Kancil Story Writing competition entry by Moomintroll

Kancil and the Banana Tree House

Once there was a Kancil - a small, smart and very fast mouse deer.  He was meditating under a banana tree. It was a lovely warm day and Kancil was relaxing after having a cucumber lunch from the farmer’s field.

Just then Mr. Tiger was standing a few yards in front of Kancil.  He was a bit nervous that a tiger was standing in front of him.

Mr. Tiger came closer and he said, “I’ve got you Kancil. You won’t get away now!”

Kancil replied, “If you eat me I will be turned into a little piece of cardboard by Prophet Suleiman for not taking care of his crunchy, tasty, luscious, succulent, mouth watering meat pie, in his banana tree house.”

Mr. Tiger said, “Where is this house?”

“Just behind me,” replied Kancil. “And this is the key,” he added, showing Mr. Tiger a small stick.

 “Let me in now!” roared Mr. Tiger. “If I can’t eat you then let me have that pie!”

“Ok, Ok, you can have the pie.”

Kancil gave him the key to the house and said “Go inside, lock yourself in so no one sees you eating the meat pie and throw the key out the window.  I’ll take the key into the forest and when you can’t see me anymore then you can start eating the meat pie.”

“Alright, alright! Just run away now Kancil.”

Then Mr. Tiger started climbing over the tree, looking for the key hole. When he got to the top of the tree he got stuck and all tangled up.

Kancil ran away giggling because there was no such thing as Kancil being turned into cardboard by the Prophet or a meat pie in the banana tree house.  He had tricked that silly Mr. Tiger into getting stuck in the banana tree!

The End.

MuBoMaStu

It's June already and winter is here at last. What better time for a new Brian St Learning Centre Learning Plan?  Winter is not my favourite time of year - it seems to bring out the worst in us - it's dark alot of the time, sometimes the sun barely breaks though the clouds, we're feeling lazy and unmotivated. All we want to do is sit in front of the heater, look at iPods and computers and eat all day long.  And we've all been sick. Blecchh!  
Well, as the saying goes "A change is as good as a holiday", so we've ditched the Table Time, the workbooks and the maths stuff and replaced it with MuBoMaStu:  Music, Books, Making Stuff.
The girls and I have spent most or our days playing piano, cornet and drums, reading books for the annual home ed readathon, and making things with our needles, hooks and rainbow looms.
Our first project was to yarn bomb the letterbox:

Ok, so I did do most of the crochet and knitting, but the girls helped dress the letterbox and the Snork Maiden crocheted alot of the metres of chain needed to wrap the curly metal bits. Plans are afoot for more yarnbombing.
Getting everyone reading again is proving difficult. I'm not sure why but it's like they've forgotten how or that they are out of practice. Signing up for the readathon has helped a little with motivation, and read alouds are a favourite once again.
We've also been watching alot of classic movies and docos which is a lovely way to while away a rainy afternoon. We started the BBC's The Human Body series  and  I plan to make Mondays 'Campfire Day' where we will watch and (hopefully) discuss a range of thoughtful short films from around the world via Campfire.
So, I think our new plan for the winter season should be a really relaxing yet re-energising time for all of us.

Last night was Just Brass' end of term concert. Both girls performed solos this time. The Snork Maiden even had her own backing band.

MineCrafting

Moomintroll has a passion for Minecraft, as many young people do nowadays.  I set her a challenge the other day: Could she build our house on Minecraft?  Well, after a short time talking about how our house is constructed and discussing what was important enough to include in the rooms (the tv and couch were a must) Moomintroll built it. It's pretty accurate and I particularly like the way she made the shower.
Here's a short movie I made of her talking us through our home.

After a trip to Kryal Castle recently both girls have been designing their own Minecraft castles. They are also working on rollercoasters, hotels, restaurants and farms.

After many months of searching for a healthier Nutella substitute recipe and many failed experiments with said recipes I have finally found a winner! And I made it up on my own out of sheer exasperation.  It should have known it would be easy but as usual I got sucked in by all the flashy looking blogs and websites out there showing off their beautifully presented superfood laden creations with all natural, organic, gluten/dairy/sugar/everything else - free ingredients.  I love spending time sifting through all those blogs getting wonderful ideas but sometimes the pictures are so intimidating and the instructions are so complex that it's easy to forget that I can just do it myself without a professional camera, lengthy explanations and pretentious looking Mason Jars.
So this is my recipe:
150g packet of hazelnuts
175g dark choc bits (I used Coles' Homebrand ones)
a slurp of oil. I used Rice Bran Oil as it's what I have in the cupboard and I didn't think extra virgin olive oil would taste right.

Throw it all into Vera the Vitamix who will kindly grind it all up into a lovely dark chocolately paste.
Moomintroll is happy with her chocolate sandwiches now and that's all that matters to me.

Rainbow Looming

The latest craze has been here at our place for some time now. The Snork Maiden's skills are getting better everyday, and I do mean everyday!  She spends hours in her room with You Tube and her looms and our house is littered with stray rubber bands. Moomintroll also enjoys looming, but not as much as her sister does.

L-R: Rose Garden; Beaded Fishtail; Chevron; Butterfly (own design)

L-R: Triple Single Starburst (own design); Triple Single; Zippy Chain

L-R: Ten Pin Dragon Scale; Sailor's Pinstripe; Triple Fishtail

After mastering bracelet designs and coming up with her own patterns, The Snork Maiden moved on to bigger and better things.

L-R: Snow White, Cinderella, Princess Aurora

L-R:  Someone; Elsa and Anna (from Frozen)

just a bunch of people

more people just hanging around

another person and Ponyo (from the movie Ponyo)

The Simpsons

iPod covers

pencil toppers; Penguin, frog, Hello Kitty, duck (?)

a bird, Jake from Adventure Time, a Seussian Barbaloot

more bracelets

more bracelets. The THINK bracelets help us to remember to speak nicely to others. Is what you want to say Thoughtful, Helpful, Intelligent, Necessary and Kind?  If not then don't say it!

purse

more bracelets..

DNA Double Helix bracelets. These were custom designed to Dr P's specifications.

and some more bracelets..

and finally....

headbands for unruly hair.

So you see, there's no time for maths books and art lessons. There is way too much Looming to do!

Public Transport Adventure No.2 - The Gold Coast!

We're enjoying our Public Transport Adventures so much that we decided to go all the way to the Gold Coast. Well, not all the way of course. Just to the airport and back again.
Firstly a train to Southern Cross station at 7.30am, then the fantastic Skybus to Tullamarine at 8.20 am.
We arrived at SeaWorld Resort around 2pm after a two hour flight and a one hour bus ride along the Gold Coast.
For the next three and a half days we swam, rollercoasted and waterslided our way through SeaWorld, Wet'n'Wild and Movie World. The weather was glorious everyday.

Sea World Resort

Sea World

Movie World

Movie World

We weren't the only ones who had a great holiday. Sniff enjoyed staying with Grandma and the Fluffies (as we now call Hazel and Cuddlepie) spent their time at the lovely Clarabel College Fluffy Palace.  Many thanks to our very kind babysitters!

Public Transport Adventure No. 1

Tecoma to Belgrave.
Caught a train to Tecoma, then walked along the rail trail to Belgrave. Bus to Upper Ferntree Gully then train back home.
Kookaburras, Pied Currawongs, giant ants, helicopter tree seeds, morning glory, kangaroo apple, crickets, gooey chocolate brownies, crazy bus driver, skater dude, rottweiler with a bandaged paw, painted power poles, yarn bombing, incense, prayer flags, loom bands, op shopping.

Back in the swing

I really love this time of the year. Last year is in the past and there are so many exciting possibilities looming in the future.  A new year brings with it the most exciting thing of all - a new schedule! I'm a big fan of plans and schedules and time tables and even though we often don't stick to them religiously it's comforting to know that when things are going pear-shaped and out of control we can look at our schedule again and be reminded of what we could be doing and when. The Snork Maiden especially is liking having a time table and is suddenly very eager to do her work and learn new things.

We kicked off our new year at the annual Not Back To School Party at a water theme park not too far from home. About 250 other homeschoolers were there taking over the park. It was a great day to relax and have fun with friends.

a ride that looked pretty tame but really wasn't!

driving a mini car

racing down head first!

The time came to get stuck into our work.  I won't go into the details of our time table but it mostly consists of Table Time, Indonesian language, the usual maths/English stuff and our project for the year: The Middle Ages.
Table Time is a new thing I've come up with after reading many other blogs and their versions of Circle Time, where families spend time together learning scripture verses, prayers and/or poetry and copywork.  I have adapted this into Table Time where we spend every morning choosing and writing out an inspirational quote and decorating the page, then learning a poem.  At the moment we're using one of my very favourite childhood books called "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Robert Louis Stevenson.  It's a Golden Press publication with beautiful handstitched artwork by Virginia Tiffany.

These are some of the images from two poems the girls have learnt so far: At The Seaside and The Swing.

We choose uplifting quotes from "101 Moments of Joy and Inspiration" by Meredith Gaston.
Both girls really love starting the day this way - settling our minds and being creative puts us all in the right mood for the rest of the day and they are easily able to move onto other studies without any fuss.

Table Time on the deck

Moomintroll's work from today

The Snork Maiden drawing happily

one of mine

Indonesian studies are taking off at last, with the help of these free podcasts from the Learning Indonesian website. They feature a native speaker who has a beautiful melodic voice - that helps alot when learning a new language.
Our big project for the year is the Middle Ages. As it was Chinese New Year last weekend I thought we'd begin with Ancient China. So far we've read about the Tang Dynasty, read poetry by Li Bai, Wang Wei and other famous poets, learned about inventions from that time period including toilet paper and the first moveable type (woodblock printing) and explored Confucianism - a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and local Chinese beliefs and practices.

Buddhist shrine at our local Chinese New Year festival.

the Snork Maiden found her lookalike

having a go at woodblock printing, using polystyrene blocks. It proved challenging carving out the letters backwards!

 Confucius says...

"I hear and I forget.  I see and I remember.  I do and I understand." 

                               "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."   

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;

A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.

We never tire of looking at each other - 

Only the Mountain and I.

Li Po