September Inspiration

September and, like many others, we are about to start back to more formal learning. I have some reservations about the long holiday and we need to get going again. Having said that, this is a brilliant time of year to go away. This time, last year, we were away this week which proved a brilliant not back to school activity.

I don't have any preschoolers, any more, but found this post by Lizzy quite convicting about older children too especially

 It is easy to consider things which are definitely optional absolutely necessary, but to be flexible about things which should be essential.

Danika has published an enormous list of Christian history books for children of different ages. I certainly haven't read all of these books myself but the list will be helpful when researching books.

We are hoping to start our nature studies with Exploring Nature with children (review soon), this week so this post from its author, Lyn Seddon, about how to set up a nature journal was relevant. We love some lovely empty journals just waiting to be used.

We should never stop learning and Annie Kate's article about modelling the joy of learning for our children was challenging and inspiring. This has inspired me to write a list of books that I ought to read. What would you put on a must read list?

This is apple season and with a biggish crop, I am always looking for more uses for apples. This post helps to avoid wasting the skins although I tell myself that composting isn't waste.

Have a happy September!

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August in Books

Every time we have a break from more formal home education, I have great hopes about reading and then reading again. Sometimes, this works and sometimes, it doesn't. This time, I have ended up having multiple books partially read but fewer finished.

Anyway, my current books are 

Sketches in Church History by SM Houghton. This is at least my third reading of this book and my reason for rereading now is to see whether the book is suitable to read aloud to my two youngest. I love this book: it is an easy read covering Church history from the early Church to the nineteenth century from a Reformed Protestant perspective. Still, I suspect that the children will benefit more in another couple of years.

Over the last few months, I have become quite enthused about my vegetable garden perhaps because Middle Son has helped extensively with the garden. Anyway, we have been eating potatoes,

watching the pumpkins daily

and hoping about the beans.

Before anyone thinks that my garden is a complete success, I need to point out that the carrots and tomatoes have been a complete failure and the brussel sprout sowing has yielded only one plant. Anyway, this balance has enthused me to read Joy Larkcom's Grow your own Vegetables.

This has been tremendously educational and also has short sections so it can be read while waiting for the dinner to cook or while watching swimming. The latter had the side benefit of leading to some helpful gardening advice from another mother. 

My home education reading is What your Year 2 Child needs to know. I will probably review this once I have finished it although I'm not making particularly fast progress. Still this is an interesting book from educational, political and Christian perspectives.

Ages ago, I started to reread J.C. Ryle's Expository Thoughts on Matthew. I find this book clear and helpful but sadly, in the business of life, it got left for a while. More recently, I have started rereading it- a section a day and yes, I was foolish to stop. Ryle has such clear and relevant things to say and expounds the passage in an unforced manner.

I'm hoping to find time to read about exegesis and have lined up Berkof's Principles of Biblical Interpretation which looks readable even for a mother who tries to read at silly o'clock. 

With the children, I have been reading aloud Return of the White Book which I reviewed recently. I'm enjoying a second run through of this missionary book.

Marcia Williams books are also proving popular and our library seems to have a plentiful supply! Some of these books are making me think about the role of teaching children about myths and legends; whether they should learn about them and how to teach them in a Biblical context. The books have certainly led to some interesting discussions.

Finally, we can't escape The Famous Five. Certainly, much of Five Run Away together wiled away a long journey.

Have you read anything recently that you would recommend? Anyway recommendations are gratefully received but I would love recommendations for books on Christian education. 

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Plants and Making Presents

I promised one of my readers that I would put up instructions for growing African violets from leaf cuttings so here is the tutorial. This can be done with other plants although I have only used this technique for mint and African violets.

This activity is useful for 

• teaching children about different types of plant reproduction. The new plants here are essentially clones of the parent plant as this is asexual reproduction.
• making cheap presents.

Materials needed:

African violet plant with healthy leaves

Compost-I used potting compost but suspect that garden compost would also work. I just haven't tried this.

Narrow necked container: bottle or vase.

Opaque material: I used foil but black paper or polythene would also work.

Method:

Carefully remove 3-4 healthy leaves from the plant. Place these in narrow necked container filled with water and exclude light with foil or black paper.

After 4-6 weeks, the leaves develop roots and sometimes, little leaves. Pot using compost. Keep moist but not waterlogged.

Keep in a sunny place. I use a window sill.

The leaves that I planted last autumn were ready to be given away at Easter time. The leave in the picture above was taken off the parent plant in May.

This plant was grown from a leaf last autumn.

I would stress that I'm no gardener and growing African violets this way is really easy.

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Balancing Half Term

This half term has been about balancing:

• older and younger generation
• children and essential catching up around the house
• house and the garden

It is easy to write as though I had come to the right balance but this is still a work in progress. 

We started out with a family celebration alongside a trip to the sea. This balance seemed to work reasonably well-that was before life got complicated.

Monday was meant to be a day on our church's annual outing but instead, Grandma was admitted to hospital. We managed to get the children to the outing-there was no point them hanging around hospital, all day. We are hoping that Grandma will be able to come home soon.

I had always intended to do some catch up this week but there just seemed a vast amount to do. I'm talking essentials and yes, not even that is all done. Middle Son has done sterling work in the garden which was needed. 

We did fit in another outing to Knole Park in the driving rain and eventually, some hail.

The clothes that I thought were waterproof proved that they weren't! I thought that we were relatively hardy about the rain but we all wanted to go in the dry. The State Rooms are fascinating. The guides kept telling us that they were cold but after the rain, it was a relief not to be wet and being dry felt warm. 

Half term is a time to read. I seem to have several half finished books.

 David Cloud's Keeping the Children continues to challenge. Plenty of food for thought. 

I'm pulling together some books for a children's book club which is an excellent excuse to read children's books. Jim Cromarty's biography of Hudson Taylor The Pigtail and Chopsticks Man is the first that I am reading for this purpose. Do let me know if you can recommend books about different countries of the world for 7-11 year olds. 

On the way out to hospital, on Monday, I pulled a book off the shelf to have something to read while waiting. As a result, I am a fair way through Georgi Vin's Three Generations of Suffering. A thought provoking read about Christians in an atheistic society.

For light relief, I downloaded Choosing Home:20 Mothers celebrate staying at home. The chapters are short vignettes of different mothers and their perspective on staying at home.

The read alouds are on hold. Does that mean that they are not too successful, if we can wait a week? Younger Daughter has wanted a couple of Dickens' simplifications over the holiday. Dickens isn't quite the same simplified! Aldophus Tips, by Michael Morpurgo, as an audio book is currently being enjoyed for what must be the fourth or fifth time.

One text that has seemed so relevant this week has been

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 

James 1 v5

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Potato harvest

This year,we have taken part in the Grow your own potatoes project. This is open to home educators, in the UK, with primary school aged children.

The project provides potato tubers, a chitting box, black bags for growing, stickers for dates and, on the website, teacher resources.

Chitting the potatoes

 The potato tubers provided were of the Rocket variety and a regional type. One extra Rocket tuber was sent so that it could be grown in a clear bottle to see the root structure.

We had a cold Spring. There was frost after we had planted the potatoes and although we had put them in a fairly sheltered spot, I was concerned that we might have lost them. This wasn't the case but the shoots were slow to emerge. The project has a set date for harvesting and weighing the potatoes, I guess, to fit with school holidays. My gut feeling when we got to the date was that the potatoes probably needed longer and sadly, I was right.

 The picture below is of our harvest-there were also some very, very tiny potatoes which might have grown more with a few more weeks.

 A rather sad 60g of the regional variety and 210g of Rocket. I didn't bother to enter the competition for the heaviest crop! They did taste good roasted although we did have to supplement them with other potatoes for this family of eight.

It is worth taking part in Grow your own Potatoes especially if your children haven't grown potatoes before. This is the second time that we have taken part and whilst seeing the tubers emerge from the soil is always exciting, it probably wasn't quite the learning experience that it was first time round. We probably need to make our own project for another year, growing something new to us!

Harvest or no harvest

This year, the yield from our garden has been disappointing. Why? Slugs, rain, cold and wind have conspired to remove the blossom from the apple tree, prevent seedlings growing or eat them. Adding to this, the squirrels ate the greengages just as they were ripening.
 These are the rather sad potato plants-the slugs loved their leaves!

We have harvested some potatoes but not quite as many as we had hoped.

What I've learnt

• thankfulness that we do have supermarkets full of food.
• gardening is hard work. I'm sure that ours would have done better with more time spent weeding and removing slugs. 
• some of the produce that didn't grow is for reasons beyond our control. The tomato plants needed more sun. The loss of the apple blossom was due to the weather.
• Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.
• Appreciation of the food that we do have from our garden-some potatoes, garlic, a few damsons, some rhubarb (this did well), a few blackcurrants from very young bushes and we hope to have some apples and a few wild blackberries.

How does your garden grow?

How do you make time for gardening? 

Potatoes

This year, I accidentally ordered double the number of potatoes we intended to grow. Not a disaster but it meant that we ended up growing potatoes in potato bags, compost bags, old dustbins and even the ground! 

Most of the bags used compost made in our compost bins from kitchen scraps, grass clippings and weeds. Due to my over-order, we did have to buy some extra compost. It will be interesting to see how the yields compare. 

Probably due to the rain, we have had a battle with slugs and whilst this crop is organic, I'm about ready to throw in the trowel and buy slug pellets next year. This autumn, I need to research pellets that won't harm children, birds, hedgehogs and frogs-all of which appear in our garden. The slugs had a bit of a field day with our potato leaves even with regular removal of many, many slugs. Suggestions on the slug battle are gratefully received.

Today was the great day for emptying the first potato bags. I think that it is worth growing even a few potatoes so children can have the excitement of seeing them appear from the ground.

There were a fair few worms too!

The first bag was of white potatoes and a fairly poor harvest perhaps because this bag had the most slug attacked leaves. The second bag was of reds and had a much richer content. Both the bags contained home made compost.

Fresh potatoes taste so much better than shop brought. I'm hoping that we have a good yield from the other bags. The family seem to eat more though so they won't necessarily last long.

Next year, I need to have more ground properly prepared and to work on the slug problem. 

Summer days

 In the UK, the holidays haven't started  but are due to begin in the next few weeks. This is the time to be making plans for those days spent around home or the nearby area. These activities are things that we can do at home or within walking distance. My children have a range of ages from 18 to 3. I don't feel that I have to find activities for the older children but it is useful to have some things that everyone can enjoy.

I hope there will be time to enjoy ordinary things: reading and looking at books, discussions over meals, friends to play and children making up their own games.

Education doesn't stop with the holidays and particularly for early readers, reading and writing will need to carry on although probably in a different, disguised form.

Books and reading

• Library book club
• New read alouds
• DVD to go with books. We read Hugo Cabret with a home education bookclub recently but haven't watched the DVD yet.
• Local art and reading activity days/hours

Outside

• Picnic in the park
• Help in the garden-there is plenty of weeding/slug removal/pruning and hopefully harvesting to do.
• Find out about the famous people who have lived around and about.   
• Blackberrying. We never have enough blackberries!
• Barbecue
• Lunch in the garden with friends
• Camping
• Teddy bears' picnic
• Bat walk
• Sand pit
• Open air swimming
• Cycling/learn to cycle
• Roller blading
• Make a scarecrow
• Make a solar oven-for a sunny day!
• Get out the guttering
• Outdoor letter matching

Inside

Herman friendship sourdough cake

• Sour dough bread
• Frozen yoghurt
• Make ice cream
• Decorate ice creams-always a big hit with little people and maybe better outside!
• Growing bean sprouts
• Decorating-I would like to tackle the kitchen but am a bit nervous about this. Probably not for the odd bored five minutes!
• Press flowers
• Holiday journal
• Marshmallow building
• Inside picnic-for wet days

Do feel free to add ideas for the summer. What has been successful in your house?

Inside gardening

The children are very keen to get out and planting but it is grey and I doubt whether much would germinate. So we have to make do with indoor gardening.

We have the hyacinths that they planted in the autumn

and new planting.

Cress-we had egg and cress this week so it is time to plant more.

Sprouting mung beans, to go with next week's Five in a Row book,

and indoor salad-planted outdoors.

Any more ideas for winter gardening?

Fruit trees

Along with our house, we acquired three apple trees and a greengage tree. All of the apple trees produce cooking apples; Bramleys to be precise. We have had so much fruit. The greengage only fruits on alternate years but one of the Bramleys has produced hundreds of pounds of apples each year.

Obviously, fruit trees don't last for ever. We were also keen to have some eating apples so planted some more apple trees both four years ago and two years ago. Old fashioned varieties which aren't always easy to buy in the shops.

We hope to have a little fruit from these, for the first time, this year. We might have had some earlier if it hadn't been for squirrels and little people. Perhaps, the greatest benefit from these trees may be for future generations.

A long term gardening project but once in place they need relatively little maintenance-the picture shows that we aren't into much garden maintenance! The trees are probably require the least effort of our fruit and vegetables and produce the greatest return.
We are grateful.

It is good to go into winter with a freezer full of fruit.

This is linked to Frugal Gardening 101

Compost

I never thought that I would write about compost but having seen several posts mentioning starting to make compost, it seemed worth writing about our experience of composting. Ummm, we've been composting about about 10 years now.

Our local council is keen to reduce waste so sells cut price compost bins. We are keen to cut costs so we've brought the cut price compost bins.

Vegetable and fruit waste plus coffee grounds and tea bags go into a little green bucket outside the backdoor which when full is put in a big bin at the end of the garden.

 My husband adds cardboard which apparently adds to the mix and we wait.

A few months later, we have compost. Well, a few months later we have something vaguely resembling compost but it has to be sieved. Unsieved compost contains little twigs, plastic labels that accidentally got thrown in and anything else that didn't decompose. My kind husband does the moving of the bins and sieving- sometimes with help from little people who like dirt.

Pros:
We buy many fewer bags of compost. We haven't stopped buying compost-more of this later.

We sent less to landfill. Not sure how much as this isn't something we have measured! Probably, 4-6 of the small green buckets a week.

Cons:
Bit embarrassed about this but it is a common problem. We have had problems with rodents in the big compost bins on a couple of occasions. If we were starting again. we would put wire mesh under the bins.

Home made compost isn't the best for growing seeds. For starters, it has seeds in it. We have had several unexpected tomato plants around the garden. If the new seeds are unfamiliar it can be very difficult to distinguish wheat and tares. This is an especial problem with salad mixes when the seedlings can all look different. We have started buying potting compost for this and reserving our own compost for improving the soil and growing potatoes.

Overall, the pros outweigh the cons and we plan to carry on composting.

This is linked to Frugal Gardening 101.

Garden maths

Middle son had some practical maths yesterday.

He had to work out whether our gardening is cost effective.

There are a few assumptions in these calculations:

-seeds were brought in the 50% sale

-yields were compared with the cheapest non-organic store range which is what we buy. The vegetables we grow are organic in all but certification but he didn't compare with organic prices.

-time was not included

We did not allow for other benefits of growing our own:

-little ones who know that fruit and vegetables don't grow in packets

-satisfaction of growing our own

-organic produce which we would usually not eat

-better taste.

What were his findings?

Rather expensive to grow: tomatoes. In fact, we've made a big loss unless we get a bumper crop which doesn't look likely.

Expensive this year but may recoup costs another year: blackcurrants and raspberries. This was because of the cost of netting. We were given the raspberry canes and the blackcurrants weren't expensive.

Cost effective: garlic

 potatoes

 and basil.

We didn't do a formal calculation for cut and come again salad but I suspect this is also cost effective.

Was this a useful exercise?

Probably, I need to have a careful think about tomatoes for next year. The main costs were the expensive seeds due to previous problems with blight and compost. We do make our own compost but most of this was used on the potatoes so we brought growbags for the tomatoes.

The calculations of yield had to be a bit rough and ready but still worth doing.

Middle son enjoyed his maths which has to be a bonus. He had to work on estimation especially of yields, price per weight and comparing different measurements. Hopefully, he will be able to advise how much of each profitable crop to grow but that is for another day.

This is linked to Frugal Gardening 101.

Bill the scarecrow

Our version of the "Dingle dangle scarecrow" made from old clothes and sheet, old curtain rails for arms and legs, packaging material and bags. The only new item was the string for holding everything together. The name, Bill, was chosen by the children but from its origins our scarecrow has no connection with the financial variety.

The children, and some visiting friends, made the face.

The old clothes were arranged

 and then re-arranged.

We stuffed "Bill" with more old clothes and packaging material and added some boots.

All ready for the garden.

Guarding the blackcurrants.

I keep looking up the garden and thinking that there is someone there-hope the birds think the same.

This is linked to 92 days of summer


and to It's Playtime.

Do visit for so many play ideas.

Time for planting

We've been blessed with a garden which, by UK standards, is large. An opportunity for the children to play, for summer hospitality and for our own fruit and vegetables.

 I'm not a great gardener and there are so many things to do....

Encouraged by Large Family Logistics, I've decided to devote regular time to the garden.

The suggestion in this book is to have a Gardening Day possibly Saturday. Tried this sort of thing in the past but it really hasn't worked for us. There are so many other things to do on Saturdays and we like to have everything prepared for the Lord's Day which seems to take me a fair amount of time. A good use of time though.

What has seemed to work better for me is to have a regular half an hour once bookwork has finished for the day. The younger children also love having time to play outside and get muddy! This week, I've pushed this up with another half hour after lunch. This fits well into the schedule as our 10 year old has half an hour reading time after lunch, initially, while Mum sorted out the baby and put him down for his much mourned rest but now while the aforesaid "baby" and his sister enjoy the outside.

What remains to be seen is whether the plants grow.

This is one recent attempt. Usually, even I can grow hyacinths but this time either I or a little helper managed to plant two out of three hyacinths upside down.

Repotted: