Star Wars Identities and Hyde Park

We took a trip to the Star Wars Identities exhibit at the O2 this week and it was AMAZING.

 Really educational as well as just having loads of awesome Star Wars memorabilia.

The kids were shocked by how small the ships were and couldn't believe that the real Millennium Falcon was not much bigger than the Lego one.

 The exhibit walks you through the lives of Anakin and Luke Sky-Walker, explaining how their identities were shaped by things like genetics, culture, parenting, beliefs and values, peer influence and more.

It also allows you to create your own character as you go.

It was really well done and definitely worth a visit if you are in London.

There's also a Nissan advertisement 'innovation centre' that we stopped for a play in. The kids loved the Virtual reality station and doing a quiz about the cars.

After that we went to the Diana Memorial for a play (it was a beautiful day) and got some juices from a market on Queensway.

All in all a really fun day out.

In your image...

This week we've started our mystery of history curriculum again. Lychee is now old enough to join in and get something from it, which makes it a whole lot easier than it was last time around!

To be honest, we stopped because we moved house and taking our timeline off the wall meant we would have to reconstruct everything we'd done and I couldn't face doing it at the time. Starting again means rebuilding slowly, which is a lot more manageable. 

Today the children are using play doh to create men in their own image... Which quickly descended into creating their own "beasts of the field" and "birds of the air".  Cosmo is enjoying it so much more having a sibling to encourage creativity. First time around he wanted to make everything look perfect, exactly like a real person. 

Second time around, with a little encouragement from his sister, he's created a six legged, long necked, mammal that swims and has a number on its back which changes each year to tell you how old it is. 

I love how they inspire each other and learn from each other in ways that I couldn't teach. 

Family learning is the best! 

Not Back to School trip

This week is Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish new year, and generally when we would restart our homeschool after a loooooooong summer break hanging out with daddy. It's a fun day of starting out with fresh curriculum and books; and eating lots of sweet things (we have fruit, yoghurt and honey for lunch!) to remind ourselves of how sweet and good God is.

Our home-ed co-op. however, prefers to start a little earlier, and this year, we decided to join them on a trip to Prestatyn in Wales. It was so much fun to go with our cousins and the kids had a fantastic time.

We went to surf school at Surf Snowdonia, to great Orme copper mines and on a fossil hunt; we played on the beach, in an incredibly mild ocean; we went to Conwy castle and on an audio tour of an Edwardian house.

It was great fun to catch up with old friends, as one of Cosmo's favourite buddies who left our co-op last year made the effort to book in to the same resort and hang out with us all.

On the way home we stopped in at Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the MAD museum. It was incredible and the kids loved playing with all the exhibits, particularly a typewriter that was attached to fishing wires, which tapped glasses that had been tuned to different pitches.

You can see our video of what we did below:

South Africa!

We've had an amazing Easter holiday in South Africa visiting family, but it's also been a crazy fun learning experience.

dissecting fruits and seeds

It turns out that Little Lychee had no idea lions and elephants were real animals (she had imagined them to be like dragons and fairies) so that was a big surprise; and it was the first trip that both children can remember flying on an aeroplane.

Some of my favourite home ed experiences though have to the children collecting and dissecting seed pods, just to see what was inside, and then googling to find out what they were (admittedly because they wanted to know if they were edible). They loved trying out all the new fruits that we hadn't really seen in England - even though several of them were the same, they just look different because of the climate they grow in. A green grapefruit that's three times the size of any grapefruit you've seen before is essentially a new fruit to a four year old and a seven year old.


Another favourite was recreating a game park with sticks and leaves, and then building a house for little animals like geckos, complete with a braii and benches outside of it.

Gecko shelter

Mini game park with watering hole

Excitingly Cosmo took it on himself to write a travel diary, journalling what we did each day, so that he could share it with his cousins when he got home. This is a great achievement for someone who generally dislikes written work. 

It was also really interesting to watch the children at a bird park we went to in Montecasino. Obviously Little Lychee loved all the pretty birds and wanted to collect their feathers for her collection. Cosmo on the other hand, barely gave them a glance. He wanted to read the signs at each enclosure carefully, more than once, to learn the facts about each bird, then he was ready to go. Personally I feel that he could have got that information from a book, so it seems an odd thing to do at the park, but he was happy and thought it was a great trip. Just goes to show, you never can tell what your child is going to find interesting until you let them decide for themselves!

You can click on the video below to see more photos of our adventures.

Making Chocolates

 We had a great time making raw chocolates this morning and can't wait to taste them a little later on when they've set. We even made our own instructional video to share for Lychee to earn a DIY skill for her 'Chef' badge.  You can watch the video below:

Ickwell Nature Reserve

Lychee woke up, now officially a four year old, and decided to commandeer one of my T-shirts as a dress. More and more she is wanting to wear my things, be it slippers or hair clips, she's just so desperate to grow up. When all the other children are playing she likes to have a cup of tea with the mummies. Sometimes I can't decide whether she really is shy or if she just really wants to be a grown up.

To be honest, she looked remarkably cute in the T-shirt/dress (more so than I did!) so I'm going to let her keep it.




The T-shirt was originally my little sisters (I got a massive new wardrobe when she emigrated -sad story) and I love it. The 'Beloved' logo is cute enough, but what you probably can't quite read underneath is the red script which says 'because you never looked more beautiful than in His eyes'. I really do love the One Truth brand clothing.

Lychee wore it to come on a fun day out with some friends at Ickwell nature reserve. Several people were camping for the whole weekend, sadly we had to leave because I had a wedding today.

Cosmo and Lychee had great fun climbing trees, catching insects with her new bug hunting kit and generally building dens and stick fighting with lots of new friends.

Cosmo's highlight was teaching other children how to use his fire steel to make little fires. He just loves it when he is confident in a skill that takes others a bit of practice. It's a great way of getting him to talk more easily when he is feeling shy.

Lychee's favourite part was catching crawdad (my kids love that song) and cooking them. She didn't eat them, but both kids loved running around checking the traps and seeing how many were there. We of course, did eat them and they were very delicious.

Here's the video:

Wicksteed Park

It's the end of the summer term and our home ed co-op decided to celebrate with a visit to wicksteed park.
It was awesome.

Easter Holidays and Pet Eggs

The Easter holidays were so much fun. We had beautiful weather and it was great to spend lots of time playing outdoors, digging in the garden and general enjoying the sun.

The children played their first ever game of cricket, watching the new baby tadpoles in our pond, and even took part in some of the planting out.

We started our 'Kitchen Chemistry' online course and they loved experimenting with molecule density using the toaster from the boy's kitchen and a bin bag, and experiment that was repeated with a hair dryer and a mini hot air balloon on a camping trip over the Easter weekend.

Heated molecules are less dense

The children also went to the energy show at the science museum in London with their dad and had a fantastic time as well as Cosmo going camping in the peak district with daddy to climb a 'mountain'.

We had a lovely time celebrating passover with my sister's family and some friends, and the children took great joy in the charoset (I used mango, pear and cinnamon with walnut) as well as joining in with some really fun songs.

 But the part the children have been most excited about this Easter is getting their 'pet eggs'.

We currently have ten eggs incubating in the school room and the children cannot wait to see them hatch. They've been very diligent in checking the temperature regularly and topping up the water and the eggs are due to hatch Thursday or Friday.

I'm sure I'll manage to film it, and will post it here after. The baby chicks will then live in our house 6-9 weeks (weather dependant) and then move out into the chicken coop and run that we have built for them in the orchard.

Exciting times!

Giving the 'Happiness Advantage'

This weekend I read an interesting article in the Times about 'Dolphin Parenting' Which was Shawn Achor's reply to 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom'.

If you haven't heard of Shawn Achor I highly recommend listening to his TEDtalk on 'The Happiness Advantage' in the video below.

I've never been comfortable with the Tiger mom style principles, and although it's a little corny, I do love the 'dolphin parenting' idea. We have been able to implement a few of his ideas into our daily  homeschool routine and I'm already seeing positive outcomes.

So, if you want to join me in 'Dolphin Homeschooling' here are the ideas we are using so far:

1) watch a funny video on youtube and laugh about it together. 
Yes, daily. Laughing together is not only fun, but it releases endorphines which help you learn faster and retain information for significantly longer. Plus it's bonding.  

2) write down three things that you are grateful for. 
Teaching your child to scan the day for positive outcomes, within 21 days this becomes a habit, so make a month (or longer) of daily gratitude journalling.

3) One happy memory.
Also in our journal we write out one happy memory/favourite thing that happened today. I write this for Cosmo, as I don't want his emotional experience to be limited by frustration of spelling etc... I let him tell me his happy memory and then I ask leading questions like 'what happened next?' and 'how did you feel about that?'

4) An encouraging/positive note.
My children have facebook accounts. Don't worry, they don't know their own password and they are only friends with family members. It is useful for this exercise though, where I ask him to send one encouragement or note of praise to somebody.

Shawn Achor points out that IQ isn't really a great predictor of success or happiness. How positive you are and how well connected you are with your support network are much more important predictors of both. These exercises done daily will build habits, and habits become character and destiny, according to someone much smarter than me.

'Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny'
                                                      -Samuel Smiles
 
 In just three days my son is already way more positive. He is finding all kinds of things to be grateful for, he's stopping during the day to point out that 'this is going to be my happy memory when we journal!' and he's saying encouraging things to me and his sister.

This stuff works, so let's give our kids the Happiness advantage :0)

Photo credit

Art and maths

Yesterday was sunny and my kids got excited about having an 'art' lesson outside.

The only problem is, I had planned to do maths. 

Problem was easily solved though, because it turns out, if you think about it carefully enough, art and maths overlap quite a lot. 

First lesson was pattern recognition. Cosmo loves patterns, but lychee has struggled with being able to repeat a pattern in the past. 

With a bit of help though, we coloured in a huge area of paving slabs using chalks in a repeated rainbow pattern and talked a bit about colour theory (primary colours blending through secondary colours... etc...)

Cosmo helpfully brought up colour temperature too, so we discussed that briefly, because this term our co op is focussing on light, so I figure wavelengths will be worth knowing a little about. 

Then we made a giant number line, by writing one number on each paving slab of our path. I used our 'mathematical reasoning' book and had the kids work out exercises by running along the line instead of drawing arcs on a page. 

It all went pretty well, and there was also some fun naughty and crosses, pictures of hearts and people's names scribbled around. 

Who knew you could fill an entire day, just playing with chalk? 

Yes He Is (Death is Not Natural)

Okay, so this isn't technically a homeschooling resource, but I recently discovered this website that is full of media to make sharing your faith on things like facebook and twitter easier. The thing is, it has such simple, clear summaries of the gospel, that it is actually perfect for little ones to get a grip of the metanarrative of the gospel.

The website is called Yes He is and you can see a sample video, called 'Death is not Natural' here:

Lovely animations, which would make a great change to devotional time, and with a few basic questions you could easily make it a comprehension task, whilst all the while reinforcing the truth of the gospel. 

Go to Yesheis.com and you can view hundreds more videos and images that portray biblical truth in a simple and eye-pleasing way :0)

Managing Money: A learning opportunity almost missed!

Pocket money has been something that has come and gone several times in the Gracie household. We always tie it to some form of responsibility, and initially it goes well, but Cosmo gets bored. Currently pocket money is tied to him independently completing a set number of worksheets each day from our Timberdoodle curriculum, without complaining. 

We have always had 'spend', 'save' and 'give' jars, and he must put a little of his money into each jar, although the ratio is determined by him. He has historically been very generous with giving, kept  enough to spend on 99p toys from poundland, but not really been motivated to save beyond putting a small random coin in... until he had something to save for. 

Saving with a goal in mind has inspired him. He recently told me that he wanted to save up enough money to take the whole family to Gulliver's land (family ticket = £90). I had laughed it off and explained that it was a lot of money and would take far too long to save up his pocket money. He worked out that it would take just under two years, and that he felt he could wait that long.

A little later I read this blog about a four year old who saved up to buy herself, and her baby brother, iPads. I realised that we had a fantastic teaching opportunity, which I was missing by assuming he was incapable. 

So we had a chat about how to raise extra money for his goal. He has donated some toys to a local charity shop which pays him £2 a bag. He has also discovered ebay and listed his duplo set there (three days to go if you want to bid!) and is planning on selling his 'Swim fin' too. Grandma has been paying him 'a penny a pine cone' to collect kindling for her fire and a small amount for watering her plants. Even little Lychee got in on the action, attempting to sweep the Grandma's kitchen after a BBQ so she could earn some 'Gulliver money' to give to Cosmo.  

What I love most is his little determined character isn't undermining his giving attitude. He still puts money in his give jar. He still took the best bits of duplo (in his opinion) to save for his cousin Jonathon, and most notably, as well as saving £90 for our family ticket, he now also wants to save £180 so that he can take his cousins with him. 

We've created a spreadsheet for him so he can add to it when he earns money and watch his goal drop down. He's so excited and I nearly missed all this because I assumed he couldn't do it. 

Let your kids dream big.

*Update is available here*

Writing and Sibling Love

Yesterday Lychee wrote her first word!

It was on the chalkboard in the school room, and she chose to write her brothers name. After walking in and announcing that she was going to do it, she started with the second letter, but with a little encouragement she got the whole word.

I was so proud of her, but when asked if she wanted to try another word she threw down the chalk, snapped 'no' and ran out the room. We need to work on manners for sure!

Still, I love that she chose to write her brothers name and not her own. It's such a reflection of her darling little heart. She loves her big brother so much and 'brother' was the first recognisable word she said, long before 'mama' or 'dada'.

Sibling love. 

Gracies XL

Cosmo has been enjoying playing with some video editing software and has come up with a fun trailer for a movie about our family becoming superheroes. He chose all the videos and photos for the storyboard template himself, and all the clips where he is in a read cape and Lychee has chocolate on her face were written and directed by him :0)

He also did the typing for the inserts. Unfortunately the iPad keeps inserting apostrophes into things (like Gracie's when he types Gracies) and he will not allow me to correct them, so you'll have to excuse the grammar.

The 'XL' thing is a bit of a joke in our family as Cosmo and his dad like to wrestle, and they add 'XL' to their names to give themselves wrestling identities. Without further ado, I give you 'Gracies XL - the trailer'.

Orchard Toys

We were lucky enough to receive some lovely Orchard Toys for Christmas from a relative, and it really has been one of the best presents they received.

Having games that are simple enough for the whole family, or even just the two children, to play together has been so much fun. We have put together a games cupboard over the years, and whilst its always been in reach, we've told the children that they cannot play games without adult supervision because of small parts that might get lost.

Not so with orchard toys. In fact the game pieces are chunky and vibrant enough for a two year old to tidy up by herself and be confident that she has got every piece.

The easiest game, that the children play happily together without adult intervention, is 'Farmer's Lotto'. Everyone takes a card, then you take turns to turn over a card and see if it matches your card. The first person to fill their card wins. The catch is that you have to say the name of the animal and make the sound it makes if you want to keep the card.

Farmer's Lotto

Simple enough for a small child to play, but really helpful for our littlest in building confidence to speak (she has a mild speech delay).

The second game is called 'slug in a jug' and is slightly more difficult, but is doing wonders for her sight word recognition and for her brothers ability to create sentences.

It's basically pairs, but instead of matching, you have to find a rhyme! Each card has a picture on it, but also the word printed in bold so that whilst the child gets a big hint from the picture, they are still seeing the word.

Phonemes are colour coded so that children can easily see that "ea" in "pea" rhymes with "ey" in "key" or that "bowl", "mole" and "goal" all rhyme, despite their different spellings.

Slug in a Jug

For our youngest, she simply has to say the words and recognise whether they rhyme. For our son, and any adults playing, you have to say a sentence including the two words - hence the name "slug in a jug".

They're great games, and honestly slug I'm a jug would be easily replicated with homemade flash cards.

The official Orchard Toys cards are really nicely made though, and I highly recommend them.

British Children Are The Unhappiest

This Sunday one of our pastors was talking on service and he threw in the fact that a study done by UNICEF showed that British children were the unhappiest in the industrialised world. 

He then showed us the following quote:

"British children are trapped in a cycle of compulsive consumption as parents shower them with gifts to make up for their long working hours... 

...While children would prefer time with their parents to heaps of consumer goods, parents seem to find themselves under tremendous pressure to purchase an excess of material goods for their children... 

...Parents in the UK almost seemed to be locked into a system of consumption which they knew was pointless but they found hard to resist," 

                                                       - UNICEF 2007

It's something I feel I've instinctively always known. I came from a dual income family, but I know I was much happier (despite feigning embarrassment) when my mother left her well paid London based job (which required us to have an au pair) and took up working at my school. It was less pay, and she probably didn't feel that she was reaching her career potential, but we spent more time together.

We homeschool because we feel that no amount of money you could offer me for a second job would be able to buy enough stuff to make up for the amount of childcare my children would have to be placed in. 

It's not just about having me around all the time, it's about them being together too. In a school system (or any OFSTED style childcare) they would be split in different classes because of their age differences. My favourite summers were when my sisters and I did things like riding camp, because we were in the same class, over ones were we did holiday club (which was fun - don't get me wrong) where we wouldn't see each other all day. 

We are in the really fortunate position of living where my husband works. There's no commute for him, he literally walks through the back door and he's at work (or sometimes even tells his tutor group to come for breakfast in our living room) so we get the maximum time with daddy home possible. He also get's school holidays where he can spend plenty of time with me and the kids. 

Sometimes it's hard work. Sometimes there is tears and tantrums and I would love to just get an office job somewhere and have a full day of peace and quiet, but we'd miss out.

We'd miss out on these valuable years building family relationships - and that's worth losing a second income every time. 

Half term

So we've just had half-term, but with this being a homeschool the learning never stops!!

This holidays we signed Cosmo up for his first ever holiday-club with Wilstead evangelical church and he had a fantastic time. It was for two hours every morning and he came home having learned new songs and games, as well as a memory verse.

There were some competitions, including boat building, for homework and he worked so hard to create a boat that actually floated - experimenting with gluing coins and pebbles to counter weight his beautiful sail (those are ants that he drew on it), and covering the whole base in cling film to make sure no water would get in it.

There were also homework sheets, with word searches and crosswords and he won gold medals for completing those too.

At the end of the week there was a medal ceremony and he was presented with a certificate and a sticker book which he is very proud of.

He did miss two days of holiday club as we went to stay at my mothers to spend a little time with my sister who is about to emigrate half-way around the world :o(


We had a great time and celebrated a cousins birthday with a family trip to gulliver's land which was obviously a huge hit.

My aunt also stopped by on the second day with a box load of Math resources and games for us and we've been excitedly sorting through them, looking at which ones we'd like to play now and which ones to put in our 'soon' shelf in the school room.

And finally I've spent some time with Lychee on the new iPad (yes! I've finally got one!) and been working on the Montessori pre-language opposites app and starfall ABCs. Both are excellent and I highly recommend them, although it can make it hard to limit screen time as the children get really into the 'work' they are doing.

So that's been our half-term. Did you do anything exciting? 

Feast of Tabernacles

Looking for meaningful ways to celebrate the feast of tabernacles with your kids?

Here's what we'll be doing: Living in a Sukkah

For a more 'grown up' version of finding Jesus in the feast of tabernacles, you can read a great article here.

Lamplighter Publishing Offer!

Great news from Lamplighter Publishing!!

Recently a coupon code for their audio books accidentally got released. It was only supposed to go to 100 people who had attended a seminar, but somebody put it on facebook and... well they got enough downloads to crash the server.

I was so impressed with the way lamplighter handled this. I personally paid to download without realising the code was supposed to be exclusive, so they sent me a polite email, letting me know that they would be honouring my purchase, but requesting that I don't share the code with others.

I was so excited to have received the audio books (me and my children are enjoying them so much) but disappointed to not be able to share the offer with my friends.

Well, we are in luck! Lamplighter are doing another phenomenal deal, and this time we are allowed to share!

photo credit

There are several packages which have each been discounted to $7 (£4.30) each. That means that for £8.60 you could get all of the audio books that we have. I'm also spending the same amount again, this time to download the ebooks for some of the same stories and several new ones that weren't dramatized. My son will love reading through the books that he now knows the stories to - we had to listen to 'the hedge of thorns' four times through before he let me put on the next one - but I'm eager to read some of the new books to him as well, particularly titles like 'boys of grit who became men of honour' and 'The Giant killer'.

photo credit

This is genuinely a fantastic deal and I can't recommend it highly enough, but it's only for the next 24 hours. Once you have purchased you will have plenty of time to download, but you must make the purchase today.

Click here to buy!

GAPS friendly Easter Cookies

Courtney over at Women Living Well has a tradition of making Easter Cookies with her children. Personally I would call them meringues, but semantics aside, these are a great way to teach your children about the Easter story. 


Unfortunately we are on the GAPS diet and these cookies contain a whole cup of sugar. 


So I set to work and I have created the GAPS friendly version. The recipe is almost identical, but you have to be a little more careful with things like ensuring the egg whites are at room temperature (they will not whip up properly with honey if they are cold). 


So here it is:

1 cup whole pecans
1 tsp. white/ distilled vinegar
3 egg whites
pinch of salt

2/3 cup honey

Preheat oven to 180c (don't forget this step!!)

Place pecans inside a sandwich bag and let children smash them up with a rolling pin. Explain that after Jesus was arrested, He was beaten by the Romans soldiers. Read John 19:1-3.

Let each child taste a small amount of the vinegar. Put 1 tsp. vinegar into mixing bowl. Explain that when Jesus was thirsty on the cross, He was given vinegar to drink. Read John 19:28-30.

Add egg whites to vinegar. Eggs represent life. Explain that Jesus gave His life to give us life. Read John 10:10-11.

Sprinkle a little salt into each child’s hand. Let them taste it and brush the rest into the bowl. Explain that this represents the salty tears shed by Jesus’ followers, and the bitterness of our own sin. Read Luke 23:27.

let the children taste a little honey and then add 2/3 cup to the mixing bowl. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us. He wants us to know and belong to Him. Read Ps. 34:8 and John 3:16.

Beat with a mixer on high speed for 12 to 15 minutes until stiff peaks are formed. This works really well with my version of the recipe, as initially the mixture will be brown (due to the honey) but will eventually turn white when it's ready. Explain that the color white represents the purity in God’s eyes of those whose sins have been cleansed by Jesus. Read Isa. 1:18 and John 3:1-3.

Fold in broken nuts and then dollop blobs of it onto a lined baking sheet. Explain that each mound represents the rocky tomb where Jesus’ body was laid. Read Matt. 27:57-60.

Put the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door and turn the oven OFF. Give each child a piece of tape and seal the oven door. Explain that Jesus’ tomb was sealed. Read Matt. 27:65-66.

GO TO BED! Explain that they may feel sad to leave the cookies in the Oven overnight. Jesus’ followers were in despair when the tomb was sealed. Read John 16:20 and 22.

On Easter morning, open the oven and give everyone a cookie. Notice the cracked surface and take a bite. The cookies are hollow! On the first Easter, Jesus’ followers were amazed to find the tomb open and empty. Read Matt. 28:1-9.

Well, Courtney says to do this over night and on Easter morning, and I think I probably will next year. This year I wanted to do it prior to Easter to check it works. It did. It worked brilliantly. I will definitely be adding this to our family traditions to do at this time of year. 

The photos are from her blog, because they are much prettier than mine.