Mud in my eye

Me to my 6-year-old last week, as she sat cuddled on my knee talking about her school day:
"Sweetheart, you have such beautiful eyes. Just like the ocean, they are."

Her almost-8-year-old sister, overhearing, instantly cuts in:
"What about MY eyes? Are THEY beautiful?"

"Oh yes," I say. "Like melted chocolate. Two warm pools of deliciousness!"

She smiles. Then she looks at me thoughtfully, staring into my undistinguished brown-hazel eyes, and says,
"Mum, your eyes ... they're just like ... dirt."

That's so sweet, pet ;-)

Happy birthday

Happy birthday, my secondborn baby girl!

Today you are 6, and we celebrated with family and close friends, with laughter and jelly, chips and pillow fights, frankfurts and ice-cream cake.

Next week you'll enjoy your party with your schoolfriends at a no doubt loud and frenetic playcentre, but today was about home comforts and beloved adults surrounding you, games with friends' children who are as close as cousins and as dear.

Such a beautiful lot of gifts you received - a red knitted dress made by your grandmother, books, games, craft supplies, a party silk dress, and, to your great excitement, a digital camera of your very own, and your wonderful pink guitar. Now, worn out from the excitement, you and your sisters are curled up on the couch watching an old Wiggles DVD. Your arm is wound around the 2 year old's neck gently, and your eyes look sleepy.

I wish you many more such birthdays, lovely girl. I look forward to seeing you grow into your years, to being part of that in whatever way you need and want me to. I love you with all my heart, and always will.

School chooks

One of the nicest things about the school my elder two daughters attend (other than the fact that it's small - about 350 kids) is the wonderful Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program that runs there. I remember touring the school when A, my eldest, was 4 and in her kindergarten year, and being entranced with the then-embryonic vegetable patches and the newly-constructed purpose-built kitchen, with its light, airy interior and wonderful, welcoming smells.

It was one of the reasons we chose this school for our girls, and in the three years from that time to this, it has only gone from strength to strength. All the kids from term 3 in grade 3 onwards have weekly cooking sessions, and, now that the garden is established and very productive, they use predominantly produce from the beds they themselves have weeded and maintained. The kitchen is also used for twice-weekly breakfast clubs, one of my personal pet programs at the school - providing a free, nutritious breakfast and a chance for kids to relax and socialise before school (and for working parents, two mornings a week that they can drop off early without any concerns).

With the removal of the last portable classrooms at the school and their replacement with a multi-purpose classroom building funded by the stimulus package education money, more space was freed up for veggies, fruit trees, mulched areas...

and chooks!

Oh the anticipation that the kids manifested, waiting for the chookyard to be constructed. Oh the excitement on the first day of term, when the 4 Rhode Island Reds were installed. Oh the loving care with which the kids feed grass scraps to these fat, happy hens. Competition for the privilege of filling their food and water bowls, bringing them bowls of fruit & veg scraps, and collecting their daily eggs is fierce. The kids love to stroke them, and at least one of the hens is a shameless poser for this, backing up to the fence so little hands can reach to scratch her gently.

I think it's fantastic to have chickens at school. The kids are getting to use the deep-yolked, full-flavoured eggs that these well-fed ladies are producing in their cooking classes, and are already noticing the difference from cage-fed hen eggs in particular. The soft burrrrking sound that the chooks make as they go about their business adds a friendly, cheerful note to the playground, even when it's in repose (ie when all the kids are inside!)

In time the plan is to extend the run by about another 8 feet and add in three more chickens. It'll be a great thing well into the future for the kids.

Reading Notes - Toddler's Top 20 for April 2011

(Earlier posts in this series are here - February's books - and here - March's books).

Continuing on my monthly wrap-up of toddler's top-rotating picture books, the past month or six weeks has seen a transition towards longer titles on the whole, with one or two exceptions. At almost 27 months, C's sense of humour is burgeoning, as is her ability to predict narratives and rhymes. This has led to the retention of two of last month's favourites in this month's list - they have remained stalwart on daily rotation because of their humour (in the case of Too Many Pears) and rhythm (Where is the Green Sheep).

C is also engaging with more complex stories and characters, and her lengthening attention span is showing in her capacity to follow plot points across an entire book. Her narrative sense is emerging and, like her sisters, she's part of a storytelling and story-hearing clan, and she's drinking it up. We were born for the tale, all of us ;-)

This month, daily books on most days have included at least half of this list. We've been reading, on average, 25 books a day - C is in a very beautiful phase with books at the moment, of wanting to sit down with me for extended reading sessions and cuddle and explore the text. I remember this stage with delight from my older two and I'm very much soaking up having it back again. Unfolding the written word to a beloved child must be one of the purest pleasures in parenting, I think.

So this month, the top reads have been:

1. Good Night, Little Bear (Patsy Scarry)
All of my children have enjoyed this one. We have it in a Golden Book form.

2. The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse (Miriam Norton)
This is a classic and another Golden Book - ah, how I love the Golden Books! Mickey Miggs is one of C's favourite fictional characters of all time.

3. Piglet and Mama (Margaret Wild)

Hey, lookit - another charming pig in children's fiction! Piglet and Mama is very sweet, and very much part of the repeating-pattern little-lost-animal school of picture book (as are both Little Baa and Little Lamb, listed below).

4. Little Baa (Kim Lewis)

5. Goodnight Harry (Kim Lewis)
Kim Lewis is a particular favourite of mine in the children's picture book arena. Her soft watercolour illustrations team perfectly with the themes of her stories, and the countryside is like another character in the books, always waiting just outside the window. C loves Harry deeply; this is probably one of her two or three absolute favourites at the moment.

6. Little Lamb (Piers Harper)

7. I Know a Rhino (Charles Fuge)

8. The Poky Little Puppy (Janette Sebring Lowrey)

9. The Saggy Baggy Elephant (K & B Jackson)
Both The Poky Little Puppy and The Saggy Baggy Elephant have emerged from the Golden Book section of our library this month in triumph. Our own dog is called Pokey (named after both this book and the Hokey Pokey) so C finds that an endless source of mirth.

10. Ten Apples Up On Top (Theo LeSieg)
Is there a better early-counting book than this classic?

11. A Fish Out of Water (Helen Palmer)
This was my husband's earliest memory of being read to - an early school teacher reading A Fish Out of Water to the class. He picked up this copy in a secondhand bookshop in Echuca last year and it was instantly adopted as a favorite by the older two girls. C is just ready for it now.

12. Charlie and Lola - I really, really need actual ice skates (Lauren Child)

13. Charlie and Lola - I will be especially very careful (Lauren Child)
Yes, we're back to Charlie & Lola again. She spotted these two titles at the library and nothing would do but that we should borrow them and read them, many, many times. Le sigh.

14. Too Many Pears (Jackie French)

15. Where is the Green Sheep? (Mem Fox)

16. Hop on Pop (Dr Seuss)

17. Cuthbert's Babies (Pamela Allen)
I love this Pamela Allen story of Cuthbert and his quintuplet baby sisters, and so, it seems, does Miss C.

18. Are You My Mother? (P D Eastman)

19. The Sea Mice and the Stars (Kenneth C Steven)
This is a very appealing little book indeed, and while I would have thought it was too old for C, she listens intently and devotedly to the story of Ashenteen and Willaby gathering the fallen stars to light up the mouse village. A lovely story to read over and over, too - it has adult appeal.

20. The Wish Cat (Ragnhild Scammell)
This is such a favourite of mine! It's the story of Tom, the beaten-up, scruffy but endlessly good-natured stray who is definitely *not* the answer Holly expected to her shooting-star wish for a sweet, fluffy little kitten.

We Play - Outdoor Art

We had one - and one only - good day weather-wise this past week, and it was the occasion for getting outside after school: bouncing on the trampoline, riding scooters and bikes, playing in the sandpit, and drawing on walls and concrete.

Drawing happened with sidewalk chalk, naturally,


but also with nature's own green ink, the rich, juicy, abundant grass.



Later, the kids experimented with painting with lime and lemon juices on the wall, and rubbing crushed rose petals on the ground (none of which produced anything as photogenic as the Green Grass Girl above, but all were great fun!)

Learning about pigments and colours available in the natural world was such a fun thing to do on the cool but clear day that may well prove to be our last hurrah of decent weather before the long dark of winter closes in.