Take a walk on the wild side

Friday

It has been recently reported that today's children can suffer from Nature Deficiency Disorder, not so in our house. Today we saw a second visit to Nyman Gardens and loved it all over again. Bean and Pumpkin made me read all the signs they could see on trees and plants and where the plants were from (really must brush up on my Latin) and we felt and smelt and observed and described and hid and climbed and fell. (Asher fell out his first tree.)


We shared our lunch time with a Robin and two field mice, all of which were less than a foot away from us. The mice running around in the hedge row behind the benches we were on. The boys spent about 15 minutes watching them and I had fresh satisfaction and delight in our choice to home educate. 






















Our house is full of collections of sticks and leaves and cones and seed pods and various other natural findings. I can remember David Attenborough once talking about the importance of collecting things. In fact Nyman's Gardens itself is a huge collection of plants from far and wide. So our house may be full of odd bits and bobs but it is the beginnings of great discoveries.


Pumpkin has spent a lot of time with Plum today, holding her hand, singing to her, cuddling her and playing 'boo.' I love watching the boys relationship grow with each other and their sister and am glad that the transition from two to three has been a smooth and natural one for them all. 


The drawing is one of Bean's, it is the Horsham Museum. The bricks are a skate park built by Pumpkin. Bean also asked me to write "all the numbers" so he could copy them. As a teacher I was always quite apposed to giving the children worksheets of numbers or letters to copy but in the spirit of 'unschooling' I dutifully wrote down the digits from 0 - 9 for him to copy. Sometimes I think it's me that needs de-schooling, not my children!

Babble, books and baking

Today's biggest pleasure has been listening to Plum babble all day. At some points it almost sounds like she is imitating her daddy when he says her name. She gets the intonation perfectly. She literally hasn't stopped. The boys continue to love their little sister and I continue to love watching them with her. They often sing her songs and hold her hand or lie down next to her. Pumpkin is often a little over bearing towards her and seems to be constantly in her face or kissing her or full body hugging her. It has been a challenge for us to encourage him in his affections towards her whilst also protecting her from being squashed! Today's development has been Pumpkin's idea to read to her. 

We love reading. It is one of my favourite things that I wish I had more time to indulge in! We have books or reading material everywhere and one of the boys favourite outings is to the library. Bean has recently become fascinated with Australia (I don't know why or remember where the interest was stimulated from) and this morning I came downstairs to daddy and Bean looking at pictures in a back issue of the National Geographic in which Bean was total enthralled. 

cheese scones

honey cookies

After a week of eating chocolate eggs and a party bag full of sweets from yesterday I got busy in the kitchen in the hope that the phrase, 'Mummy, I'm hungry,' can be met with some home baked goods this week. Pumpkin still insists he's hungry pretty much all the time and he pretty much eats all the time too. I don't know where he puts it all! "Hollow legs," that's what his daddy would say.

And whilst we're on food, Plum has taken to feasting on one side only and then wanting her pudding up to an hour later! I don't remember the boys doing that. She really does have her own rhythm and it goes to show from the outset that our children are all different. Just for the record, after the normal (for me) rickety start, I am loving the breast feeding once again. This time especially, I feel it gives me and Plum dedicated time together and I wouldn't have it any other way...even when I fall asleep on the job in the middle of the night (as I did last night) and forget to even offer the pudding, much to Plum's disgust who proceeded to make it clear that she wanted it! :)