Happy New Year

It's a brand new calendar year, and whilst it's not traditionally the time a new academic year starts, I have surrendered to the recognition that we need to re-vamp the way we home educate. 

I have been re-evaluating everything, from our use or non-use of curricula, our schedule, our achievement and of course how we all feel about the way things are going. The catalyst for this was my 9 year old finding it harder and harder in one particular academic area and often things ending in tears (everybody's) and the main lesson being taken away from our learning was that it was hard/ I am stupid/ I can't do this. So after spending a great deal of time over the Yuletide I have changed almost everything about how we do home education in our home. 

First off I am no longer filling in a daily schedule in my planner. No more "do x on Monday" because time and time again we fail. I cross it out and transfer it to the next day and move the rest of the week a day along. It feels like failure (and it messes up my beautiful planner and any of you planner girls out there will know how hard this is to take!) In place of this I am having a list of things we intend to achieve over a week in my weekly planner, organised by subject, with anything extra we do in a tick box table at the bottom. 

This one single thing has had an immense impact on our home education journey. Not only has it transformed how much we achieve in a week but gives us all a tremendous sense of control, organisation and satisfaction. Seeing all those ticks each week (as any die-hard planner girl will tell you) gives me a huge thrill. And if we don't get any of the "bits" done then I can carry them onto next week's list. The other MASSIVE thing this has done for me, as the one responsible for the home education here is the RELEASE from GUILT. On Friday we went on a Lego workshop at a local

Museum and, whilst this "counts" as education, usually in the back of my mind, subconsciously even, I would feel guilty about doing more of the "fun" things. It felt like skipping school, especially as it wasn't part of the contents of any particular curriculum we might be trying to use. But I felt so liberated on Friday knowing that everything on our list had been ticked off for that week. That in itself is worth the paper alone. 

Along with how I plan our weeks, I have also taken into consideration the learning styles my boys have and have revamped the materials and methods we use. I'm currently waiting for orders to arrive, but I'll share as soon as we're up and running. 

Here are some of the amazing things we saw at our Lego workshop and the exhibition piece our group created (which will stay on display for the remainder of the exhibition. How cool is that?).