We planned to make some mosaic pictures today with the cut out colourchart squares but when we started gathering together necessary stuff we realised we didn’t have any glue. We found nice big pieces of cardboard but nothing to do the fixing with so we decided to walk into Lancing to buy some glue.
So we could tick off some exercise on the childrens’ fitness challenge sheets I walked very briskly and they semi-jogged but we went through a succession of alleyways which cut straight through rather than the twice-the-distance and not very interesting walk along the streets. Now the alleyways are your classic back passageways really – overgrown, full of broken glass, weeds, graffiti and so on, perfumed with eau da urine. Unless you are Davies and Scarlett however. They walked along exclaiming at the ‘beauty’ of everything. In the broken glass chips from beer and alcopop bottles they saw emeralds and diamonds, the nettles had ‘pretty zig zag shaped leaves’, the dandelions were like ‘sunbursts of yellow’ when in flower and ‘fluffy white clouds’ if they’d gone over to dandelion clocks. They spotted each little blue forget-me-not and daisy and other flowering weeds I don’t know the name of.
Whilst I still don’t think the alleyways should be litter filled and used as toilets it did strike me that as adults we so rarely see the beauty in things the way that children do. And they don’t do it in a conscious ‘behold the wonder of nature’ type way, they just see and feel it. I was chatting to a friend the other day about positive attitudes, feeling that things are mostly good and being a glass half full sort of person and pondering that I wasn’t always like that and I certainly don’t get that attitude from my parents. I think I realised today that actually it hasn’t been passed down a generation, it’s been passed up. Spending most of my time with people who see wonder and beauty everywhere has rubbed off :).
We had a quick look round the charity shops and Scarlett fell in love with a small cuddly rabbit for 20pence, Davies found a very 70s book called ‘Fun with Felt’ which I’ve not looked at yet but he tells me has some cool things to make inside. We got our glue and walked briskly home again.
We then started our mosaic pictures. We found a couple of books for inspiration – that 100 history projects book that I think most of us have on our bookshelf from a couple of years ago and a book about Ancient Rome which was an ex-library book. We sketched out a basic design on our paper and started cutting and sticking. I went for a dolphin leaping from the sea, partially inspired by a similar sort of design at Fishbourne that I’ve always admired. Davies went for flowers and Scarlett’s is still fluid (as in she has changed her mind at least twice and so far it is just lots of squares :lol:). We did that for an hour or so and I explained it would be a work in progress for a while rather than an instant piece of art but I think we’ll come back to them, I certainly want to finish mine.
Whilst we were doing the pictures the children put on Watership Down but it didn’t really hold them and eventually they decided it was too nice to be inside and went out to play with the chickens.
Then it was time to pack up towels, sunsuits and some marshmallows and sticks and head along to Worthing beach to meet up with Caz, Bid, Archie and Elliot. They are the friends Davies and Scarlett went to play with fortnightly for a while when I was working. They have rented out their house and spent the last month or so in their old campervan WWOOFing around the country. They’ve already got a story to tell and have met loads of interesting and different people, including several Home Educators. They were back in Worthing for a week to catch up with Caz’s parents before heading off for another month of WWOOFing and then heading off to LA in September on the first leg of a round the world trip that will take them to Mexico, Vietnam, New Zealand and other places.
The children had a ball playing in the sea, on the sand and pebbles, clambering and just being together; the four of them get on really well. Ady joined us on his way home from work and it was just a lovely few hours on the beach. Ady got the full guided tour of their campervan and naturally it’s led us to chat about doing something similar. We’d not have the luxury of keeping our house and doing something like that so it would be a less secure for the future adventure and not something to leap into but we quite like the idea of a lot of what they’re planning.
No idea when we’ll see them again – sometime next year probably but it was really nice to see them and wish them good luck and safe travelling and we’re looking forward to farflung postcards from distant lands with news on them along their way. 🙂
We came home and I chucked the children in the shower to get all the salt, sand and seaweed off them (one point to a house with a shower to come back to I guess) before reading stories and sending them off to bed. They are weighing up how they’d feel about having very few toys with them and living in a ‘RV’ – Scarlett isn’t at all sure about not bringing all her soft toys and Davies is a bit unsure about leaving the dalek behind :lol:.
I keep pondering it, but there’s nowhere for books.
Comment by Jax — 24 July 2008 @ 6:48 pm