More Haiku & Another Certificate

Emily passed her level two in yoga last night, so she's a very happy bunny about that. Her homework this week is to write/design a Vinyasa, which is apparently a flowing sequence of moves that make sense together. She's very keen on that and has already spent ages working on it!

Yesterday Emily wrote more haiku, this time three on yoga which she added to her yoga journal:

Stretched, flexible joints
Dog, cat, tree, warrior now
Mind body spirit soon calm

Anger turns to peace
Sleepily meditating
Dancing to the Sun

Relaxing music
Interesting sanskrit words
Yoga destroys stress

Rachel loved those. The rest of the class wanted to know how come Emily had learnt about haiku as they hadn't (??? even though some of them are 12??) and what year of school was she in........Rachel pointed out at some considerable length (!) that Emily's home educated (she's a big fan) which led to lots of girls asking what that meant which eventually led to lots more girls whining that they don't want to be stuck in school, lol. Emily had a good time with Rhiannon practising partner work while some of the others were being tested, and had a somewhat less good time when someone decided to laugh at her for wearing "boy's shoes" because her slip on shoes had footballs on. Okkaaay. Girls, obviously, are not allowed to like football. Not even with world cup fever approaching. The local schools are clearly doing a very good job of breaking down gender stereotypes and encouraging tolerance, kindness and manners all round. *Rolls eyes* I'm tempted to suggest that she goes to the next dozen yoga lessons wearing her ever expanding collection of football shirts ;-)

Also yesterday we did lots of French practice and yet more trivial pursuit. This morning has been maths and history, with Emily revising things from her Ancient Egypt project which we did in Jan-March 2005 (blimey, that sounds like yonks ago!!! Hard to believe we've been home educating now for nearly two years).

This afternoon she and Jon have gone off on a mystery shopping mission :-))

Whilst typing, I'm going to add the rest of Emily's haiku from the other day, purely because I rather like them!

The Waterfall
The water rushes
Sparkling in the bright sunlight
Swimming in peacefulness

Autumn
Wind whistles in the clouds
Rapidly changing colours
Leaves float in the wind

Winter
Snowflakes land softly
Ice fairies settle in bare trees
Grass bathing in snow

A Cat's Life
Shake, stalk, leap on prey
Tail tucked under in a ball
Scratching, kicking toys

Beginning of Spring
A spring shower falls
Butterflies finding nectar
Buds blink in the sun

It is surprisingly difficult to convey what you want to say whilst sticking to the 5-7-5 syllable rule. Very good language practice I reckon, especially helpful for practising the differences between active and passive voice, and experimenting with changing tenses without changing meaning. Well, we found it fun, anyway!