Caterpillars

Last Friday, we were at a park and found a flowering plant that was infested with caterpillars. My boys were exhilarated!

We had many close encounters with caterpillars previously. We have so far managed to morph just one caterpillar but missed observing the crucial processes. Since then, we have been on a lookout for caterpillars. On most occasions, the one miserable caterpillar that we managed to find will die on us because we do not have the correct leaves to feed them.

This time, my boys made sure they harvested plenty of the leaves (and even flowers!) from the plant that they found the caterpillars on. They wanted to be sure we were successful this time so they harvested about 5 caterpillars!

These five hungry caterpillars ate up ALL the plant material we collected in less than a day! I wasn't too optimistic that these will survive. They were tiny and so would need a lot more food to fatten up before they are ready to weave their cocoons. It wasn't practical for us to go back to the park everyday to harvest fresh leaves for our caterpillars, so I did the most convenient thing; I plucked some leaves from one of my plants in my balcony. These were leaves that have yellowed and were those I would remove anyway so I didn't mind. To our delight, the caterpillars devoured these leaves!

We are left with three caterpillars. Two have escaped. We noticed that the smaller ones were able to squeeze through the tiny holes on the plastic aquarium we put them in. In fact, on the first few days, we found escaped caterpillars crawling on the floor. We have since transferred them to another more secure container.

A week has passed and the caterpillars are still alive, eating and growing. We are waiting and keeping a close watch ...

Medieval Birthday Celebration

Preparation for the Medieval Party started about two weeks before the event. Invitation cards were sent out and details were planned. Actual gathering of material and making of things took place a week before. It was a nice departure from our usual school routine. This happened to coincide with the one week school holidays so we had "lighter" school days then.


Costume

We wanted a costume party but did not expect our guests to come with the appropriate costumes. In any case, we don't have costumes either. We figured we could make very simple ones. This is what I did. I used gray coloured cotton fabric, cut them into rectangular sheets and use a safety pin to pin the back and front flaps at the shoulders. I had initially wanted to sew / hem these but time did not permit that. I was glad the fabric we chose lasted one wear with rather minimal fraying.

D and B designed their own coat of arms. We read the book Coat of Arms by Catherine Daly-Weir. This book comes with templates so that made it easier. The symbols and animal designs were drawn or traced onto coloured papers and then cut out. These cut-outs were then glued with white glue on a shield shaped flannel. The completed crest was in turned glued onto the gray armour. (I am beginning to discover how useful white glue is!) This method required no sewing at all!!! What a time saver?!

Coat of Arms gives detailed explanation on the significance of the colours and symbols that are often used. These are my boys' final products. They each made crests for all the members in their group for the Dragon Hunt.



Welcome Table / Decoration

I found idea of giving fictitious names to our little guests from this site. We came out with ridiculous sounding names that are food related (Straw of Berry, Gin of Ger, Guard of Lick, Man of Gostin etc...) These names were written on ice-cream sticks that were decorated to look like mini swords. The idea was to let our guest draw a "sword" out from the "rock" like King Aurthur style. The illuminated letters we made were put to good use in a little poem I composed to explain what to do.





Music

What is a party without music?! I hunted long for these and asked at forums to finally find a site that allows for download of MP3s! Gregorian Chants and other such church music (which are what most people know of music of that period) were much to solemn so I chose Medieval Dances instead. Here is a site of Medieval Dances. I selected the album from Anstrorran Dance Symposium for our "banquet".


Craft 1 - Glorious Goblets

I wanted to occupy the children while they waited for the food to be ready. I got the idea of decorating plastic wine goblets with sequins from this site. These are some that were decorated by the children.


These goblets were then used during the party for drinks. No problem with mixed-up cups ;-)


Archery

We have two wooden bows we bought long ago at Daiso. D and B love to play with these; shooting chopsticks along our corridor. We experimented and found that these bows could actually be used to shoot chopsticks into cardboard boxes!


D and B were excited to let their friends try their hands on some archery too. However, we were worried the bows might give way if they were pulled too hard so we decided to add a toilet roll core on our target board as the bull's eye instead. Accurate shots, regardless of the power of the shot, would lodge the arrow into the tube; the arrow should sit comfortably in the tube even if it doesn't pierce the cardboard. This set up worked pretty well :-) I think the children enjoyed this quite a bit.



Craft 2 - Medieval Arrows

Chopsticks as arrows don't look very pretty. We decided to dress our arrows up! I found how to make a medieval arrow from this video clip. I simplify the steps a little and tried to teach this to the kids. This craft required some fine motor skills so mothers were roped in to help. This project didn't turn out too well but I hope some interest was generated :-b

Dragon Hunt


I sent the children on a wild-goose-chase kind of Dragon Hunt. Each clue was written in a poem that played around with words. I composed these poems one day while my boys stayed over at their grandparent's place. I enjoyed myself thoroughly and in the process renewed my interest in poetry! The children had to decipher the clues. There was just a lot of scrambling around from place to place - all around my estate. :-D

I originally intended them to find the dragon and throw tennis balls into the eye of the dragon. But because we were running late, the final Dragon thrashing was skipped. :-(



Food

We had medieval potash with bread. Traditionally, potash was marshy soup with potatoes, beans and various spices. I concocted one without the more unfamiliar stuff. I decided to have pizza as a supplement just in case people are not used to medieval food.

It has become a "tradition" for me to bake apple pies instead of birthday cakes for my boys. (They are two of those weird kids who dislike cakes.) So I did bake two apple pies. Unfortunately, I didn't time myself properly so the baking time extended into the time for preparation of the other party food. As a result, my poor guests had to wait patiently for their lunch.

My dear husband was such a great help in the kitchen that day with assembling the pizzas while I got the children organized and prepared the other stuff. In our original plan, he was supposed to be the jester - juggling and entertaining... haha. Well, thankfully we don't have grumpy guests to cheer up and the children were left to entertain themselves most of the time.


All in all...

We all had fun!! Fun during the preparation as well as during the party itself. I am just super exhausted after that! I truly think it was well worth it though.

I kind of like this sort of themed party. May consider doing a Greek /Roman themed party next time... but without the food. Haha... Cooking is really not my forte :-)

Art : Limbourg Brothers III - Illuminated Letter

Our latest Picture Study was Psalms XXVI of the Les Tres Riches Heures.

Upon the death of the Limbourg brothers, Jean Colombe was commissioned to complete their works. He intentionally retain the style of the Limbourg brothers. In this manuscript page, Colombe illuminated the verse and beautifully illustrated it. We followed this Picture Study up with delving into illuminated letters.

We flipped through a book about illuminations called the Illuminated Alphabet by Patricia Seligman and Timothy Noad. I bought this book at a book sale many years ago. (I am now thankful I did!) I was attracted to illuminated manuscripts in general after visiting the British Museum where I was spell-bound by all the richly illustrated and decorated manuscripts. The pictures and words just seem to jump up at you!

This book takes you through the history of the illuminated alphabet and has projects that exemplify various styles of illumination. We browsed through to get ideas for our own letter designs.

Since we were preparing for the boys' medieval birthday party, I decided we would make illuminated letters as decorations for the instructions to our Dragon Hunt (a game we were planning to have in the party). These are the letters we decorated.


Credits :
"D" and "S" by D
"I" and "H" by B
"T" by me :-)

We tried to design the letters with the text in mind. I will be posting pictures of how these were used in a later post.


Visit Rumphius Webpage Art to find out about how we approach Art in our homeschool.

Getting into the Medieval Mood

This pass week was a mad week for us. We were in the thick of preparing for my boys' 8th birthday celebration.

Knights and castles. Swords and armour. Bows and arrows. Horses and dragons. My boys just LOVE everything about the middle ages.

So when I agreed to have their first ever birthday party, I decided we'll have a medieval themed one. (I have always heard about or read about people having themed parties but have never had or attended one! And they sounded so fun. I just have to try one!). I was at first a bit hung up about not timing it with our History studies. Should I do it next year instead? That's the perfectionist in me speaking. But I decided to be spontaneous about it. I just want to let my boys have fun!!!

We have shied away from having any parties previously because I wasn't sure I could handle the logistics of one. How to feed so many people? What to do with the children? Oh no! Have to plan games? How to entertain everybody?! ... So much work!!!

Then recently, I read about the wonderful birthday party a good friend of mine planned for her son. I was amazed at her dedication and creativity! I was really put to shame. Haha... in a good sense because I was all inspired after that. She spoke about making memories for her children and that set me thinking... It is just this few years really, may be between the ages of 6 to 12. I don't think a teenager would fancy one at all. It would be too "childish" for them then.

So here I am, going to give it a try ... starting really small with inviting only 3 families. Just don't think I could cope with more... :-b (Have already exceeded the rule of "number of friends to invite equals age of child" rule.)

I hope to do a crash course on History in the Middle Ages (just for this two weeks) ... just a bit of this and that. This would serve as an introduction for later studies. I just couldn't resist it. :-b

In order to get the boys into the mood (Like they needed help!?), I chose a book that is set in the middle ages for our read aloud. It is King of Ireland's Son by Padraic Colum. Reviews of the book revealed that some clever story-telling is exhibited in the weaving of stories within a story. I have been saving this book for when we are "there" for History, but have decided now is good enough! This book has been a page-turner so far. More a fun and fantasy type book rather than one that gives detailed introduction to that period in history. Nevertheless an enjoyable read.

These were the books I assigned for independent reading this week:
Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges
The Kitchen Knight by Margaret Hodges
A Medieval Feast by Aliki
If You Live in the Days of the Knights by Ann McGoverit

There are many more of such books. I just chose those I could get my hands on.

Revamp of House Management System On The Way

I know I am getting a call from God to do a bit of reorganizing in terms of household chores. Here is why I am quite certain:

Call 1
Happened to "chance" on a library book titled Chores Without Wars; Turning Dad and Kids from Reluctant Stick-in-the-Muds to Enthusiastic Team Players.
Borrowed it and am in the process of reading it. Picked up a couple of ideas that I would want to implement.

Call 2
Have been getting a nudging feeling to re-look into some of FlyLady routines. (sixth sense?!)
Have benefited from it some years ago and think I can use more of their suggestions now! ... And re-instate some that have died a natural death:-b ... Really worth browsing through their site for some housekeeping tips.


Call 3
The Homeschool Freebies of the Day on 3 March was a free e-book "Mama's Saving Grace Homeschool Planner"!
Contains mainly planner type blank pages but had a few pages on common chores to do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. A good list to start with.

Call 4
Curriculum at a Click's free product of the week is an ebook "School and Chore Charts"!
Some of the cute colourful chore cliparts might come in handy later...

I am getting the goose bumps!!!

Time for a revamp!!


PS: I have added new links on my side panel! This is actually for my own convenience :-) Check under My Favourite Links for all the websites where homeschool mothers share their resources.


An UPDATE on 5 March
I just got CALL 5!!!
One of the blogs that I keep up with just posted this: House Cleaning the Easy Way.

I hear Him loud and clear! And He sure knows what I need.

Our Winged Visitor

Thanks to the help of my little gardeners, who have been faithfully watering my plants in the balcony, my flowering plants are blooming lusciously! I LOVE to peer out at our mini-garden from our "school-room".

Sometimes when we are hard at work, we would hear the familiar twittering sounds of our winged visitors. We would abandon our work and creep noiselessly toward the glass door to observe their nectar-collecting sessions.

They are the Olive-backed sunbirds. These sunbirds have been visiting our flowers but this is the first time I manage to take a picture of one. Still, it isn't as clear as I would have liked. Since we live in a concrete jungle, these surprise visits are moments that we get excited about.

Boy! Am I glad I have a balcony?! Wished I had a garden. I'd plant vegetables, fruit trees and of course lots of flowering plants that I can harvest for the table and for floral bouquets. Here I go dreaming again... ... ...

Starting a Fresh Water Aquarium

We were blessed with a free fish tank and all the add-ons needed to start a fresh water aquarium. I have put off setting it up for almost 3 months! This is due to hesitation on my part. I just wasn't sure I could cope with one more commitment. And all this time my boys have been begging me to buy fishes.

We finally did buy. 22 to be exact. That looked like quite many at first, but when we emptied them into our large tank, they hardly filled the tank!

Excitement was in the air. During the first few days, we spent many hours watching our fishes. I was glad we bought a variety of fishes as they each had their own characteristics and thus interesting to observe. They were rather therapeutic to watch.

We bought guppies, Neon Tetras, Mollies, and some others unknown fishes. The aquatic plants I chose without thought turned out to be rather hardy water plants. They are the Java Fern and Malayan Aqua Fern.

Within 2 weeks of setting up the tank, we discovered that our female guppy delivered 6 guppy fry. B described our experience in his blog. I read up more about pregnant female guppies here and gathered some other information for D to read and answer a few pertinent questions. He documented his "findings" in his blog too.


We learned about the gravid spot in females. This is a dark spot on the rear end of the abdomen of female guppies. The gravid spots are actually the eyes of the baby fry! Nearing delivery time, this spot becomes very dark. In the photograph above, you can see the distinct gravid spot of the female guppy below as compared to none observable in the female guppies above (although they were all obviously pregnant).

Our guppy fish fry were at first about 0.6mm long. They were almost transparent except for their large black eyes. They knew well enough to hide safely under rocks and amongst the leaves of the water plants in the tank.


Now after almost 3 weeks, they have grown to about 1.2 cm and have turned opaque and more brown. They have become bolder and were spied swimming fearlessly with the larger fishes.



It was not all well and good. We had many casualties to the point that my boys were making guesses as to which fish will die next! We found guppies rather vulnerable in general. However, thankfully, of the 6 guppy fry we discovered, 5 are still alive today. I hope we can be able to at least see ONE of them through to adulthood.

Christmas Cookies

We baked more cookies this Christmas week. This time we tried out Auntie E's recipe (Thanks E!). Because of our relative inexperience, we took 3 whole afternoons to do it! One to make the dough (then chill it overnight), the next afternoon to shape them and bake them, and the last, to decorate them with icing.


I think they look quite pretty and temptingly delicious. I left them in two bowls with plastic wraps around them before we packed them on Christmas Day, to be given away...

B: Why do you have to wrap the bowls?
Me: Well, we don't want uninvited guests, like ants and other insects to nibble on them...
B: AND cookie monsters?
(All eyes turned to Daddy)
Me: Yes, AND cookie monsters :-)

This lot was given away to relatives and neighbours... ... ...Well, to be honest, we did have a few "nibbles" ourselves. Just couldn't resist it.

Watching Daddy Gouge

My boys got to see Daddy at work these few days. He has just started out making a new violin. This is him using his gouge to do a rough arching of the back plate. The boys can't help poking their noses in his workroom every now and then. How could anybody not be curious to find out what all that noise is?!


Lots of planning goes into the making. Sometimes Daddy has to design his own tools to work with. That is part of the fun for him. This picture shows a special violin plate rest that holds the plate down while he gouges. It is his very brand new invention! And he is extremely satisfied with it...


Boys cannot resist playing with the wood chips left on his workbench. Look. They make interesting rings ;-)

Home Sweet Home : Juicing

Lately, we have been falling sick a lot. I suspect it is due to our constant exposure to sick people in crowded trains and buses. The transport conditions are not within my control. As such, I have been thinking of ways to boost the immunity of everyone at home so we can be more resistant to getting infected.

That's when I was introduced to raw foods and juicing. Here are two interesting articles on raw foods:
1. Why switch to living foods diet?
2. Raw Foods and enzymes
I don't fully agree with their arguements but I thought most of them are valid.

I don't really fancy raw meat so I thought increasing our intake on raw fruits and vegetable will be a good start. That started me out researching on a suitable juicer. I talked to friends who were juicing regularly already and found that low speed masticating juicers are better than high speed centrifugal juicers. This article Juicers, Blenders and Dehydraters explains why.

However, the good low speed juicers were way out of my budget. Fortunately, I chanced on a very affordable hand crank juicer. I immediately know that was what I needed.

Now I juice about 4 times a week. (I wish I had the time and energy to do it everyday.)


Here is my effort in juicing 4 apples, 2 carrots, half a beetroot, 3 sticks of celery and 1 clove of garlic. This gives about 800 ml of pure juice. Each of us, thus have about 200 ml of juice for breakfast. This is on top of what we normally consume; not replacing anything that was in our regular diet.

Other items I sometimes add into my juices are cucumber, bean spouts, wheatgrass (only masticating juicers can juice this), mint leaves etc. Just about anything healthy sounding can be added in. I love concocting different juices every time.

You may say, why not eat them, instead of juicing them. Well, try chewing on some beetroot, carrot or celery and let just see if you find them particularly palatable or see how long your jaws can last before they ache. I think your tummies would also be so full you'll not be able to stomach anything else! We want the nutrition, without our stomachs having to process through all that fibre. Don't get me wrong. We definitely need a healthy dose of fibre in our diets. But there is a limit to how much fibre we can have in our diets. Afterall, we are not cows.

I have been juicing for about a month now and I feel our immunity DID improve. So far so good!