Natural Medley

30 July 2016

War, water and wheelchair

Hello fellow travellers.

This week we head to the woodworking room to watch Miles making his WW 2 replica wooden guns.

We also have some fascinating moments watching the interactions between water, plastic bottles, tissues and food colouring.

And finally, we view a burnt out car from a wheelchair!

All accompanied by Aiden's eerie guitar music - composed and performed by him and sound bending by me.

Sound exciting?

By the way, look at the gorgeous shapes made by plastic bottles left overnight in an aquarium!

We'd love your company on our Unschooling Adventures.

Click on the picture below to enter the rabbit hole...

Til next time,

Keep on creating!

Love

Jazzy Jack and The Bracks

22 July 2016

Where we visit the zombies at the art gallery.

Greetings one and all.

We return with another video. That's two in a row. On a roll here!

The puppets with freaky penises!

This week we watch Miles build and sleep in a bivouac ( gorgeous word!) in the backyard, play with the zombies at the art gallery in the fog sculpture, visit a couple of sculptures inside, and hear me singing!

Please come along for the ride.

So simple and so beautiful.

The other day Miles wrote about a day in the life of an unschooling teen for an unschooling newsletter at Stories of an unschooling family.

I include it here to round off the story of the video.

A Day in the life of Miles Brack age 14.

From the outside my day looks like this.

I wake up somewhere between 11am and 1pm.

Play video games till about midnight.

And go to bed.

Very basic and boring to write about.

However on the inside:

This morning I woke in my bivouac which I built in the back yard, in order to test out my new folding bed which is going into my Andersen Shelter I am digging on our block of land.

The temperature was between 0 and 5 degrees Celcius which added a little spice to the adventure.

I lay in bed surrounded by two jerry cans I discovered at the recycling centre and resprayed, imagining I was in the Home Guard during World War 2.

At 5:30 am after a surprisingly comfortable but short sleep (3 1/2 hrs!), I returned to the 21st century and the work of Slowmoguys filming glass shattering at 324,000 fps.

Porridge for breakfast called me indoors and I snuggled into my other bed to eat it with more Slomoguys entertainment.

Returning to my favourite era of 1940s I jumped on the computer to play Heroes and Generals enjoying the indepth environment of the frontline. Including installing a new weapons pack on the back of my SdKfz(a 1944 halftrack German motorbike).

After lunch I mostly watched Youtube videos of funny moments in Heroes and Generals.

Then I got bored and decided to conduct some experiments in my fish tank. ( It's alright there are absolutely 100% no fish involved) I bought the fish tank last week at The Green Shed. Various experiments were conducted with food colouring, cut in half plastic bottles, and tissues, studying floatation, water pressure, surface tension, vortexes, bleeding, filtration and oil leaks.

Mum videoed some of this for our vlog Natural Medley on youtube.(subtle plug!)

Various housework took place and writing of this article.

Now I'm off to have more porridge before going to bed in the am. Couldn't do that at school...

Bushy (Cris) on our date at the fog sculpture the weekend before.

Aiden also had some insight into the fog sculpture :

"Being in the fog was like the Arma3 mod for DayZ (Computer game). When the hoard comes out there's lots of fog!"

"It was really pretty when the sun rays shone into the water. When the music started playing it was really 'majestical' "(quote from our favourite NZ movie - Hunt for the Wilderpeople).

Brothers!

We hope you can join us for more adventures.

Make our day and like, comment and subscribe to join in the fun!

Til next time, keep on creating!

Jazzy Jack and The Bracks

15 July 2016

Meet the family

Hello there my lovelies!

We have a treat for you today...hopefully.

We decided to video one of our unschooling outings and use the filming and editing as part of our schooling experience.

So we hope to bring you videos on a regular basis and use this as structure for our week, encouraging us out of our cosy home to explore the world a little more.

As it was impossible to avoid using names in the video, we have gone live!

Please meet, Aiden our 11 year old...( formerly known as Mr Actor)

And Miles our 14 year old...( formerly Mr Artist)

Cris also known as Bushy...

And Jack also known as Jazzy Jack !

Collectively we are The Bracks, so yes, I am Jack Brack :-)

We kept the editing loose (!) and allowed the voices of the kids to shine so you can get to know them and their wonderful world a little more.

Hopefully you enjoy visiting the Arboretum, meeting the Australian Magpies and seeing some more of our beautiful country.

So here we go...

Til next time, keep on creating!

Love,

Jazzy Jack

26 June 2016

BeautyScope 289: Glowing grasses

in every meadow everyday

grasses quietly

unveil their auras

22 June 2016

A couple of unschooling adventures

We have been enjoying some unschooling adventures lately.

Firstly we visited the train museum with our local homeschooling group.

Here is Mr Actor in front of the largest steam engine in the Southern Hemisphere and the fourth largest in the world from memory. He is always moving and balancing and parkouring when he is well!

This the interior of the diesel engine section. Very dark and claustrophobic but my brilliant camera managed wonderfully. This is a V12 engine with 2000horse power. Very impressive to my engine mad kids!

Mr Artist in his usual playful mood...grossing us all out!

The second adventure was a long weekend at Heartwoods our bush property.

It's always a special day when there is water in our leaky dam. Winter, our water dog, was in her element.

There was even water in the bath tub in the goat paddock (so called because it is a small fenced area...we don't have goats) which is unheard of.

Mr Artist has a passion for all things WW2 and has decided to build an Anderson Shelter at Heartwoods. He spent the entire weekend digging in the rain. He wouldn't accept any help. The wet conditions were ideal for digging.

And ideal for sinking as Mr Actor discovered!

Hope you enjoyed our wet winter adventures.

Til next time, keep on creating!

Love,

Jazzy Jack

16 June 2016

Simplifying and Centring

Greetings my friends!

I wanted to touch base and explain what is happening in my life currently.

I have been simplifying.

I'm not sure where it actually started, but there are so many blog posts and youtube channels spouting simplicity and minimalism these days. I thought it might help me get some clarity in my life.

So I started with my wardrobe. I have removed all red, orange and purple because they were making me feel overcooked and put them in a bin under the bed. Then I removed all duplicates in my wardrobe. So I only have one grey blazer etc.

This has lightened up the space considerably, and I now am left with naturals and neutrals. White, black, grey, cream, brown, green, blue seem to be the way my brain wants to dress. I find simple styles that layer, with texture, line, beautiful cut, lovely fabrics are the simplest.

I still have all my fun stuff under the bed if I need an infusion, but lately I need calm. This has all totally surprised Bushy as I have been the colour lover from way back. I have an extreme personality with opposite sides and styles, so who knows I'll probably reverse all this in the future...hence the bins under the bed!

Next area to simplify has been my diet.

I am currently eating a raw food vegan diet!

I'm not sure how long I can keep it up as I still have to prepare my family's meals and preparing two different meals is not my idea of fun. Maybe in the future we will settle on cooked vegan with lots of whole foods.

But I am noticing a distinct increase in energy levels, and it is interesting to sample foods here and there after a clean fruit and vegies diet. You really notice the salt, sugar and fat!

I've only been on it for a couple of weeks and will continue for at least a month before making further changes. I want to see what it can offer my aging body!

I have also been reducing my online interactions, taking myself off old email lists which no longer interest me. Trying to eventually reduce the outside stimulation and voices to make me centre into myself and find my own voice.

Unfortunately this has meant less action on my blog. I hope you will bear with me as I sort through this internal time.

I'm starting a love myself project, where I really step through my own goals and accomplishments and I feel gratitude for myself which leads to love.

This is a huge area for me because I have always felt lacking and unworthy, even though people constantly tell me how talented I am. So I am paring back the outside voices to listen to my own loving voice.

Along with loving myself is the whole realm of loving my body.

I am taking time each day to have long walks, doing yoga stretches, and also introducing meditation times as well. I have a plan to start weights, but haven't nailed that one yet!

It's been very interesting that as I chip away at the things and practices and people that don't serve me 100%, (not that they are repugnant, but just not quite right), I find I hear more clearly that little voice inside that is my own.

My mantra at this time is:

keep it simple

I am writing all this out to help me see it in its entirety, and I publish it in case it helps others to read.

+++

Sooo Bushy and I went on a date on Sunday to the National Arboretum where he has a research site. It is an amazing place with plans for 100 forests and 100 gardens. It's early days yet as they only opened it a few years ago. We are fascinated by the kinetic scupltures they have installed recently.