Archive Posts Selection

This is a selection of archive posts from around 2005-2008, originally posted on my Multiply blog, and my Svengleska Hemskolan on UK Blogger. The original dates are lost due to the way that the data was saved.

Barbary Pirates

Our read-aloud for the younger children at the moment is “Doctor Dolittle” by Hugh Lofting. It’s absurdly politically incorrect, so I’m having to edit a lot as I go along, but lots of fun! The bizarre adventures seem to just appeal to young children’s sense of the ridiculous! On Friday we found our living room full of car-seats as Daddy was using the car as a van for the day… Mummy was horrified, but the children quickly took stock of the situation and saw that it made a great pirate ship/ bus/ islands in the pacific etc. Hours of fun!

Motor-Biker Becomes Spider-Man-Boy

We have a ton of birthdays occurring over the festive season! My Dad’s before Hanukkah, my nephew’s on 25th December, Motor-biker’s on 2nd, my best friend’s on the 5th January and then our uncle’s on the 13th.

It’s always a little difficult to manage to get what they want in time, because I always forget that the shops will be closed! But this year Motor-biker only wanted one thing: to be Spiderman!

This time, it was quite easy, and my does he look cute!

* Edit: we have scoured through our photo archives to find a pic of Motor-Biker as Spider-Man, but no joy. I can’t believe there never was any photo evidence, but it seems to be doing a very good job of hiding itself now.

Languages, Shmanguages!

We were invited to join one of our homeschool groups’ German classes last week, which really pleased me because I had planned to start looking at German this term.

My intention with languages has always been to give the children a ‘taste’ so that they can get a feel for a language and then maybe choose to take it up later. We’ve tried Swedish (sadly much less successfully than I had hoped), Spanish and German previously with no real interest shown. On the other hand, we’ve picked up Latin and Hebrew which have both proven to be very popular with all the children (and Dragon-tamer showed some initial interest in Greek, but we haven’t pursued it).

Dragon-tamer has asked at various times to try Japanese and Icelandic, but I have had to put him off for the time being. Icelandic I know from trying to teach myself, as well as a year in Old Norse during my Scandinavian studies degree course at UCL, and let me tell you that Icelandic is comparable to Latin in its complexity. We might give it a go one of these days, but there is a real scarcity of good materials available in the UK for learning Icelandic.

So anyway, now that we’ve signed up for German and said we’ll definitely be going again, I got phone call telling me that the Hebrew classes have started up again.

(((sigh)))

We have tried several different Hebrew classes, but none of them have been quite ideal – the German class was so wonderfully geared to children (and mixed age range children at that), whereas the Hebrew was aimed at adults and the children were getting nothing out of it, plus the fact that the last one we tried was held at someone’s house meant firstly that the room wasn’t big enough to sit in a way which would encourage learning, and secondly there was more time spent chatting than learning. Perhaps I sound miserable and unfriendly, but honestly I just don’t have time for it with homeschooling.

So as it stands, we’re going for German and we’ll have to make do with my amateur teach-as-you-learn method of Hebrew classes at home. I like it better that way really. That way we can concentrate on Dragon-tamer’s Bar Mitzvah* portion at the same time as teaching the little ones their alef-bet, and everyone’s happy (we hope).

* Edit: Dragon-Tamer decided not to pursue a Bar Mitzvah. (Although I do have some Jewish heritage, let’s just say it’s complicated, and although Dragon-Tamer still identifies as ‘Jewish-ish’, they are not religious).

Archive Post: Sommarstängt

This is a summer post, I thought you might enjoy during these long, dark days of winter.

I’d have to date this post, from my old blog Svengelska Hemskolan, to around 2006 when for a year or so we joined the local Swedish cultural and language school (in Milton Keynes) for bilingual kids on a Saturday morning.

Svenska skolan has finished up for the summer now, and by all accounts, it seems that most of our Swedish friends have somehow wangled enough holiday to spend the whole summer in Sverige!

When we lived in Stockholm we were amazed by the amount of shops which closed up completely for the summer, content to lose any potential tourist business, while their owners spent the summer in their sommarstugor in the Skärgården, or abroad. That would be completely unheard of in the UK! Of course there is no direct translation of sommarstängt in English because we don’t do it (close for the summer), as far as I know!

The most disappointing implication of the sommarstängt culture was that, when we spent the summer on Lidingö, we found that our local library was sommarstängt the whole summer, which meant we had to take long bus trips to the main library in Lidingö town. No great hardship, I grant you, but irritating nonetheless!

Perhaps it all boils down to jealousy? I rather fancy taking a couple of months off myself. I’d probably have to take the children along though. Hmm. Not much point really, might as well stay put.

Vocabulary:

Svenska – Swedish

Skola – School, definitive (the) school = skolan

Sverige – Sweden

Sommarstugor (plural of sommarstuga) – holiday cabins

Skärgåden – the Swedish Archipelago

Lidingö – a beautiful island just outside Stockholm, where we lived the second summer of our year and a bit in Sweden

Sommarstängt- Closed for the Summer

p.s. This edited archive post is part of my commitment to write 50,000 words in November for NaNoWriMo (normally reserved for novel writing)!

Archive Post: Lunch på Ikea

Hej!
We had a fun morning at Ikea with a Swedish friend. It was horribly busy, but after we’d finished lunch, my friend showed me the shortcuts through the store so we could escape without dragging the children all the way round.

We reminisced about all the things we missed from Sweden (that you can’t buy at Ikea!): päronsoda and sockerdricka are my two favourites, but I consoled myself with a couple of cans of Kopparberg non-alcoholic pear cider and a big block of Daim chocklad! Mumms!

We also talked about how hard it is to buy Swedish books abroad, even online, since most Swedish bookshops require a Personnummer (well I do have one, but I don’t actually know it… I probably have a card somewhere, but it goes against the grain to use it really) and most of them won’t actually ship utomlands. Ahp! (with a sharp intake of breath)!

Just for fun, I’ll leave you with a video on pronouncing the Ikea product names!

 

Archive Post: Dagens Nyheter – Flodhäst

Archive post from the Svengelska Hemskolan blog

I got a notice from blog.co.uk telling me that I hadn’t posted in 30 days. Wow, 30 days! I knew I hadn’t posted recently, but I didn’t realise it had been so long. Well, apparently, that’s because I haven’t had anything Sweden-related to relate.

I did meet my local Swedish-Finnish friend briefly in passing and had a quick samtal på svenska, and we both agreed that we must meet again for coffee, but didn’t make a date.

We’re not actually actively learning Swedish for school at the moment, so I don’t focus my thoughts on Sweden and Swedish as I would if we still were. Perhaps we’ll try again another time, but at the moment it’s a struggle just to do the ‘three R’s’.

I do have a poster map of Sweden up on the wall alongside a post-card of Mamma Mu (the singing cow) and a beautifully painted calligraphed Swedish alphabet including the three ‘extra letters’: å, ä and ö, and these caught Pony-rider’s eye a few days ago, so that prompted a little conversation, but no real interest in learning the language.

When I get round to it, I will post some reviews of Sweden-related things that we enjoy.

In the meantime, I thought I would give you a Swedish word to try on for size:

Flodhäst – Hippopotamus

(literally, river-horse) Dragon-tamers is just telling me, “that’s what Hippopotamus actually means!”

pronounced: flowed-hest

When we lived in Sweden, there was a children’s television programme about horses entitled ‘Hippo’.

Don’t ask me why I chose that word, no reason at all that I can think of. Just a word I like the sound of. 😀

Archive Post: Mamma Mu

Archive post from the Svengelska Hemskolan blog:

One of our all-time favourite resources for learning Swedish is the Mamma Mu series of CD’s.

Mamma Mu

http://www.mammamu.se/

I’m not sure this will work, but hopefully you’ll be able to play the torrent of the CD “Visor för hela kroppen” – Songs for the whole body
here. [Edit: that link seems to have disappeared, so here is a video instead]

Our favourite is track 16, “Veckovisan” – The Week Song. I did try to find the lyrics online, but can’t find them so if I get a chance I’ll get them myself and add them here.

In the meantime, here are the veckodagarna – Days of the Week in Swedish:

Söndag – Sunday
Måndag – Monday
Tisdag – Tuesday
Onsdag – Wednesday
Torsdag – Thursday
Fredag – Friday
Lördag – Saturday

Note that Swedish days don’t need a capital letter in the middle of a sentence like English days do.

Ha en trevlig helg! Have a nice weekend!

Archive Post: Sommaren i City

Archive Post from the Svengelska Hemskolan blog:

The summer school holidays are officially upon us, and all of the children’s activities are finished until the new school term starts in September: swimming, gymnastics, trampolining, Irish Dancing, Girls’ & Boys’ Brigade, German and Hebrew. I’m really relieved as actually that level of activity was beginning to create burnout for me, as well as costing way too much, and I realised that we were hardly managing to get anything done at home – both in terms of housework and schoolwork.

I’m weighing up whether or not we should take a long summer ‘holiday’ from homeschool. We have a lot of work to catch up on, but I am *so* tired! So I’m not planning to go back to most of the activities in September, and I’m thinking of getting the book “Homeschool Family Fitness” and trying to do more ourselves, and I’d like to do a bit more with languages at home. Still not sure how – I may use some of the money we’re saving on more curriculum items. I’ll post what I’m planning to use later.

In the meantime, here is some Swedish vocabulary connected with the summer:

Sommar – Summer (en) definite = sommaren
Sommarstängt – closed for the summer (see the original post on this blog)
Jordgubbe – Strawberry, (literally, earth chap) plural = jordgubbar
Smultron – Wild Strawberries
Grädde – cream (to go with your strawberries)
Sommarstuga – summer cottage, typically on the
Skärgården – the Swedish archipelago
Sol – sun (en) definite = solen

I’ll leave you with some very typically Swedish pop-music:

Sommaren i City – Angel

Archive Post: Gunga och Rutschkana på Parken

We met our Swedish-Finnish friend Tieja again for our monthly coffee date, this time at the park by the lake (we thought we’d reserve Ikea for rainy days!).

It’s funny how you remember words you haven’t thought of for years when you hear them – like the word ‘gunga’ – swing (noun and verb, just like in English), and ‘rutschkana’ – slide (just a noun, as far as I know).

When we lived in Sweden and Dragon-tamer was little, the ‘rutschkana’ was their absolute favourite thing in the playground. I can hardly believe it was 10* years ago now.

I asked them if they still had any memories of Dagis (short for ‘daghem’ – day-home; in other words ‘nursery’). They hardly remember it at all really, apart from a favourite toy – an amazing water track contraption. I wondered whether the Dagis teachers were still there. It would be nice to go back and visit. I thought we’d do it last year, but we still don’t even have passports, so it’s looking less and less likely that we’ll even manage it this year, but you never know.

Homeschool is being drowned out a bit by ‘life’ at the moment, but I keep thinking that I would like to try and teach the children some Swedish so they’d be able to speak a little if and when we do visit. They do recognise the sound of it, which is good, I think – they can tell it apart from French or German or Hebrew.

Well, we’ll see how we go. I’m looking out for any good teaching materials for Swedish as a second language for children. If I find any, I’ll let you know.

 

 

[This post was originally published on the Svengelska Hemskolan blog, * it is now 20 years ago!]

Studying Health and Nutrition the Fun Way, and Swedish Välling

We are on a bit of a ‘health-kick’ here right now – we’ve invested in a juicer, a manual grain-mill, and we are sprouting seeds, making coconut yoghurt and kefir, brewing kombucha, and having all sorts of fun! My 12yos is even growing wheatgrass to juice (they love the whole process! Though I am the only one who is willing to drink the stuff!)

I discovered that grain is easier to store for longer than flour, and there are advantages to milling your own grain in that the nutrients present in the flour begin to dissipate following the first 48 hours after milling. I’m reading a book called “Nourishing Traditions” which talks about the necessity of soaking grains the old-fashioned way, so we’ll try that some time too.

This got me to thinking about Välling – the staple drink for babies in Sweden. I assumed it was something you had to buy ready-made, like rusks (does anybody remember having Farley’s rusks for breakfast?!) But then I found a really simple recipe:

Skrädmjölsvälling 1port

Ingredienser

Skrädmjöl 2-4 tsk
Vatten 2 dl
Salt

Gör så här

Koka upp tillsammans under omrörning och söta gärna med honung eller fruktsaft. Önskad mängd vatten kan naturligtvis bytas ut mot mjölk.

Basically, what you do is boil 2-4 teaspoons of flour, it can be wheat, whole wheat, rye, or oats, with 2dl water or milk. Stir constantly. Add salt and sugar (honey) if you want to and think the taste requires it.

Basically, I don’t recommend it – paediatricians in the UK and the US (and, I suspect, the World Health Organisation) don’t recommend wheat for babies under 8 months old, and don’t recommend putting any cereal, no matter how thin, in a baby’s bottle due to the risk of choking. Not to mention, don’t ever give babies salt! (And no honey before 8 months either.)

Another interesting fact that I discovered when my brother was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease is that it is a disease commonly found in Swedish people among others, and the suggestion at least on the Swedish side is too early introduction of wheat – before a baby’s digestive system is mature enough to stop the wheat particles from entering into the bloodstream.

Nevertheless, Välling is something so homely and comforting I can’t imagine Swedish people giving it up any time soon!

If you’re in the US, you can try and buy Välling at http://www.scandiafood.com/ (Just don’t give it to your kids) 😉

 

[Originally posted on the Svengelska Hemskolan blog]

p.s. Although I do love the book Nourishing Traditions, and I’m completely sold on the idea of the necessity of raw fermented foods in our diets, NT also advocates the ‘old fashioned’ eating of meat. I accept that there’s a valid health argument in the book for questioning our modern diets (the chapter on fats makes really interesting reading), but I reject its conclusions on ethical grounds.  So if you’re vegan/ vegetarian, you might want to be aware of that before thinking about purchasing the book.

High Culture: Closed for the Winter

We started the day with Latin: Dragon-tamer orally going through the noun tables and verb paradigms we have learnt so far, and reviewing vocabulary, and finally doing a simple translation exercise that involved placing the correct words in sentences. He did quite well considering we only do it occasionally. Pony-rider listens in too.

As we are fairly relaxed and unschooly, I never insist we do these or any other lessons. My goal in introducing Latin, and other languages, is to give the kids a flavour of the language so if they decide they want to take it up seriously, they can.

We all listened to a children’s classical CD (Bernstein Favourites: Children’s Classics), and Dragon-Tamer dictated a couple of music reviews which I typed up and posted on to our local home-ed reading group website.

We thought that, in the afternoon, we would just ‘pop in’ to the local museum, or gallery, but when I checked their opening hours, I discovered that both are closed: the Gallery for two weeks while they change exhibits, and the Museum for the whole winter (except for education groups of 20 or more children… so possible to organise for a later date but no good for today).

Disappointed, we discussed other alternatives for the afternoon, but nobody could agree, and since Motor-biker was poorly with a slight temperature, we opted for a quiet afternoon in, watching nature programmes and schools maths programmes recorded earlier.

Originally posted on the Svengelska Hemskolan blog.

The Avion My Uncle Flew

‘The Avion My Uncle Flew’ by Cyrus Fisher, 1946

I have been meaning to review this book for ages, as it was definitely a family favourite, and probably our top literature choice of 2015.

The book was recommended to us by a friend as a super way to introduce the French language at the same time as studying the post-war period through children’s historical fiction.

The story is written in such a clever way – the main character is sent to his uncle’s village in France to convalesce and recover after breaking his leg back home in America, and strikes a deal with his parents that, if he manages to be walking again and if he has learned to speak French by the end of the summer, they will get him a fancy new bicycle.

Johnny stays with his uncle in a boarding house in the village because their home had been destroyed in the war, but the uncle is working on making an aeroplane of his own design, to reverse their fortunes, and so he does what he can to help as his leg improves.

So as we follow the story of his recovery, we also follow his learning the language. We start off by learning the odd single word in a sentence, and by the end of the book there are whole pages in French.

In addition, the story is interwoven with a spy mystery and adventure as Johnny discovers that not all is as it seems in the sleepy French village in the mountains.

“Seldom do we find so happy a combination of charm of
Style, local color, humor and thumping good adventure as is set forth in this tale.” – School Library Journal

Lots of fun! Highly recommended as a read-aloud.