February weeks 1 & 2 - 2024
Burn’s Night, Candlemas, Lunar New Year, Pancake and Valentine’s Day
The last few weeks have felt a bit like festival after festival! We had Burn’s Night at the end of January (celebrating the famous Scottish poet), so naturally we focused on Scotland and Scottish music and stories. Then came Candlemas; the Christian feast that marks the presentation of Christ at the temple for the first time (and celebrates light returning to the world). The pagan festival is known as Imbolc and celebrates fertility and the coming of spring. We lit candles to celebrate this, and took great pleasure in seeing the first ‘Candlemas Bells’ (snowdrops) coming through in the garden and on our local walks. The violets, crocuses, primroses and daffodils are blooming now too, and the blackthorn and cherries are blossoming in places… I’m learning to love this time of year, despite all the rain… We then focused on Lunar New Year, and finally Pancake and Valentine’s Day… We’ve also taken turns to have a cold, so it’s not been the easiest time, but we survived. Here is a summary of our learning:
February Week 1: Burn’s Night and Scotland, Candlemas, Lunar New Year
Read Alouds: We’ve really enjoyed Greyfriar’s Bobby (Ruth Brown), that lovely true story of an incredibly loyal wee Scottish doggie, and also The Treasure of the Loch Ness Monster (by Lari Don). K really loves these stories and their beautiful illustrations. The latter one sparked a wonderful role-play where she re-enacted the story using cardboard boxes as pretend doors (treasure beh8md one, poison behind another), and another box as a boat, paper packaging as a nest and some wooden eggs as Nessie’s eggs, and a snake draft-excluder as Nessie! I’ve made a note to check out more books by Lari Don later… For example, there’s a book about a Kelpie (a mythical water spirit/horse that abducts children), but I’m worried it might be a bit too scary for K right now! We also re-read Tabby McTat (Julia Donaldson), and listened to the audiobook on the Yoto Player.
For Candlemas we read the short story of The Snowdrop by Hans Christian Andersen, and for Lunar New Year we focused on China and read The Seven Chinese Sisters (Kathy Tucker) and Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett (we love Jan Brett, and this is a charming story about a girl’s search for her missing hen set in scenery that is very reminiscent to me of the beautiful Yangshuo/Guilin area of southern China). We then found China on our map and read about Chinese children and their lives in Children Just Like Me by Barnabus and Annabelle Kindersley. I told K a few stories of experiences I’ve had in China month to entertain her too. Then, in true lunar new year fashion, we set about spring cleaning the girls’ wee house (the playhouse) and this motivated us to spring clean our house. Much needed!
Sweet violets (Viola odorata) on our local walks
Nature Study/Walk: We went spotting wildflowers, and I have to admit, we picked one sweet violet to bring home, as the scent is just so heavenly (think of those Parma violet sweets from your childhood!). Apparently the goddess of springtime and flowers, Persephone, was picking spring flowers, including violets, when she was abducted by Hades, god of the Ancient Greek underworld. Luckily Hades didn’t abduct us this time! Later, because we had been focusing on Scotland, we studied and then went out identifying Scots pine trees (using Caroline Voake’s ‘A Child’s Guide to Trees’). Our trip to Watts Gallery (see below) was perfect for this, as the woodland there is full of lovely mature trees. The girls loved exploring, and little M was particularly taken with the many beautiful daffodils that have sprung up since our last visit.
Poetry: Our poetry over breakfast included Snow Hare from ‘The Lost Spells’ and the traditional saying ‘The snowdrop in purest white array, first rears her head on Candlemas day’. We have also been continuing to read a poem every day from ‘I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree’. K particularly enjoyed one that likened waves to white horses (The Wild White Horses by Bernie Doherty), and this led to me showing her the memorable Guinness TV advert where the waves are white horses.
Guinness TV advert directed by Jonathan Glazer, 1999
Music: Continuing the Scottish focus we sang these traditional songs: The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, The Skye Boat Song, Wild Mountain Thyme and Flower of Scotland (I often sing the girls to sleep with such songs, so they knew them a bit already). K also discovered a pretty hideous American kid’s song on Amazon’s Alexa about the Loch Ness Monster by The Fun Squad, and she has been playing it repeatedly at high volume! It’s not my favourite, but she thinks it’s super cool and has at least learnt some new vocabulary from it.
Picture Study & Art/Crafts: K made a lunar new year dragon mask. I had planned for us to make and decorate beeswax candles for Candlemas but we never managed it… Something for next year! We haven’t done a picture study for ages so we must get back to that soon.
Feb. 2. - Earth Worms and Soil, Pancake and Valentine’s Day
Read Alouds: We focused on earthworms as this was the theme in the Exploring Nature with Children (the little nature-based curriculum we follow). We studied a worm’s life cycle using this Life Cycles book. We tried to watch a short animated film of the story Superworm by Julia Donaldson on BBC IPlayer, but K found it too scary so it was shortly switched off (she has enjoyed watching the original episodes of Bagpuss on Iplayer, as have we!).
Nature Study/Walk: We were really saddened to find our local wood has had many trees felled due to Ash Dieback… This is a fungus, originally from Asia, that was introduced to Europe about 30 years ago and has devastated the European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) because our native species has no natural defence against it. The Woodland Trust state it will kill up to 80% of ash trees across the UK (at a cost of billions), change the landscape forever and threaten many species that depend on these trees. K was visibly upset as we walked through the remains of the wood where she’s played and made dens since she was tiny… I don’t think it’s an understatement to say we are both in mourning. I’m clutching at straws here, but at least it provided an opportunity for us to learn about this terrible fungus. We counted the rings on some of the felled trees and discovered they were about 70-100 years old, which makes them ‘notable’ trees according to The Woodland Trust (they can live up to 350 years). The sad irony is that the village we live in is, in fact, called Ash… Who can imagine an Ash without ash?
The devastation of Ash Dieback, Ash, Surrey
On a more positive note, we volunteered gardening one Saturday morning at K’s preschool, and weeded and dug over a couple of beds which gave K and M a fantastic opportunity to observe earthworms! The preschool children will now be able to plant some vegetables there later this spring with help from the teachers. It is so sad that even though each spring the preschool asks for parents to help, apparently no one ever does… We were the first! We have made a mental note to offer to help every year, as it really was enjoyable, and it is so good for the girls to see us doing (and join in doing) something for the community.
Poetry: We read ‘Our Little Kinsmen’ by Emily Dickinson (about earthworms!). We also read ‘Radiant Sun’ from A Child’s Seasonal Treasury, and learnt the old saying ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you’. K swiftly adapted the end of this to “and so is poo”! We are definitely still in Freud’s so-called anal stage, ha ha!
Music: The girls enjoyed ‘There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden’, and ‘Wiggly Woo’ action song. We also listened to the Northumbrian (County Durham) folk song ‘The Lambton Worm’ about a worm that grows so big it eats sheep and children! (I have fond memories of my mum singing this in the evening accompanied by her friend on guitar around campfires on our joint family holidays in Wales when I was a child). To fit with Valentine’s Day we listened to ‘All You Need is Love’ (The Beatles) and another lovely folk song called ‘Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron’ (by Matt Williams). During free play time we also listened to Puccini 'O mio babbino caro' from Gianni Schicchi and Nessun Dorma from Turnadot.
Block printing using vegetables etc.
Picture Study & Art/Crafts: We made daddy a Valentine’s Day card (of course!), and we did some fun block printing at a Watts Gallery session for little ones. Who knew that if you cut a bunch of celery in half it can make prints that look a lot like roses?! (See bottom left picture above). K also used a cauliflower and potato cut in half to print little trees and the sun. Little M is obsessed with the colour black at the moment, and has given us all a good laugh by saying a) she thought daddy was going to buy me black roses for Valentine's Day (my goth days are over!) b) that she saw a black rainbow above our house and c) that her favourite colour of pom-poms at our dancing class is black (needless to say there are no black pom-poms!). I also found I can’t leave her unattended drawing anymore, as she loves to draw all over herself in black and I come back to find her looking like Rambo!
Other: In true British fashion we cooked up a ridiculous amount of pancakes, although over three days as the kids requested more! We also went to Story Time at a local library with a friend and enjoyed a few other play dates and a trip to a home education roller skating session. K’s dad took her to see ‘Dinosaur Adventure Live: Trouble on Volcano Island’ at a theatre in Guildford, but he came back saying never again as the production had been way too loud with kids constantly screaming, K had been too tired (and scared due to the noise) to really appreciate it, and they had got stuck in awful traffic… What a shame… I was glad I had chosen not to waste more money and had stayed at home playing with little M. And finally, I did a course called Parenting for Faith at a church that is going to be twinned with our church. This was a nice opportunity for me to meet some other parents, and fun for K and M who played very happily for nearly 2.5 hours with some new little friends.
Over the next two weeks we will be focusing on humans (anatomy and health), plants and garden birds again. We’ll also have family staying so time will no doubt fly. Maybe we will convince grannie to sing us The Lambton Worm…