Month: October 2018

Living out history lessons – The Iron Age.

August, 2011 we went for the first time to live one week in Sagnlandet Lejre, as they did in the Iron Age. We had 3 children at that time, and they were 7, 4 and 3 years old. I thought it could be great history lessons, learning by living as they did then. The village was build to fit the time period 200 B.C. until 200 A.C.  When we first arrived we were given clothes as they would have been worn then. So we put all our present things away and lived with one outfit for the rest of the week. We also put away our phones and computers for a week.

There were 4 houses in the village and we were 4 families living together there in the village. We had no running water og electricity. We were given food to prepare every day, and everything had to be cooked over a fire or in an oven which took hours to heat up. We had no watches, so had to start estimating time in a new way.

We had a ritual area where we did a sacrifice while there, as they would have done in the iron age.

There was a lot of animals loose the area and the children got used to walk near them.

We had a  witch doctor who would walk around in the local area with us and teach us which plants could be eaten and we picked them and put them in our food.

More animals. Most of the animals they keep at Sagnlandet, are original breeds that can be traced back to the iron age. These are wild pigs.

We did yarn dying with natural colours, picked in the area. We dyed yarn from the local sheep. We then spun it and made belts.

Making belts.

We made sushi from salmon and then smoked the rest over the fire.

Lovely to spend your time watching the fire at night.

The small kids LOVED the outside toilet 🙂

The geese and the wasps pestered us quite a bit, but was also a part of the real life experience of the iron age. This holiday has meant a lot to our children. It but a lot of the things we do today in our life, into perspective. Brought out our grateful side for having running water, water closet, hot showers, a potato pealer and so on. When we talk about history now, they often say “is that before or after the iron age, mum?”. We actually repeated our trip to the iron age 2 years later. In 2017 we went there again, but then to their viking site, but more will follow later in a new post about that experience.

The Children made a movie about Octopuses

We have combined the children’s interest in making movies with their interest in biology. This is our second movie in our series of biology themes they have chosen. They have made the movie on their own. As a parent, I have only contributed with the advise on ideas and helped with the planning of their time spend on the project. The project didn’t really happen, until we put the project on our weekly schedule. They had to have a set time to work on it. Like an author, sometimes needs to set himself a set time where he works on a book. Then things started to happen.

Octopuses is an amazing category of sea animals. There are 800 different species, and they are split into 5 categories:

  1. Nautilus.
  2. 10- armed octopuses.
  3. 8-armed octopuses.
  4. Sepia octopuses.
  5. Vampire Octopus from hell.

Nautilus.

5 species. It has a shell. No ink. Can get up to 20 years old. Has 90 tentacles without suction cups. Found around Australia and in the Pacific ocean.

10-armed octopuses.

300 species. Spine of cartilage. Can swim very fast. More than half of them light in the dark. 13 species in Denmark. One of the 10-armed species is the kolos octopus. It is the largest octopus found. It can be up to 10 meters long and weigh 500 kg. It can put up quite a fight with sperm whales who likes to eat them. It has eyes the size of a football.

8-armed octopuses.

Spits poison. Can get through very small gaps. Very soft, apart from their beak. Can change colour and shape. Can let go of an arm and regrow it. Can get up to 5 years old. Very strong- can lift up to 33 kg. Clever brain.

Sepia octopuses.

120 species. The chameleon of the sea. Can change colour and shape. Has an inside shell. They are cannibals. Has 10 arms. Usually get 1-2 years old.

Vampire squid from hell.

Likes to be on its own. It has light cells, so it can choose where on the body it want to light. Around 28 cm long. Turns inside out, and shows some spikes it has on the inside. That makes it seem invisible. It shoots off blue slime which lights up. Lives at 1 km depth.

Pleurotus ostreatus – growing Oyster Mushrooms with the kids

We are making a biological experiment at the moment. We like to grow all sorts of things, sometimes with success other times with failure. We dance around when we have success and learn a lot with the failures.

At a Maker Space Event we went to, we made and bought a bag with a mixture for growing Oyster Mushrooms.

Maker Space CPH 2018-09-30.

Ready for darkness in 1 week in warm room 2018-10-01.

One week later we took the bag out of the dark box and hang it in our livingroom and after a few days this happened:

Day 1 of mushrooms appearing 2018-10-18.

Day 2 2018-10-19.

Day 4 2018-10-21.

Day 5 Our Oyster Mushrooms are huge! 2018-10-22.

Great way to see things grow with the kids! Now I have to eat them all, nobody else here likes them.

Home School Mentor Function

When starting out Home Schooling, it can be hard to find your own feet. When we started out Home Schooling, we had a lot of resistance from some people around us. People asked many critical questions. Some people find it very hard to accept, when you choose to live your life in a way that is lived by a minority of people. In an ideal world, everyone would be supportive and offer their help and positive curiosity. But unfortunately that is not reality.

At the beginning you also have so many questions and for some the fear of taking responsibility for your own children learning. What should a day look like? Is there a wrong and a right way to do it? We have gotten so far away from taking responsibility and relying on our own gut feeling, that some people feel like floating and near drowning, when taking the step to Home School.

When we started out Home Schooling, our greatest fear was not being able to manage economically. So I also started out teaching 2-4 evenings a week, seasonally. This was pretty tough with a 1, 2 and 5-year old at home. But our new free life just felt so good and the children were thriving.

But there were very few Home Schoolers in Denmark in 2009, so it was hard getting play dates and the current friends quickly left us, as they started in the local School. So we slowly had to rebuild our social life. We enrolled in a weekly play group and started contacting the other home schoolers we could find on the internet and met up with them.

But our first year was hard. Actually the first few years were hard finding our feet. But I had tried major changes in my life before, so I just fought my way through it, as we had such a great every day life.

Through the years, the number of Home Schoolers has increased and I have played a mentor role for many of them. I have invited them into our house and talked to them about all their concerns and helped them as well as I could. If I could avoid them having to go through the feeling of being all on your own with these many questions, I would see it as a great way to spend my time. I often also would acquire new great friends and play mates for my children.

Home School meeting 2018-08-12 at Streyf Nature Cabine.

We have, and still do, arrange meetings and activities where old and new Home Schoolers can meet, ask questions and make friends. This is also one of the main reasons why I have set up this website – to help new Home Schoolers, not feel so alone.

Home School meeting at our house 2018-10-18.

Home School meeting 2016-07-02.

 

 

Nature is everything 2018-10-17

One thing we always seem to be in deficit with, is going to the forest and to the sea. You just can never do those things enough. It brings on tranquility and peace of mind. It makes you high on life and brings on so many questions about our Mother Earth. The seasons changing, the change in weather. The change in the surroundings. And it always gives you free exercise.

Photo from Hareskoven 2018-10-17.

Photo from Bagsværd sø 2018-10-17.

Often Home Schooling 4 children and trying to do your best all the time for everyone, can turn into just to high a speed. Then we go to the forest or sea and chill out and try to live life slowly and feel time in another way. Today we spend 5 hours in the forest just doing what ever came up. I had my knitting with me. My oldest daughter had her book of Survival with her, which had a peculiar collection of advice in many weird situations. They had a long role play where invisible dragons fought on the lake. We had lunch. They set up a play, which they acted out with me as audience. We did gymnastics and yoga together by the water. Some of us tipped our toes in the water and splashed a bit. We observed the leaves falling from the trees. But most of all, we talked and talked. Sometimes I think that home school really is about talking to your kids and listening to your kids. We spend just so much time doing just that every day. It is wonderful to get to know what goes on inside their heads.

Native American Project 2010-08-27

When we first started out Home Schooling 1st of April 2009, one of our intentions was to follow the children interests as much as possible. For history, geography and social science, that meant taking a lot of interest in
indigenous peoples and past cultures. Particular Native American, Eskimos, Asian and Egyptian culture. The project shown, is a tipi that we build out of 4 poles, 4 meters long and a half circle that we sewed and painted to complete a huge tipi in our garden. We also designed and made Native American costumes for the children to live out their Native American dream. We had this tipi for many years in our garden. It is my largest sewing project until now.

How dangerous is a Christmas Tree, when it has been inside drying for 3 weeks?

My Husband is against having real candles on our Christmas tree. I always had real candles on our Christmas tree when I was a child, so I have been complaining about my loss of atmosphere at Christmas, by having to live with artificial lights on our tree.

So he needed arguments, to defend his opinion. So as usual, he watched a million youtube movies and read a million articles about the subject.

And of course he came to the decision, that we had to try out the fire threat ourselves. We had to do an experiment. So this year we would not go to a workshop and make things out of the tree trunk, but set fire to it, and see how quickly it would burn. Real quickly, was the answer. With 5 m high flames.

Density, water + salt with an egg

Put an egg in water and observ that it does not float.

Put salt in the water and see the egg start to float on the water. Mix more water in, and see it sink again.

This is an easy experiment to do in the kitchen, but such a great part of how density works.

When we swim in the ocean we will find it easier to float or swim, than in freshwater. This is because the water density is higher in saltwater, than in freshwater.

If we would try to swim in oil, which has a lower density than freshwater and saltwater, we would find it very hard to stay above the surface.

The Medical Museion – The Body Collected

For a few years we have wanted to go to The Medical Museion. They have actual body parts in formaldehyde, you can see close up.

Biology and Chemistry is a great interest of our children, and they had so many questions to the guide.

We had pre-ordered a children friendly tour of the exhibition “The Body Collected”.

They have a large collection of bones affected by different illnesses.

We try to show our children all aspects of life, so that they do not grow up with tabus, shame or go around wondering about things, that they do not dare to ask us. They have become very good judges of what they are uncomfortable with and say:”I do not want to see that” and just go on.  It is healthy to learn to question “that is just how it is” when the doctor orders you antibiotica or other situations in life, where you do not think you have a choice.

 

 

 

 

 

After the tour, we went around in the museum on our own. The cellar had a very exiting exhibition “Min the Gut” where you could read about the importance of the stomachs bacteria flora and the research done during the past few hundred years.

There also was a Pill Machine where you could answer a line of emotional and dietary questions, to go to a machine where it would give you the right amount of medicine and guidelines to treat your ailments. It was a way to show you the combination of medical and holistic treatment.

On the other floor, just by the entrance, there was a game, where you could play roulette, gambling with your age. You could get good or bad body parts and we had a lot of fun. I managed to turn 101 years old, so I won.