Chasing Bubbles

 S. comes up with all the best ideas. Today he was in the laundry with me and saw our bubble wands and asked, "Can we have bubbles?!" I have been very busy lately, packing for our move out of town, and the kids have been a little stressed as a result. Not only do they have so many changes at the moment but they also have a mother who is trying to split her attention a few too many ways, so it really helps when I take their lead and just go with it.

Bubbles are cool for so many reasons.
For starters.. "Wheee!!! Bubbles!!"
And, well, they are like tiny glass rainbows!...
and they make wind visible!...
and they are interactive!...
Just as importantly though, bubbles are a chance for my kids to have my attention. I am outside with them facilitating and can't be lured into folding laundry, or fixing a snack, or checking my email in the middle of what we are doing. Apart from that, they give kids a chance to chase and catch which is something that is innately human. They are like cat toys like that (in fact A.'s cat Felix started chasing the bubbles while the boys were doing the same). They are an activity that I can do while I am carrying the baby on my back, and yet I don't have to run around myself. If we have been inside and doing sitting down things for too long, running around chasing bubbles is a great invigorator. I also find that my children's enthusiasm tends to peter out just as the liquid starts to, but that may just be my luck.

Thank goodness bubbles are generally pretty cheap. Buying a bottle of liquid might set you back $7 at a toy store (in New Zealand at least) but making your own is normally pretty easy and inexpensive. If you are making your own you can always let the kids do the mixing too. It never hurts to think of the process rather than the product, though. Everything involving making and mixing processes is an adventure for us. We discuss a lot about guessing the results, and experimenting to find out which things work, and which don't. I find that it helps to warn my oldest child that things might not work well before we try something new, otherwise he can get very disappointed and grief-stricken.

 I seem to have one son who is a concrete thinker and one who is a lot more creative and abstract.

A: "I know ALL about bubbles. They're made with air and they pop when they touch a hand or the ground."

S: "I think they might fly up to SPACE!!"

Learning the Ropes

Last Monday the weather was not so great. I was anticipating yet another stuffy day inside trying to find something to stop the boys from scrapping with each other. A. was already whining that he wanted to use the computer or watch something. This is his go-to habit when he is at a loose end. Thankfully his little brother is more likely to look around for something to do, so when he said "Mummy! I want to tie this rope to the tree!" I was thrilled to say "Good idea!" and open the front door so he could run out to play. It's no surprise that his big brother didn't want to be left out so he followed to see what was happening.

It often starts out with quiet thought with S. and then his brother comes along and tries to steal the thing he's working on. He just feels lonely or bored and hasn't got the most elegant of social skills yet. The more the boys play together the more sophisticated social tools that A. uses. I still have to remind them all the time that if it's not working it's best to explain what you are trying to do. A. seems to learn best by explaining.

The other day at Playcentre there was a visit from someone from one of the local swim schools, explaining about how to be safe in and near water. A. latched on to the concepts that she was explaining to them which related to a picture book she shared with them. A. stopped her all the time and explained what was happening in the story, including what would happen if the picture was different "That's safe at the pool, because they have their Dad with them, but if he wasn't there? That's NOT SAFE!". (I couldn't help but notice the embarrassed smiles of the other parents... his incessant interruptions would have been considered "disruptive" in a class of 20 or more children, but were within range of normal for a preschool group - I began to understand the frustrations expressed by my teachers from school... ok let's face it, I still hadn't grown out of that habit even by university!).

S. sems to learn a lot through doing. "I do it my-SELF!" has been his focus for about a year now. He is only just learning how to tie knots and it is amusing how much each of the boys learns from each other. S. is often the inspiration behind the play, and A. is great at developing the ideas. If it sounds like fun S. will often let A. be the leader, even to the point of pushing him arounds, but S. will remove himself from the situation after a while and just go and do something quietly by himself. 

After tying rope between trees, "We made a tripping thing to trap people!" and then keeping people safer, tying ropes around trees, and then tying ropes around each other, the exhausting game of tug-o-war caused more stress than it was worth, so they boys decided it was time to do something else. The cats had come out to be around people and were playing a mad chasing game up and down the trees, and S. decided he wanted to climb the tree too. He's quite a good climber. Once he finally decided he was too cold and he asked me to help him down. I asked him if he felt safe and he said he didn't. "Okay, I'll help you... you can put your foot there... now lower yourself down... now your feet are almost there, you can let go! You did it! See I said I'd help you!"

Both boys are pretty good at knowing what they can and can't do. S. is quite confident. A. tends to overthink things and make himself nervous. Sometimes I wonder if he cultivates a sense of himself as a victim so that he can abdicate responsibility and feel better when he's rescued... or feel the phantom strength of indignation when he is left to languish on his own. Maybe I too am overthinking things, but it feel like if I can just find the source of the problem, root up the need, then I will be able to address it and find him a way of looking at things that will leave him feeling like he can be in charge, and pro-active, rather than letting his life happen to him.

Moving House

I recently found out that my husband was being offered a job in a different city. This will be the 4th move for us since moving from Christchurch in January 2011 when we left our home at the foot of the hills to stay on a lifestyle block in the Manawatu so as to escape the aftershocks of the September 2010 earthquake. Soon after we left there was another major earthquake that destroyed more than the previous quake had and we were very lucky to be out of harm's way. My parents' house has since been fixed and in parts rebuilt around them.

We only stayed in the Manawatu for 9 months before needing to relocate to find work. The flat that we first moved into was damp and poky and I spent some dreadful and heavily pregnant and nauseated months there fearing that I would never be able to cope as the parent of three children. Thankfully everything worked a lot better for us when we moved to a new place that had sunlight and topsoil, so I could have a garden again.

However when we moved to the new flat my older son (then 4) asked me "when are we going to move to our new house?". It seems that people can adjust to any number of circumstances but it's probably not ideal for my sons to be moving from place to place. We have the security of having family with us but it does them (and me) no good to be uprooting and moving around. I fear that my elder boy will be much like me and have his roots fairly deep once he settles some place, and he does not like transitions much... but he seems to handle them a lot better than I did at his age. This is possibly because for all the moving that we have done he has always had the closeness and support of his family as the most important parts of his world. We are his home.

The place we will be moving into.

We may like having a home base, but it doesn't stop us from going on road-trips. Last Thursday we had to drive 140km to a different town to go and look at flats, and once we had found one we then had to drive back again. I may have to do the trip again on Wednesday to sign the tenancy agreement (but I'm hoping a fax will do the job). The Christmas before last we drove 250km to Waipukurau for a family lunch, and then came home via Granny's place (a round trip of 550km). I hope that we can eventually settle some place where we don't have to make ridiculous commutes, but for now thankfully my children are very forgiving, and at least they have each other for company and entertainment.

Exploring Google Earth - A. finds a picture of a humpback whale.
He's also been obsessively clock watching.

I have been showing A. some of the places we have visited on Google Earth. The thing he likes most is Street View, and how it wooshes around like you are flying. I would like to get a globe so that they have something concrete to manipulate when they find places. Recently, one of our best friends went to Sweden and we were fascinated to woosh around the Google Earth from New Zealand to Sweden to see how far it was. We aren't moving that far.

Thankfully we are moving back to a place where we know people. We will be back in the Manawatu, and surrounded by others who are also home-educating. The boys will be able to see other children of similar ages and catch up with old friends they may barely remember. It is also a larger house than the one we are currently in which will mean more room for making things and doing big...stuff! It's all a big adventure!

I have made up a calendar with pictures on it so that the boys can follow our progress and see how long we have to go and when things are happening. It is a continuation of the calendar I made for them when we went on holiday to see their grandparents in Christchurch in summer time. Through using the calendar, my older son recognises numbers, weekends, regularly scheduled events like his swimming lessons, and even my 3 year old can see pictures that remind him of past events like birthday parties and Christmas, and future events like trips, dentist appointments and... moving day.