What the Hnef-tafl?

This term Nathan chose to learn about Vikings for history. We borrowed some books on Vikings from the library, which I read and then listed different aspects of Viking life to focus on - one for each week of term. Each week Nathan reads the relevant pages from the books and then answers some questions about what he has read. He does this fairly independently. One of the books is from the "Hands on History" series from QED Publishing which includes lots of crafty activities to do as you learn about Vikings. Another is set out as a story of a Viking family. Nathan enjoys reading so he has found this a good way to focus on history.

Last week, Nathan was reading about what the Vikings did for fun and in their spare time. They enjoyed sport and games, one of which was the game "Hnef-tafl" (pronounced Neff-tah-fell) which means 'king's table'. The Hands on History book had instructions for making the game, which I encouraged Nathan to do and which he made, somewhat reluctantly.


Once it was completed Nathan and I had a game, and since then it has been played over and over again. The kids love it. The adults love it. Initially, it sat on the end of the kitchen bench to show Daddy when he got home from work, but there it has stayed. I find it astonishing that a game that was played by people from the other side of the world and some thousand years ago can be recreated and now sits on my kitchen bench. Of course, a game from a millenia ago does not come with a printed rule book and so we have had to add 'house rules' as we go, but it is a surprisingly engaging game.

Nathan does not particulaly enjoy history, and so I really appreciate that the flexibity of home educating allow us to choose topics within history that do interest him. Before we started home schooling, and while we were preparing all the documentation for the Board of Studies interview, we read the Board of Studies outcomes for each subject. Since we have been through the school system, and since my husband still works in that system, we found it difficult to think outside the outcomes as defined by the Board of Studies. Many of our outcomes were just as they had defined them. However, when it came to the HSIE and English outcomes, the sheer number of words in the BOS syllabus were overwhelming and simply not useful because of their verbosity. Those documents are seriously OTT!

Since DH is a history teacher, I asked him what he thought learning about history was really about. What should we be aiming for when we help our children delve into history? This little diagram is what we came up with, and I really love it, as it is easy to keep in the back of my mind week to week and term to term, to ensure that what we are spending time on lines up with what we set out to achieve. I fact, I'm so chuffed with this little pic that I thought I'd share it on here :)We also came up with these Key Skills, many of which won't really come into play until the kids are a bit older:

Using Information:
Locating and using sources of information
Identifying different types of sources and their elements
Evaluating the accuracy, reliability, bias and usefulness of sources

Asking Questions:
Asking Who? What? Why? When?
Investigating the impact of environments on events and people
Investigating changes over time
Finding causes of events
Finding impacts and responses to events
Finding other perspectives about events

So, thats history here. How do you approach history in your home educating?

Welcome to our guinea pig day spa....

The girls have been wanting to bath their guinea pigs for a while, so today we gave them the full day spa treatment.

Cocoa and Patch had their nails trimmed and were treated for mites and worms. Then our lovely, untrained beauty therapists treated them to a shampoo, blow dry and brush (with dolly brushes), accompanied by some smothering with love and attention!

Here is Amy with Cocoa...
and Lili with Patch...

The Guinea Pigs seemed to enjoy it and the girls loved it (and I had fun too :)

Amy's special day

Finally a post about Amy's 4th birthday! I wrote about my ideas to create a sustainable/frugal birthday party here and this is how the day turned out...

We got Amy a new baby doll and I sewed some clothes from leftover fabrics, including the dress in the photo above. I made a cover for an old basket and filled it with vintage plates and cups as a picnic set, complete with embroidered tablecloth and napkins. This may have been environmentally friendly as it is all used items and not just imported from China, but it was not frugal! Those little cups and saucers are expensive! And, I'm not sure it was a wise gift idea being so fragile, but I had a ball finding all the items and sewing up the cover.


I sewed the bunting from some new and some vintage fabric, and we made heart shaped dream catchers with wool and fencing wire we had in the shed. I was really happy with how these both turned out, and now Amy has the bunting hanging on the wall of her bedroom where it looks lovely.


Lili decorated a tin for the textas and crayons - colouring in is always popular with kids!

We created a tent to play in from bamboo and pieces of fabric, sheets and pillows...

Everyone wanted to play in there....

Amy had a fantastic day celebrating with friends and family. She doesn't tend to put herself as the centre of attention very often, so it was lovely to fuss over her.

The cake was garden inspired, complete with lady-bugs cupcakes. Note to self: make smaller cupcakes next time as the kids barely ate them, although the chooks were very appreciative of the ample leftovers!

Daddy ran the party games...

We had a special birthday morning tea on Amy's actual birthday, using the new tea set of course :)


So, Amy had a great birthday. I think I succeeded in creating a party that was just less plasticky than I usually do. Frugal? In some areas. Sustainable? Using vintage items and making gifts and decorations was definately more sustainable, but personally it was pretty unsustainable in terms of just how long it took me to get everything ready. Still, I have already forgotten about how much work was involved and now I can just enjoy the memories :)

Happy Birthday Amy!