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?). 

Proud Mummy Moment

One of the biggest worries I think many of us who are educating our children other than in school have is reading. How old are they when they finally "get it", once they do get it do they have an appropriate "reading age", are they reading good quality fiction and. On fiction from a good range of genres. The list goes on. And even though I find myself telling my concerned colleagues that they shouldn't worry and that little Freddy will get it in his own time and then he'll fly, I still sometimes, just sometimes, allow that doubting fear to creep into my mind. 

E was a natural reader (and I was a smug parent lol). He seemed to learn to read by osmosis. By the time he was five he was reading simple chapter books and by seven devouring Harry Potter like a jam donut. He practically inhaled it. 

But B. Well. He was different. He IS different. He is nearly seven and finds it hard. He didn't seem to have the same innate desire to learn to read that his brother had. He manages life perfectly well without it, thank you very much. And I wonder if he'll ever "get it". 

Roll forward to bed time reading on Friday. Reader, he read! My heart wanted to burst as much as my cheeks were. He read almost entirely by himself a level 3 (because level is important, right?) Biff, Chip and Kipper book. My proud mummy moment was happening right there in that snuggly bunk bed. He was decidedly underwhelmed by my exclamation he was reading, of course. "I'm not reading Mum, I'm

just working out the sounds in my head and saying them out loud!" 

Need more sleep or time or both

This time of year I just want to cozy on up by the fire, drink tea and read great books. I always feel like I need more sleep. Hibernating sounds very appealing. So that is what we've done (nestling by the fire,not hibernating) in between writing our Christmas wish lists, our usual outside the home activities and a visit to the cinema for IntoFilm week (see https://www.intofilm.org/ for more details about this wonderful learning opportunity that happens in November each year). 

We went to see Alice Through the Looking Glass where the Jabberwocky got a brief mention. So naturally once we got home we hunted out the brilliant poem Lewis Carroll wrote about the Jabberwocky and settled down by the fire with a cuppa and some brilliant reading and poetry. 

Jabberwocky 

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
And the mome raths outgrabe. 

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 
The frumious Bandersnatch!' 

He took his vorpal sword in hand: 
Long time the manxome foe he sought 
So rested he by the Tumtum tree, 
And stood a while in thought. 

And, as in uffish thought he stood, 
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, 
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, 
And burbled as it came! 

One two! One two! And through and through 
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! 
He left it dead, and with its head 
He went galumphing back. 

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' 
He chortled in his joy. 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
And the mome raths outgrabe.

By Lewis Carroll

The year so far in pictures

View on Flipagram

Autumn Musings

Still a contender for the world's worst blogger, I am back to have another go at "regular blogging".

I was recently introduced to using beautiful planners and journals to plan and record my daily/weekly/monthly goings on and have really enjoyed committing my thoughts, ideas and memories to paper, using art, poetry and quotations to embellish my own mediocre ramblings.

As I delve further into middle age I realise that my brain really does have a finite capacity, most of which is filled with song lyrics (I'm a singer in a band) which I promptly forget when the spotlight is shining on me. So it makes sense to use other means of memory keeping. I am truly loving my new found creative outlet and as I was happily cutting and sticking I recalled I had a dusty old blog somewhere out there in the world wide ether. Of course!! This too is the perfect memory keeper. That was my original intention.

With a quick trip down memory lane I really wish I'd managed a bit more. So in my shiny new planner/journal, under the page headed "goals" I have firmly placed a bullet point entitled "post to my home ed blog once a week". It can't be that hard? Surely?

Not back to school

It's that time of year again when my social media is full of those pictures of shiny, smiley children, standing in front of their houses, bedecked in brand new uniform. With faces full of excitement and anticipation for what the new school year brings. 

Our first day back looked like this:

We kicked things off by heading to the park with the dog to drink in the hazy morning warmth of the last days of summer. Or are these the early days of autumn? I'm not sure, but either way we spent some time together talking about our plans for the day and appreciating the renewed  tranquility that is ours now school is back for everyone else. 

I suspect these glorious warm morning walks will be few in number as the month progresses and soon we'll be donning our sweaters and wellies. I'm looking forward to it! Happy new term. 

Embarrassing!

Nearly a year since I last posted. Well that's embarrassing 😳

I think maybe daily posting was setting my expectations to high and so I crashed and burned in glorious anti-climax. 

So what had brought me back? Two things really. Firstly my gorgeous gymnastics crochet buddy has oy gone and left the country (how rude)! Luckily for me she and her family are blogging their adventures so I can at least live vicariously through her as she gets up to mischief half way around the world from me. Her blog entries reminded me that I too had means to collect my memories for safe keeping in blogland and so I popped back in here to have a look. The second kick up the backside was seeing all those beautiful threads of my memories, some of which I'd already forgotten which has galvanised me into action. So on the advice of my beautiful, wise friend, I'm setting the bar lower and am going to attempt a weekly post of what we've been done. There should still be plenty for me to reminisce over when my babies fly the nest. 

So here in the UK right now it is official school holiday season. The parks are all teaming with people, my facebook feed is a mix of family holiday snaps and desperate cries of "need more wine" and "when do they go back?!" We however just try to continue our gentle pace, minus the extra curricular clubs that have all suspended for the summer. 

Since I last posted I have begun to adopt more structure to our journey and we are using a beautiful Waldorf inspired curriculum from Oak Meadow. Our day rhythm goes something like this:

Breakfast

Morning walk

Main lesson time

Lunch

Stories/reading

Afternoon studies (craft, cooking, music etc)

In addition to that, at certain times in the week we also have a weekly history co-op (where we use The Story of the World book and activity books), swimming lessons, our local home ed group and forest school. It sounds hectic, but really it isn't. 

So this week in literacy we looked at the traditional folk tale from Scotland about Grey Friars Bobby. The boys drew their own interpretation and did a summary. 

In science we learnt why we have day and night and seasons and in our history  group we looked at the first writing and had a go at making our own stone tablets with cuneiform letters and parchments with ink made from berries.  

E finished his current topic in maths and is about to start the next topic - times tables! B has been doing his phonics work and both boys have been practising writing the letters a and b, really concentrating g on how to form them correctly and in E's case trying out cursive. We met with friends in Friday to play our recorders, went to a birthday party or two over the weekend and alongside that lot there was much playing and merriment. The weather has been lovely this week. It's all set to change next week- watch this space. 

Day 18

Today the boys did "just acting" at their morning drama workshop. It was their coaches last day so the emotions were high. E loves this particular coach and has thoroughly enjoyed her workshops over the last year. 

This afternoon both boys did a level on math loops and reading eggs and then we completed our osmosis experiment. We had one very firm, turgid piece of cucumber and one very limp disgusting looking piece. Mind you, B the cucumber fiend wanted to eat both of them lol. 

Gymnastics this evening and just watching my baby bear still makes my heart swell. I die of cuteness every week. I just wish I could take a photo (we're not allowed). 

Day 16

Tuesday toddlers as usual this morning. The children made animal pictures based on cut out circles- an elephant, a panda and a tiger and E drew his own elephant which I was very impressed with - he's a reluctant artist at the best of times. 

B mostly played whilst E helped set up the drinks and biscuits in the coffee lounge in between bouts of playing on iPad apps or playing on the foosball table. 

After lunch we did some maths. It was a bit like pulling teeth for E today (it took 59 minutes to do a 10 minute activity). Meanwhile I managed to chuck some food in the slow cooker for dinner tonight and put yet another load of laundry on. 

Next we continued our Open University science course that we started last week. Today's experiment is designed to help us look at the process of osmosis using a cucumber and a saline solution and plain distiller water. We set up our experiment today and we will be recording our observations over the next 24 hours. 

We did some colouring sheets about teeth brushing and B spent quite a long time making stars using a paper stamper and then lining them all up in coloured patterns. 

E has his first "after school" tea date today at a friends house at 5pm. He is beyond excited! 

Another busy day! 

Day 14 & 15

I totally missed writing up Sunday, but to be honest you didn't miss much. I tidied, sorted laundry, did good shopping etc whilst the boys kept themselves busy doing who knows what?!

Day 15 we got up and did some maths (e did maths loops and B did maths seeds) we read some stories then we headed out to a soft play centre for a leisurely play and spot of lunch with friends. And much to my 7 yr old's delight there were two other 7 year olds there whose school was closed due to a power cut apparently. So these four boys all had a fabulous time running around and organising make believe play. 

When we got home I read about 5 books to them - pretty much read myself to sleep lol. 

This evening at Beavers they had a commercial pilot visit along with an exciting suitcase of interesting artefacts related to his career. 

I enjoyed today. 

Day 13

Saturday = kids play randomly whilst I do "stuff".

The boiler was serviced, the airing cupboard sorted out, 3 sacks of unwanted linen delivered to charity clothing bank, £115 spent on two boys' pairs of shoes for winter (ouch!), table cloth purchased to hide damage from leaking batteries B left on it yesterday, large(r) storage box bought for ever expanding dressing up clothes collection. 

Not sure how much actual education happened (it is the weekend after all) although I did notice the boys were playing a competitive maths game with each other on the iPad at one point. 

Day 11

So I'm behind again!

Thursday (yesterday) we did straw pictures and made autumn play dough with lots of lovely spices in the morning the played out in the garden. 

Straw craft 

Bowling balls: 

Some trees:

The afternoon was mostly a mix of free play, a bit of minecraft and a game of guess who?  A lovely visit from a lovely Aunty with delivery of gifts and cards for one of my birthday boys, eating cake and drinking tea. 

Day 12

Fabulous Friday!

Our home ed group was this morning and my co-organiser was on holibobs so I was on my own! Slightly apprehensive it was going to remain that way as messages trickled in from the regulars to say they weren't coming. 

I needn't have worried!

By 10.30 there were 12 families with 22 children, many of whom were brand new attendees. The atmosphere was buzzing and there was a fantastic "teen" contingent which was wonderful to see. 

We had a craft table of adhesive vinyl coloured sheets, paper, scissors and glue

A Pom Pom craft table

Play dough

Braid making and yarn craft table

K-nex table

Chess, puzzles and Lego games

And a minecraft laptop network/hub. 

The weather was still a balmy 23 degrees today so there was a lot of spillage into the adjacent skate park too. 

Next for us was a quick stop at the chippy for lunch then a drive to forest school for the afternoon. I managed to leave the boys there and grab a coffee with a friend. Bliss!

The evening finished with a birthday takeaway and mars bar-malteser cake for the newest 19 year old on the house. 

Happy happy day :) and now to settle down for the first Strictly Come Dancing of the year!  Wish every day could be like this. 

Day 10

Oops. Bit late, but here goes. 

This Wednesday saw the return of our weekly drama session at the local(ish) youth theatre school. There has been some issues about numbers last week following a restructuring of the groups (there are so many children now that they've split to 3 age groups) and with change often comes uncertainty. However, they ran with it today and I'm hoping enough of us were there to keep it sustainable. 

This morning they did a "study" on the story The Giant Jam Sandwich; I was delighted to hear that B played the part of a slice of bread lol and E was a villager. At the end they were all wasps! After the session we spent an hour playing (chatting for parents). 

This afternoon B did some maths seeds (lesson 12, number 7 finally complete) and some reading raven phonics. E did the next stage (9) on the code.org learn to code program. He (and I) are really enjoying it. 

Next came some general browsing which lead to E starting a Christmas present wish list. On it he's written Xbox 360, ps4, wiiU, own iPad, Disney infinity. I can't help but think he's going to be disappointed come December 25th. B would like a red power rangers suit. And belt. And gun. 

Gymnastic next; live watching my tiny boy listen and join in with such earnest. He is with another particularly tiny 4 year old girl and they are just so stinkin' cute together. Makes my heart melt. Every. Time. These years are slipping by so fast. 

Day 9

Tuesday toddler group day - big mainly watched stampylongnose on the iPad whilst the smalls made play dough pies and cakes and pretended to bake them in the play oven, scooted on the clatterbug bikes and generally played. 

After lunch we began our "Basics of Science" course delivered by the OU through FutureLearn. The objective was to find out how much water a potato contains and learn how to present data in a meaningful way using a graph. 

E carefully selected a reasonably sized potato and he took charge of weighing it and microwaving it for 1 minute intervals until it pretty much ceased to exist. We found out that our potato was approximately 80% water and we made a great graph to show how the water left the potato. 

Meanwhile I could hear lots of splashing and running water coming from the cloakroom. "I'm doing science" came the explanation from B.  He had filled the sink with water and was placing different objects into the water. So we decided to make a chart to record our findings about which things sink and which things float to see if we could find a pattern. 

Next we popped to the shops to but some A1 coloured paper for some BIG paintings and some autumnal shades of food colouring gel for our next batch of seasonal play dough. 

There's been more iPad/you tube watching this evening and some note taking of wish lists for Christmas (we're starting early lol). 

Days 7 & 8

Oops! Missed yesterday. Probably because I was buried alive under mountains of paper work whilst my boys played happily. There was a chapter of Mr Stink by David Walliams read at some point and a trip to the supermarket for the weekly shop. The funniest part of the day was that B (aged 4) has discovered the old American series of The Monkees and spent most of the day watching episodes, along with videos of random 1960s and 70s pop songs. He can do a mean rendition of Mungo Jerry's "summertime", including beatbox percussion. :)

Today we did junk modelling with quite a lot of Sellotape and string. B has a but if an obsession with tying things up or together. Nobody can ever find belts for a thing as they have usually been repurposed as some elaborate "baddy" trap. 

Once everything was securely tied up we quickly moved onto play dough and painting (continuing our Elmer theme) Lego (red bricks only!) dressing up and we did some action songs. E finished writing his prayer out for Beavers tonight and completed Bertie Beaver's diary using Word on the laptop. 

Next came some bubble making. E got the bubble science kit out and we tested a few different bubble mixtures to see which was best. The best recipe was this:

1 cup of warm water

2 tbsp dish soap

1tsp glycerine

1tsp white sugar 

We briefly visited a friend and the children played in the garden whilst I had a quick cuppa and a chat. 

At Beavers this evening  E got his Chief Scout award, his faith badge and another which I have no idea what for! 

I sewing is on the agenda next. 

Day 6

It's the weekend! I always feel like we "waste" our weekends by doing very little. Or that they are stolen from me as I have so many jobs that need doing that they get gobbled up and suddenly it's Monday again!

Saturday has been a case in point. 

We kicked off the morning with some stories in bed. Loved the illustrations in this one. A really cosy read for the impending autumn. 

E normally has gymnastics on Saturday mornings but he has decided to stop. I feel a bit torn about it really. I understand why he wants to stop - the building is really grim, delapidated, leaking and probably a health hazard and many if the young coaches, who probably have no idea about gentle attachment parenting, often use shouting and coercion to control children, which I hate, but felt "ok" about it  as my boy didn't experience this the other 5 days a week when most other kids get this all day at school too. It was just a small part of the hour, after all. That being said, I liked to either watch him doing really well at something g he enjoyed or liked the time at home without him if his dad took him that week. I guess our Saturdays will just look a bit different from now on. 

So when we finally got out of bed, the boys played practically all day -either in the playroom, in their room or on the wii or iPad. 

I spent the whole day doing "jobs" - catching up on work paperwork (10-2pm!), an opticians appointment for sight test and lens check (2.45-4.15pm), birthday present shopping and delivery and then home to cook dinner. 

We finished the day curled up on the sofa and watched Monsters University. 

Day 5/30

It was Farm Day Friday today and we all had a wonderful day dispite the gloomy weather and ocassional downpour. 

We learned all about cold smoking food and how to build your own smoker. I feel so inspired to have a go at this myself. Alister (the farmer) has utilised easily available  items to make his and after tasting (read: scoffing the entire block) the amazing smoked cheddar we ended up with at the end of the day we are all hooked on the smoked applewood flavour! It beats shop bought any day. 

Whilst we were waiting for our cheese to smoke (which can take as little as 30 minutes depending on how mild or strong you like the smokey flavour), there were opportunities to help erect a new poultry enclosure - E enjoyed doing this, especially bashing in the fence posts, feed the rare breed sheep, play on a decommissioned tractor or just play with your friends. There was a lot of team work involved in whichever activity the children chose to be involved with and everybody contributed to their particular activity. 

The boys made the most of bashing in fence posts, playing around the farm, paddling in the stream and dancing in the rain. We all came home tired and happy. 

At the end of the session a new home educator told me she could almost have cried seeing how much her children got out of the day and how much joy she got seeing the children having such a wonderful day; Today was a happy day. 💕

Diary day 4

Mmmm. It feels like we've not done anything particularly educational today. 

Here's the list of what I can remember:

Early morning play in the park. 

Just Dance on the wii. 

Pretend play. 

A few more sentences written for Bertie Beaver's diary and prayer for faith badge. 

Trip to the library to exchange books. 

Trip to the supermarket to buy play. dough ingredients and utensils for our "project mud kitchen" which is hopefully going to begin this weekend. 

Lunch - made pizza. 

Walk around the woods and another play in a different park. 

Ninja sword warrior play. 

Toilet training. 

Reading stories. 

Building Lego. 

Swimming lesson. 

I'm guessing as the weather turns cooler  (it was another 23+ degrees again today) we'll do more "indoorsy" stuff that might look more like school. But we'd be fools to miss out on learning under the trees whilst the warmth of the fading summer is still with us. 

Home ed diary day 3

We've been making the most of the glorious 23 degrees Celsius sunshine today before Autumn really sets in and spent most of today outdoors. It's been glorious weather today. 

B did a quick level on maths seeds when he first got up (recognising the number 7) and then we did some gluing - a tooth craft to support the learning we've been doing about teeth and healthy eating. Oh and we read about a hundred books whilst waiting for friends to arrive. 

We then headed to the park/rec with our best friends plus the dog in tow and spent a rather interesting morning together. E has been extremely emotional today; what started out as a general grumpiness, which I attributed to our regular drama workshop being cancelled this morning, continued into taking out those negative feelings on your closest friends (I'm not talking about myself, honest!) There was much tormenting and eventual fisticuffs at one point that we all felt very drained by the time we came home. This was topped off with a full on sobbing into the sofa (again, not me 😉) when our friends had gone and a general sombre mood from E for the rest of the day. Even my normally not terribly observant 22 yr old son noticed there was much "brooding and listening to rock music" coming from the 7 year old's room today. Is 7 a particularly hormonal stage for boys? I must do a bit of reading up. 

Anyway, it was a real opportunity for me to talk to E about feelings and how we handle them and how we sometimes take our feelings of upset, anger, isolation, disappointment, (the list here is endless) out on our closest friends without even realising we're doing it. (I should like to apologise at this point to my Dad for all the years of being so awful to you when all I really wanted to tell you was that I loved you most in the world). 

This afternoon we popped to see another friend for a much needed change of scenery and had some therapeutic cups of tea, playing,  trampolining and jigsaw puzzling. 

Wednesdays is gymnastics day and both boys thoroughly enjoy their hour of "after school" gymnastics at the local club and I enjoy a good natter and crochet with a lovely home educating mummy friend of mine who always brings a little spark of light and love to my day for that hour every week. 

That was hump day. More antics tomorrow.