We have goslings! And where did the week go?

I did not mean to fall of the face of the earth for an entire week! But I have to say, the boys and I had gone through a nasty six week period (yes, six weeks straight!!!) of coming down with one illness after another other. Never have we been so sick before (thank you mid-western winter!), but then last week we were all finally feeling good, and we just didn’t want to be inside the house any longer, so we have been out literally every day, all day long, and I just never got round to posting!

It has been a good week, not only have we been feeling great, but I think spring has finally decided to make an appearance in mid-May and everything is wonderfully green and blossoming. Should I point out that our spring temperatures now are still colder than the worst of winter days in Hawaii? Or would I just sound bitter (ahem). Needless to say, we must have acclimatized somewhat, because it’s only in the 60s most days and we are out in t-shirts praising the glorious weather!

One of the wonderful things that we did this week, was watch our goslings hatch! We have been watching mama goose care for her nest for a month, sitting dutifully on them while it snowed and rained, and then on the first hot day (over 80F) we had all spring, they hatched.

Aren’t those little babies cute swimming between their mama and papa? Neighbors told us that this same mating pair come to our pond every year and usually nest in the same spot (our backyard). It will be fun to see if they come back next spring.

Hope you are all enjoying springtime too!

Preparing for Ayyám-i-há

Ayyám-i-há is just around the corner, so I thought it would be a good time to look back at last year and share some of the things we did in preparation for Ayyám-i-há and in celebration of it. For those who are new to my blog - as Bahá’ís we don’t celebrate Christmas, but we do celebrate Ayyám-i-há. This is the Bahá’í period of celebration with family and friends, a focus on charity and service projects, and gift giving. It is held on the last three days of February and the first day of March.

So here is a round up of some of our Ayyám-i-há projects and celebrations:

• Our Ayyam-i-ha advent calendar.
  
  
• Making cards to send to family and friends.
  
• Our Ayyám-i-há banner.
  
• Our virtue tree.
  
  
• Hanging flower ornaments that we used for decorations.
  
• Our handmade gift giving day tradition: handmade book and money box, Rylan’s nesting doll set made for Damian, my gifts for the boys – tool belts and mini dino puppets.

• We made Ayyám-i-há cookies together.
  
• The boys chose some of their own toys to give away to a family in need.
  
• One day of Ayyám-i-há is treasure hunt day, the hidden treasure are the boy’s presents for that day. For Rylan the clues are written, for Damian we use pictures.

Since we will keep our spring theme for Ayyám-i-há this year (after all we need some color to brighten up this LONG, white winter we are in!) we may revisit making our pipe-cleaner leis and paper flowers as fun crafts to do in preparation.

I have pulled my Ayyám-i-há box out of storage and am getting things ready to go up soon. But right now I am thinking about what to fill our advent calendar with….hmm…what special things are you planning for Ayyám-i-há?

Still here, believe it or not!

Yes, I am still here…never meant to be gone for SO long, but this move has been a tough one. I have spent my life moving all over the world, and yet this move really threw me for a loop. It wasn’t the weather (although various people from a DMV clerk to a Target associate have actually shrieked at me and called me ‘insane” for moving from Hawaii to the Midwest, and “in winter, of all times”!). We were just displaced for a long time, and had lots of things go wrong. I will not bore you with the details, but the good thing is that, after three months of being in limbo, we have settled in a nice home, in a nice neighborhood, and just spent three weeks with visiting family over the holidays. So, thankfully, life is on the right track again!

I am still unpacking boxes and hanging pictures, but the important areas are finished– including a dedicated school room upstairs (hooray!) and a dedicated play room right off the kitchen and living area, which has already seen many, many hours of play.

As to school, let’s just say, we have been un-schooling it for the past three months, for the most part. Rylan reads anything I put in front of him, so he has been feeding his mind non-stop, but the more formal learning activities have been far and few between…until this week! We are finally getting back into our school routine, with great excitement! And this time around I have a 6 year old and a 3 year old (when last I posted I was teaching a 5 and 2 year old!), which means I now have a proud, little preschooler in my midst! :)

So, I am back and it feels good, and I am looking forward to this new year. Hope you have all had a blessed start to 2011!

{our world now}

I will be back!

To all those who have asked or are wondering…I will be back, just not yet. In a whirlwind of changed plans, the kids and I, and all our stuff ended up leaving Hawaii a week ago (it was originally supposed to be mid-November)! We are staying with family, looking for a home, and trying to begin a new life in a new place. This all means we are super busy and also taking a break from school (at least in the more routine kind of way, but there is still plenty of learning going on). The boys are in cousin and grandparent heaven right now, so they are very happily preoccupied.

As soon as life develops some kind of normality again I will be back, fingers crossed it will be SOON! :)

Best birthday present

This weekend my sweet, wonderful husband chartered a helicopter to fly our family over our beautiful island in honor of my birthday! It is an amazing experience, not only to see the mountains and waterfalls up close and personal, but also for us to see the parts of the island we have never seen before because they are inaccessible by car, and the hiking trails are too dangerous to take the kids on. It was a great way for us to see the island really well before we have to say goodbye to it. The ride was a magical experience for all of us…here are some images from the tour.

{I got to sit up front, with windows all around!}

{inside the canyon}

{coastline riddled with sea caves and waterfalls tumbling straight into the ocean}

{one of our favorite beaches as seen from the air: the wave pattern is cause by the coral reef}

{more waterfalls than you can image!}

I am still here…sort of

I did not mean to disappear for such a long period of time. It is not because of a lack of things to share, I even have a bunch of half finished draft posts on various things we were doing in school before our life got turned upside down about two weeks ago! My husband was offered a promotion, and so we are moving AGAIN! We are trading our snorkel gear for snow boots and moving to the Midwest! Don’t get me started on how much we are going to miss the great weather and natural beauty of Hawaii, but in every other way this move will be better for us. For starters there are the grandparents, aunties, uncles, and cousins that my boys will have all around them…and that is no small thing for us, since it has been 14 years since I lived near any of my family and my boys have never experienced it. I am so happy that they will be able to benefit from developing those relationships. And then there is a wonderful Baha’i community, all the homeschooling resources and options, museums, zoos…and I could go on and on about all the positives of this move, but I won’t. For starters I have so much to do, and then there is the nasty cold the kids and I have. Second bad one in the last two months, total bummer. As if we want to spend our last days in Hawaii sick at home, right?

So, I am here, and I will be stopping in to share things when I am able. It may not be every week day…at least not for a while. But I will do my best.

{image from my husband’s recent raft trip around part of our island}

Geography: Asia Study

Over the past couple of weeks we have been studying Asia as a part of our general introduction into world geography (then we will go on to specific countries). Before our summer break we had just completed Africa.

We have had so much fun studying about Asia, I have to say that geography is fast becoming one of my favorite subjects to do with Rylan (and Damian joined us for many of the activities too). Here is a list of the activities we did and the resources we used:

• We read the True Book: Asia together and created a fact sheet from it. We also read parts of several country specific picture books.

• We read about children living in Asia in Children Just Like Me.
  
  
• We colored and labeled a map of Asia.
  
  
• Rylan drew pictures of some Asian animals and colored in a Japanese lion mask.
  
  
• I printed off pictures of Asian people from Google images, and Rylan cut them out and glued them onto our Asia poster, as we discussed where the people came from.
  
  
• We put together an Asian poster of all the info we collected above, to put up in our school area.

• We read folktales from various Asian countries (some are in the book list shared at the end of this post).
  
  
• We listened to Asian music (see recommendations below) and learnt how to say hello in several of the languages (a fun song to use is the “Rapp Song” on the DVD Hooray for the World! by Red Grammer).
  
  
• We ate Asian food. I made khoresh bademjoon (a Persian dish), the boys helped me make fresh humus (Israeli/Arab food), we went out to a Chinese restaurant, we made havesh polo (a Persian styled rice with carrots), and we also ate a Japanese inspired meal together.
  
  
• I put together an Asian sensory tub for the boys to play with, in rice of course! I had envisioned a lot more going into this tub, but Asian items proved hard to find on this little island!
  
  
• We made Chinese lamps and origami sea creatures. We were also going to make a Japanese kite, but didn’t get round to it with the flu bug visiting our home during that week!

• We used our homemade tangram set (tangrams originated in Asia).
  
  
• Rylan completed Asian themed math worksheets, which I shared for download here.
  
  
• Asia is of special significance to Bahá'ís, since it is the birth place of our religion (much like all the other major religions in the world), so we read stories about the beginning of our Faith, learnt about pilgrimage (which Rylan has been on, but was very young), and we also started to create a wall of pictures and facts about Bahá'í places of significance, which we will add to as a part of our “travel” through the continents.

• We had fun going down memory lane as we looked through our pictures from our seven years of life in Israel.

{setting off on a several hour camel ride through the mountains along the Red Sea…that’s Grandpa with the cap on}

Website resources:

• Asia Kids Society
  
• GEO Puzzles - Asia
  
• Printable worksheets for use with Children Just Like Me: from Jolanthe at the Homeschool Classroom

One year gone by

Yesterday we spent the evening at our county fair. We had a whole lot of fun on the rides together and then the boys won armfuls of prizes in the game area.

But the fair coming round again (it happens once a year) got me thinking about this blog, and the fact that the second post I published in this space was about spending a day at the fair. The post was dated 6 September…which means it has been almost a year since I started Nurturing the tender years. 223 posts later, here I am!

It’s been a good year. I have enjoyed meeting and getting to know so many of you wonderful people out there in the blogosphere, and sharing what I am learning in turn…here’s to another good one!

Grandpa’s mugs

My Dad is in his early 70s and just a few years ago he took up a new hobby – pottery – proving that it is never too late to start learning something new!

He now has a studio in the downstairs of their home, and against the wall he has shelves filled with what he calls his “duds”. Mostly he keeps them as samples of what the glaze combinations look like. Well, I love those shelves, and have raided them many times. One time was after he completed a batch of practice mugs, trying to figure out the right shape for a set of mugs that my Mom wanted for their home. He ended up with a bunch of too-small mugs. I snapped them up in a second!

Why you ask? Because they are perfect cups for little hands.

I am not a big fan of plastic for food use, in fact I avoid it as much as possible. I use glass and stainless steel for just about everything, including food storage in cupboards and the fridge. It is better for us and the environment. And these mugs are perfect for Damian to drink out of. They are just the right size for his hands, they are hardy, and he thinks he is super special to have exclusive rights on “Pa’s mugs”.

Time to open an Etsy store, Dad! :)

Kayaking and snorkeling in Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park and underwater preserve

We put aside a whole day of our Big Island trip for Kealakekua Bay and I am so glad we did. If you only have 2 days on this island I would say spend one in Kealakekua Bay and one in Volcanoes National Park (although I would more strongly suggest that you not limit your trip to this awesome island to only 2 days! ;) ). But these parts of our trip were undoubtedly the highlights of our week there.

{the bay}

In the morning we rented a kayak, threw all our gear into the wet bag, and set to rowing the 1 1/2 to 2 miles across this beautiful bay. I have to tell you, not a single one of my photos (much to my disappointment) show how absolutely turquoise the water was there. It was gorgeous.

{climbing into the kayak}

We canoed about half way across the bay when met with several pods of very friendly spinner dolphins. They put on quite a show for us, continually leaping up and spinning on their tails. There were also a few too cute babies in the pods who swam so close to our kayak you could reach out to touch them, it is an incredible experience to have these majestic creatures so close and in the wild.

{swimming along side us}

Needless to say, it took no encouragement for the boys to jump in and swim with them. Both boys were in awe and giddy with excitement, and should I point out that I was in awe of the fact that they seemed quite unaffected at the 20-30m depth of the water! The dolphins swam around and under them…and mom so taken with all of this wonder did not get one decent photo of it…at the time I was so absorbed I did not think too much of the camera, but afterwards I was so sad that I did not have my wits about me…oh well…next time! :)

{little Damian watching the dolphins beneath him}

{Ramtin, Rylan, and Mr. Spinner}

After spending a considerable time with the dolphins we continued to kayak to the other side of the bay. At which point you tie your kayak near the Captain Cook Monument, and there under the water is the most gorgeous underwater preserve. Pristine coral and a rainbow of fish. We could have spent all day snorkeling there.

{the area where we snorkeled}

It was a beautiful day. After we kayaked back to the shore, went to the hotel to shower and change, we took our very hungry selves out to a lovely dinner, at a lovely restaurant, and enjoyed talking about all the amazing experiences we had just shared. And not a day has gone by since then that Damian has not reminded me that he swam with dolphins…

An amazing vacation

We are back from an incredible week. We spent the week on the island of Hawaii, Hawaii (more affectionately known as “Big Island”). I cannot even begin to explain how amazing all the experiences were that we had during our time there.

It is a fantastic place to visit, the diversity is quite something to behold, you can go from pristine tropical beaches to lava fields.From snow capped mountains to dessert like terrain, to fern filled rain forests, white sand beaches to black volcanic sand beaches, and waterfalls galore.

I am going to be sharing more details on certain aspects of our trip in future posts, because they were most certainly field trip worthy for our home learning, even if they were in the guise of a holiday! But I will tell you this – we kayaked in the open ocean, swam with wild/free dolphins (they were all around us in the kayak, so we jumped in the water with them), we snorkeled and saw the most beautiful coral and fish, we swam with green sea turtles, hiked through tropical forest, across a volcano crater and through a lava tube, and we witnessed new land being formed while watching the flow of surface lava after dark.

It was a wonderful week that will definitely go down as one of my fondest memories.

And now as an aside…if any of you are planning (or ever plan to) travel to Hawaii the BEST travel guides you can invest in, and they are worth every penny, are Andrew Doughty's ultimate guidebooks.

Taking a short break

I am going to be taking a short break from this space…just a few days to spend some much needed relaxed time with my three (two of them rather little) men. I will be back on Monday with much to share! Can’t wait! :)

Preparing your children for the arrival of a new baby

First let me start by saying we are not expecting another baby, in fact, unless God decides to send us a little surprise, I think our family is pretty much complete as is! :) That said, I get asked this question a lot by friends – they want to know how I prepared Rylan for Damian’s arrival. So, I thought it was time to put it here, on the blog so I always have an easy to find reference on the subject.

I believe if you prepare your older child(ren) for the arrival of a new baby, the new baby will be born already loved by their older sibling. And jealously in the older sibling, as well as other difficult behaviors that could manifest themselves with such a dramatic change in family dynamics, can be kept to a minimum (this is not only wonderful for the children, but also makes life easier for the parents who are adjusting to having another person to care for and probably on very little sleep!).

So, here are some of the things we did to prepare Rylan for Damian’s arrival (I say some, because I am pretty sure I don’t remember everything we did, even so this is a long post!):

• In Israel (where both of my boys were born) they monitor pregnancies very closely, so we knew from very early on, about 14-16 weeks that Damian was doing well and was definitely a boy…with that knowledge, we shared the news with Rylan, so he would have plenty of time to get used to the idea. We also chose Damian’s name relatively soon after it was confirmed that he was a boy and started calling him by it, so he felt like a part of the family already.
• In addition, to using his name, we included Damian in various parts of family life, for example, during prayer time he was prayed for. Rylan, without our prompting, would lean close to my belly and sing a prayer for Damian every night, “So he can hear me!”, he told us. He always sang the same prayer, “O God! Educate these children. These children are the plants of Thine orchard, the flowers of Thy meadow, the roses of Thy…”, by ‘Abdu’l-Baha. I have to say that, to this day, when Damian is crying and really upset, if Rylan sings this prayer to him, he stops crying, listens, and completely calms down! It was immensely helpful when he was a small baby, and it made Rylan feel very special that he had his own, very effective way of calming Damian down. It also made Rylan feel loved by his brother before Damian was able to express himself.
• I involved Rylan in the process of my preparations – I spoke to him about it, answered his questions, took him shopping with me and let him help me choose stuff that we needed for Damian. He helped me go through the old baby clothes and toys (during this process I called these things “clothes and toys for Damian”, I did not point out that they were his old things, I felt like that may cause unnecessary possessiveness over things he had long forgotten about, since they had been put away for some time).
• We worked on various things that would help Rylan become more independent before Damian arrived, to reduce his frustration when I couldn’t help because I was busy with Damian and his independence would also make things easier for me in those early days where my focus would have to be on Damian. Things like learning to get dressed by himself, getting small snacks for himself from the kitchen, and toilet training. I made sure to start all of this learning early in the pregnancy, with the hopes that it would all be well-learnt and a normal part of life, long before Damian’s arrival. I would not recommended making any big life changes for your older child right before or directly after the arrival of a new sibling, if it can be avoided.
• We read books together about pregnancy and new babies, there are lots of great age appropriate books on these subjects. You can see my recommendations at the end of this post. I also prepared myself by reading various books, one of my favorites was Siblings Without Rivalry.
• I bought Rylan a newborn baby doll (bought from a teacher resource centre, because I wanted a true to life doll), I also bought a little set of baby care toys (diapers, bibs, pacifier, creams, baby soap, etc) to go with the doll. We played with it, showing him what it would be like to care for a baby, how to hold him, change diapers, burp him, we spoke about breastfeeding and how much he would sleep at first, and not be able to play or talk, etc. Right before Damian was born I set up a baby changing centre for his doll right next to Damian’s diaper changing table, so that while I was caring for Damian, Rylan could care for his baby. I also let him pull a stool over and help me with Damian, if he wanted to.
• At some stage before Damian was born (a few months) Ramtin and I started making very gentle and subtle remarks about how all the toys would be shared, pointing out as well that Rylan would get to try out all the baby toys we were washing and getting ready for Damian. Somehow this worked really well for us. By the time Damian was born, Rylan was already thinking about the toys in our home as being more “family” toys that we all shared and played with, so he was not possessive over them when it came time for Damian to play with them too. Of course, he has always had his own special cuddlies that he sleeps with and the like, which are his special toys.
• Before Damian was born I went out and bought a small present for Rylan, which I wrapped, and put in my hospital bag. When Rylan came for his first visit to meet Damian, Damian “gave” him the present. Ramtin helped Rylan make a welcome card for Damian, which he brought to the hospital to give to his brother. I also had a framed picture of Rylan on my hospital night stand, which I showed him when I was packing and we discussed how much I would miss him and think about him while I was away.

{Rylan showing Damian the card he made for him}

• Family arrived a couple of weeks before Damian’s birth, so Rylan could get used to being with them and having them care for him as well, so that he was comfortable with them when it was time for us to go to the hospital. Ramtin took several days off work to be home with Rylan while I was in hospital (I was there for two days), and to give Rylan extra attention the first few days I was back home. Rylan visited with us both days at the hospital for long periods of time, and was with us when we brought Damian home (I would have loved for us to stay together at the hospital all the time, but there was no allowance for this, all the rooms in the maternity ward were shared, so families were only allowed to be there during visiting hours!).
• And one little note about the time since Damian joined us: whenever we feel like Rylan needs a little extra love and attention from us, we let him stay up for a special movie or game night. It seems we only need to do this every once and a while and it works wonders.

Learning About Africa Part 1: the reminiscing

We have begun to learn about the different continents as a general introduction to world geography, before moving onto specific countries, and we started with Africa. We have been having fun with the African theme for the past couple of weeks now. In another post I will share with you what we have done, but first a little reminiscing...see although I was born and spent my first 6 years in the US, I grew up in and did all my schooling in Southern Africa (well, except for 2 years in middle school which I did in Israel, and my masters degree, which I completed in Switzerland...but those are altogether different stories). So, I thought it would be fun to start this section out by taking a little walk down memory lane with Rylan, so he could see what our life was like in Africa. My husband also grew up Southern Africa, and we spent the first five years of our married life there before moving to Israel.

Rylan loved looking at all the pictures, especially since my husband and I spent a great deal of time in animal reserves, and Rylan loves the animals! I thought it would be fun to share some of his favorite photos with you. See the mama and baby giraffees behind me? We were walking inside a private reserve owned by the company my husband worked for. It was just a 5 minute drive from our home!

Playing with lion cubs - this was in another private reserve about 20 minutes from our home. In the picture below, one of the lion cubs jumped up on Ramtin's back and started licking the back of his neck, which was red for two days afterwards, their tongues are like rough sandpaper!

Me holding little 6 week old Lucky, a lion cub who had been rejected by his mother because he was the runt of the litter. He was raised by people until old enough to be returned to the wild. We got to watch a lot of his growing up. We often used to go have a Sunday brunch at this reserve, and he would sit under the table at our feet while we ate, and let me tell you, not a single time did we return home without Ramtin missing a shoe lace! Lucky used to love chewing on those shoe laces. :)
Rylan thought this one was really funny...not so much at the time...a bull elephant charging our car!

We are not the only ones who have been in African animal reserves, however, little Rylan has gone on his own safari. When we has two and half we went back for a visit, and made sure to take him to Kruger National Park for a week. He loved seeing the animals up close in the wild. This baboon jumped on the back of our car, and Rylan put his hand on the glass, and the baboon put his hand against Rylan's through the glass (I enjoyed that moment and forgot the camera, this shot was just before that happened).

Thank you for walking down memory lane with us!