Save the Queen!

Don't panic.

Her Majesty is not in any trouble here.

''Save the Queen'' is a new card game that Zephyr made up a few weeks ago whilst he and I were having a break together one Saturday morning. The girlies go to a gymnastics class that Zephyr has no interest in, so we head off to the local Salvation Army charity shop that has a quaint cafe attached. Funds are tight so we can't do it often (making ''eating out'' a HUGE novelty to my kids), but when I manage to scrape up a few pounds, I indulge in a cappuccino and Zephyr indulges in whatever fancy pie or scone they serve up that day. If we time it well, we pick up some nifty new books for our ever growing book collection. (charity shops are the BEST place for stocking home educator libraries)

This particular morning, Zephyr brought his cards with him, and proceeded to lay out a game called 'Save the Queen'. You'll see here that the Queen is placed in the middle, with 4 stacks of face-down cards placed around her...these are the 'baddies' trying to get the Queen. The face-up cards around those are trying to 'Save the Queen'. Zephyr is still working on refining the game, but for a first go, it was challenging and fun! Players flip up a card in one of the 'baddie' stacks, and then if you had a face-up card that was a higher-value, you placed the 'baddie' card on top. It's now joined the 'good guys' in the battle to save the Queen. Players keep flipping the baddie cards up, and IF you flip them all up - the Queen is saved. If you run out of 'good guy' cards of high value, then the Queen wasn't saved, but lucky enough for her, you get to start all over again. (it's a Queen that believes in reincarnation).

Why am I telling you all this?

Well, because I'm just so Thrilled to see my 4 year old come up with this nifty card game in less than an hour over a scone and some apple juice. My kids may not fit on a school radar with their reading, writing and arithmetic, but their creativity and freedom to create amazing things is making (not reaching) new boundaries. They'll eventually learn to read, to tie their shoes, to remember what 3+3 equals and all that other stuff we pick up to get by in life, and I have no timescale that demands they learn these things now. I'm thankful for that, because otherwise we probably would have been sitting in the cafe memorizing spelling words instead (bah!).

I hope all of you are enjoying sunshine wherever you are. Stop by again next week where I wow and amaze you with our exploding volcano.

No, we don't live in Iceland, but we do live in England where there's lots of noise about the recent volcano and the stranded travellers here. As it so happens, the kiddo's have been intersted in volcanoes the past few months, so we've been reading (reading = me read to them) about Pompeii and looking at diagrams in our science books on how volcanoes erupt, watching the volcano episode of 'Magic School Bus'....it seemed good timing to go ahead and make our volcano model, which kiddo's enjoyed getting messy to paint and decorate. We explode it this week. A dear friend is even putting us in touch with a lady who lives in Iceland that the kiddo's can penpal with........so I guess with child-led learning my kids are leading me in to a volcano!