loved the film

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pointe shoes

Loved Black Swan at the cinema, Ballet Boyz at the theatre and Margot on DVD

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oak leaf

icicle on the woodshed

Digging my way into the woodshed through a 4 foot pile of snow, thoughts of Cold Comfort Farm mingle with a need to watch The Shining

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girls playing chess

Visited the Lewis Chessmen at Aberdeen Art Gallery (other Scottish tour dates) – they are beautiful

wall of album covers, some of which I still have!

A Storm Trooper surrounded by Star Wars shoes

 though I really can’t see Jabba the Hut wearing the green basketball boots that have been named for him…

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Little bits that weve been watching/seeing/thinking about/liking. First a 9 second clip of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s 11 turn pirouette from White Nights:

Ellen Degeneres on being vegan:

Then this clip from the Magic Sword reminds me of walking in our woods here, all wild and magical. It was the first film we took the children to see at the cinema too…

and a trailer for The Social Network, definitely one of better films weve seen of late:

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early evening sun on the loch

Below, a beautifully animated talk by Ken Robinson:

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random bug on a sunflower leaf

education:

Potatoes for Schools registration is now open for 2011 – free seed potatoes, available to home educators too

The BBC Scottish History section is very good, nice timelines going on.

on self esteem:

We Teach What We Are - a blog from Wayne Dyer on the best we can do for young people.

Page 20 of Ladies First Magazine has a beautiful article about womens body image and self esteem.

and there is an excellent article on aspergers here

…and a small mention for Twitter, some of the above were passed on through there. Last weekend we won tickets to an early preview of Despicable Me, complete with many freebies, thanks to following Cineworld on there. Very funny film, one of the few weve seen that actually makes the 3D element worthwhile. Follow us on our vegan family account or as Frugaluk where we pass on many competitions

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Listening to an audiobook of The Silmarillion just now while browsing the Atlas of Middle Earth. This follows on from our epic watching of the extended versions of all three Lord of the Rings films in preparation and inspiration for our own mountain quest. Nice to be back in Middle Earth

other jewels: smoothie and brambles. Todays smoothie consisted of LOTS of kale and leaves from the overwintered cabbages which are now huge, LOTS of borage flowers, cleavers, a few black and red currants that are just starting to ripen, bananas, brazil nuts and an apple.

a contrived pic of a smoothie with bramble flowers and honeysuckle

The brambles (blackberries) are growing all through the honeysuckle and produce wonderful big juicy berries in autumn so there is no thought of ‘weeding’… the flowers are very beautiful:

bramble flowers and buds

pink

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Peregrine Wildwatch Centre

Wonderful place this, great home ed group event there

quarry face where the nest is

red squirrel

female peregrine in tree - she was making a lot of noise!

fast

building a hide

impression of a caterpillar called Bob

best friends

a few more pics in our home education set on flickr

and a short video of the squirrels below, much topical talking in background…

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Weve had a few spring-like days now, causing me to dig over some ground for the little polytunnel and clean and set up the coldframe to let the ground warm up for salad seeds. Browsing Suttons trying to decide what to plant this year – will have more room with extra raised beds… this really does feel like waking up after winter! The pond is finally unfrozen today so I expect frogly activity soon It’s been like this in varying thickness of ice and pattern for months:

Dance mania continues with ballet, tap, jazz and contemporary being studied :)

Books and films amany dug out to accompany this in fine home educating fashion. The Ballet Companion is a gorgeous book, it’s been to good for me to read that things have come on with problems such as eating disorders and painful pointework (ouch pouches – love them!) being dealt with much more compassionately in general. High quality vegan ballet shoes are even available As for films… oh so many, from White Nights to A Chorus Line, loving them all, also deeply appreciative of friends sharing the enthusiasm and cost of DVD purchase… Had a nice time reading over T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and then watching Cats and boring delighting others with tales of cast members I knew/was taught by or with… same goes for Billy Elliot… ah to be an old “when I was young — fill in with unbelievable sounding fact–” person – it’s great fun!!

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