in an accident gory.)

Twenty-two miles on a bike! Golly Gosh!

Through mud that goes squish and though puddles that splosh,

Through fields of grass and paths all brown,

Out and in and out of town,

We go past locks, we go past houses,

We go past horses and, er, cow-ses,

All this for puppies, small and sweet,

And kittens with soft paws for feet,

For we’re sponsoring an Animal Home! (Mayhew,)

For cats and dogs and rabbits too!

At long, long last, we stop for lunch,

On chips and sarnies we happily munch,

Then back on the bikes and off we go!

(Starting, of course, a trifle slow.)

But our hearts are light as air,

Because, Great Scott, we’re half-way there!

We make light conversation, trying to ignore,

The noises coming from the floor,

Because our feet, beginning to ache,

ARE LOUDLY ASKING FOR A BREAK!

(Though they’re just being lazy, as we know,

We only started five minutes ago!)

After many, many hours

Of passing grass, and flowers, and flowers,

We get back home! Hip hip hooray!

What a fun, but tiring day!

We are so tired we all fall asleep,

There is no need for counting sheep!

Tea with Friends

It is a lovely thing to share something which is means something to us. Poetry tea has long been a corner-stone of our home education and it was special yesterday to welcome Lucinda and her children, one of whom joined the home ed world only in January, for tea and cakes and favourite poems. Lucinda brought the sequel to Marriott's Edgar's "Albert and the Lion", which was a joy to me as I didn't know there was one and Albert and his Lion are old friends of ours. I dug out Jim while we were on the subject of lions eating children (I was assured that our guests would not find it too gruesome) and we finished off with "The King's Breakfast". All the children read aloud, ate cake and drank tea and it was a very civilised affair.

It doesn't look much like school and it certainly doesn't feel much like school and I can't imagine what the lesson plan would look like, but as we reflected together, as the children bounced on the trampoline, we could list so many of the benefits. We have "covered" home economics, socialization (learning about sitting at the table and taking turns), socializing (having friends over), learning to read as our new readers follow the words of familiar poems, reading aloud in front of an audience, literature and ideas, (we have touched on World War I recently and Albert's Dad taught us about life insurance). All this in a warm and loving environment - and cake! What more could we want?

Words

Following our trip to the O2 Exhibition, we are spending some time reading and writing about the Titanic. The wreck was discovered by sonar equipment and I was trying to explain the difference between sonar and echolocation - is there one? Out came out our trusty Oxford Dictionary, leading me on a pleasant rabbit trail:

"Sonar: a system of detecting objects underwater by reflected or emitted sounds."
(Aha! no swimming bats!)

"Echolocation: the location of objects by means of the echo reflected from them by a sound-signal."

In the next column was,
"Edam: a spherical Dutch cheese, usually pale yellow in colour with a red rind."
I don't know why, but this struck me as a soothing and strangely poetic collection of words. I repeated it a few times for effect.

Back across the page to "Eclair: a finger-shaped cake of choux pastry filled with cream and iced." Succinct and elegant, everything I love about dictionary entries.

My son suggested I look it up in the red (Chambers) dictionary, so "Eclair: a cake, long in shape but short in duration, with cream filling and chocolate icing." A joke! In a dictionary! What a lovely, hidden surprise.

And underneath, "Eclaircissement: the act of clearing up a midunderstanding; explanation."

Eclair, eclairissement: cake and understanding - essential to life.

Magical Muffins

The children have been excited about these muffins coming up for a while now. There was something about the name that put me in the mind of the hallucinogenic 60s, but the kids has no such qualms!

This is the muffins prior to their magical transformation. I have to say it was an odd muffin recipe - rubbed in and a lot of milk - and I thought the actual cake part was bland and a little heavy.

But the fun was in the decoration! All three of my children were fired up by this, even rubbing their hands with anticipation. We mixed the icing, and I tried hard to find 'messy-mama' mode as we sloshed the food colouring. The results were a riot of joy, clour and kitsch.

We stuck with the theme and had magical poems, including elves riding the underground and a nymph and a goblin arguing over moon beads. I searched on-line and discovered the delightful "A Small Dragon" by Brian Patten. If you have a minute - literally, 58 seconds - do click on the link and listen to the author himself read it. It is wistful and a little sad; something I couldn't quite catch touched me. After I had read it and we had paused a moment, my little girl wondered aloud what might have become of the dragon. I didn't know. What does become of us when we need foods others can't provide?

Sticky Muffins

As I have said before, Poetry Tea-time is a vital part of our Home Ed week. This year I have been inspired by my daughter's Christmas gift of a muffin and cup-cake cook-book and I have determined to work my way through it. Today, it was Sticky Muffins. Middle son refused to have anything to do with anything that contained dates, but the rest of us had fun.

Not high in the beauty stakes, they were delicious.Middle son still would not try even a bite,but enjoyed a cookie and read us some Michael Rosen poetry.

We also shared some A.A. Milne (The King's Breakfast is one of my favourites as I love to do all the voices: King, Queen, Dairymaid and Alderney cow) and a couple from an anthology of poems inspired by the senses: donkeys' large ears and all that they can hear, and if you were a chocolate, would you eat yourself?

Chocolate Muffins

We have just enjoyed our first Poetry Tea-time of 2010. I lit one of my Christmas candles and brewed the tea my new tea-pot, a gift from my husband which matches my charity shop tea-cup and saucer. My daughter bought me a Muffin and Cup-cake cookbook for Christmas (with the printed warning that adult supervision may be required) and we used it to make Chocolate Muffins. She chose it herself while in the Garden Centre with her dad and was excited by her find and told him that I could use it to bake for poetry tea. It is gratifying to me that this is such a fixed feature in her mind: something that we do and will keep doing and that is good to do. I plan to work through the book systematically and bake each recipe in turn, even the odd sounding ones (although I will have to give anything containing banana a miss.) Each child chose two poems, all old favourites, and again I am pleased that my children have such a thing as favourite poems. My little girl, a not-yet reader, recited the first verse of 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' and asked for a Pam Ayres as her second choice. I dared to read 'Snake' by D.H. Lawrence, a poem I am very fond of but have thought too long for the children to listen to, and they sat quiet and said they liked it. Dad joined us as he is off school due to snow again and, as the muffins were quite small, we had two each. Poetry tea may not take very long, it certainly wouldn't fill and afternoon of school, but I cannot imagine a better or richer experience. Next week, it's Sticky Muffins.

Yet more tea

Poetry tea-time is my favouite occasion of the week. It is a time when I really notice how my children are developing. Both my sons, eight and nine, read aloud and are eager to chose and share. They read clearly and with great intonation, frequently assuming different voices for appropriate characters. My daughter, six, chooses poems for me to read which she remembers from previous readings.

Last week, my friend bought me a lovely book full of inspiration; the photos are art in themselves. I found in this book, a quotation from Mrs Beeton, which appealed to me so much that I shared it with the children. My little girl chose it as her copy-writing this morning:

" ...tea and bread and butter and a few elegant trifles in the way of cake and fruit ..." Can you see the cake, the grapes, apple and pear, the thickly buttered bread and the tea-cup with two sugar lumps?

We invited our neighbour who treated us to a recitation of a poem she still remembers from school. We enjoyed a couple of classics, some A.A. Milne and Benjamin Zephaniah. What a lovely way to spend the afternoon.

Pretty in Green

Passing a local charity shop on Tuesday evening, I spotted this beautiful tea-set:

I have been known to dither over purchases from second-hand shops but this really caught my eye and I thought it would be perfect for poetry tea-times. So, Wednesday morning, when the shop was open, I made a special journey to buy it. It is proper bone china, and has no stamp to say it is microwave and dishwasher proof. The plates and saucers, (clearly from a different set originally) are Wedgewood.

Poetry tea-time is one of my favourite times of the week and Julie has just posted some encouraging thoughts on the study of poetry. It has taken me a while to get into the idea of reading fun kids' poetry and not worrying so much about Great Poets (my children are 9, 8 and 6!) and A.A. Milne is a firm favourite. In fact, I also bought (along with eight other books for a grand total of £2,50!) new copies of "Now We Are Six" and "When We Were Very Young" with colour pictures as the ones we were using were from my childhood and are beginning to fall to pieces. Now, all I need is to bake some cookies!

Mission Accomplished

I did manage to get all my eight things done yesterday! What is more, I felt calm and relaxed at the end of the day and spent a few minutes with my boys poring over the Lego catalogue and helping them write a list of what they wanted to buy. This is in contrast to my usual, exhausted good night kiss and request not to hear from them until morning! So I am trying the same strategy today (although today's list has 16 things on it, writing my blog being number 3.)

I am feeling that persistent guilt that I am not doing enough with the children and I am trying to dampen it by telling myself that this is still our Christmas holiday. The truth is that I am just feeling very flat and unmotivated. I am trying to notice how I feel without forcing myself to change and I am hoping that by being a little more gentle on myself, by lowering my expectations, I will rest body and soul and feel re-energised to start next week.

In the meantime, I have followed this link from Here a the Bonny Glen, to a great site of read-aloud poetry. Here is 'Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth' read with a voice like warm chocolate. Maybe I can find some time to listen to more of this today ...