Our recent outing to Simon's Town.

We haven't been on an outing in a while-winter weather, winter illnesses and a need to stay indoors has kept us at home. So I thought that it would be good to get the kids out to continue our exploration of Simon's Town.

My plan was to visit the Heritage Museum but when we arrived at 10:00 we discovered that it only opened at 11:00. Not wanting to waste the opportunity of being out I decided to take my chances on visiting the Bronze Art Gallery just across the road. When we looked through the doors it looked like they had closed down as everything was grouped together in one corner and not displayed neatly on shelves. But, luckily for us, there was a lady working inside who opened the doors to let us in explaining that they no longer function as a gallery but they still create the bronze works there. And that's where our fun began!

I asked if we could do a behind the scenes tour and was surprisingly allowed to enter the workshop unassisted. We entered through large glass doors to the smell of melting wax and bunsen burner gas. As there was nobody to guide us I started asking questions of the ladies working at the workbenches. They seemed to be working with wax! Wasn't this a bronze sculpture house? After a few questions and photographs a very enthusiastic man decided he would give us our own special tour.

So here goes. I'm going to try to remember the whole tour for you:

The whole process starts with a sculpture. But not one of bronze. It can be wood, clay or any other medium which is easier to mould or carve. If the sculpture is a large one they "break" it into smaller parts.

This is a large sculpture (of a very thin Madiba) which they were supposed to use for the World Cup Soccer, but it hasn't made it to the bronzing stage.

After dismantling the original sculpture they make a rubber mould of it. These are moulds of smaller soccer sculptures.

The rubber mould is then filled with hot wax. When the hot wax is removed from the rubber it looks like the original art work, well mostly. If it doesn't this is where the bunsen burners and blades come into the process. Using a heated tool, workers neaten the wax works.

The wax statue is then taken to be dipped into another formula-which we were told is another type of wax.....

and is then covered in sand. This whole process is repeated around three times with different types of sands each time.

In between each dipping it is left to be dried by fans.

Once the sand is dry the "sand" statue is placed in a large sand pit. Now you have a hollow sand statue, lined with wax. Or so I understood?! The bronze is then heated in this large pot and poured into the hollow statue, melting the wax.

Our tour guide shortened the tour here. But basically there's a sandblasting procedure next, followed by a burning/colouring procedure. And the end result....

Something like this! Fascinating for me, think we lost the kids at the sand covering stage-but they still enjoyed all the business and interesting new apparatus to look at.

By this time it was close to 11:00 so we walked on over to the Heritage Museum. This museum was created in the memory of the Muslim community which had been forcibly removed in the early 70's. I never knew that the original Simon's Town community had consisted of mainly Muslims and I'd never learnt about the fact that this community had also been forcibly removed. We had always only heard about the District Six community being removed. This is why I love visiting museums-I hated learning History at school-but learning South African history right here on my doorstep makes History so much more interesting!

The museum is small but it is filled with memorabilia from bygone days. Photographs of the Muslim community cover the walls. There's a traditional eats table filled with examples of typical Malay foods.

And lots of old kitchen utensils to look at and learn how people from the past lived.

Jenna enjoyed looking at the Bridal gowns in both Bridal rooms where there are examples of wedding attire for children too.

Michael was sure that granny had one of these-no she doesn't use it still, it's just on display in her hallway.

The owner of the house is very keen to share his memories with you as he guides you through the rooms. He enjoyed showing the kids the old games he played.

Can you believe that this old newspaper kite would survive the Simon's Town winds?

Jen's highlight was seeing this doll all dressed up in it's finery-this is how Muslim babies are dressed for their dedication ceremony.

We enjoyed this museum, although it was small, it was interesting to get a peek into the history of another culture. A lovely morning spent covering History and Art in one outing!

A few more reasons....

When Charity and her family moved in we cleared out our shed so they would have a place to sleep. But all that stuff had to go somewhere and the only space available was the children's outside play room-cum school room. For a while that room couldn't be used for anything-there was a lot to sort through!

This gave me a little time to finally sort through 10 years of teaching equipment which had been out of sight (but not out of mind) in the shed. Looking through old worksheets, posters and work cards has given me lots of inspiration for teaching Jenna. I've been looking at a lot of my old teaching resources through new eyes: how to use them in a less time consuming way? Was this activity really just a "keep 'em busy" worksheet or a useful learning tool? Did I really need to keep it all? Parting with apparatus and posters which took me hours to make is not as easy. I'm hoping I'll be able to find a use for most of it with at least one of my kids!

This brings me to our fourth reason: schools are full of busy work-work which is designed to keep a child working while the teacher can teach other children or get on with admin. While I fully accept and understand the reason for this when one is in a classroom teaching 35 children, I also see it as wasted time in the big scheme of things. I remember those days when I walked out of school at the end of the day and thought: Wow, this must have been a beautiful day! Wish I had experienced it.

Not much time is spent outdoors when you're at school. A lot of time is spent (especially in the early years) doing a keep busy activity, waiting to be taught. While I recognise that this will still happen in a home situation, it certainly doesn't need to take so long when you only have a few siblings to wait for. Reason number four: less time spent schooling means more time outdoors, playing or persuing your own interests-just what I believe children in the early years need to spend most of their time doing!

painting outdoors in the sunshine

Michael has started labeling/naming his pictures: The forest

Sorting through my teaching crates is taking a looooooooong time! After a while Jenna started asking: When are we going to start school mom? I had told her we could start with school-like activities when the room was sorted again. So I had to put a stop to my sorting. I was spending more time with worksheets than with my children. Some much needed mom and kids time was called for! As I still think Jen and Mikey need time to play I'm not planning to spend everyday schooling. We have a flexible three day plan which allows us to fit in free-play days, nature walks, outings and visiting grannies and grandpa. Reason number five: We can choose when to do school or not, allowing us to fit in other important activities like building family relationships or exploring the our world.

Bags packed by Jen, waiting for school to start now the room can be used!

Although I fully believe in integrated ages for learning (allowing for younger children to learn from older and vice versa) one of the reasons I've been holding back on following a daily school routine or teaching for long periods of time: I have a VERY busy 3 year old boy! :-) Michael moves non-stop! Even in his sleep! When he was a baby at sitting stage, he had a habit of flicking his fingers at a rapid pace. He was a happy little boy who watched all from a far, while he was still seated, excitedly flicking his little fingers!! While Jen likes to sit quietly creating, he loves to move. (The only way I've found to get him to concentrate for long periods is to introduce him to Lego.) Figuring out how to do activities with Jenna and not to leave Michael out has been challenging. But we're learning. I still think it's not necessary for him to be doing any formal work. It seems he's the extrovert in our family who loves to have someone within sight when he plays. This means if Jen and I are busy I need to find something to occupy him. We try to include him as much as we can, but I really don't think it's important for him to be learning his ABC's and 1,2,3's in a formal way right now. Reasons number six, seven and eight: 6) home schooling allows for individual attention to teach new concepts when your child is ready, 7) it also allows for interaction between ages and sibling bonding, 8) you can adapt your teaching to the learner's style of learning, personality and interests.

learning my numbers through play

making use of some of moms old teaching equipment

I am almost finished going through the first two crates-three more to go! Perhaps by next January, when Jenna's official Grade R year should begin, I will finally be all sorted! You think?!

To Home School or not?

Everybody has different reasons for home schooling. As unique as each family is I don't think there are two families who have entirely the same reasons. In fact, what I have found is that as you experience more of the home schooling life your reasons change. And this is a good thing!

hanging up the washing

So why are we choosing did we choose to home school our children?

There has been no other time in my life when I have learnt more about myself and the Lord than this season we're in right now! When I was teaching, teaching consumed me. It was my life. My busy, all-consuming life. I can look back now on that time and see how the Lord was trying to teach me-but I was too busy to listen! Being in control of how, when and why things happened was the way I kept my sanity.

I didn't want to have a career which took me away from my child. When we chose for me to stay at home with our children I've learnt (slowly but surely) to live life one day at a time. Yes, there is still planning happening here-but I have to choose to not let the plans rule me. I plan, but I need to be open to change. Remembering to never be afraid to listen for that gentle voice which has guided me to let go of so many rules and regulations, is most important for me. Reason number one: Choosing to live life at a slower pace.

clay creations: my roundabout

clay creations: my game

In my final two years of teaching I had two very different classes. My second last year was THE toughest class I'd ever taught. There were so many challenging children with sad little stories that I struggled to teach and maintain discipline in the classroom. My final year was an absolute contrast. Teaching them was a breeze compared to the year before. When I reflected on the possible reasons of why the huge difference-besides my own imperfections that is-I discovered that the first class was largely made up of children from broken families, single parents or struggling marriages. The second class? Stay at home moms, married parents very few single/divorced parents. For me this just confirmed our desire for me to stay at home with our children. Reason number two: Relationships are important, relationships need time to develop and grow, relationships mean investing time in someone.

a few of their favourite pastimes: lego and drawing

Do I always plan to stay at home? Well, I haven't had a desire to go back to teaching, but I'm not sure if it's only for the early years. As Jenna grew I watched her learn so many things through daily living which I had taught children in Grade One. Watching the learning happening in our home environment confirmed what I'd always yearned for as a teacher: learning through life's experiences. Will it always be this way? I don't know. But I sure do like this way for now! Reason number three: Life prepares us for life, learning from everyday experiences can be done!

tea time

And then one day a friend challenged my thought processes: You can't home school out of fear! Ok, time to do some self-reflecting?! Had this little comfortable life of ours become a sheltered haven to protect my children from the world? Yes! Uh-oh, was I really preventing my children from going out into the world because I was afraid of it's influence on them?! Yes, I was. So what was I going to do about this? I did some serious soul searching. What was I really afraid of? The truth? What if they learnt something I didn't agree with and this caused them to not have a relationship with the Lord? It was then that I came to terms with the fact that I am not in control of their lives! I am not their protector. Even if I did send them to school Our Lord would be there to protect them. Ultimately He is in control. So I actually reached a point where I had to admit, sending them to school wouldn't be such a scary thought. If for some reason they had to go, I'd actually feel ok about it.

Until about a month ago....

creating a new game

My beliefs were to be questioned again. Was I really doing what the Lord wanted for this family?

Now if you read that sentence carefully you'll notice one very important word: I.

You see this home schooling journey so far had been mostly mine and our children's. I'd taken on sole responsibility for teaching and raising our children. Yes, Ray and I had talked about home schooling. I'd tried as often as I could to share with him what I was learning from all the research that I had been doing. He never disagreed with what I was doing-he could see our children were learning. He was involved in parenting and even in a lot of the natural learning, he was the best teacher for our kids. But I was the one spending most of the time with them. I was the one involved in most of the training moments. And I expected him to know what to do and do likewise (she says cringing!)

It was me who had the passion for home schooling, me who was driving the dream, me who felt like I was ultimately making the decision. My husband is a laid back type of guy. He lives life day by day facing the challenges as they arise. For me who likes to get things done, make changes, fix the problem this has been one of my biggest learning curves: life does not have to be all worked out! Worrying about tomorrow never solved the problems of today. As he so often tells me: We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Yip, God put two total opposites together because He knew we'd make a great team, if we could just learn to work together! And this is where my challenge with submission came in. How does one submit to someone who takes life a day at a time when you're a planner? (Do you see now why God had to get me to let go of planning ruling me?) To be honest, I can't give you a complete answer, as I'm still learning ;-) But this is what I feel the Lord has said for now: Wait, be patient he's learning too. It's not your job to teach Him-it's mine. And while you wait are you patient enough to let him learn and make his own mistakes? Phew! Not teach? Not fix a problem? Be patient?

Yes, Lord if that's what You think is best, but I can only do it with your help. And that's when the restoration process began when I finally realised I had to let go of telling him what to do with our children and to let him learn for himself. Am I getting it right all the time? No. But my hope is not in me, it's in Christ and trusting Him is what I'm asked to do.

The funny thing is when I do let go and wait patiently for the Lord to teach Ray-he somehow reaches the very conclusion I have but it's usually at the right time for our family. And if he doesn't reach the same conclusion, it's usually a better plan than what I had anyway!

reading in their "castle"

So as I mentioned I started questioning again:

Should we be home schooling? One of the reasons why I asked this question was because I wasn't 100% sure if Ray was agreeing for my sake or not. And so I had to step back and give him time to make a decision.

Jenna will turn six in January. This means she could go to pre-school (Grade R) next year. Is this what Ray wanted? So we visited some Pre-schools-who just happened to be having open days at the time! (How is it that You time things so perfectly, Lord?!)

This experience was quite scary for me. Old fears came creeping back. What if he decided she had to go to school, could I really let go? And then if I didn't send her, what if I was stopping my child from God's purpose for her? Phew! Who was I to stand in God's way! The only way for me to keep myself from worrying was to remember that God is in control. Whatever Ray decided, God was right there with us. School or not, my children are His and He would be their most important teacher and protector. One of the Pre-schools we visited was very impressive: I would recommend it to anyone who wanted their child to get a varied, challenging curriculum. I came to the conclusion that Jenna would easily fit right in. And then the old fear came back: What if they didn't teach her what she really needs to know?

So after a lot more soul searching and discussion with Ray I had to admit that, for the really important things in life, I am not her best teacher. And just as I'd learnt that the Lord taught me through life He can and will do that for her too.

But I still had to wait patiently for Ray to make a decision. And eventually he did.

It took some time. And lots of patience. And then some more time while we discussed and weighed up the reasons for or against schooling/home schooling. I went through a patch of feeling confused and uncertain of my own abilities to home school. But eventually we decided together that as Jen is actually capable of doing most Grade R concepts already we'll try a trial year of following a little more of a structured schooling lifestyle.

And that's what we've been doing.

Ooops, I've digressed from the original topic haven't I? Sorry, I'll have to share a few more reasons with you next time :-)

p.s. I must add that this has been a five year journey-all the letting go of fears and preconceived ideas hasn't happened overnight!

Little Farmers.

The first time we ever planted a vegetable garden we were blessed with seedlings by friends of ours who lived on a farm. This made the whole experience so much easier! Our garden grew quickly and we reaped a good harvest. Ray enjoyed experimenting with his own planting and he planted mealie, butternut, beans and marrow seeds too.

But all good things must come to an end and after enjoying an easy start to the whole veggie garden experience we had soon eaten all our produce and were left again with an empty veggie patch. Maintaining the garden at that time hadn't been easy as well. I had had lofty ideas of the kids getting involved with the maintenance side when in reality they enjoyed the reaping side more! Picking veggies before they were ripe, pulling spinach leaves off for "rabbit" food and pulling off flowers before they had a chance to become fruit was more of a regular occurrence than picking of ripe veggies.

And so my dreams of a veggie patch were shelved for a while.

At the beginning of the year one of my goals was to start one up again. But I just never seemed to have the time! Until one day Jen asked if she could plant her own vegetables! Perhaps this meant we were ready for a second try. I started to plan-I had learnt that having too much of one crop and planting veggies we didn't eat ended in wasted food. So I decided that we'd only plant what we eat regularly and in smaller amounts at first.

Jenna decided she'd like her very own patch. She quickly designated areas for herself and Michael. This got me thinking of an idea I'd once discussed with our friends of their kiddies sharing some of our garden space. And so we invited them to join us too!

Now I know we probably should have waited until the weather warmed up but I figured: while we were all enthusiastic we'd jump right in and hope for the best! After visiting Hart's nursery in Ottery-they sell individual seedlings which means you can get as many as you like instead of the usual six pack-we were ready to start.

Ticha (that's Charity's husband) was very keen to help so we had the man-power necessary for the first stage: compost. We've been adding to our compost heap for a while now and there seemed like enough for our small patch so with his help we added compost to our soil.

It was rainy, hence the rain coats. But that didn't put the kids off. They happily pretended they were farmers getting their field ready.

A little bit of manual labour to warm themselves up in the cold weather.

Finding new ways of turning the soil when the work got too tiring!

The veggies waiting to be planted: lettuce (two kinds), onions, spinach, cauliflower, brocolli and a strawberry plant. Yes, I do know that's not a veggie! But I couldn't resist buying it as last time we'd tried growing strawberries from seeds and they didn't grow. So I thought I'd give myself a better chance of success and bought one that was already showing signs of producing fruit.

Even farmers need to rest sometimes.

We use old tiles turned over in between our patches to walk on. Here the children are putting tiles in between the four patches.

There was so much learning happening through the whole process. Sorting, counting, sharing, problem solving. I love real life maths!

As there were no tomato seedlings we also planted some of those along with a few beans.

Jenna loved the whole experience and got stuck in to all the little jobs to be done.

Michael enjoyed the seed planting the best!

A day or so later Ticha dug another patch for our carrot, butternut and (possibly) mealies patch. But it was all too tempting and the kids just couldn't resist playing in the mud. As we're still waiting for butternut and green pepper seedlings to grow, which we planted in tins, they've taken full advantage of creating little roads and dams in the sand.

What I really enjoyed about planting the veggies was seeing all the learning happening. Jen had asked if we could make signs for her veggies so I came up with a very simple plan. I wasn't sure at first if Michael would be keen to make his own as he hasn't shown any interest in drawing. But he really enjoyed using real vegetables or pictures from the seed packs to copy onto his own signs! I know I should have taken a close up photo of his drawings but if you can take this proud mommy's word for it-they really looked like the real thing! Maybe he'll be like his daddy one day-Ray is really good at still life's.

The pitter patter of little feet.

In the past month or so I've had four friends give birth to new little blessings to their family. It's wonderful to see God growing His nation here on earth! For us it's been a time of questioning again as to whether or not we'd like to add to our family of four. The discussion continues to have no conclusion, but while we wait for a decision we're getting a little taste of what it would be like.

Unfortunately xenophobia is a whispered threat on our doorstep again. With the World Cup coming to an end people started feeling threatened about the availability of work and so threats were made towards our Zimbabwean maid and her community. Charity and her husband have a one year old daughter. It is not unusual for Zimbabweans to work and live here and have their children live at home in Zimbabwe with grandparents. I've had other maids before who have left their children behind because it is a better environment for their children. Sound crazy? Isn't Zimbabwe in the media often for their political problems?

Reality check! We live in South Africa, where although we've come a long way towards freedom for all, there is still poverty and lack of employment. And so having a little baby to protect, Charity and her husband debated whether or not to take her back home. For Charity this would have meant being left on her own while her husband took their daughter and not knowing when they'd come back. As she was the only one with work she would stay behind. But how does one afford the costs of journeying home on the salary of a domestic?

My first reaction was anger! Why couldn't they stay? Hadn't they come here to seek asylum from their own country? Couldn't we as South Africans see that threatening them with violence was just what we had fought so hard to change in our country? We wanted equality-didn't that mean for all? Then I realised that I was talking from a priviledged perspective still. After all I'm not the one living in a shack with no work trying to feed my family. So we were left with what our hearts felt was the only option.

For a while I had been asking Ray if he would consider having Charity and her family live on our property. God has His ways of preparing us. We both need time to make decisions and this made it easier to make it quickly-something we needed to do as time was limited.

And so now we have this precious little girl and her family to play and live and learn with.....

Before the World Cup started there was much debate as to whether or not it would be a good thing for our country. Yes, this may sound like bad news, but I'm still choosing to live in hope that the Lord can use even this for His good!

So far there has been little news of anything serious happening. Although many Zimbabweans have packed up and left there are still some who have chosen to stay.

So while we wait patiently we're enjoying the sound of little feet again!