One of my goals over the winter school holidays is to downsize and simplify my life. Whilst this sounds easy enough, it has a twist of irony attached.

See, I am not a horder. I am, as the skipper says, a good ‘chucker’.

I don’t collect old newspapers. There are no old magazines, cards or papers fluttering around.

My pens work or get tossed, only have what I need in the office drawers.

packets of foods get emptied into plastic containers and stored in the pantry. Boxes and packets are tossed. Bill filed when paid, envelopes trashed, empty bottles and cans out to recycle. Gone, away, not here.

So you would assume, wouldn’t you, that I would not have a great deal of stuff to sort through.

But, you see,  I have this deep and amazing compulsion to have one of everything possible. Only one, granted, but one of anything.

Types of food – check. Types of frozen goods – check. Types of dry goods stashed away in the larder – check.

A gel pen in every shade possible – check.  One stapler for each of the weight staples available – check.  Coloured paper, lined paper, pretty notepaper, cards – A3, A4, credit card sized – check, check and checkmate.

Although my main well, obsessions, lend towards food and stationary, they are not restricted to such. Oh no.

I crave books by loved authors. I crave vases of all sizes and shapes, teacups and saucers of prettiness and dainty handles, serving platters, trays and plates.

I like one of each item that may ever be possibly necessary to be stored in my car. A torch, gum, a comb, a pen and (pretty!) notepaper. Nothing that says ‘advertising material’. A shopping bag, a picnic hamper, a blanket, a pillow.

I also like one of each item secured in my handbag. Gum, phone, paper and pen, brush, clips, elastic.

And candles – oh candles. I love them all – pillars and 3 wicks and fatties and tealights and votives. Scented, unscented, containered, boxed. All in my candle cupboard, of course.

Sheet sets must have their ‘friend’ and their slips. Towels must be married to their life partner.  Placemats must be clean and folded, no food spills.

And I like it all – every single item – to be clean and stored neatly.

Obsessive much?

It’s OK, you can say it,  I know.

However, the skipper and the first mate… they are another set of genetics altogether.

Which brings me back to the beginning. One of my goals over the winter school holidays is to downsize and simplify my life. Because we are moving our business – our business that takes up several hundred cubic meters of office space plus the same in workshop space - back home. Into the garage.   Because as fast as I declutter and sort and get rid of stuff here at home, the skipper deals with it and takes it away. To guess where?  Yep the workshop. 8 years of accumulated stuff.   All stored and stacked and stashed.  And soon it has to come home again.

This is going to be interesting.

My favourite chicken, Pie, lays me a fine brown speckled egg everyday, without fail.

She’s a good girl.

Even at this time of year, when all the other chickens are sulking moulting and the days are short, she’s been leaving me a daily nugget of chickeny goodness.

So when one of these

became one of these:

it’s no surpise that much bok bok bokking was heard from the yard.  She did not look at all impressed with herself.

Then today, one of these instead:

She looked downright clucked off.

The first mate told me it’s “because she’s run out of toner, mum“.

Looks like even goodly chookens give in to the winter moult.

“Dear Miss Hind,

As you know, because my fine motor skills and pencil grip are not quite tippity-top yet, although thanks to you I am well on my way, my mum is writing this to you to tell you what you have done for me this year.

You have made me curious – I will never be afraid to ask when I don’t know.

You have made me try harder – where I once gave up, you have taught me to push on.

You have made me stronger – I trust my body to take me where it needs to go.

You have made me braver – when my heart is thudding you have made it sing.

But most of all you have made me happy, and I (and my mum) love you for that.”

THIS is a copy of the end-of-year Christmas card my son gave his Prep teacher, Fran Hind, last year.

She kept it, because that’s what teachers like her do, they keep all the keepsakes from the children they have taught over the years, in spite of overflowing cupboards and families who tell them to “get rid of this junk”.

I have reproduced it here today, with Fran’s permission – and with much scrounging about her cupboard to find it – because I felt it was timely to share what it said about Prep, or more importantly, what it didn’t say.

It didn’t say “thanks for improving my grade point spelling average”.

It didn’t say “thanks for helping me get an A in numeracy”.

It didn’t mention any sort of assessment at all. Because that’s not what Prep is about.

It’s about preparing children for school, about getting them used to the idea of spending the next 12 or so years of their young lives within its walls.

It’s about teaching them where the tuckshop is, how to get to the toilet, who to ask if you’re in trouble, how to share, how to sit in a seat quietly even though your whole body feels like a jumping bean.

Prep teachers like Fran Hind – and there are many – help kids who don’t know how to ask “can I play?”, they quietly tell them “I know you can do it” when they think they can’t, and when school, the bells, the kids, the noise, and the fact that someone else got to the Leggo box before them becomes all too much, they say “how about we go and choose a book from reading corner together?”

Along the way, the children are learning all sorts of things, drinking in knowledge, almost as if by osmosis.

They didn’t need structured lessons to do it and they certainly didn’t need to be assessed on their ability to do so.

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) is currently drafting its national curriculum, to be delivered in all schools across Australia. One of its proposals is that “achievement standards will be introduced to the Prep Year”.

How utterly unnecessary.

A child of four or five can undergo transformations in the space of a few weeks of which a caterpillar turning into a butterfly would be proud.

One mother I know is thrilled – and just a little shocked – at her daughter, Marnie, who is reading Year 3 books in her Year 1 classroom.

At Prep, the little girl had trouble reading her own name.

I wonder what would have happened if Marnie had been given a D for reading back in Prep?

Would her Year 1 teacher have seen that mark, slotted her into the bottom reading group and never stretched her wings?

ACARA says some Queensland parents want the grading system introduced here, as it already has been in Victoria.

Well, maybe Victoria should come in line with Queensland.

Maybe someone from the Victorian Education Department should come up here and have a look at our Prep classrooms and see all our little caterpillars who are about to turn into butterflies.

from http://www.couriermail.com.au

Today, bought a Pandanus pedunculatus for my front yard.

You may know it as a Pandanus tree. Or a screw pine. Or a penis tree – so nicknamed for its interesting prop root system.

Then again, you may not know it at all.

Native to Coastal Eastern Queensland and New South Wales, there are 2 camps in regards to these trees. Jeanie dislikes them. She says they bring bats. She says they are horrible spiky things – and they are, indeed, not for everyone.

But they grow amazingly well by the sea, and I find their root systems incredibly interesting. With the right plants around them they look gorgeous.

Pandanus fruit are eaten by animals including bats, rats, crabs, elephants and monitor lizards. I don’t see many elephants around here, but yes, we have bats, crabs and monitor lizards. What sub-tropical seaside community doesn’t? Probably a rat or two. But I am so not acknowledging that.

Indigenous Australians used the pandanus for survival. Every part of the tree was used.  Fruit was eaten fresh and cooked. (The fibrous nature of the fruit makes it a natural dental floss!) The flowers are pleasantly fragrant and were used for perfume and body decor.  Medicine – to treat scrofula, skin inflammation, sores, constipation, diarrhea, urinary tract problems, arthritis, stomach spasms, asthma, back pain, heart attacks, and, wiki tells me, internal fractures.  Fine mats, woven from the fibres in the leaves, were used for burials and special presentations.  

So, in my camp, the history and usefulness of this tree adds to its unique appearance, and, sorry Jeanie, I am soon to plant this treasure out by the mailbox.

I’m sure the postie will just love me. ;)

So, which camp are you in – the pandanus fans or the prickly spiky shit things camp?