Those two dots on the left are my Water Babies.  Swimming and watching some learner kite surfers.

Perfect tidal pools, and little ‘islands’ as they called them.

Love it.

And have you read The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, by Charles Kingsley?  It is quite lovely, and imaginative.  Some of the most memorable illustrations I’ve ever come across, just give it a google.

I love a bit of wild play, especially at the beach.

My family moved from Auckland to Snells Beach when I was 11, and I spent many, many hours at this beach.  Safe for littlees to swim anytime, shells, trees, sand.

The kids and I went for an early morning beach walk, after breakfast with mum.  One of the characteristics of Snells Beach is how far the tide goes out, leaving tidal pools to explore and rocks to climb.  That’s Kawau Island in the distance.

The beach has changed dramatically since I was a child, is was mostly sandy, with the occassional patch of eel grass – which the parore or the black snapper eat.  Now the beach is almost covered by the weed.  I used to help my poppa put out and empty the net of fish when I was little, stunning, gutting fish and cleaning the net.  I know this beach well.

The population grows, run off from streets and houses increases, effecting the ecology of the bay.  I even found a mangrove seed putting down roots, or at least attempting to.

Environmental changes aside, it was a great morning of exploration for Luna and Blake!

All the usual suspects.

Yes, this is a juvenile flounder, we followed it for a while.  The tidal pools are full of small fish.

Beautiful.

The last few visits to mums’ were during the school holidays, and I was astounded that whenever we went to the beach, which was at high tide everyday, and the occasional low tide walk, there were almost no children (or adults actually) to be seen.  I wonder where the children are?  Inside?  In school holiday programs?  Another reminder for me to get out doors, and get my kids out too, we all get on better with all that space and freedom for creative play.

(The kids and) I love building huts and nests, with a few stormy days there was a wash up of palm leaves on Pt Chev beach, so we quickly gathered them all and whipped up a beach hut, fun times!  We are really fortunate to be just a few minutes drive from a beach, although it’s an inner harbour beach, it’s still worth a visit, we’ve been most days and is a perfect little outing after dinner when there’s a bit of energy to burn off.

Luna collected Pohutukawa blossoms, and fresh pine needles, and it’s perfect.  I even got to bust out some of my long forgotten weaving skills, this was still there a few days after, for summer and sunshine!

And those blossoms…

Blake had been quietly working on this the other day.

Tiny butterfly sequins that were part of an emergency fun handbag for a long bank visit.

I love these tiny discoveries, ideas just played out.

A little experiment we did this week, freezing some flower buds in ice cubes over night, the little ones loved it.  Above are two comfrey flower buds, just appearing in the garden.

Here’s the lot…

Most were wild or weed flowers, plus some herbs and vege flowers.

Straw flowers above, and clover bud below.

Luna enjoyed some water colour paints.  Making the spade very beautiful.

Luna seems much more into object art than, painting on paper…

They’re in our backyard, there’s a swamp and a valley for huge rocks…

And there’s a forest…

The great thing about the kids loving the grit and metal on the driveway, is that it has almost all the fun of a sandpit – without the sand!  Wohoo.  Sand at the beach is fun, sand in bed is not!

If you read my blog for the sewing and vintage finds, and some of my other interests, you might not know that we are quietly home educating our two little ones.  It feels much more solid and we are becoming more focused, as time goes on, but it has really just evolved from how we care for ourselves, and some of the choices that we have made, and some that have been made (it seems) for us.

Probably the biggest influence on my mothering, was having two casual part time jobs when I became pregnant, so no guarantee of a job to return to, though I did work a little between babies, it was totally uneconomical for me to work – if I was putting my daughter in childcare, I’d be paying to work.  So I became the stay at home parent.  Along with the work situation, I also discovered that Luna and I would not do well if we were separated for long periods of time, especially if she was not with someone she (and I) loved and trusted.

So, we carried on, doing our thing, we joined the local La Leche League group, and the local Home Birth Group, making some connections and as time went on, those with similar aged children sent them along to kindy, others returned to work while their children went to day care.  Playcenter sounded cool, though I huge commitment, and from the centers I talked with, long wait lists, and not very baby friendly (while pregnant with Blake one woman said, sorry no babies or children at the weekly evening meetings.. hmm, Okaaay).  I guess I was pretty spoilt by the total acceptance of mothering while meeting during my time with my La Leche group…  So, I investigated some of the Kindergartens, which seemed to have high ratios of children to teachers, and the narrow age group seemed so limiting to learning and real social interaction.  We don’t ‘do’ much, keep it fairly fluid, though there is (most of the time) a rhythm to our days and weeks, spending time at the beach, doing errands and all the day to day stuff.  We have a smallish group of friends we enjoy spending time with.

Along this journey, I have thought a lot about how we learn, and how our relationships enable us to learn, and how a lack of close genuine relationships hinder emotional intelligence, and I have read much along these lines, books like Hold on to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté, which is really about our relationships with our children and why our children need us (and other caring adults) in their lives more than they need ‘friends’ (yes, I know, what about socialisation..?  Sorry I’m not going there, just read the book).  And some books by Alfie Kohn, namely Unconditional Parenting, and Punished by Rewards, highlighting the real problem of using the behaviourist approach to parenting and education (do this homework, then you can watch tv, or each time you share with your brother you earn a gold star, and so on) this approach to learning and manipulating behaviour is the basis of our education system and extends into the work place, generally speaking.  There is much more to these ideas and approaches to learning and relationships, but what I found when I picked up these books, is that they gave voice to this uneasiness I feel when I consider mainstream education, and why I wince a little when I hear someone exclaim, “Good boy!” to a child.

So, anyway, I’m writing here, because Luna has started writing, she has had moments of ‘writing’ lists and notes, but she has been reading Tintin books, and whenever she has chanced upon a page with writing on it (like a power bill or essay proof) she has added her own text.  I find this really exciting, because my philosophy around learning, is that children/people will learn if you let them and we don’t necessarily need to be ‘teaching’ kids, but to trust they will learn.  In the same way babies are driven to crawl, then walk, talk and so on, we don’t need to teach them how.  I know this is challenging to people, especially as we have this system devoted to education and sometimes it hard to accept that parents are teachers too.

Luna was drawing rainbows here, when she started writing ‘N/Z’ and ‘O’ on a page, she exclaimed “I did it!”  ”I’m writing!”  Great, she felt so good about it.  That was exciting for me, and she hasn’t stopped.

These seem to be some of her favourite letter to compose her messages, she usually describes them as ‘Messages from Jacques Cousteau’ and I talk with her about the letters, some of which she knows as being a’s or t’s etc, she knows more than she lets on.

When I first saw this one, it reminded me of the Tintin books, and the use of speech bubbles, but Luna told me it was about Jacques Cousteau, when he writes on the maps, interesting!

Luna loves submarines, and here’s one,

See?

So when she started doing this, I thought, ‘Wow, we haven’t done any ‘teaching’ around writing’ like letter forms, no sitting down to write or read, thinking we’ll do that in a year or so… then I remember how much time I’ve spent with Luna singing the alphabet, talking about some letter, ‘L’ for Luna, ‘D’ for daddy etc, and writing shopping lists together, reading recipes, signs etc. and of course, the hours and hours of reading… so for her I suppose it’s really just around her, and now it’s coming out.  It seems too easy….  will see what happens next!  At the moment, it’s like magic for Luna.

At the post office…

Luna and Blake love cooking, well, they love mixing and messing, so I set this up for them while I was working in the kitchen recently.  Just the right height, an old shelf, screwed on top of two old speakers, a few bowls of various sizes, I picked up a couple of small sieve sets, and small measuring spoons, some kid size whisks, add a couple of jugs of water, some bowls with old flour, stale bran and oats, a few little dishes of spices, a couple of little essence bottles with water to add and mm-mmm good times.

I made sure there was a proper glass jug for each and numerous bowls for ‘ingredients’.

Serious business (Yes, Blake is wearing undies over his pajama pants).

Cute!

“See, this is too thick, too thick for crepes.”

Just moments after this photo, I must confess, Blake tipped a whole jug of sticky wet floury good stuff all over the floor.  I sounded really cool, and so was repeated a couple more times.
Because, sometimes I see these amazing and inspiring photos of play-at-home kids set ups, that are IMMACULATE, like all the containers, all the shelving units, all the natural-nonplastic-organic-colourful-multisensory-play-stuff so well ORGANIZED looking.  Things might start out neat and tidy, and sometimes what I call organised here, but the reality for me, is things are somewhat chaotic, and messy.  Have fun, get messy, tidy up, eat food, get messy, tidy up…

Luna did some shopping (unpacked the vege box) quite an interesting use of containers or baskets. and colours.  This is now our picnic basket and we eat outdoors often these days.  Loving the sunshine and no floor or table to clean afterwards!

Very organised!