This morning evolved into a very nice, productive morning after a bit of a bad start on my part, as my back was playing up. After breakfast I sent the children to the garden because they were getting on my nerves, but things soon changed for the better after we got a little fresh air outdoors.
I first decided to continue my mission of culling the rosemary beetles that have all but decimate our rosemary bush. This was a new piece of information that I learnt from our walk in the local cemetery-cum-nature reserve on Sunday's bug -themed family walk. I was told that rosemary beetles can cause havoc to rosemary plants and one is allowed to kill (I prefer the term cull) them by picking them off the branches and starving them in jam jars.
Being Chinese and generally a little squeamish about certain insects, I used chopsticks and asked my younger one to spot them for me, and he enjoyed looking at them once they were wriggling with their last breath in the jam jar. We then spotted a rosemary beetle falling onto a spider web, so I duly expounded on the goodness of spiders in eating unwanted insects while the rosemary beetle stayed entrapped, so the children now think spiders are a good thing. My older boy watered the strawberries with his water gun, and then it was time to go inside as rain seemed to be imminent.
We had had a fun time yesterday, during the rare London heat wave, doing crafts on the grass in the sweltering sun. I have to confess that craft is not beyond me, but my first instinct would always be picking up a book or some knitting or sewing for fun. Because of the disruption in routine, having moved twice in a year and a long trip away in Asia Pacific, craft was the easiest thing to drop off our home ed activity radar, well before everything else, and the last thing to come back, just out of habit. So I was glad that the boys are getting into cutting and pasting and painting again after a good, long break.
This morning then, my older boy suggested doing some more craft first outdoors, but once forced indoors we settled ourselves down for some crafty action. One painted while the other made and painted a bus with an egg case, and all that time I was preparing a dish for shared lunch at Tuesday home education group in our local adventure playground. I reserved some seeds from the peppers in case they fancied planting them later on.
In the adventure playground where the home education group takes place things were a lot more fluid. Generally a lot of playing indoors and outdoors, including in the soft play area where the older one built and made stories. Parents are around to supervise while socialising with each other, at the same time allowing the children to play, catch up with their friends or make use of the toys and play equipment. The older one was keen to do some reading just before lunch, and after lunch, while rained poured down outside, the younger one sat on my knees and read for a while. The latter had already made a butterfly with sweets wrappers when he first arrived. We parents chose to read, play with the children or assist in their activities, chat (catching-up and more serious exchanges on home ed matters) and chill as we pleased.
'Why does God make thunderstorms?' my older one asked. I said it would be something to look up together in his Science Encyclopaedia.
Now as they sit asleep in the car after their day's work, I look forward to the prospect of either a chickpea and chorizo stew, or a Greek lamb shoulder soup, both prepared this morning during the children's free-play time after breakfast. It might be chocolate cookie making time before dinner time though if they wake up early enough.
