When Stora Pojken was little, we were given a beautiful book called "Den Blå Barnkammarboken" which roughly translates the Blue bed-time book.

When we went to lessons at the Swedish school, one of the teacher was using another, Silver bed-time book of songs which included a CD, and a few weeks ago when I was looking for resources for learning Swedish, I discovered there is now a whole range of books in the series, ranging from anthologies for very young children right through to ghost stories for older children.

When we got our copy of Den Blå barnkammarboken, they didn't include CDs, but I have found a place online where you can listen to samples and buy MP3s here.

Track 4 is a little song called "Små grodorna", and it goes like this:

"Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se,
Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se,
ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar havar de,
ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar havar de,
ku-ack-ack-ack, ku-ack-ack-ack, ku-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack,
ku-ack-ack-ack, ku-ack-ack-ack, ku-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack!
Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se,
Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se"

And the translation:

"The little frogs, the little frogs are funnny to see,
The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to see!
No ears, no ears, no tails have they,
No ears, no ears, no tails have they!
(And then they sing the Swedish equivalent of 'rebbit' or 'croak' or whatever it is that English frongs say - ku-ack-ack-ack!
The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to see!"

It's an absolute must-learn traditional Swedish dagis nursery rhyme, and you're really not culturally literate in Sweden without knowing it!

Roligt, va!

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

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.

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!

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

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 yoghurt and kefir, brewing kombucha, and having all sorts of fun! My 12yos is even growing wheatgrass to juice (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 disappear after the first 48 hours after milling. I'm reading a book called "Nourishing Traditions" (I'll review later) which talks about the necessity of soaking grains the old-fashioned way, so we'll try that sometime too.

This got me to thinking about Välling - the staple drink for babies in Sweden. I thought it was something you had to buy ready-made, but then I found a 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 oat, 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 recomment 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.

Another interesting fact that I discovered when my brother was diagnosed with Crohn's disease is that it is a disease commonly found amongst Swedish and Jewish people, 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 conforting 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

I'm a big fan of the Homeschool Lounge, and I do a lot of 'networking' on the internet, and I find it invaluable, especially lacking as we are in real life fellowship. I started a group on the Homeschool Lounge as a contact point for people in the UK and Europe, but it occurred to me that there was nothing similar for people in the UK, and so I decided to take it upon myself to create one.

The result is the Home Education UK network - a much smaller and humbler version of the Homeschool Lounge, and with a decidedly British 'flavour'. I'm hoping that it will develop into a really useful resource, a kind of 'one-stop-shop' for advice, support, encouragement and information on all things relating to home education in the UK. It's designed to work in partnership with the Homeschool Lounge rather than as competition to it.

There are groups for every kind of home education method (Charlotte Mason, Unschooling, Classical, etc.) and various different curricula (Sonlight, ACE, Ambleside Online etc.), and I'm planning on starting regional groups as an aid to making local contacts; there's a forum with various categories, including Teaching Methods & Learning Styles, Curriculum Subject discussion (History, Geography, Maths, English etc.), Special Needs and a Marketplace. If you join up, you also get your own profile page where you can blog, (and upload your homeschool blogger using the RSS feed), post photos and videos and more.

Come take a look today!

We met our Swedish-Finnish friend 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 thuoght of for years when you hear them - like the word 'gunga' - swing (noun and verb, just like in English), and 'rutschkana' - slide.

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

I asked him if he still had any memories of Dagis (short for 'daghem' - day-home; in other words 'nursery'). He hardly remembers it really, apart from a favourite toy - a water track toy thing. I 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.

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.

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)!

Hello!

I thought I would share what we've learnt this morning.

We were reading about the 'firecrest', which is apparently one of the UK's smallest (if not *the* smallest) bird, though I had never heard of it before now.

I checked it out on the RSPB's website, and was pleased to find that they have a sample of its song together with lots of information:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/f/firecrest/index.asp

We're just on the edge of being in the right area to find the firecrest, so I will have to make a note to look for it when we go out towards the south-east.

The book we were reading, by the way (if any of you are interested) is '366 and more Nature Stories', published by Brown Watson. The author is Anne-Marie Dalmais with illustrations by Annie Bonhomme. It seems to have been written originally in Europe (printed in Milan) and is translated into English and edited by Colin Clark. It is a great book for nature study, with short and sweet little stories every day of the year.

There's some great pictures of the book here here and it is available through used booksellers.

Since I can't work out how to insert anything... I'm supposing that it may because I have a free blog account here, and you have to pay for a premium account to get fancy stuff on your page, am I right?

So anyway, the playlist I wanted to insert is here: Shoshana2's Playlist:

http://www.playlist.com/user/19319641

Enjoy!