The essential Beijing experience

We have had the most taxing day for the children in China yet, ushering them right the way through the entire Forbidden City, the former residence of Ming and Ching dynasty emperors on a mildly hot and extremely sunny day. It is only when one goes about Beijing with young children that one realises how much there is really to walk, even from one corner of Tiananmen Square to the other. They have indeed done well, being cajoled with frequent moments of rest, rolling bottles of mineral water down the slopes of the palace buildings and indirectly discovering how rain water is drained, through hundreds of stone-carved hornless dragon outlets. They used the side of palace building stairs as slides and chased sparrows during spare moments, and we had a lengthy discussion between me and the 5 year old on politics. Here were some of the things we talked about:

Why do the people no longer want an imperial system and an emperor nowadays?
Why is it important not to run away but to defend one's land?
The importance of a country's defence ability
What is a good emperor/ruler as opposed to a bad one

It seemed to me that the size of the palace highlighted the ridiculousness of a country focussing so much on one person in the past. Louis XIV springs to my mine though - the heavenly realm 天朝大國 needed an imposing residence to assert its importance.

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Travelling with the brood on the high speed train to Beijing

We woke up nice and early by our current jet-lagged standards, insisted packing and made the 11 o'clock high speed 高鐵 train from Shanghai to Beijing. Thanks to the hospitality of well connected friends we have been chauffeured around Shanghai for the past week and today is the first time we are sharing public transport with our compatriots. Frankly reading this week's Xinmin Weekly of Shanghai (新民周刋) made me glad of this little privilege. Beggars readily exposing their maimed limbs for sympathy, rubbish and children weeing on the Shanghai metro as mentioned in their feature article 公共空間誰的地盤 (Whose space is public space?) do not entice me to take two under sixes on the Shanghai metro by myself, least of all jet-lagged and at rush hour, when my better half is at work meetings.

I may be somewhat ashamed of myself for being timid and over-protective of my children in their education about China, but I reckon these things have to be taken slowly but surely. Coming out of their relative cocoon of extremely educational and child-friendly museums and summer holiday entertainment, children can be over-excited about a country that may under-deliver touristically day-to-day basis. I wanted to see Shanghai Art museum, my 5 year old wanted to go back to the hotel for his holiday daily swim. Hubby wanted to see Shanghai Museum, yet the boys were yearning for a playground, hard to come by in central Shanghai. You want to show them the bund? They'd rather go back to he hotel to watch Madagascar.

China has a great deal to offer and I have forgotten that this is the first time we are here with children. There will be a time for them to rough it with the rest of the Chinese people, but for the time being, small to medium doses of Chinese culture coupled with a little of what they fancy is what we need.

The advantage of taking the high speed train to Beijing is the ability to watch the changing landscape as we race northwards, while marvelling at the speed display at each end of every train compartment. Being with other ordinary Chinese locals on our first high speed experience merits a day in itself.

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One typical Friday

I have to say today was a day when things came together fairly well and the sunshine after weeks of rain helped enormously! Fridays are normally days when we have no set plans apart from possibly a museum or gallery visit related to our current topics of study or interest, or sometimes just a nice day to spend a half day with daddy who takes a bit of time off work to enjoy the best of London life.

Today we had a relaxing morning getting through some chilled work, first in the children's room and then a newly kitted out study. Violin practice happened straight after a hearty breakfast, which was a wonderful thing considering my eldest, who was the one practising, was in top form after a good night's sleep. Both my younger child and I snuggled up seated on top the bedcovers. Listening to the violin music which was coming along very nicely. A gold star was rewarded for my eldest's labours rather effortlessly today!

Then we faffed around in the study trying to work the new state-of-the-art computer. Maths Whizz web-based tutoring failed to launch as we didn't have Flash installed, so my older one had to delay finishing his initial assessment to gauge his 'Maths age' a.k.a. Maths level. He happily opted to work through his Activity Bible while I downloaded a new, recommended Britannica Kids app onto my iPhone for learning about dinosaurs for my 3 and a half year old.

Packed lunch once prepared, we went on our way to the London Fire Brigade Museum to attend a booked 'school group visit' organised by another home ed parent. On a regular basis individual home ed parents would search high and low and book a 'school group' visit or special activity according to their own child's current learning an invite other home edders to join in, mostly only at a small cost. We were blessed with brilliant sunny weather so the children played with other home educated children in the playground opposite the museum before we were due to go in. The visit that ensued was duly informative, being mostly on the Great Fire of London of 1666. They also learned about making a fire plan and had an introduction to the fire engines through the ages, and finished off with every child who wanted to having a go at putting on a firefighter's costume.

That wasn't the end to our venture south of the river. The aforementioned playground opposite attracted a number of home ed families after the visit had concluded, and we gradually gravitated towards the even more exciting adventure playground which opened at 3pm ahead of school children's arrival.
This turned out to be a great time for the children to play and get to know each other better, in wild games pretending to be pirates of all sorts of nationalities and making a fire with the playground staff. We home ed parents were equally happy to chat and swap notes, especially since the planned museum visit intended for KS1 students drew a crowd of patents with children of similar ages.

On the way home my oldest commented on the Monument - which happens to have been erected in commemoration of the Great Fire of London and the ensuing rebuilding of the city- as we passed it on the bus. Looks like we are going back into town to walk the 160 steps up to the top of the Monument!

By the end of the day, my oldest had successfully tackled the entirety of the Maths Whizz assessment and done some more work online, finished his Chinese writing ahead of Chinese Saturday school tomorrow morning, and well ready to snore away in bed.

We the parents went off worthily to the parent talk run by our Suzuki method music centre on the topic of music practice. Suzuki Method and home education are made for each other, I concluded by the end of the evening - but that is another blog entry entirely.

A normal home-edding Tuesday

I thought I would start blogging about the children's progress through chronicling what we do over the course of a day. I'm sure there are things that I won't have picked up or noticed in the children's lives, but I'll do the best that I can!

This morning evolved into a very nice, productive morning after a bit of a bad start on my part, as my back was playing up. After breakfast I sent the children to the garden because they were getting on my nerves, but things soon changed for the better after we got a little fresh air outdoors.

I first decided to continue my mission of culling the rosemary beetles that have all but decimate our rosemary bush. This was a new piece of information that I learnt from our walk in the local cemetery-cum-nature reserve on Sunday's bug -themed family walk. I was told that rosemary beetles can cause havoc to rosemary plants and one is allowed to kill (I prefer the term cull) them by picking them off the branches and starving them in jam jars.

Being Chinese and generally a little squeamish about certain insects, I used chopsticks and asked my younger one to spot them for me, and he enjoyed looking at them once they were wriggling with their last breath in the jam jar. We then spotted a rosemary beetle falling onto a spider web, so I duly expounded on the goodness of spiders in eating unwanted insects while the rosemary beetle stayed entrapped, so the children now think spiders are a good thing. My older boy watered the strawberries with his water gun, and then it was time to go inside as rain seemed to be imminent.

We had had a fun time yesterday, during the rare London heat wave, doing crafts on the grass in the sweltering sun. I have to confess that craft is not beyond me, but my first instinct would always be picking up a book or some knitting or sewing for fun. Because of the disruption in routine, having moved twice in a year and a long trip away in Asia Pacific, craft was the easiest thing to drop off our home ed activity radar, well before everything else, and the last thing to come back, just out of habit. So I was glad that the boys are getting into cutting and pasting and painting again after a good, long break.

This morning then, my older boy suggested doing some more craft first outdoors, but once forced indoors we settled ourselves down for some crafty action. One painted while the other made and painted a bus with an egg case, and all that time I was preparing a dish for shared lunch at Tuesday home education group in our local adventure playground. I reserved some seeds from the peppers in case they fancied planting them later on.

In the adventure playground where the home education group takes place things were a lot more fluid. Generally a lot of playing indoors and outdoors, including in the soft play area where the older one built and made stories. Parents are around to supervise while socialising with each other, at the same time allowing the children to play, catch up with their friends or make use of the toys and play equipment. The older one was keen to do some reading just before lunch, and after lunch, while rained poured down outside, the younger one sat on my knees and read for a while. The latter had already made a butterfly with sweets wrappers when he first arrived. We parents chose to read, play with the children or assist in their activities, chat (catching-up and more serious exchanges on home ed matters) and chill as we pleased.

'Why does God make thunderstorms?' my older one asked. I said it would be something to look up together in his Science Encyclopaedia.

Now as they sit asleep in the car after their day's work, I look forward to the prospect of either a chickpea and chorizo stew, or a Greek lamb shoulder soup, both prepared this morning during the children's free-play time after breakfast. It might be chocolate cookie making time before dinner time though if they wake up early enough.

Celebrating Chinese New Year as an overseas family

'The first day of Chinese New Year is almost over and I am already running out of steam!' - I said on Thursday, and here we are, on the third day of the Year of the Rabbit, and we have all but forgotten that it's New Year.

We probably bloomed too early - to use the analogy normally reserved for daffodils that are open too early only to have had it when CNY finally comes. We've had a go at making homemade turnip cake at home for the first time, as in previous years we were actually in Asia to celebrate the festival and there was hardly the need to make anything at home because of the abundant choice in the shops. My 4-year-old did his bit and grated a good amount of the turnip we needed, but went off quickly to play with his aeroplanes.  The recipe was a cut-out from a Chinese magazine years ago when I first got married.  Never did I think that I'd be establishing a family tradition years later by making it with my children.  Here goes - with all the taels and catties (Chinese measurements) stripped out plus a little twist added by my mum:

Chinese Turnip Cake
- 800g Turnip, grated and liquid squeezed out (long type turnip from Asian or Japanese/Chinese/Korean shops in the UK)
- a teaspoon of sugar
- 160g 'Jim Mai Fun' white rice flour (from Chinese shops)
- 20g 'Deng Meen' wheat starch (a type of Chinese flour, also from Chinese shops)
- one and a half to two Chinese preserved sausages, 'Lap Cheung' pre-steamed to cook for 10 mins (from Chinese shops)
- a handful of dried shrimps, pre-soaked in water for 10 mins
- a stalk of salad onion, chopped into small pieces
- 7-8 shallots, chopped small
- 500 ml hot water or chicken stock (I had to use Chicken Bovril because I had run out of everything else!)
- preferably a non-stick saucepan

Method
1. Put a teaspoon of sugar in the turnip to take away the aftertaste. Drain the dried shrimps of the water and reserve for later. Fry the dried shrimps and Chinese sausage with the shallots until soft and add the grated turnip until all turns soft and turnip turned transparent. Add the salad onions and stir into the mixture.
2. Add the flour and stir so that it is well mixed in with the moist turnip mixture.  This stage is similar to the 'roux' stage of making a bechamel sauce.
3. Slowly add the hot water or stock to the mixture and stir to make it into an even paste.
4. Transfer the paste into a heat proof dish that you can fit into a large saucepan, with a gap for steam to come through.  Ideally one ought to buy a Chinese metal steam rack that are like metal legs that prop up a dish for steaming food.  Pop the dish of turnip paste on the metal steam rack and steam the turnip cake for at least 40 mins.
5. The cake is thoroughly cooked if you push a skewer through the middle and it comes out clean.
6. Allow the cake to cool and cut into 3/4 inch slices.  Serve warm or reheat by frying on a pan with a little oil until slightly golden.

Enjoy!

Academic research to settle wobbly knees - on starting home education

I am really excited about starting learning concurrently with my two little ones (who are actually screaming at each other as I write). It is as much a process for me to learn how to facilitate their learning, as learning new things that I ought to have learned at school (human biology was never my strong point!). There is no shame attached to what I'm about to say - it was only a matter of days ago when I learnt the English word 'platelet' as its equivalent in Chinese, which I had known since I was a child. And that was because I was reading the blood issue of 'Okido' kids' magazine with my 4 year old.

While I have been through higher education, discovering my own ability to self-teach for a set purpose without following a pre-designed, accredited course is a first. For my children to become autonomous learners, I believe, is a key factor for me to home educate my children at least for a while, if not throughout their school years. I would like them to learn to speak and write in my mother tongue, as Chinese is becoming and is likely to be equip a 21st century person well. There is a sentimental dimension of my wanting to be able to converse with my children in my own language and for them to be able to reply in the same language - not only can they get to know their extended family (who mostly speak Chinese) more intimately, knowing the Chinese language will also help them understand their ethnic culture in a way that surpasses what can be appreciated by overseas-born Chinese children who are unable to read in the language. Indeed, there is much that is 'lost in translation'. A die-hard fan of ancestry programmes like the BBC's 'Who Do You Think You Are?', I think that there is much to be said about the enriching experience of knowing where one comes from and how one connects with the historical past, either in local history, national history, or as a tiny little part of world events. Knowing the Chinese language has to be part of this enriching experience of knowing where one comes from.

As for me, the academic challenge of understanding educational research into various styles of home education, and the practicalities of bringing home education into reality, is rather a daunting but welcoming one. I almost don't know where to start - learning styles of children, Steiner education, Mason education, Summerhill ... it's a whole load to learn and sift out for our own educational purposes. And here I am - having just discovered an extra 10 newly joined member e-mails sitting in my inbox from the Kent and London Home Educators' E-group. Happy reading to me!!

There's nothing better than starting at the beginning. Paula Rothermel, phD., wrote her doctoral thesis on home education in the UK and I have just browsed through her shorter articles. She produced surprising findings on the number of less educated parents choosing to home educate, when the stereotypical home ed parent (at least in my mind until fairly recently) is the middle class well educated professional family that can afford to live on one income or two part-time incomes combined. Heartening to know that home educated children do better than their reception age peers in their first year of 'formal education'. More to follow.

On the verge of a new adventure

I wouldn't have thought that having two young children under 4 would compell me to read online research articles and academic books. But as life (not fate!) will have it the question of how best to home educate the children has made me look closely at the pedagogy of the arts in early years education.

Now, is it kosher for a home educating mother to look at research materials based on the classroom setting? The dilemma that still troubles me, if only a little, is the burst of creative discussion that a group of young children can have which can contribute towards interesting learning situations. But in truth I am not confident that it is to be found in every primary school classroom the majority of the time. Another objection that I often hear from well meaning people is how home educating parents could be depriving children of socialisation available in schools. To that I would say, how did children use to learn and make friends before the age of state education? Large families, playing with neighbours' children and spending time with non-peers was much more likely. Nowadays it is little valued the act of children learning from trustworthy adults other than their own parents, it seems, unless they are paid to do the job. How about youngsters
volunteering at the local city farm or helping their parents with visiting the sick or the vulnerable in the local community? Surely that is not inferior to children being ferried from school to afterschool class, or worse, from class to class on weekends? There are more learning spaces than classes alone.

Anyway it is on the premise about finding out more about early years education in art and the arts that I googled for academic articles. This seems to be almost as fascinating as watching my children reach their own little epiphanies almost on a daily basis. Being able to dip into existing research into education that would feed into my practice with my children is such a joy! While I don't think only trained teachers (as I am one) can do a good job of home education (as I often hear from people who are reassured of my professional background), to me personally it adds another dimension to our joint adventure together as mother and sons. It is not simply an academic challenge but also a practical one - how do I translate what I read into something that serves my children well? We shall see!