Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Monkey Man!

Happy New Year everybody! Did you have a lovely festive season? We certainly did. Relaxing has the been the name of the game at our place, so much so that I've had trouble convincing the kids to leave the house! We've had several 'pajama days' and I've played more board games in the past few weeks that I've placed in my entire life leading up to this point. We've also been enjoying having the time to make things together including this fabulous Design Your Own Superhero Cape kit my sister sent Henry for Christmas.

The Seedling brand kit came with a ready-made cape and lots of great things to decorate it with including felt, foam and glitter-glue. Henry is already a bit of an eco-warrior so he quickly decided he wanted to be Monkey Man, a superhero who encourages people not to buy products that contain palm oil (which ruins the habitat of the South East Asian orangutans)! Quite a specific superhero I agree but he saw something on TV about the Melbourne Zoos Don't Palm Us Off campaign last year and ever since he has been my supermarket vigilante always asking if things have palm oil in them. Bless...

NB: If you're a bit of an eco warrior too you might like to watch this short video about the plight of the South African rhino.

Little Dancing Queens

I cannot tell you how many times my sisters and I listened to this album with when we little.

When I was about eight I used to 'choreograph' routines to my favourite ABBA songs then I'd rope my friends into performing them with me in front of the class (and any other class who'd let us in if I remember correctly!). Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that one day I'd have a daughter of my own who would be doing the same thing. Well, it seems some things never change. Today Bella is playing out the same scenario performing 'Dancing Queen' to her classmates with her her friends from the ABBA Club.

Bella and her friends started their own ABBA Club some time ago so they could write out lyrics at lunch time, talk about their favourite songs and do the odd performance. It intrigues me to think that ABBA still holds sway over little girls after all these years. What's really interesting is that it's all about the music. They don't seem to attach themselves to the personalities the way we did (I was definately a Frida girl) and I'm sure they must wonder why on earth they're dressed that way!

They love their Lady Gaga, Katie Perry and Adele too (I'm glad they're not writing down some of their more colourful lyrics!) but there is just something about ABBA that they all love. Is it the music, the lyrics, the harmonies? Perhaps I'll never know but it is a lovely link with the past for this aging ABBA fan who doesn't mind joining in when no-one is looking...

Books vs apps...

You may (or may not) have noticed that things have been a bit quiet here in Golden Seed Land. That's because I've been busy teaching one family member to read and spending seemingly endless hours setting up iPods and Kindles for the other two. It's been an interesting time caught between an old-fashioned school reader and navigating the e-reader world (which has so far failed to excite much enthusiasm!).

Do you remember a time when you couldn't read? I must say I really don't and I can't imagine looking at a page of English words and not being able to interpret their meaning. Ours is a reading family. We live in a house with books in every room and spend many hours a week reading, visiting bookshops and thinking and talking about books so you can imagine my excitement when the jumbled letters on the page suddenly started to make sense and Henry started reading.

Henry's favourite book to read is Book 1 of the Victorian School Reader (pictured above) which was used by all Victorian children from 1928 to 1950. It's not like we don't have any other books to read but there is something about the way the story builds with a mixture of familiar and new words that both Henry and Isabella have found irrestistable.

Sure you can teach your kids to read with any number of apps on an iPad but for me it just wouldn't be the same (KJ Dellantonia seems to get what I mean here and I wonder if the Silicon Valley moguls sending their kids to no-computer Waldorf schools do too). I love books as things as much as for what they contain and I want my kids to know about dust-covers, endpapers and fontispieces. That's why I love the idea of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. Imagine getting a free book in the mail (personally addressed to you not your mum or dad) every month from birth until you turn 5 - bliss!

Obviously, we're aiming for the best of both worlds here. Isabella loves her new iPod Touch (which she saved for two years to buy) but even though she knows she can download books onto it she hasn't shown any interest in doing so and far from taking up reading time she has read more books in the past couple of weeks than ever before (thank you Roald Dahl , Jeff Kinney and Megan MacDonald.) Tom's Kindle, however, lies idle and yesterday we bought 6 new books between us so we're not there yet!

How about you? Book, e-reader, both or neither?

Surprise lunch...

The other day the kids offered to make me a salad for lunch. Lovely I said thinking that they were playing their favourite game, 'cafes'. About 15 minutes later I wandered into the kitchen only to see Henry cutting up carrots with a sharp paring knife and Isabella cutting up a tomato with a butter knife! Not wanting to rain on their parade (but praying that no fingers were going to end up in the salad) I allowed myself to be shoo-ed away. A few minutes later they brought me a lovely salad of tomatoes, carrots and marinated fetta finished off with french dressing and some basil they picked themselves. It was the best salad I've ever tasted...

Twinkle, twinkle little star...

Over the weekend my little star won her first ever award. Her team placed 2nd in a state aerobics championships and she just couldn't get the smile off her face. Well done baby!

Kids In The Kitchen...

Every school holidays we try and spend at least one day together in the kitchen. We choose a number of different things to make none of which take too long and all of which give us lots of breaks in between stages. Yesterday we started with cupcakes. I think you can tell from this photo just how excited Henry was...

Of course licking the beaters is one the best fringe benefits...

Although licking the icing off is pretty good too..

After a bit of a run around outside and a trip to the supermarket we made pizza dough. The kids loved the kneading process and kept checking to see if the dough had risen over the next couple of hours. Look at the concentration on those little faces - Junior Masterchefs in the making! The Hawaiian and Margherita pizzas they made were delicious...

...and we finished dinner with the kids favourite desert, 'Frog In A Pond' which we made earlier in the day while the cupcakes were cooling. We let the jelly set a little too long so they were more 'Frog On A Pond' but they do look sweet don't they?

Do You Know Rosie Flo?

Today the kids both got new colouring books. Not just any colouring books mind you but Rosie Flo's and Johnny Joe's colouring books. Illustrator Roz Streeton first started making these incredibly imaginative drawings for her young daughters. They have a lovely Victorian/Edwardian feel to them just like those amazing illustrated catalogues of household items people used to order things from last century.

Unlike other colouring books where all the drawing work is done for you, with Rosie Flo's children get to personalise the characters by drawing in their own face, arms and legs. It's amazing what a difference this makes - check out the Rosie Flo Gallery to see what I mean.

These cute drawings by Isabella are from the the 'Kitchen' book. Isabella likes to do the drawing first then follow up with a colouring session. Henry is all about colouring. He had so much fun creating this lolly shop.

I know what we'll be doing tomorrow...

Growing Eco Warriors

Holidays are over and we're already back into the school routine. Isabella was eagar to go back as she knew she would be receiving her 'Environmental Leader' badge. Ours is a 'sustainable' school which means that anything to do with the environment is a big deal. A large percentage of the school's power comes from solar energy, the toilets are flushed and the grounds watered with tank water. The kids get to look after the vegetable garden, orchard, chooks and until recently a sheep. Behind the school is a large nature reserve full of native flora and fauna and has an area known as 'Nature's Classroom'.

I think these sort of experiences are really valuable for kids and so does my friend Loretta who is involved with Gardeneers a great program for kids at the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden Society in Canada. 'Gardeneers' is designed to get little kids in touch with nature. From watching a seed grow to exploring garden wildlife, composting and worm farms, kids get to get down and dirty while exploring the whole around them.

Too often kids hear about all the terrible things that are going to happen if pollution and global warming are not addressed. From their point of view it must seem very strange to be surrounded by grown-ups who don't know how (or worse still don't care about) fixing the problem. Old habits die hard. Projects like sustainable schools and 'Gardeneers' empower kids to become part of the solution and hopefully some of the boundless enthusiam for change they generate may rub off on the rest of us. Fingers crossed!

Pure joy...

These are the moments I would bottle if only I had the recipe...

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Three is a wonderful age. When Isabella was three she had a wonderfully eccentric understanding of the English language. I remember one night Tom and I were discussing whether or not a new shirt he had bought was too 'loud' to wear to work. The next morning Isabella said 'Daddy, I don't like that shirt it makes too much noise'. Another time I described a day as 'stinking hot' and from then on she always referred to hot days as 'smelly' but my favourite was the time that she and Henry saw a puppet show together at daycare. When I asked her if Henry had been scared at all she replied quite matter-of-factly, 'oh no, he was full of joy'.

Now it's Henry's turn. His vocabulary is expanding daily and he is always eagar to try it out and there have been a few gems recently. Last week he desperately wanted to sleep with us in the 'big bed'. When I asked him why, he said through his tears, 'because it makes me feel so delightful'. When he woke me up the next morning at 6am he asked if I could get up with him. Bleary-eyed I said I needed a few minutes and he said 'well, it would be magical if you can'.

Sometimes he just makes me laugh out loud. In the car the other day Isabella was talking ten to the dozen as usual and after a few minutes Henry turned to her and said in the most casual voice 'turn in down, Man'. I can't wait to hear what he comes out with next!

Caz

Halloween

Bella the Witch


Bella the Witch & Henry the Monster

Last Saturday I went 'trick or treating' for the first time ever! We were inspired by a note dropped in our letter box stating that 'seven families' from our street would be participating and that if we would like to join in the fun we should leave our outside light on. The kids were very excited about the idea so we quickly rustled up some costumes and when the night finally came around we ventured out shyly into the street. We went to a few houses before we ran into our American neighbour Brian who gleefully admitted that there were no 'other families' just him and his wish for his kids not to miss out on a lovely American tradition - so now we were two families! At the first house we went to together we picked up little Amelia and her mother and then Eva at a house a little further down. By this stage we were a 'posse' and the kids were really getting the hang of yelling out 'trick or treat' at each house.

It was a lovely warm night but there was thunder and lightning in the background - very atmospheric. After 13 houses we were ready to call it a night and parted ways but I feel quite differently about the street now (and so do the kids) having met so many lovely people. We must do it again next year.

Caz