In which we start a new project and make Bosworth Jumbles

On Wednesday Hannah and I were catching up on Great British Bake Off and one of the history of food sections was about Cornish saffron buns. We reflected that we hadn't tried those on our recent holiday in Cornwall. I was about to suggest we made some when an idea for a whole project embracing geography, history and cookery burst fully formed into my brain. We would print off a map of the counties of the UK, one which could be coloured (Hannah has only a very shaky idea of how the country fits together so this will help her understand it better). One by one we  would make a local speciality from each county and look at its history, make it...eat it obviously..and colour in its county of origin on the map.

Today we decided on Bosworth Jumbles, from Leicestershire as suggested by someone on Learning Under the Trees. I googled it and found a recipe on the ITV website from Ade Edmondson's programme on cooking local dishes. He used to come into the bookshop where I worked as a new graduate and was lovely so I felt warmly inclined towards his method, which you will find here. This S shaped biscuit is from a recipe supposedly left behind at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) by Richard III's cook! Although a different website suggests a far simpler recipe which seems much more likely than the lemony version we made. All I can say is Richard III may have lost his horse, his kingdom and his life at Bosworth, but at least he had damn fine biscuits!

I should add the not-very-S-shaped one is not badly made but half-eaten!

In which we experience an air raid...

...in a manner of speaking! After playing with a friend who goes to school and is currently doing WW2, Hannah came home expressing a desire to build an Anderson shelter. Not, as her friend  had done, from a cardboard box, but properly, in the garden, from scrap metal. I took a deep breath. I thought about the possibility of getting scrap metal. I discounted that and offered large cardboard boxes instead, but in an unused bed in the garden with a wooden frame. Hannah accepted but then we considered the fact that we have a metal shed in the garden. That would work,we thought. We spent a bit of time researching shelters and air raids and decided on what she would need to have in the shelter.

Yesterday she made herself a gas mask out of a pair of goggles from a chemistry set, some dark fabric, a toilet roll inner tube with metal mesh from the craft box on the end. She planned her wardrobe, a dress (those of you who know Hannah will know how unusual *this* is), a hand-knitted cardigan, knee-socks and boots. She decided which toys and books would be appropriate..and ended up reading The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, which was published in 1940 (we checked!).

Today, while she got dressed into her wartime clothes, I went down and made up a make-shift bed in the shelter. She had some home made leek and potato soup (wanted it to have been feasible for a 1940 lunch) for lunch and packed a canteen of water, a thermos of soup and a roll in her case. Then I played an audio clip of the air raid siren and she picked up her bag and coat and went calmly down to the shelter with the dog.

They stayed in there for two hours, which is probably long enough to get a sense of what the waiting for the all clear might be like. The dog fell asleep, Hannah read a bit of her book and played with her toys. She wrote a diary entry. Then she emerged into the daylight after the all-clear!

In which we celebrate "best friendship"

There have been a slew of articles doing the rounds on Facebook this week on the subject of discouraging children from having best friends, like this one in the New York Times or this one in the Sun. There are always comments from the teachers advocating these policies that they are not saying children can't have best friends, just that they are encouraging inclusiveness and general friendliness. And I agree that is a good thing, but I don't understand several things about this move.

I don't understand why having a best friend prevents you from having other friends and making friendly approaches to others. Certainly children can be encouraged to do so *without* losing that special bond of best friendship.

And I really don't understand why children have to be protected from the pain of falling out with their friends. We have spats with our friends, our family, our life partner.....that is part of life. It's painful, but there's no way to get through life without experiencing it at all unless we do not have a close relationship at all. Which would be a poor and miserable way to live a life!

Hannah is currently curled up on the sofa with her best friend. As I started writing this, her friend had her head on Hannah's lap and Hannah had her arm round her friend. They spent all day yesterday and all day today together. They've had the odd argument as they always do, but after so many years of best friendship, they are used to that and are very good at resolving it and getting on with being friends again. They first met in 2005, when Hannah was 22 months old and her friend was 20 months. Her mother and I got into conversation in a soft play area and have also been good friends ever since. They've been to pre-school together, we've shared home ed days (I have L here one day a week at the moment although it used to be two days), we go on holiday together, we have sleepovers, they come to our family birthday dinners. It's special.

It's not exclusive. They have other mutual friends they enjoy spending time with, some of whom were initially L's friends and some of whom were Hannah's. They do drama and trampolining together so they have a fairly large circle of shared friends and acquaintainces..but they also do a lot of separate things and have other friends that the other only meets at birthday parties. They have, in fact, a normal friendship. Just like adults. Surely it is not that weird to have a friend you feel closer to, feel you can trust with your deepest feelings and concerns, have more in common with, share values with??? Should we all be aiming for a colourless existence where we get on with everyone but love none? I don't think so.

I like that Hannah has these close friendships. She has 4 special friends. L is one..more like a sister than just a friend (especially considering the squabbling and rivalry!)..they go back before memory and I hope that they can weather the storms of adolescence and stay friends for ever (it's a challenge, but not impossible...I have a good friend I;ve known since we were about 2 and our friendship has survived all our different life choices and deepened over the years).

A is the next; they met about 2 years ago and have a much more peaceful friendship. They have lots in common and can spend hours and hours in each other's company quite easily. O is another friend in this vein although we don't see her that often at the moment. And last but not least, B. We met her last year and despite a 4 year age gap, she and Hannah had one of those instant connections that feels a little like love at first sight. Although they maintain their friendship by email as we live in London and B in Leicestershire, I have a feeling that they will always be able to pick up where they left off as the best friendships do.

So here's to friendships, the ups and downs and all the brilliant potential of best friends!

In which I make a plan

Mondays are apt to run away from me unless I do some forward planning. When I just have Hannah at home, the question, "what shall we do today?" is enough to start her off, sometimes according to the theoretical timetable and sometimes not, but when we also have her friend L which we do every Monday, it works better if I organise something on which they can work in a cooperative way. They are as intensely competitive as if they had been siblings and have such different strengths that a project in which they can take on different roles works well.

Usually I try to tie that in with something topical as they have such very different interests. This week it revolves round pancake day. So far I have this planned: make a very simple lapbook about pancake day (or at least start it) with info on why we celebrate it, how it is celebrated in different countries, etc. Make buns filled with whipped cream as they do in Denmark and Sweden. Have a pancake race. Make a mask or headdress for carnival.

We shall see!

First though, we have to have a hamster funeral. L's hamster died and they don't have a garden so we said they could bring Barney to join the rodent graveyard here.

In which we go to an uninspiring event

Living in London, we are spoilt for choice of fabulous and exciting things to do...which is why it is really annoying to have hauled ourselves into central London (in half term!) to check out the Imagine festival at the Southbank Centre and found it a bit....meh!

On paper, it sounds great. So many performances of music, plays and poetry that I was interested in. In part the meh-ness (I know that's not a word, bear with me!) was down to a delay in communication with the friend I was going with. We left it far too late to decide which events we wanted to see and by the time we did they were fully booked.  Of course nothing on the website said "this event is in a tiny room and there are only actually 30 tickets available," or we might have been a bit more urgent about our meandering plans to get together and plan what to do.

So that was one gripe, but I might not have minded so much the long wait for the one event we could attend if there had been anything to  do in the interim. I don't count eating our packed lunch and running around pretending to be a dog as things to do. There was an art and craft session advertised as "drop in" but when we attempted to drop in, we were told it was full and the rest of the day's sessions were fully booked. My friend said she could see tables with sheets of drawing paper and pens on. Really??? This is the best you can do? Funnily enough, I can provide her with paper and pens at home. If I go to a craft session at an event I expect it to tie into the event in some way.

There was also apparently a Reading Den, but we didn't go there.

There was so much empty space, largely taken up with bored children running about, that could so easily have been utilised by storytellers, musicians and small quick craft activities.

I did, however, really enjoy the idiosycratic performance of The Comedy of Errors by a group of girls from Mulberry school. Very cleverly put together. I don't think it quite came across to everyone. Hannah was completely baffled by it and I wished I had taken the time to explain the plot beforehand so she could have enjoyed it too.

If we go next year (and I'm not ruling out the possibility), I will be suire to book well in advance for any interesting events and take more cash for the funfair in case of boredom!

In which we throw a party

It's become a bit of a tradition to have a halloween party. Hannah and I both enjoy party planning and entertaining people and Halloween, coming a little over 6 months after Hannah's birthday, fits nicely into a pattern of regular party throwing. We didn't have one last year as it happens because we went on holiday in the October half term (with rest of family for BIL's birthday...sadly we usually holiday with them so are still tied to the school holidays for it), so this year we were ready to make up for it with a BIG party.

Hitherto we have had at most 6 children and had it at home but by the time the guest list had grown to 25, it was obvious home was not going to cut it this year. But having paid for 18 children to do 10 pin bowling in April, my bank account doesn't quite match my enthusiasm for parties. The unseasonably warm October weather gave me an idea though. We would do it in the forest and put up our humungous tent in case it rained.

(humungous tent, although this was at HESFES, not at the party)

I was nervous about the tent because it was a pain to put up at HESFES, but in the event, it took 15 minutes, after which DH pootled off to collect girls from trampolining while I unpacked the bags and hid chocolate eyeballs in the surrounding bit of forest. Afzaul got back with Hannah, 2 of her friends and my friend L about 1.45 and not long after the guests began to arrive. Within about 30 mins we had 14 children so we started the games.

As Hannah's friends are an eclectic mix from a variety of activities, we always start a party with a getting to know you game. In line with the Halloween theme, we played "spider's web" which involved holding a bit of wool while throwing the rest of the ball to someone else. The person holding the ball had to say their name and how they know Hannah. We ended up with a lovely looking web, the ice was well and truly broken as the minute the last person had said their name the whole crowd of them took off into the woods, shrieking and giggling and the resultant tangle provided Tim and Richard, two of the dads who stayed, with hours of entertainment as they determinedly untangled it (they cheated in the end and scissors came into it!).

Once we'd got to know each other, the hunt for eyeballs was on. The children sorted themselves into teams and I set them loose to hunt for the chocolate eyeballs. Great fun was had by all as the children disappeared in giggling huddles into the woods while the parents got to know each other and most importantly I got time to draw breath! After about 20 minutes they came straggling back with 40-odd eyeballs between them and the winning team got a prize (more chocolate...sorry!). After a brief break to eat some eyeballs, we set off in search of a flat open space to do mummy races. Two children in each team volunteered to be mummies and the other 3 were wrappers. Armed with a roll of toilet paper they set about preparing their first mummy who had to run to a log about 25m away, back again, have their bandages removed before wrapping mummy number 2 and the seond person running there and back. Team Irish Dancing won..although I did help them with the wrapping as on the whole they were younger than the other teams.

After that came Zombie Mats...which in all Hannah's explanations made NO sense to me whatever, but in the event involved one person being the zombie who had to walk slowly, zombie-style, round a circle while the other children moved from one mat to another. When the zombie managed to get onto a mat, the child who happened to be standing on the centre mat became the zombie. They played quite a few rounds of this, then followed that up with blindfolded doughnut eating.

I had other games in mind, but the apple bobbing became impossible because we didnt have enough water and, hyped up on chocolate and the excitement of being out in the wood as darkness crept up on us, no one wanted to sit down to play "witches cauldron"...which in any case was a bit of a backup in the event of having to take shelter in the tent. The rest of the party seemed to consist of running around shrieking (children) and laughing at Tim and Richard determinedly untangling the spider's web wool (adults).

Tent in the woods party a fabulous idea....will definitely do that one again!

In which she tries an unexpected new activity

And I muse about my educational philosophy and the National Curriculum.

She had a friend sleep over last night and I had promised to take them swimming. We got to the pool, where I discovered that I'd forgotten my swimming costume. Fortunately the girls are old enough and competent enough swimmers to be allowed in the pool without adult supervision so off they went. I hung around the edge and read my book. About half the pool was set up for a fun session with huge floats and the other half was occupied by the local scuba diving club. after they'd been in for a few minutes, there was an announcement that the club was offering 15 minute taster sessions. Hannah immediately wanted to try, but I wasn;t sure they would let her because of her age. I suggested she went to ask, but she got distracted by the game she and A were playing and forgot about it. Until someone from the club came over and asked me if the girls would like a go. Turns out eight is not too young, so they went over. There was only one set of small enough gear so A had to wait while Hannah had her turn. I watched her for a bit and she seemed to be having a blast...which prompted the musing about educational philosophy.

"Do you have to follow the curriculum?" is quite a popular question when we tell people we home ed and mostly I just say no, especially if they have children in school whose learning is contrained by the state-determined, lowest common denominator that is the NC. What I really want to say is "no, thank God." I suppose we are by default following it in maths because Hannah likes workbooks and Education City, all of which are based on the NC, but then we can also discuss very large numbers, make our eyes go funny with the number of 0s in a googolplexian, use all sorts of maths in our everyday life and enjoy ourselves with abstract concepts...mainly on car journeys!

But for the rest of our learning (and I do mean "our"..I am re-teaching myself Latin and learning a lot of biology for the first time and fascinated by astronomy), the NC is so narrow and restrictive. The universe is so big and beautiful and amazing and a lifetime isn;t enough to learn all we want to know about. Thinking about all the potential to learn we have makes me so excited and I want Hannah to feel that buzz of wanting to know something and having the tools at her fingertips to find out and the pleasure of discussing and debating the things that have no answer or of finding the answer to questions that nobody knows YET!

All that from a 15 scuba diving taster session! But it seemed a perfect illustration of  how I see our journey, looking at the world as our classroom, our playground, our resource cupboard, our shelves full of interesting things to find out about and launch ourselves wholeheartedly at whatever opportunities come our way.