Back to Blogger

Itchy feet again. Three years ago I changed from Blogger to WordPress, and now I’m heading back. No good reason really (actually that’s not true, I secretly think that if I find the perfect blog then I’ll suddenly become a disciplined, committed, prolific and brilliant blogger. What?). There are a few less restrictions on Blogger. Plus I started a new HE blog that got mistakenly caught in WP’s spam detectors, and annoyed me. And I can’t seem to make my WP blogs work with the Blogsy app on my iPad. Soooo.

Maybe it’s babies. Last time I changed, I had just had my third child. Now I’ve just had my fourth, so obviously it’s new blog time! Well, here it is: Something Rich and Strange. I would love Love LOVE to see you there

I’ll leave you with a picture of Poppet:

My poor neglected awarded blog!

Hello! This has been a terrible year for blogging, and for me in general I kind of feel like the first 5 or 6 months have been something of a write off. A short spell in hospital in January knocked me for 6, felt a bit better by Feb, then… pregnant! But with the worst first-trimester symptoms yet. I’m 19 weeks now and have just started to get some energy back, but still with bouts of exhaustion and headaches. The house, children, home educating – we’ve all been in survival mode, but this state of barely getting by has caused me to rethink a few things, which hopefully I will get to explore and examine a bit on here.

In my weeks and months of silence, the lovely mum6kids over at Thinking Love, No Twaddle has bestowed upon me the Liebster Blog Award! German for Dearest, it’s designed to encourage and support those of us in the quieter areas of the blogosphere.

I want to pass it on to SarahElizabeth over at Delivering Grace and Lisa at An Ordinary Life? who somehow manages to blog nearly every single day. They have lots of great ideas and information about home education, and life with little ones in general. Enjoy!

Art Appreciation: Great Books from the Book People

Hurrah! The Book People have the Katie Collection by James Mayhew back on sale again

10 books for £9.99: Katie’s Picture Show, Katie and the Waterlily Pond, Katie and the Sunflowers, Katie Meets the Impressionists, Katie and the Bathers, Katie and the Spanish Princess, Katie and the British Artists, Katie and the Mona Lisa, Katie and the Dinosaurs, Katie in London.

From the Book People blurb:

Children, especially those with an interest in art, will love joining young Katie as she manages to explore a variety of famous paintings by climbing inside them. The Katie Collection is full of fun and educational reads that see the happy little girl discover more about sunflowers, dinosaurs and the Mona Lisa, amongst many other delights. James Mayhew’s long-running series of picture books are steeped in culture and are perfect for parents and children to read together at bedtime. Wonderfully illustrated, they will help introduce your child to the joy of art!

I think these books are really good, and Amazon agrees – lots of 4 and 5 star reviews for them. 

(Clicking on the pictures will take you to Amazon, where you can read more about them, have a look inside and buy each for only a couple of pounds if you miss out on the Book People deal – they went quickly last time!).

Things I love: Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food

I absolutely love this book. I’ve had a few of Oliver’s cookbooks in the past and haven’t really got on with them, mostly because the ingredients list seem to go on for pages, and require items that I would buy for that one recipe and never use again.

But Ministry of Foodand I just seem to click, once I’d got over the lack of punctuation (bullet points instead of full stops in a paragraph? Argh!). The recipes are simple, foolproof and delicious. I was admirably frugal and borrowed it from the library but having renewed it four times and covered it in food splodges, I thought I’d better buy my own copy.

Here’s a recipe from the book that I cooked this week, and turned out really well. I used this cast iron casserole pan which I bought at Ikea, a really good inexpensive alternative to something like Le Creuset.

Chicken Stew (serves 4-6, p180)

ingredients: 2 sticks celery (I used celery salt), 2 medium onions, 2 carrots (I used 3, kids love them!), olive oil, 1 heaped tbsp plain flour, 400g tin chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper, 3 sprigs fresh thyme (I used rosemary), 500g diced, boneless, skinless chicken thighs, 500ml white wine (I used less than that, maybe 250-300ml, and topped the rest up with water and a chicken stock cube). (I also added in some cooked roast veg leftovers – diced potato, Jerusalem artichokes and more carrot.)

If using the oven preheat to Gas Mark 4/180C/350F. Chop the celery, onions and carrots. Put the vegetables, herbs and olive oil in a casserole pan and fry for 10 minutes. Add meat and flour. Pour in the wine and tomatoes. Stir and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then simmer on the hob or cook in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. Remove the lid for the final half hour of cooking time and add liquid if it looks dry. Remove herbs before serving, and taste to see if needs more salt and pepper.

Home Educating and “Good parenting”

Apologies to all those who read my daughters’ first attempts at blogging!  Here’s some more from How Children Learn at Home, by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison.

Thomas and Pattison look at a study by Desforges and Abouchaar on how parenting influences academic achievement. They found that

Home background is crucial to educational achievement in school… “good parenting” is uniquely influential on children’s achievement even when all other factors, such as socio-economic status, are taken out of the equation.

“Good parenting” in this case meaning

• provision of a secure and stable environment
• intellectual stimulation
• parent-child discussion
• good models of constructive social and educational values
• high aspirations relating to personal fulfillment and good citizenship

 

From all their time spent with home-educating families, Thomas and Pattison conclude:

By the nature of the task which they have undertaken, home-educating families are almost guaranteed to fulfil the greater part of Desforges and Abouchaar’s “good parenting” ideals. In fact the interviews showed parents providing these factors in abundance. In this sense, what home educating parents do with their children is not so much a radical departure but simply an extension of what is considered to be good parenting anyway… Remarkably it seems that parenting, rather than teaching, is sufficient to enable children to learn. (pp70-71)

Which is nice!

Aw W’s defrtgyh

Reading Job

I haven’t been blogging recently, because as you can probably tell from my last post, I really don’t feel like I have anything productive or interesting to say! It’s a hard time at the moment.

But one thing that has been going well, that I have been enjoying and getting a lot out of, is reading my Bible. I wrote about this a little while ago, and have since tweaked the way I do Bible study having read Sweet Journey by Terri Maxwell.

I use a Bible, notebook and pen (allowing me to indulge my stationary fetish!). I’m reading the King James Version at the moment, which I haven’t before. The language is gorgeous and extraordinary, but sometimes hard to understand, so to clarify I sometimes look up those verses in different translations. BibleGateway.com or the Online Parallel Bible (bible.cc) are good for that.

I’m reading Job at the moment – chosen deliberately, for no matter what I’m going through I haven’t lost all my children, livelihood, possessions, and been inflicted with painful sores from head to toe! I write the date and chapter at the top of the page – the date helps keep me accountable so I know if I’ve missed too many days. I’m reading one chapter at a time which works well with longer Old Testament books, but with shorter New Testament letters, maybe even just a few verses a day would be good.

I write a short summary of the chapter at the top of the page. It is important for Job because the chapters are either Job or his friends speaking. At the end of the book, God proclaims “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends, for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7, KJV.) Writing it down helps keep straight in my head whether what is being said about Job’s situation is right, or just SOUNDS right.

I then copy down a verse that jumps out at me from the chapter, either one that summarises the content nicely, or that applies to me personally. I end with a couple of sentences about what I have learnt from the passage, and a prayer that I may be able to apply anything gained to my own life.

From somewhere in the depths of my memory, probably remembered horribly incorrectly, there’s this little rhyme which comes to mind when thinking about a verse or passage:

What have I learned about Jesus and God?
What have I learned to cause shame?
What have I learned about following good?
Is there a promise to claim?

This all sounds like a lot, but really only takes around 15 minutes and one small (less than A5) notebook page. I haven’t read Job like this before, and it has been so interesting looking at what a worldly view of a situation can be, explanations which sound like truth and wisdom, as opposed to what God has to say about it. And of course there is the example of Job’s legendary faith and righteousness which shines through under enormous trial. It is so good that at the moment, despite everything else, reading the Bible is a real privilege and a pleasure and the more I do it, the more it feels like that.