Fridge magnet

This is a very useful resource:

http://www.fridgemagnet.com/

They have fridge magnetic rolls - you can cut a bit off and stick it to a postcard or something you've made and hey presto... instance fridge magnet decoration.

French nursery rhymes we know - comptines et chansons

This is one of our favourites:

(it sounds like a little fanfare in terms of song style):

Pomme de reinette
Pomme de reinette,
Et pomme d’api,
D’api, d’api rouge.

Pomme de reinette,
Et pomme d’api,
D’api, d’api gris.
(you use your hands to tap - make a sideways fist so your hand is the apple. The song is a nonsense rhyme apparently)

Moustache, moustachu
Moustache, moustachu
Voici le chat
Griffa, griffu
Griffa, griffu
Sortez les griffes
(whiskers, cat, claws out, claws return are the gestures)

http://bmarcore.club.fr/Tine/E167.html
Le Grand Cerf
Dans sa maison un grand cerf,
Regardait par la fenêtre,
Un lapin venir au loin,
Et frapper chez lui.
"- Cerf cerf ouvre moi, ou le chasseur me tuera!",
"- Lapin, lapin entre et viens Me serrer la main."
(In his house the big deer was looking out of the window, a rabbit came and knocked, "Deer, Deer open up for me, otherwise the hunter will shoot me!" "Rabbit, rabbit of course you can come in and we will shake hands."
(the gestures are: use your hands as antlers - fingers spread out, make a window shape, use hands as rabbit ears, knock, hands round mouth to indicate shouting, use your hand to make a gun, enter motion with hand, shake hands)

Bedtime tales

Tonight I told little one a story about the gnome who lives in our garden. Today, whilst I was sat outside in the garden I heard a lot of squeaking and twittering noises and thought it was a bird in distress. I went to have a look and instead saw a shrew. They are so tiny but they are so busy and unbelievably noisy. I was stood over them watching - they appear to be living under our shed and don't seem to care that the human neighbours they have know about them.

Anyway, I made up a story tonight (had to be short because I have a sore throat and a sniffly nose) about our resident gnome hearing the twittering sound and going to have a look for what he thought was a baby bird. Instead he finds that he has new neighbours - the very noisy shrew family. He looks, listens and sniffs for the creatures making the noise and finds them. At the end, having said, "Hello" he goes back home and he and his family settle down for the night.

Anyway small person liked it - I got the "Mum did you make that story yourself?" It's nice to be able to improvise and not hold a book but have all the component parts of a kindergarten age story - little adventure then safe return home again - and it lasted all of about 3 minutes (thus saving my voice).

I've always wanted to do a storytelling course or two because I think it's amazing that people can weave together or memorise stories.

German (Deutsch) resources

I believe that other languages are so important and small person (hmm need a nickname for here) loves hearing them. We have quite a few of the German Pixi books to read - Rapunzel, The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids. We also have a few CDs in Deutsch.

This is very useful for songs and rhymes:

http://german.about.com/library/blmusik_kinder.htm

For French we have our French tutor (sadly she has another job so won't be available after this week) who we have seen for about 18 months. I also have French language books and an ELC Fun with French CD (songs and rhymes).

Spanish is something I would like to introduce and we also have the name of a Latin teacher somewhere but this will be more formal in the way it is taught so we intend to wait for a year or so on that.

The good thing with home education is that you can learn alongside your child. The problem is many of the foreign language resources are mostly aimed at adults and they seem to be written by soap opera dramatists. They have the most awful plots running through them. I got one out of the library on German (a BBC one) and it seems to be about an Eastern European man trying to stay in Germany and earn a living and take up residency there. It really put me off because I want something that is not dramatic but is more joyous to learn from. Oh well...

You're not my friend

I read a story to the small person tonight. It's about a fox cub who is playing with his mummy and then his mummy tells him it's time for bed. He doesn't want to go and tells his mummy "you're not my friend". Naturally, at the end of the story it all turns out all right and they snuggle down in their den for sleep, as friends again. Well, after I finished reading it, certain small person decided to test the story's plot and declared that I was no longer her friend. Distraction often works best in these scenarios so I sat looking out of the window at the sunset and she came to see it too. I was asked to take her back to her room which I did and then, when I left again, after saying "Good night" got a "You are really my friend mummy" moment. :) The joys of stories and 5 year olds.

Toolkits

I want to get into the crafts resource and do some woodworking stuff with my child.

There is this resource here:

http://www.forsmallhands.com/

I've also looked at a company called Moulin Roty who do a toolbox too.

At the moment I need to save up a little more for either option.

Garden education

It's been wonderful the past few days and we've been out in the garden loads over the past few weeks (apart from when it was raining too much). We have loads of butterflies in our garden and this is because I am very careful about what is growing in it. We keep our nettles and keep lots of indigenous and/or butterfly-friendly plants in the garden. We grow rosemary, mullein, nettles, foxgloves, lemon balm, dandelions (lots of insect species love these, along with birds such as finches) and buddleia. I also weed by hand rather than using chemicals.

Yesterday I had one of those moments. I was stood in the garden with birds twittering, the sound of my child singing, bees buzzing and the scent of the butterfly bush, complete with peacock and red admiral butterflies probing for pollen, all surrounding me. Totally found the 'now' - ah, beautiful.

If you have a garden then make it butterfly and bee friendly, if you can and if it suits your climate. It's a most wonderful resource for a home educator to go about spotting and identifying butterflies. We made butterfly fridge magnets (used a butterfly stencil - cut out shapes and painted them according to a butterfly wall chart). The scent from most butterfly-friendly plants is incredible - it's a really good to way to help with olfactory (smell) sense integration. Eye tracking by following around butterflies is so natural.

We have lots of bumblebees too (less honeybees this year).

Also, this week has seen the birth of 4 girls to our friends, neighbours or family members.