Latest / The BIG Home Ed Conversations | Home Education / Topic Challenge: Food Around the World

Transcript

Topic Challenge: Food Around the World · The BIG Home Ed Conversations | Home Education

0:15
Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Big Home
0:18
Ed Conversations. My name is Kelly Rigg.
0:21
I'm a home educating mum of two and a qualified mindset and ADHD
0:24
coach. I'm really passionate about
0:26
supporting parents and neurodivergent families as they
0:28
navigate children not OK at school and ultimately then
0:31
transition from mainstream schooling into home education.
0:34
I'm here together with my Co host Ashley Venario.
0:37
She's a fellow home Ed mom of three and a former primary
0:39
teacher. And we created the big Home Ed
0:41
Conversations podcast together with what began as honest,
0:44
heartfelt talks around her coffee table with the kids
0:46
running around us. And it's now grown into a space
0:49
where hundreds of listeners now tune in for real, unfiltered
0:52
conversations about alternative education, mindset and kind of
0:56
educational philosophies. So we cut through the noise and
0:58
focus on what really matters to home educating families.
1:01
This season we have been sponsored by Stru, a home
1:05
educating logging app that's been developed by a home
1:08
educating mom and her brother. They have given us access to the
1:12
app and we're using it to track what we're doing and to share
1:16
with you just how amazing it is to see if it might work for you
1:20
and your family because it's definitely been something we've
1:23
been enjoying this week. I have been focusing on the book
1:27
tracking function. So the app has this ability to
1:31
scan a book and track that as an activity, which is super helpful
1:36
if you're looking to track your read alouds, maybe what your
1:39
kids are individually reading. And I found it's actually even a
1:43
great way for me to track my pretty big personal library here
1:48
at home. So one of the challenges that
1:52
I've been having is just having a way to remember what books I
1:57
have at home that I've not kept it a very good secret that I
1:59
love books and I have a lot of them.
2:02
And it's one of the things that keeps me on my toes because I'm
2:06
constantly like, OK, let's say we're studying Australia.
2:10
Do I have any books on Australia?
2:12
What kind of fix fiction books might I have on Australia?
2:14
Do I have any geography books, anything about its history?
2:17
So all of these things come to me when I'm out of the house,
2:21
always. So I'm either at a library or a
2:23
bookstore and I'm trying to think, OK, do I need something
2:25
else or do I already have enough?
2:26
And I have just found that by taking a little bit of time to
2:32
1st create kind of a dummy account on the Stru app.
2:36
So I set up a child as library and under that child's activity
2:43
I just scan my books and I tag them with a few keywords,
2:47
whether that's geography or country or just a word like
2:51
China or history. I can easily then go back and
2:57
sort through it and see what I have.
2:59
And this has just already been pretty amazing because it's
3:02
allowed me to 1, just refresh my memory on what I have and to
3:08
hopefully in the future allow me not to either over purchase or
3:12
bring back a million books from the library that I don't
3:14
actually need. So I've really been enjoying
3:17
that. If you're using this true app
3:19
along with us here, go ahead and scan a book and you'll see how
3:22
beautiful it is when it that picture of the book shows up in
3:26
your feed. And we were talking about feeds
3:28
last week and just how nice it is to be able to see that
3:30
activity tracking. And this way you can add your
3:33
books to it as well. And it's just another great
3:35
feature that we've been enjoying.
3:37
Yeah, it's so nice actually because I have been using this a
3:40
little bit myself with my two have both wanted to do a reading
3:44
challenge this year with they both started reading really well
3:46
now and so my youngest is devouring books.
3:49
It's so wonderful seeing her go from strength to strength with
3:52
that. It's just amazing when it
3:53
clicks, just really, really nice.
3:55
And she's getting into kind of harder and harder books.
3:59
And actually you do forget kind of where they've started started
4:02
and the level they're able to read at a certain stage.
4:05
And then actually how that develops and changes with time.
4:08
And I think what I am really enjoying about it is that I will
4:10
be able to have a look back and see all the books.
4:13
Like if they do see if I remember to scan them, obviously
4:15
I'm never going to be able to scan them all.
4:17
But like, trying to scan a reasonable amount of them will
4:19
help to give me a good baseline over time for how they're
4:22
reading is developing and the kind of complexity of texts
4:25
they're able to read independently, which is.
4:28
Yeah, just really, really nice. It's a really fantastic feature
4:32
that I think is going to be really, really helpful for most
4:35
home educators. You can download it on iOS and
4:37
Android, so it's available on both, but you can go find it
4:40
online as well. If you just literally just
4:41
search for strew home Ed app, it will come up.
4:43
So go find it and you can use the code big home Ed just to
4:47
make sure that you're kind of linking it back to where you
4:50
found out about it. So cracking on with this week
4:53
then. So we decided at the beginning
4:55
of this season that we have got various subjects that we maybe
4:58
dip in and out of. You do the odd thing on, but you
5:01
never really fully go all in with the topic.
5:03
And we're quite project eclectic ourselves and we do tend to
5:06
follow random threads like this sometimes.
5:08
But ultimately there are some subjects that we just never
5:11
think to cover. And last week we did capital
5:14
allocation and investing. So that's what we covered on our
5:17
episode last week. So if you missed that, go back
5:19
and have a look at that one. It sounds really dry, but
5:21
actually we had a lot of fun with it and the kids really
5:24
enjoyed it as a subject. And it's definitely opened up my
5:26
mind to the remembering that that they are little people and
5:30
one day they will have a mortgage and bills and their own
5:34
bank accounts and stuff to manage.
5:35
And actually, a lot of us did feel massive disservice from our
5:38
schooling around financial education and even sometimes our
5:42
parents didn't have an awful lot of information around investing
5:44
and stocks and shares and pensions and things like not
5:47
many of us really understood what to do with our money and
5:50
have had to kind of learn the hard way.
5:51
And so, so many of us will end our adult life without a pension
5:54
and stuff like that as well, like without kind of really good
5:56
savings. So it's so important for us to
5:59
be teaching our kids about this stuff and helping them to
6:01
understand that the earlier they started, the better a life they
6:04
get to leaves with the easier life, I suppose, because they
6:07
can fix the problems that arise for them in life.
6:09
So yeah, we covered that last time and then we picked food
6:12
around the world, which has been our challenge for this week.
6:14
So me and Ashley are not allowed to talk to each other about what
6:16
we're doing with our kids during the week because you don't want
6:18
to give each other ideas. You really want to get a good
6:20
baseline for where our brains end up going with it as well.
6:23
So it's really quite fun. I was really excited about this
6:26
one because I am a foodie, so actually I love food.
6:31
And I think you're the same Ashley idea when you've eaten in
6:33
some incredible places, I'm sure on your travels because you
6:36
travel a lot more than me. Yeah, I it's the best part of
6:39
traveling, isn't it? I really enjoy it.
6:42
And it's it's just a nice way to experiment too, with something
6:46
outside of your comfort zone. It really is.
6:50
I think that's one of the things I love the most about travelling
6:52
as well as just all the different favours.
6:54
And even just like driving through Sri Lanka for example,
6:57
many, many years ago and seeing people selling the pineapples at
7:01
the side of the road. Like a whole town would be
7:03
responsible for selling pineapples.
7:04
That would be that every single person in that town would grow
7:07
the pineapples, cut down the pineapples, sell the pineapples
7:10
at the side of the road. And ultimately that would then
7:13
all the money would be pulled back into that community.
7:15
So they wouldn't like all have an individual wage.
7:18
They would use that money collectively and stuff like
7:20
that. It's just really, really
7:21
fascinating how different groups of people kind of do food
7:25
differently as well. And so anyway, so we kind of
7:29
started off on a bit of a tangent with ours.
7:31
We were really, I was really struggling initiative to figure
7:33
out, do I just want to try lots of different foods with the
7:36
kids? It's like I've got 2 autistic
7:37
children and trying lots of new foods is not really something
7:39
they love. And so I was like, maybe not, we
7:42
can try a little bit maybe, but that's going to be a bit tricky.
7:44
And my son is massively into the Greeks and Greek mythology and
7:48
stuff at the moment. And we have tried to do a little
7:50
bit of Greek food at home like, and I was really stumped at
7:53
first. There's so many different
7:54
avenues we could go down. And you mentioned when we were
7:57
talking about it very briefly at the end of the last session to
7:59
like starting to plan our thoughts around it, about
8:02
remembering to look at this from the state of like poverty as
8:05
well and, and famine and how difficult food is to get hold of
8:08
in certain parts of the world as well.
8:10
And it isn't all about fun and flavours.
8:12
It is about kind of how we're obviously keeping different
8:16
industries alive and even processed foods and all the rest
8:19
of it. There's so much you could do
8:21
with this subject that I did get a little bit like at first, did
8:25
you have anything that you kind of initially landed on or did
8:27
you have that same kind of? There's so many different
8:29
avenues to go down here. Exactly.
8:31
So initially I thought, OK, we're going to be like trying
8:35
staple foods from all around the world and just expanding our
8:38
palates. And then I thought, you know
8:40
what, this is going to get messy.
8:42
And we already had a lot of evening commitments and I feel
8:47
like we do our best cooking sort of towards the back half of the
8:49
day into the evening. And I was just thinking, this is
8:52
not, this is not going to actually pan out the way I think
8:56
it will. And like just getting to the
8:57
grocery store this week to get supplies will be a challenge.
9:00
So I quickly shifted gears and amazingly, we had a field trip
9:06
planned for the day after we recorded.
9:09
And I did not know this, but when we arrived at Earth's
9:15
Trust, which is up in Reading, it's a site where there was
9:20
previously a Roman settlement, and so there's a lot of
9:23
excavation that goes on there. It's archaeologically very
9:26
important. And what's really interesting is
9:29
it was built on top of a village from the Iron Age.
9:33
And so as they excavate, they find a lot of similarities, but
9:37
differences between the two different settlements that were
9:39
there. And one of the aspects that they
9:41
talk about is food and the types of foods that the Romans brought
9:45
and introduced to England. And the kids got to look at them
9:49
and sample them things like Rosemary and plums and just
9:54
different things that previously had not been in this country.
9:57
And then they talked about how the foods that were used in the
10:01
Iron Age were very different, even though they had the same
10:04
resources available. So they didn't eat the same
10:08
meats. They didn't eat chicken in the
10:10
same way, even though they had hens and things.
10:12
So it was just, it was really, really interesting to see how
10:16
you can get all this detail about our history and our
10:20
history around food from looking at the various artifacts that
10:23
come out when you basically dig into the Earth.
10:27
So that was really cool and kicked us off and saying, OK,
10:31
gosh, what other foods we're not in this country.
10:34
How has food migrated over time and how is that interwoven into
10:39
the history of our world essentially?
10:42
And that's so that's where we ended up starting.
10:45
We did not end up there. We definitely me under through
10:49
our week and kind of touched on a lot of different topics, a lot
10:53
of which interestingly, we did talk about at the end of the
10:57
last podcast as we were brainstorming, which I thought
10:59
was kind of funny. So sure.
11:01
I was thinking like, Oh yeah, gosh, this is really taking us
11:03
down the path. But actually I was like, oh,
11:05
maybe I somehow like subconsciously inspired this
11:07
path because we did start to talk about these ideas on our
11:11
last podcast. So yeah.
11:14
That sounds really interesting. That sounds like such a
11:17
fascinating day out as well. And it's it is lovely when these
11:20
things are kind of when we when our kids get inspired by
11:23
something that's actually like that they're doing right now.
11:25
Physically, they're experiencing something, seeing something that
11:29
it really comes home so much more than anything that could be
11:32
done remotely, I find. But yeah, mine has taken a
11:35
really random eclectic kind of, I'm not sure it necessarily
11:39
followed a specific path, but we did find ourselves also actually
11:42
managing to get out and do something.
11:44
We had already planned it as well from ages ago, but we
11:47
basically did a junior keeper day at Hobble Down.
11:50
And I will give this a shout out because honestly, like it's not
11:53
cheap, but it's also incredible value.
11:56
My kids got to go spend 2 hours or 2 1/2 hours in the end with
12:00
the staff. Had a lovely lady take us around
12:02
called Jess and essentially they got to feed whatever animals
12:06
they wanted to feed. We had to catch the crickets and
12:08
the locusts in the sort of food store room and put them in a pot
12:12
to take and feed live to the monkeys and to the lemurs and
12:15
like all sorts of things, right? It's absolutely cool.
12:17
The coolest thing ever. And as we're going around, she
12:20
was obviously explaining where these animals come from and the
12:22
kind of foods they would get naturally in the wild.
12:24
And it did start a conversation around like temperate climates
12:28
and obviously in hotter climates, you tend to get a lot
12:31
more kind of fruit, that variety of fruits and this that the
12:35
other right. So lots and lots of really
12:36
interesting subjects and obviously just really again,
12:39
engaging because they were there and doing it and asking
12:41
questions and seeing what kind of foods they ate.
12:43
And obviously in the in the process, getting to see a really
12:46
cute little baby capybara is, is absolutely what everybody wants
12:51
these days. They are the animal of the year,
12:53
aren't they? But anyway, it was really good
12:55
fun. But we, we started off our main
12:58
kind of like first schooly thing I guess that we did is we've got
13:02
a globe and we sat down with the globe and we had a bit of a chat
13:05
about where people originated from.
13:07
And I was really grateful because we did the Stone Age a
13:10
little while back, not that long ago, maybe about a year ago.
13:13
And they'd retained an awful lot of it actually.
13:15
It helped me to kind of realise how much of it they'd remembered
13:17
about where humans originated from, how we managed to travel
13:21
around the world, how we would have migrated to kind of keep
13:25
food available, like fruits and grains and animals.
13:28
We wouldn't have stayed in one place where it's colder on the
13:32
planet. So like where we would try and
13:34
go when it's in the colder months, that sort of thing, that
13:37
they're really fascinating how much they could actually
13:41
understand about the planet, the seasons, the way that the Earth
13:45
is like the types of climates, the type of environments and
13:48
habitats you'd find in those different areas.
13:49
Like I was really, really pleased to see how much of that
13:51
they knew we had managed to pick up from all the various stuff
13:54
we've done before. So that was really lovely.
13:56
But actually it led to a really great conversation around we
13:59
picked three main grains, so corn, rice and wheat.
14:04
Obviously there's so many others, which I didn't realize
14:06
how many different types of grains there are.
14:07
Actually we did like a grain word search that I found online,
14:10
which made me kind of go, oh, wow, I've never even heard of
14:13
like half of these. So that's going to be really
14:16
interesting. We're going to hopefully try
14:17
some of them. We're going to see if we can get
14:18
hold of some of them and try them.
14:20
But ultimately we talked about wheat and the kind of climate
14:22
that it grows in rice and corn. And we watched, we like Maggie
14:26
Moats normally on TV. She's the one who does like like
14:29
how things work. She's got some really lovely
14:32
YouTube videos that are kind of her the YouTube videos.
14:35
And she has some like rice Paddy feels and stuff like that from
14:37
Bali. And that was really lovely
14:39
because I went to Bali for my honeymoon.
14:41
So I was able to explain to the kids about what it was like
14:43
actually being there and that we got to see some of that too.
14:46
And like, it was really lovely actually kind of sharing some of
14:49
our past with them as well. But yeah, that all kind of led
14:51
into a really great conversation around why people rely on those
14:55
kind of grains now and how as we settle down into agriculture,
14:58
like this is what happens. So anyways, that turned into a
15:00
really fascinating chat and it was definitely one of the main
15:04
kind of chats we had. But it was really great to kind
15:08
of see them engaging with that and actually give them a chance
15:11
to kind of tell me all the stuff they knew about the planet and,
15:14
and how our seasons work and everything.
15:16
That was really lovely. We did a similar thing.
15:18
So after we got back from that exploration day, which was super
15:22
fun, we listened to a podcast that was not aimed at children.
15:31
There's a gentleman fascinating wealth of knowledge, but not not
15:37
for primary school children in terms of interest that have the
15:40
subject matter was perfect, but the the interest wasn't there.
15:44
Yeah, but I was like, as we're going to meddle through this
15:47
because it is fascinating. So, yeah, not not the best
15:52
delivery for primary children, but it was a shorter podcast.
15:55
And he just talked about how where you live in the world
15:59
influences what you eat. And it went into the types it
16:03
just like you were saying, the types of grains or different
16:07
foods that are grown based on whether you're in South America
16:10
or England or China and why these things are that the way
16:15
the way they are. So I thought that was super
16:17
fascinating. And then what we're in the
16:21
process of doing, we have not completed it yet, but I printed
16:24
out a map of the world and we are going to shade the regions
16:29
by their primary agricultural food source.
16:32
Like what is their main driver? And then similarly, obviously a
16:37
huge part of his conversation was about climate and just
16:44
availability. And so even even went into soil
16:47
and how much soil impacts what's grown.
16:50
And these are things that once he said it, I thought like, Oh
16:54
yeah, absolutely, of course. But like, it didn't immediately
16:56
come to my mind. It's not something I would have
16:58
thought to talk to my kids about soil because I just, that's not
17:01
my primary. I, I'm not, I have not, I do not
17:05
have a green thumb people, but my husband we met nicknamed me
17:08
the orchid killer because I could not keep these things
17:11
alive. I've since watched a lot of
17:13
YouTube videos on how to keep orchids alive.
17:15
So I I'm up for improving. But I will tell you, like soils
17:19
not even occur to me. But once he said it was like,
17:20
yes, of course. So I thought that was really
17:23
interesting. Obviously biomes and all this
17:25
and we can impact too. So that was kind of the 1st
17:28
place we started. And then we're going to have
17:31
this map that shows us just the the world essentially and, and
17:35
obviously then helps to point out like, you know,
17:37
relationships to the equator and, and all of that.
17:40
So yeah, it is. It was a good place to start and
17:43
we sort of found ourselves there as well.
17:45
It's so great, isn't it? I think it's so interesting
17:48
because I think subjects like this as well are the kind of
17:50
subjects I like because food can quite literally encapsulate
17:54
everything. We didn't activity this morning,
17:56
which I was trying to think of the last couple of things I
17:58
could do before we came on and recorded.
17:59
And we didn't think about food miles this morning.
18:02
And we were talking about them, the different food groups that
18:05
we had for our breakfast. Like we had eggs, we had
18:07
sausages, we had some toast with butter, had a selection of foods
18:11
and we had a look at the packets.
18:14
I found it very difficult to know from the packets where some
18:15
of the stuff came from. Like some of the stuff had the
18:17
address, but not all of it. Then we had to research where it
18:20
typically comes from, try and calculate the food miles.
18:23
Then we kind of had a look at the like just for our breakfast,
18:26
just our breakfast. Shocking, absolutely shocking.
18:29
I was fully embarrassed to say how much kind of like carbon
18:31
emissions would have come from just that meal.
18:35
Like the equivalent of like boiling the kettle 20 times,
18:37
which is just shocking. Like absolutely shocking and led
18:41
to a really great conversation about eating local and trying to
18:44
eat foods which are grown locally and reared locally.
18:47
So that least it's like it's not had to travel so far and is
18:50
being done in a sustainable way. And being really mindful of this
18:53
stuff. Actually, we don't realise
18:54
sometimes the impact our foods are having on this planet and,
18:58
and how damaging they are to the the habitats of certain animals
19:03
like the mass farming. I mean, you could even get into
19:07
like, yeah, like you can even look at things like apples, like
19:10
50 years ago, the nutrients that are in one single apple grown in
19:14
the UK and versus like what it is now.
19:16
Because of the like, the fact that we are essentially killing
19:20
our soil. That soil does need to have
19:23
these kind of crops, which have like, like grasses, for example,
19:26
help to lock in all the bacteria that help to take in the
19:30
nitrogen. And without those things there,
19:33
the soil actually dies. And so we have to pull all these
19:36
fertilizers and stuff into it to try and make it do it.
19:38
But they don't stay and they just leach away, which is
19:41
destroying our rivers. And it goes on and on and on.
19:43
It's terrifying when you actually start to look at this,
19:46
realize that damage to agriculture is doing to our
19:49
planet in every part of the planet as well.
19:53
It is quite shocking. And I think it led to a really
19:55
important conversation with them this morning around like foods
19:59
does migrate and we get all these lovely interesting foods
20:02
and we can import them and we can taste them and it's so
20:04
exciting to get to have them. But actually ultimately, like I
20:08
think we did a calculation once years ago about how many
20:11
bananas? Like we as a family imported in
20:15
a year and like how shocking a number that is.
20:18
And it's like, oh, gosh, it's so bad.
20:20
Like once he starts to really look at this stuff, it is
20:22
actually quite, quite scary. So yeah, that was that was a
20:26
really interesting one this morning that really opened my
20:29
eyes as well to the impact of our food choices.
20:33
We got to that part as well before we got there, after kind
20:38
of talking about how food is across the world.
20:42
We then guys, I love podcasts as I mean, we're recording one now.
20:46
I listen. So we what do we do?
20:48
We listen to the podcast. This one was about a hunger
20:54
relief effort. So it was about a food bank in
20:57
the States. And I am just so you can find
21:00
podcasts on everything. There's a food bank that runs a
21:03
podcast about how they run their food bank.
21:05
And I'm just like, this is so incredible and information.
21:07
I would never know or understand if that podcast didn't exist.
21:11
So it was very interesting. And the point of the one we
21:16
listened to was it hired a new director and it was just
21:20
basically talking about how this is a sourcing director, how this
21:24
food bank gets their food, their donations from across the state.
21:29
And I thought this was so incredibly interesting and LED
21:33
to a lot of really good conversations because they got
21:36
95% of their food is donated, which is an incredible amount.
21:42
They only have to purchase 5%, which they get through like
21:45
financial donations. But when you have a company like
21:49
Costco as an example, because we have that here in the UK as well
21:53
as in the States, when they have food that's past its cell date
21:56
or close to past its cell date, they can arrange to have it
21:59
donated to these food banks. But then there's the logistics
22:03
of like, OK, well, is Costco delivering that food?
22:05
Do we have to go get that food? Is that food requiring
22:08
refrigeration? Because now I need to book a
22:10
refrigerated van and all of this effort that goes into actually
22:14
just getting a bunch of food from point A to point B.
22:18
But then also allowing for variety.
22:21
So they talked about how farmers actually have components within
22:26
this state. I'm sure it's the same across
22:29
the country, but how in this particular state, farmers
22:32
actually have plots that's called grow to donate.
22:35
So they're growing these crops knowing that they are going to
22:39
be donated. And so the food banks know
22:41
relatively when they're going to get these deliveries because
22:44
obviously the farmers keep them updated.
22:46
And so again, it's arranging things, but like, if you get
22:49
like a million years of corn, you can't just keep feeding
22:52
corn. People are going to get bored.
22:55
So how do we spread this out across the state?
22:58
How do we make it available, you know, to the various partners
23:01
and, and what does that look like?
23:02
And so it was super, super interesting.
23:04
They're even talking about this app that they're developing or
23:08
that they're going to be using. I'm not sure if they're
23:09
developing it, but that is going to allow them to, obviously not
23:13
for Someone Like You and me, but for different organizations like
23:16
restaurants and shops to be able to go in and log the food that
23:22
they have and it will automatically populate that they
23:24
need to pick up. And so just like the automation
23:27
of this effort is just incredible.
23:29
I just found it so fascinating to understand how how much goes
23:35
into this and and then the statistics around in this
23:39
particular state, one in six people don't have adequate food.
23:45
And so one in six people are needing supplementation through
23:49
things like a food bank and other other efforts in the
23:51
state. And we had just come from this
23:55
event and I said, OK, how many people were there?
23:58
Thirty of us. So how many of us at that event,
24:01
if we were a sample of a population from the state would
24:05
be needing to go to a food bank. So this is a very real thing.
24:09
It's not just happening in one part of the world.
24:13
It's happening all over. But then this led to the
24:15
conversation of, OK, but is it different in different parts of
24:19
the world? And so that is the next like map
24:22
activity that we're doing is to track hunger relief and not just
24:28
how it is locally either in the United States or here in
24:31
England, but where is it? What does it look across the
24:35
globe and where are our pockets where it's more intense?
24:40
So that I thought was, it was just so interesting.
24:43
Like I never would have thought, let's see how they run a food
24:46
bank. So it was super interesting.
24:48
And then what we did, we went to the grocery store and we
24:52
specifically found the food drop for donations here locally.
24:57
And it's something that we've looked at, but I don't think
24:59
I've ever spent any time actually like reiterating what
25:01
it's for. And so we did that.
25:02
So they all saw like how there is efforts even here to collect
25:07
and support food for hunger relief.
25:10
And then of course, listen to another podcast, this one about
25:15
the quality of our food. And does the quality matter when
25:20
you're choosing something to eat?
25:22
So this kind of gets into what you were talking about because
25:25
it really stressed around that effort of like food to table 0
25:29
kilometer, however you want to call it.
25:32
But and just that the quality over the quantity of your food
25:36
is really important and where you might want to spend more
25:40
money because it might make a difference.
25:44
But that ultimately, if you're paying attention, you, you
25:47
probably won't spend much more than you would anyway.
25:51
You just have to be cautious of like where the allocation is
25:54
going. But like that it might make an
25:56
effort to look at local farm options.
25:59
The average, this is in the states, the average time it
26:02
takes to get an egg, like when you buy eggs at the grocery
26:05
store, they were laid 77 days ago, 77 days.
26:11
So it is shocking. And I know it's different than
26:13
England because we do refrigerate the eggs in the
26:16
States. And so I'm sure the shelf life,
26:19
but I don't want to eat an egg that was over two months old.
26:22
Like that's crazy to me. And so that led to the
26:26
conversation of like why we buy our eggs locally and even if
26:30
it's slightly more, you know, these eggs were laid in the last
26:33
week or maybe even that morning, depending on where you pick them
26:36
up. And so that that is just so
26:40
important. And then it talked about the
26:42
importance of how how a farm has like varied crops.
26:47
And this gets back to you. We're talking about like soil
26:48
dying and all of this that like. Rotate the soil.
26:52
Exactly, and like if you have like just a mat, if you only
26:56
grow corn, that's all you grow and you're not also growing like
26:59
tomatoes and strawberries and like, you know, rotating your,
27:02
your crops throughout the season.
27:04
Like some of these smaller farms, they just have the better
27:07
nutrients because of the way that they're managing versus
27:11
just having one thing. And they're, you know, obviously
27:14
they rest the fields and, and have that rotation, but it's,
27:17
it's not as good. So really just to focus on
27:20
quality, which I thought was really interesting.
27:23
And So what we're doing out of that is just constantly making
27:27
an effort to find local farms to support.
27:30
And I thought this, another aspect that they said, which I
27:33
thought was really interesting is about how you can think about
27:37
the profits from your purchases and where those profits are
27:41
going. So obviously in the States, it's
27:43
probably a little bit different than here, but ultimately the
27:47
same If you're buying food from a grocery store and your grocery
27:51
store is headquartered like the main grocery store is in another
27:54
state that all those profits are driving towards that state.
27:59
So if you're not actually feeding your local economy the
28:04
same way as if you were buying from a local farm that is in
28:09
your region, because all that money is staying within your
28:12
area. And so it, it just talks about
28:16
how that's an important thing. And so that led to a
28:18
conversation kind of from our last week's topic around, you
28:22
know, finances and how where you spend your money does matter
28:25
and, and keeping your your area, you know, keeping the wealth in
28:31
your area. And so there's.
28:33
Industry alive too, right? I can't keep businesses alive
28:36
and keeping things going, keeping jobs available.
28:39
Yeah, absolutely. And how that ultimately does
28:41
matter, like it, it does impact the quality of your food.
28:44
Like you want to be able to buy your groceries that were, you
28:48
know, the carrots that came from the the couple streets down.
28:51
You don't want to buy your carrots, as you were saying, you
28:53
know, from even another country if you don't have to, because
28:56
there's a whole host of things that go with that, carbon
28:59
emissions and yeah, all of that. So and the food's just not as
29:02
good by the time it gets to, it's not as fresh.
29:04
So I thought that was really interesting.
29:06
And we just said we kind of beandered through as we as we
29:09
went it. Sounds like you've covered some
29:11
really, really good, like intensive sort of subjects as
29:14
well and really opened their eyes because I say some of this
29:17
stuff we don't even necessarily talk about or think about very
29:21
often. Like every now and then you
29:22
might get, I don't know, like you might make the odd comment
29:25
being like, guys, look, there's people starving in the world.
29:28
Please appreciate what the food we've got.
29:30
Like, please don't throw it like take one bite right now.
29:32
Just don't fancy that now. Just check it on the side to go
29:34
horrible. Like cover it up in the fridge,
29:37
eat it later. Like please don't waste it that
29:39
this stuff costs money. And it's obviously food has gone
29:41
up in cost around the world just astronomically in the past few
29:45
years as well. With everything that happened
29:46
with COVID and then everything that's happened with Ukraine and
29:49
all of it. Just the costs are just going up
29:51
and up and up. And ultimately we can't afford
29:53
to waste food. And obviously when you do look
29:56
at the sort of the health of and you say that the areas of the
29:59
world that are really struggling and looking for food desperately
30:05
is such a shame. How much is wasted in US bigger
30:09
Western countries and how much how much is really just going to
30:11
landfill? Yeah, I mean, I feel this way
30:14
about clothing too. That's a whole another topic.
30:16
But yeah, 100%. And so I think that the pieces
30:20
that we haven't gotten to yet, but we well, we started, we
30:24
haven't finished. We started talking about the
30:27
this you mentioned. I love how our tracks kind of
30:30
lined up. We were talking about the food
30:33
impact on the planet. So we started to talk about
30:37
global warming and climate change.
30:39
There is, I think it's called Curiosity Kids.
30:42
I have to verify this, but there is a pretty popular kids topic,
30:45
kids podcast that covered this topic and we listen to that.
30:48
And that's always a fun one because there is again, like a
30:50
child on the podcast. So it helps to just have the
30:53
kids hear that and they stay engaged.
30:56
That was a really good one. And then what we're going to
31:01
continue from there is talking about different diets and why
31:05
people choose different food lifestyles.
31:07
So vegetarian veganism, I mean, obviously there's a million,
31:11
maybe not a million, but there's plenty of reasons why you might
31:14
choose that diet. And one of them certainly is
31:17
impact on the planet. And so we're going to talk about
31:21
that. We are going to talk about food
31:25
evolution. So how food has changed in
31:28
history. This is something that sort of
31:30
when we launched this with our conversation around Roman
31:34
influences from that field trip we did, we I wanted to come back
31:39
to that. So I want to come back to that
31:40
now that we've done a little bit more research on and just really
31:43
talk about how food has changed throughout history and just
31:48
weave that in a little bit as we go forward.
31:51
So as we do our history, I want to pull in that food aspect.
31:56
And I think probably we'll have to rely on some Internet
32:00
searches and AI to help get some details around that because it's
32:04
typically not covered in in anything you read in terms of
32:07
like history books and conversations like that.
32:09
So I thought that would be interesting as sort of an
32:11
ongoing thing. And then I want to talk about
32:13
the social aspects of food. So I think food and and eating
32:19
is something that is very, very social in most cultures and is
32:24
very different. Like the types of food that
32:27
Italians eat to celebrate are different than Americans and
32:31
through all different cultures. And so obviously there is
32:34
religious aspects to food. So certain religions don't want
32:38
you to eat certain foods for different reasons.
32:40
I think it's just very fascinating.
32:42
And so that is definitely something that we're going to
32:46
look into and maybe how even like eating at different tables,
32:52
separating men from women potentially and children and
32:55
things like that over the course of history and even today, I
32:58
think could be really interesting.
32:59
So those are kind of the things that we're going to be
33:01
continuing basically the the impact of food on the planet,
33:06
the evolution of food and the social aspects of food.
33:10
And then we're still going to follow up with our map work.
33:15
So completing like the biomes and where food is popular based
33:23
on the region that you're in, what they typically tend to
33:25
grow, and then just ongoing efforts to focus on local and
33:31
like quality over quantity of the types of foods that we buy.
33:34
So yeah, that was a good week. Sounds really good and I think
33:39
it's interesting like terms with listen to kind of how you have
33:41
covered it makes me think as well about the types of delivery
33:44
that we tend to do that. I know that my kids particularly
33:47
quite receptive to us just having a chat over breakfast
33:50
like we were this morning and just talking about something or
33:52
we grabbed the globe and a book. We might watch a YouTube video
33:56
and it tends to be a bit kind of just follows their questions and
33:58
they just as they talk to me about it.
34:00
We just kind of follow it wherever it goes.
34:02
I don't do an awful lot of like sitting at the dining table
34:04
necessarily. Kind of this is specifically
34:08
exactly how this is going to go over the next hour.
34:10
But I certainly have normally have a point or a starting place
34:14
and then we just sort of like see where it takes us.
34:17
My kids also really enjoy listening to stuff.
34:19
I've never really managed to get into podcasts, but I think it's
34:22
mostly because I'm just not brilliant at searching for the
34:25
right ones. So I'll definitely look into the
34:27
ones that you've mentioned and hopefully have a listen to those
34:29
with my kids and see what they think of them.
34:31
Because I would like to listen to more podcasts, but sometimes
34:34
I find it quite frustrating when I'm searching through them,
34:36
trying to find one that's you've got the right tone on the right
34:39
kind of yeah, the right content, etcetera.
34:43
Can be quite tricky to find the right ones.
34:44
So that's a talent in and of itself.
34:46
Once, I think once you get the hang of it, it's probably fine.
34:48
But it is frustrating. I guess sometimes you try and
34:50
listen to them be like, actually no, that's not really what I was
34:52
looking for. We do that.
34:54
It's trial and error. We listened.
34:55
My kids will tell you that I'm like next, next.
34:59
This is not what I wanted. Like sometimes the description
35:03
isn't close at all. No, exactly.
35:06
And I think like with my two as well, they quite enjoy stuff
35:09
that's quite interactive. So if it allows them to still
35:11
move around, if it helps them to kind of like be experiencing
35:14
things. So we've got a lot of spices
35:16
out. Like I might well, my husband
35:19
accidentally ripped the door off of our spice cupboard recently,
35:22
just one of our big kitchen cupboard doors.
35:24
He was just accidentally pulled it off its hinges.
35:27
So he's been sat in my living room with all the spices in the
35:30
rack like just for like weeks whilst we get around to actually
35:34
put it back on the wall. It's just one of those jobs.
35:37
It's not quite been happening. And anyway, so they were right
35:40
there and I was like, oh, I know, but why don't we just have
35:42
a smell of some of these spices? And like, we just literally just
35:44
opened the jars and just had a sniff.
35:45
And then we talked about where they came from, what we used
35:48
them for, and they really enjoyed that.
35:51
They're like, oh, that smells really horrible.
35:53
Oh, that smells really strong or all that smells spicy or that
35:55
smells like pretty acidic or like in all these different
35:58
lovely descriptive words. And that was actually just for
36:01
fun like we did. She just sat there messing
36:02
about, like looking at them all and smelling them all.
36:06
And yeah, I think it's it's just really, really nice kind of
36:10
doing sort of semi interactive things, playing with the globe,
36:14
having a chat about it, doing a word search.
36:18
They both love a word search. Often we would go to the
36:21
library. So if we were doing this topic
36:23
for longer. And I think what I want to
36:24
stress as well to people is that ultimately this nowhere near
36:27
done. Like know when you're done.
36:28
There's so much that could be done and said about and covered
36:31
and stuff that Ashley said. I'm definitely going to look
36:33
into mine as well about the food banks and stuff.
36:35
And there's one that is actually local, but just up the road
36:40
local church. And so there might be something
36:41
we can go and do with them and go and deliver some stuff on the
36:45
day and. Really, we would do that
36:49
exactly. So many great subjects to cover
36:52
there and obviously we haven't necessarily covered in in enough
36:56
depth anyway. Perhaps we have talked about it
36:58
a couple of times, but it's always quite, it can be quite
37:00
scary sometimes, the thought of sort of bringing up
37:02
conversations around sort of famine and people starving and
37:07
like massive food shortages and things like that in certain
37:10
parts of the world. Because it isn't necessarily
37:12
always a subject that feels very, very easy to cover.
37:16
Like we don't like we've got young children, and mine is
37:18
still relatively young. You don't want to necessarily
37:20
upset them too much. But also children their age can
37:24
become activists. And they're.
37:26
Yeah, I mean, also, yeah, they're living it and they're
37:28
experiencing it and they're going through it.
37:29
And so ultimately, whilst it's not pleasant to hear about it,
37:33
it's much worse to experience it.
37:35
And ultimately, if we know something about it, then we can
37:37
do something about it. Yeah.
37:39
And if we don't teach them and show them them or just like give
37:41
them an opportunity to to learn about it in their own way and
37:44
they're not going to know exists.
37:46
And I think that's what some of this is about is trying to help,
37:48
to open their minds and make them realise that there is a
37:51
whole wealth of subjects and thoughts and people and issues
37:55
in the world, like problems to solve and stuff to be aware of
37:59
to just really expand their minds.
38:00
I mean, I'm, I'm racking my brain start trying to think if
38:02
there's anything else we did. I know we did do some other
38:04
things. It's mostly stuff I want to do.
38:06
Like there's a restaurant near us called the Greek Vine in
38:09
Wallington, I think it is. It's about an hour from us.
38:12
It's not very close anymore. It used to be a lot closer, what
38:15
about 20 years ago? But it they do like Friday,
38:18
Saturday nights, they do like what's essentially a Greek party
38:20
nights. They do all the music and the
38:22
dancing and they smash the plates and like you get this
38:25
like Creek party meze menu. So they get to try all the
38:28
lovely Greek food and it's really good value.
38:31
It's only something like 24 lbs an adult and 14 lbs each for the
38:35
kids. And just like that's actually a
38:36
bargain for going out for dinner these days.
38:38
So we are going to go and do that for our anniversary in May,
38:41
which will be really, really fun.
38:42
So we're going to go and have a great night out and, and enjoy
38:44
that with the kids. It'll be totally on on the right
38:47
track of what my son's interested in as well.
38:48
At the minute, he's like, we get to go smash plates and just
38:51
like, yeah, I hope they still do that because that was really fun
38:53
last time. It was really good.
38:57
Yeah. But there's so many lovely kind
38:58
of restaurants and stuff that would allow you to be quite
39:00
immersive into the culture and into the food.
39:02
And like, I mean, honestly, the idea of taking my children to,
39:05
like, an Indian restaurant or something just makes me laugh
39:07
because there's like, nothing they would probably eat on that
39:09
menu. My youngest would just order
39:11
plain rice. Should just eat rice.
39:14
It's like, why the way out for dinner in this amazing place
39:17
that literally eating rice? They might eat some of the bread
39:19
as well, I suppose. But yeah, no, it's just super
39:22
frustrating. So there's it's not really worth
39:24
it as a kind of a proper meal out thing, but it's still nice
39:27
to experience the smells and the environment and maybe the music
39:31
and like all that sort of stuff as well.
39:33
So even if they did only end up eating plain rice, maybe like a
39:35
taste of a Curry, that it's still something, right?
39:38
Like it's still really important to get those experiences.
39:40
So we'll try and do that. I'll try and be brave, OK.
39:43
I will try and be brave to waste some of my money.
39:46
We'll go out and try some different things.
39:47
But but yeah, I think this is, it's a great subject and it's
39:52
something which, as we've kind of demonstrated could go in a
39:54
million different directions. You could come at it from just a
39:57
really fun explorative sensory experience.
40:01
You could come at it from a very kind of historical and
40:03
geographical kind of perspective.
40:05
But that's, I say, what I was going to say earlier is I really
40:07
love about subjects like these is that you can quite literally
40:09
cover every single subject. If you want to refer to them as
40:13
subjects like maths, English, science, etcetera.
40:15
Like all of it blends into this kind of subject.
40:18
You can quite literally do. A bit of everything that helps
40:22
to give them context and concepts to understand and ideas
40:25
and did a bit of maths and a bit of science and all sorts of
40:28
different stuff. The sensory play can explore all
40:31
kinds of different things with them.
40:33
So it's really, really fun and I think is something which is well
40:36
worth doing. So if you haven't been following
40:38
along yet, maybe this is a good one to start with.
40:40
The capital allocation 1 was a bit harsh as a first subject,
40:43
wasn't it really? But.
40:45
Yeah. Well, to be fair, we have one
40:47
listener give a great podcast recommendation that you and I
40:50
hadn't found, so we can share that in the blog as well.
40:53
But I think that the participation is helpful too,
40:57
because you guys are finding stuff we're not finding, which
40:59
is awesome. And millions we can.
41:02
Yeah. And I love how we can take this
41:05
in so many different directions. It can let us have a little fun
41:08
instead of staying within the lines of following a math
41:12
curriculum or following a language arts curriculum and
41:15
like you were saying, not be taught just at the table in a,
41:18
in a way that can be a bit dry. So, yeah, I mean, we're
41:20
listening to podcasts in the car.
41:22
We're, you know, thinking about things as we're going through
41:25
our daily routines of grocery shopping.
41:27
And I, I love, I love that it feels very practical.
41:32
So yeah, let's let's see what's next.
41:35
I feel like my kids are humoring me at the moment.
41:37
But what? And typically they get to choose
41:40
the subjects. So they will just tell me what
41:41
they want to do next. And so we just follow whatever
41:43
they're into. But this is kind of the first
41:45
time we've done it where I am being like, right, this is the
41:48
challenge. We didn't talk about this this
41:49
week, but they are being really receptive to it.
41:52
And who knows, one of these subjects might turn into
41:54
something they want to go even deeper into.
41:55
So that's, that's kind of the hope, right?
41:58
So I guess that's what we're trying to achieve here is to
42:01
open their minds. So we have a need to pick a new
42:05
one now because like we're not exhausted enough at this point.
42:07
I reckon we're going to manage like half a season at this game.
42:10
Then we'll be like, OK, can we have a break now please?
42:14
I have got an extra bonus session that I'm recording with
42:16
a lady called Jen Hodge at some point where we're going to be
42:18
talking about obviously the children's well-being in school
42:21
Bill, which obviously all of us are absolutely gutted about, but
42:25
she's going to come and talk to us about that and possibly a bit
42:26
about the SEND bill as well. So we will get a break.
42:29
We will get a week of reprieve at some point we can take a
42:33
moment between subjects, catch our game.
42:36
All right, let's pick another one, shall we?
42:39
Was another good one. Lesson Known sports.
42:44
This is. Going to be so much fun.
42:47
I love stuff like this. Because when I thought of that
42:49
one, it was literally just like, I bet there's some really great
42:52
sports that are played in this world that we know nothing about
42:55
that actually like are played in like, I don't know, the deepest,
42:58
darkest tribe somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.
43:00
Like, I wonder what kind of things are played or done.
43:04
Like, you know, you're watching like the Olympics and you see
43:07
people doing a sport. You're like, that's a sport.
43:08
Like I'd never even heard of that before.
43:11
Olympics. Like this is the thing.
43:12
Why are we not all learning curling as we grow up?
43:16
Like why? Why is this?
43:17
Just how do you get to this Olympic level?
43:19
There's probably so much potential that's never tapped
43:21
into because people don't have the opportunity.
43:23
Like this seems ridiculous. And it looks really fun too,
43:27
right? My son, for example, really
43:29
wants to do fencing. Yeah.
43:31
So I was just like, OK, we can, we can try and find you some
43:34
fencing. It's actually, it came up as a
43:35
conversation about we're going to center parks in a few weeks
43:38
time. And on the list was sent was
43:40
fencing. He's.
43:41
Oh, that looks awesome. Just like you literally spend
43:44
your forest school day every week fencing with your friends
43:47
with sticks. Like 100%.
43:48
You'd probably be brilliant at it.
43:50
So yeah, I think there's some really good ones out there that
43:52
we could probably have some fun with with this.
43:55
Hopefully you'll get us out and be a little bit active.
43:58
But also there must be some really great YouTube videos of
44:00
people doing some really cool stunts.
44:02
You've seen those guys who like bike down mountainsides at
44:06
breakneck speeds, quite literally.
44:08
Because I watched the bloopers. Oh God, I couldn't.
44:12
I didn't think I would be able to do that.
44:14
Like we're suddenly they're going and then if they make a
44:16
turn through a Bush and it's just like a a drop off and
44:18
they're like. Oh God.
44:20
Oh. My gosh.
44:22
I think these things just give me anxiety.
44:25
My palms start sweating watching the like TikTok.
44:29
I'm like OK like I am. I am in a state of panic and I'm
44:34
sitting at my kitchen table. These people are nuts.
44:37
There's there's a guy who's doing like, it's like he just
44:42
like climbed to the top of like a really high hill, strapped his
44:45
dog, like his dog wanted to go apparently, like strapped his
44:50
dog to his body and then like jumps off and does like when
44:54
they've got like the wing suits, he's doing that.
44:57
And then just like parachutes down gradually.
44:59
I'm just like, OK, apparently, like the guy said, you're
45:03
diagnosing that. Yeah.
45:04
God, my poor little Bailey Boo. There's not a way he he shivers
45:10
at the thoughts of going outside for a wee, let alone something
45:13
as terrifying as that. But apparently this guy used to
45:15
go up with his friend and they used to like the dog was
45:18
desperately trying to jump off a Cliff after him as they're like,
45:21
maybe he wants to go too. It's like, no, he just wants to
45:24
know where his dad's gone. Just jumped off a Cliff.
45:30
Honestly doesn't really go to be honest.
45:33
I have got I would say like neurodemergic kids top my my son
45:37
is like autistic ADHD. That kid is bonkers and I'm not
45:41
entirely sure that I need to show him that there are sports
45:43
where you can jump off cliffs. We'll stay away from those ones.
45:46
Goodness me, he's definitely going to want to take that up.
45:49
But yeah, I mean, people who go do those things clearly have
45:52
like a desperate need for adrenaline.
45:56
But yeah, I'm quite curious about this one.
45:58
There must be some really good ones.
45:59
So we'll go and we'll do a bit of research to see what we can
46:01
do with that. But yeah, it should be fun.
46:03
Thing I love it. But yeah, if you guys have got
46:06
any questions or you want to kind of find out more about what
46:08
we've been up to, we are going to be doing a blog that attached
46:10
to each of these episodes. So by now you should hopefully
46:14
see an episode blog for the first one up on our website,
46:19
which is Big home edpodcast.com. And essentially we would give
46:22
up, give as many different bits that we did as possible, give
46:25
you the links to whatever we used.
46:27
And hopefully then you can either recreate it easily or you
46:30
can use it as a jumping off point to go and find other
46:33
things that you think that your kids would enjoy doing.
46:37
And remember to just just have fun with it.
46:39
Like don't don't feel like you have to cover loads and
46:41
certainly don't feel like you have to try and do it all in a
46:43
week. We absolutely will not be able
46:47
to maintain all these things like doing so many different
46:51
subjects or at once. Like that is is a lot.
46:53
Yeah, it's a lot of pressure to be trying to live like this week
46:56
on week. Like this is not normal.
46:57
Like we're not like this. Anybody out there who's new to
47:00
home Ed, you do not have to have this massive great whole topic
47:03
to cover every single week. This is not normal behaviour.
47:05
This is fun, but it is hard work.
47:07
So definitely take it easy and just go gently with it.
47:10
So no, no pressure to anybody out there.
47:12
But I hope you all have a wonderful week and we'll see you
47:15
again next time. You've been listening to the Big
47:23
Home Ed Conversations podcast. Thanks for tuning in.
47:26
Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share with a
47:29
friend. Follow us on Instagram and
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TikTok at Big Home Ed Podcast for updates.
47:36
Also check out our new website at Big Home, edpodcast.com.
47:41
We'll be back next week to talk about our experiences, bringing
47:44
the topic of lesser known sports to our children.
47:48
We hope to hear your experiences as well, so come talk to us
47:51
about it on social media. Thanks for listening.