Money Matters

It's never too early to start teaching children about money. Last week we had a gentle introduction to the evils and joys of money.

As with most things, it was driven by my sanity being at stake.

As we stood in a shop for the thousandth time with one boy or another insisting he had enough in his money box at home to buy the Pokemon / Lego / book / cuddly toy in front of us, I'd consider gambling with my own money.

Should I lend these mini people the cash - do they really have enough at home? Do they have honest faces? Do they know that I'll probably forget I lent it to them? Am I being hustled? Will I be clawing back repayment of the 60p debt in weekly instalments? Should I charge interest? Will I need a spreadsheet for this? Why am I making this so complicated?

Thankfully GoHenry have come up with a simple solution for forgetful mothers like me and the kids now have their own pre-paid debit cards. GoHenry is for children aged 8 and up so we're bang on for using their joyful services. If you fancy it, you can link their weekly pocket money to chores and if the tasks aren't ticked the pocket money won't get paid. Now that's motivating..

There's a monthly charge but for us it's worth it as the lesson in responsibility and practice in handing their own funds is worth its weight. Even better, the children feel about 6 feet tall.

When we went for our first 'use our new debit card adventure' (who says HE isn't exciting) .. the nice lady at the supermarket couldn't quite believe they were allowed to check out and pay for items themselves with their very own debit card and very own (very secret) pin.

The cards came with a price - the boys had to endure a one hour lesson on money skills with me before the cards would be issued and so we covered interest, savings, loans, pin numbers and debit vs credit cards.

I left pension planning for next time.

For brilliant teaching resources for all levels :
https://www.barclaysmoneyskills.com/Information/Resource-centre/School-Children.aspx

The 7-11 pack has a brilliant board game at the end of the pack.

The Joy of Long Division

The first step to teaching the boys long division was to teach myself long division.

I'm sure I did it at school at some point but that was at least a decade (*cough* or two) ago and it turns out that's it definitely nothing like riding a bike.

Step 1a : Google the topic and print out step by step instructions
Step 1b : Print out drill sheets and sit at the kitchen table with a garibaldi and a coffee
Step 1c : Check facebook a few times and empty the dishwasher
Step 1d : Do about 4 sums before declaring the invention of the calculator the best thing since sliced bread

Step 2 : Teach the boys long division

Here's a neat little trick to help them remember the steps :

Daddy Division
Mummy Multiplication
Sister Subtract (or in our case Stevie the cat Subtract)
Brother Bring down (if we've had an argument with our brother, we can substitute Bailey the dog)

So for example:

Then repeat, by saying Daddy divides 29 by 3 and writes the answer on the line .. and so on.

As soon as there's nothing for Brother (or Bailey) to bring down, whatever we're left with is the remainder.

(Thank you BBC skillwise and Explore Learning)

Crime & Punishment

On a car journey last week I drove past a guy on the pavement who threw some litter casually into the road and the boys had to endure my rant that it was the "worst sort of lazy, selfish behaviour", "low standards", "no respect for himself or others" and "if you're going to be a criminal at least do it properly".

Always eager to please, K cheerfully comments that "If I was a criminal I'd do it properly and rob a bank ...." "... or burgle a house" adds W helpfully. I spend the next 10 minutes explaining how there are much better career options than criminal mastermind but they've seen Despicable Me so I don't think they're buying it.

So we had crime on the mind (hopefully not dreaming up more ways to be an evil genius) while we did a bit of craft and W came up with a cool robber design for a peg person. Just to be clear being a robber is definitely not cool, but W's peg person was.

He set about making a prison for his robber. As we chatted about prisons we ambled onto escaping which led us nicely to the Great Escape which took place 72 years ago, on the night of 24th March 1944.

The co-incidence of the date was too good a history opportunity to pass up, so we did some WWII revision and took a quick tangent into the Jewish faith, persecution and brain washing.

Using the fabulous resources from the National Archives, which are easily adapted to suit upper and lower KS2, we looked at Belsen and eye witness accounts from the liberation. It's a perfect platform for exploring human reactions to cruelty, hunger, trauma and the logistics of war.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/sessions-and-resources/

We read an interview with a now elderly Auschwitz SS guard who escaped prosecution to briefly explore the difficult issue of holding individuals to account decades after an event. It's heavy going for an 8 and 9 year old so we only touched on it lightly, but I was amazed that the boys were able to articulate thoughts on something so ethically complex - they recognised it wasn't a black and white issue and felt that what he'd done with his life in the intervening decades might be relevant.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-a-91-year-old-former-auschwitz-guard-a-988127.html

Cheering up was needed and it was too early for me to have a gin so we moved onto the headline topic : the daring and wonderful great escape from the camp at Sagan. We thought about the practical problems of escaping and looked at the ingenious ways the escape committee managed to conceal their efforts, shore up the tunnel and make civilian clothing.
We used this history of the great escape, plus it has a handy quiz at the bottom :
http://www.historyonthenet.com/ww2/great_escape.htm

War and imprisonment never have a happy ending so it was fitting that only 3 of the escapees made it to the UK, 23 were returned to the camp and 50 were murdered on Hitler's direct orders. The boys could hardly believe it and looked genuinely crestfallen; we're too used to the good guys always beating the odds in stories and films.

To finish off, we looked at images and plans of the tunnels and the boys reconstructed hut 104 and 'Harry' tunnel in Minecraft.

An unplanned topic and fairly heavy going but we covered a lot of ground and had some fantastic discussion. So it's not all doom and gloom.

Except for peg robber. He's serving life.....

.... for pinching things.

Normal Week?

It's felt like a rubbish week.

Nothing untoward, just the usual minutiae. Now throw in a major work pitch, a vet visit for the cat, social and family engagements... Juggling is such a confidence killer. It's a wonder circus performers can keep a smile on.

I've limped to Thursday with FAILURE blazoned across my forehead because the kitchen is a mess, the children's nails are dirty, I haven't organised that birthday present to be posted yet, I should really wash the car, the dog needs his vaccination boosters, the oven has broken and I haven't chased the electrician etc etc and to top it all off, most heinous of all, I am convinced that I haven't done enough 'school' with the kids.

I hit the imaginary pause button - which conveniently generates a scone and a cup of tea - and did a reality check on our school week.

What has actually happened since 9am Monday?

Maths, ICT & science
Online maths lesson, every day
Explore learning session for English and maths
Long division revision and practice (W)

Column subtraction recap (K)

Science morning - human body theme with gross science

Programming - Flappy Bird computer game

Geoboard shapes app

'About Me' powerpoint (inserting text & images)
Endangered animals research & creating a poster

Literacy, art & music

Group reading, Firework Maker's Daughter
Exercise on Expanded noun phrases (K) & conjunctions (W)
Synonyms (K) & more conjunctions (W)
Creative writing lesson (W)
Literacy tutor (K)
Independent and aloud reading
Verbal reasoning practice (K)
Daily, new vocabulary and spellings

Piano lesson (W)

Art - glitter patterns, peg painting and colour mixing

Life skills
Hamster care - researching treats, cage cleaning, design & build maze tunnel systems
Trampolining
Parkour (K)
Cooking basics - independently making boiled eggs and beans on toast

8 point compass readings

Money skills lesson - debit cards, credit, interest and savings


That's not just okay, it's plenty.

I think I've earned another scone.

Maths is Fun

Exploring maths apps today - the ones below are ideal for consolidating fractions, angles, area, tessellation, 2D shapes and symmetry work. If we're ticking boxes then it's also a winner for ICT and art.

But who cares about that when you can make cool patterns?

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/geoboard/

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/pattern-shapes/

Little Miracles

After two weeks missing, presumed gone forever - Whiskers the hamster returned!

He was found in a box in the garage, which we presume he fell into from the rafters having crawled through the floor space above.  Dehydrated, dusty, considerably slimmer and looking as shocked as we were - but otherwise alive!

Not much else to say except : wow.

He might be just a rodent but in our house he's now a legend.

Pompeii

By no means the only Vesuvian town Pompeii is iconic, giving us an extraordinary link to a natural disaster occurring 1900 years ago. The site gives a snapshot of human civilisation and highlights how family, status, art, religion, business and community have remained relatively unchanged over the intervening centuries.

Archaeologically interesting, we looked briefly at artefacts online but the human aspect is where we were focussed. We touched on causes of volcanic eruptions from our Weather topic last year, disaster response, beliefs and looked for similarities in our own town (despite our notable lack of a volcano, much to the boys' disappointment).

We read extracts from Pliny the Younger who wrote to his uncle about what he'd seen at Pompeii, watched a fantastic CGI animation of the timeline of the eruption and finished up with a virtual tour of Pompeii thanks to Google Streetview.

Resources

"You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore." Pliny the Younger

A computer animation showing a timeline of the volcanic eruption:
http://www.openculture.com/2016/02/watch-the-destruction-of-pompeii-by-mount-vesuvius-re-created-with-computer-animation-79-ad.html

Google street view, explore the ruins from the comfort of home:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7489468,14.4848331,3a,75y,209.48h,82.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1e-bu_kis-dL1BnVGZhDdw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

Pompeii in images (good for quick reference):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9557356/Pompeii-in-pictures.html

Pliny the Younger:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pliny_the_younger.shtml
Plus an extended version of his letter:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/pompeii.htm

Full, detailed information on the various buildings etc found:
https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/

Sunrise Colours

One morning last month we had the most beautiful sunrise. The boys spotted it over breakfast and so I took a quick snap, hoping to catch the layers of colours in the sky.

Inspired, we set about having an art lesson (over 3 days) with tree techniques, paint washes, blending and drawing with various pens.

W (landscape minimalist) interpreted the image with typical focus on a single tree and had to be encouraged to add any further detail. A house was born of imagination.

K (still life perfectionist) got stressed that there were too many trees to recreate so needed encouragement that we were using the image as inspiration not to produce an exact copy.

Both boys were really proud of their work.

What nature supplied:

Creating a wash and blending:

Planning & drafting:

The finished artwork:

 

Shaping Up

We've been playing with shapes lately; we've looked at how things are made up of shapes, revised 2D shape names (I can never remember what a trapezoid is) and talked tessellation.

One activity was to see what animals we could draw from common shapes. I'd have gone for a slug or starfish but the boys were more ambitious and made some beautiful creatures. We made tracks, spirals and walls with jenga blocks with a side note on strength and stability.

For tessellation we played with the fab website at http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/tess/tess.htm and created patterns inspired by Victorian tiling. To finish off, we looked at tessellation in nature, with a google image search bringing up wonderful examples in flowers, honeycombs and snakes.

A note on shapes - we had to look up the difference between a rhombus and a diamond :
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-rhombus-and-a-diamond

Sorry Whiskers

Whiskers, W's beloved hamster and all round awesome rodent, has been missing for a week and we have concluded that he's probably now in hamster heaven.

He went missing and (ever helpful when hamsters are involved) Stevie the cat suggested Whiskers may have taken refuge in the bathroom. Out came the cupboard contents to reveal a very unhelpful hole in the wall giving access to the wall cavity and entire upstairs floor space. My heart sank.

We emptied rooms, lifted carpets, used angle mirrors, left inventoried food piles in every room with closed doors for days. S set up a motion detecting Ham Cam in the bathroom to monitor the hole. I stayed up late 3 nights running to lie on the landing and listen out for scratching or scuffling.

Nothing.

We agreed as a family that we're not giving up on Whiskers, but we are ready to accept that he isn't coming back.

Last night, W cried and cried until eventually he fell asleep. It was a heart breaking display of deep grief combined with guilt - he had left the cage open.

Loss is always hard but W has had it quite tough for an 8 year old. He's lost 2 cats, 2 grandads, 2 great grandparents and his hamster in under 2 years. I'm not being flippant when I list them together - as an adult I'm sad about the pets but devastated about the humans. As a child, they all hurt equally.

He's familiar with my speech about how lucky we were to have <Grandad / Lily / Great Nana / Whiskers etc etc etc > in our life and how many happy memories we have to hold on to. He glazes over when I say I know it hurts and it's okay to be sad. He's heard it too many times.

Some things can't be fixed - they just have to be carried.

Applied Cake

I wanted to do some applied maths with the boys - weights, measures, ratios - so they could demonstrate they understood what we covered last week. We halved a cake recipe, weighed out the dry ingredients, measured the liquids....

Or perhaps I just fancied cake.

Creative Boost

In 1999 a detailed report into culture and creativity in education was written by the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education headed by Sir Ken Robinson.

Well over a decade later, the world has changed but most of the points raised in the report have not:
https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/rsa-animate/2010/10/rsa-animate---changing-paradigms/

The impact of creativity on learning and engagement cannot be underestimated.

Pick any 30 adults born in roughly the same year as you. Go and sit in a room. Someone arrives and tells you what you're going to do today. It's a task to build a tower of newspaper as high as you can. You've been given a blueprint showing a base with tubes of paper stuck together and so you get to work. Every adult will build a tall tower, but what was the point?

Rewind a step and imagine you're not given any instructions. How many inventive and interesting adaptations would 30 adults come up with? How much more challenging and engaging would the session be? How much more would you learn from the people around you?

Was the purpose to build a tall tower, or to work out a way to build a tall tower?
Which approach would produce skills that were useful in other contexts?

In essence, creativity is about unlocking potential : your own potential and the potential of those around you. Being surrounded by different ideas and viewpoints inspires and expands your own.

We are so worried about ensuring children meet targets that we demonstrate a lack of faith in them. Rather than risk missing a target we stay safe and guide them to a solution, give the instructions and lay out the blueprint. At the outcome - they built the tower, they got the grade - we reassure ourselves, pat ourselves on the back and feel we did the right thing.

A short term win; a long term loss.

If you still need convincing, put the kettle on and have a look at this article which gives a broad and well researched view on the vital skill of creativity in children and adults :
http://www.journeytoexcellence.org.uk/resourcesandcpd/research/summaries/rsfosteringcreativity.asp

In the words of Albert Einstein : 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.'


Further reading : 

The full All Our Futures report is here : http://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/all-our-futures-creativity-culture-and-education

The BBC reviewed it in 2009 and pulled together further research into the benefits of creativity in teaching, specifically its impact on results : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8064306.stm

Sir Ken Robinson reviewed his report in 2011, providing a brief assessment of whether the content was still relevant : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqjQ6iMGYKk

The 11+ and Other Horrors

The title is a lie, there are no other horrors as fearsome as the 11+ which incidentally had a friendly re-brand and is now called the 'Transfer Test'.

So instead of failing the 11+ kids can now proudly say that they failed to get a STTS (Standardised Transfer Test Score) or 121 or above. Much better for self esteem.

When it comes to the 11+ the fear, loathing and responsibility is overwhelming.

Let's dive in with the cohort statistics. Out of about 10,000 children, 3,000 will be selected for grammar. The magical score children have to achieve is 121, sat on a scale of 0 - 200. Those pass numbers are skewed though because out of area applications have a much higher pass rate: perhaps if you don't live in county you only bother to take the test if you think you've got a good chance of passing. Within county, there's a pass rate of roughly 23%, so let's call it 1 in 4 children from the primaries in our area who get selected for grammar.

Looking ahead, children at grammar schools get better grades at GCSE level because only the most academically able are there. If you go to a grammar school, you have a 99% or so chance of getting A*-C in your GCSEs. In a comp, it's nearer 65% and the intake is the start point for the difference.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that unless your offspring get into a grammar then they are doomed to a life of mediocrity and low grades, which is as stupid as it is untrue. The problem is that the frenzy that parents whip up around the test can't fail to make children, and other parents, scared. Tutoring needs a blog all of its own. So does pushy parenting. But this blog is just about me and my kids so to hell with everyone else.

In order to retain some sense of sanity and order, I am repeating the following mantras:
They take the same exams whichever school they're in.
Kids with a good attitude will succeed regardless of the school they attend.

The headline is that 75% of children in our area go to comprehensives and while we have some excellent grammar schools, we have some excellent comps in our area too. Lucky us!

K is a smart kid. He works hard, questions everything and has a great memory. K is a process thinker; he likes to do one thing at time and get it perfect. He doesn't like to guess, still thinks short cuts are cheating (despite my protestations) and won't give up on a problem until he has the answer. These admirable personality traits will cost him dearly in the 11+ which relies on fast analysis, quick decisions and an ability to give rapid fire answers to rapid fire questions. Despite ability in non-verbal reasoning and literacy, K's maths is average and so the upshot is that he's a borderline case at best. It would be easier if he was a definite no or definite yes. Even if he did pass, would grammar be right for him anyway?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10328580/Weakest-pupils-suffer-crisis-of-confidence-in-top-schools.html

It's a divisive, unnecessary system I have come to hate on every level, but no one forced us to live in this county and so we have to concede that our son will end up in the school that is right for him.

The tricky thing is that K cares, A lot. He understands that this is a test that you pass or fail, however they play with the words. What child wants to fail? So as a parent even if you trust the system and allow the chips to fall as they will, you can't sit back and do nothing. You have to give them the best shot, so whatever number appears next to their name, be it 80 or 180, they can feel good about it and know they did well. I wouldn't go to an interview or test unprepared and I don't expect K to do so either but this is one single test with a score that proves only the narrowest of skill sets.

It doesn't test athletic or musical ability, kindness, science, ICT, real life problem solving, resilience, teamwork.

It's tests of character, not maths or verbal reasoning, that define success in life.

Comfort Zones, Stepping Out Thereof

The focus of our efforts this year for K has been confidence and for W - challenge.

The perfect test for whether we've made progress since Easter : Quad biking.

W is used to things being easy and he gets frustrated if he can't quickly pick up a skill or idea. Also noteworthy are W's excellent fine motor skills which contrast dramatically with his gross motor. When he learnt to climb stairs he did it in one go. No practice, no building up slowly. He'd never climbed the stairs but one day my little toddler decided it was time and crawled up at top speed, stopping only when he reached the top and head butted the wall with extraordinary force. As he fell backwards into my arms past my horrified face I had a glimpse of the shock and hilarity of what life with W would bring.

Bike riding was another challenge. Weeks and months of patient attempts came to nothing but tears, frustration and declarations of the bike's obvious stupidity. We abandoned it: "He'll learn when he's ready" we said, in defeat. The bike returned to the shed and lay untouched until a visit to Wales, months later. We got the bikes out, had a cup of tea and steeled ourselves for spending the next few days cajoling, encouraging and reprimanding uncooperative bikes. I stood at the kitchen window, deep breath.

He did a short stretch with S running alongside. Then he was gone, off into the distance. 45 seconds was all it took. W can ride a bike.

This child is binary, it's 0 or 1.

So my apprehension as I stood in the waiting area for quad biking was palpable. I know what we're up against but I have cheery determination. One challenge at a time.

Challenge 1: W hates new things ("I don't want to quad bike."). You don't know you've never done it; we're here now, it's paid for and you might love it. It's happening, go with the flow.

Challenge 2 : W hates helmets. And safety vests. (and harnesses and wellies and things that are too tight, or too loose, or scratchy). I'm a pro at getting W into safety equipment now, it's an essential skill: I ignore complaints and enthusiastically point out the amazing level of adjustment, making a rapid sequence of unbelievably tiny changes until W's anxiety abates and he accepts the kit.

Challenge 3 : W's co-ordination is not his strong suit. He finds it tough to control 2 things at once at a gross motor level until he's got the feel for it, then he'll look at you like it was the easiest thing in the world.

The boys are queued up and one by one they do their test lap. One by one they make it look easy. I notice W is the littlest of the group by some margin. I'm taking deep breaths and being unseasonably cheery, internally willing everything to go our way. I know he can do it. He's last to go.

W flunks it. Badly. He can go forward, but not turn. He can't control the throttle. He finishes an agonising lap by crashing into another go kart as the instructor pulls the safety cord.

Challenge 4 : Humiliation. Hot tears fill his helmet and my heart breaks. We're down but not out; this is the toughest challenge W needs to face.

The antidote to humiliation is kindness and its presence changes the course of our morning. The boss, Tim, doesn't like seeing 8 year olds cry and he's only there today to oversee a new employee so he's got time on his hands. He's patient, he's kind and he's our hero. He shows us the garage bit where they fix the quad bikes, sets up some cones there and teaches W the controls. In less than 5 minutes, W is back on the course and has another go. He's got the hang of it, and loves it.

W faced a lot of challenges in one morning but with a little help, he rose to all of them; there was no giving up. When it comes to challenges, that's all you can ask.

PS. I want to hug Tim.

PPS. More to follow on K's confidence later, but check out that smile! He had such a great time.

Nutrition

A quick breakfast diversion into the basics of nutrition. Who doesn't love a bit of Pritt Stick with their toast and tea?!

We do a quick cut and stick to see what various food types do for our bodies and then line up our various packets and jars for closer inspection.

We play vitamin bingo and see it's okay to eat acid but only if it's folic ... we find products high in salt, fibre or fat and line up our cereals in order of sugar content. We compare white, brown and 50/50 bread and (to my surprise) spot that brown bread might not be that much better for us than white.

The boys look delighted.

I declare it needs further research, babble something about moderation and grey areas and make everyone eat a banana.

The Black Death

What killed 1/3 of the population of Britain in the middle ages?

It sounds like a bad cracker joke but it's just our intro to our topic. There's nothing like starting the new year with pestilence and agonising death.

I like a bit of context with my history, so we started off with a timeline to get a rough feel for where we were parking our history train on the recent-human-history timeline.

Timelines are a bonus as you can cover quite a few historical periods or events while surreptitiously sneaking in some maths with negative numbers and do some cutting and sticking to boot. We cover BC and AD, major and minor ticks and identify our (humbling) little centimetre of our own personal history. Cross curricular link: Maths, number lines.

The boys cut out pictures to represent the major time periods like stone age, middle ages, Tudors, Victorians and so on and stick them on, marking the periods they covered. "Why was the Stone Age so long?" I ask. "There are a lot of stones." Fair enough.

Next lesson, we talk about life in the middle ages and begin to explore the Black Death and how many people in Britain and Europe died. Cross curricular link: European geography.

Lesson 3, we look at causes, creating a flow chart of how the plague spread and talking trade routes and shipping. We explore the ideas people had at the time about the cause (angry God, planets, bad smells) and how the poor were worst hit and why. Cross curricular link: Science, flow charts / RE, beliefs.

Lesson 4 was symptoms. We act out the stages, with apples under our armpits and give ourselves the dreaded black spot.

Lesson 5, on to cures and the bizarre and disgusting ideas (like exploding frogs and dead pigeons) that were popular at the time. Cross curricular link: Science, medicine, germs, hygiene.

We look at persuasive writing in advertising and briefly divert into how humour, glamour, alliteration, rhyme and catchy tunes and slogans can help sell products. Cross curricular link: Literacy. The boys come up with their own crazy cures and design posters to sell their wares. We have a bit of fun with ageing our paper with candles and tea bags. Cross curricular link: Art.

Some persuasive writing tips are to use exaggeration, flattery and to start off with a question. K's opening gambit on his poster is perfect "Have you got the Black Death? Don't worry - the new Black Cream is in town and it will cure you in minutes!"

"Guaranteed to prevent death, or your money back!"

Finally, the short book "The Plague, a cross on the door" about a boy whose master dies from the plague was a perfect round up. Cross curricular link: Literacy, reading and listening.

Next stop in our British history scheme for this term : Tudors...

Let's Eat Grandma

It's an old one, but a good one. The importance of punctuation.

Dictionary Challenge

It's a challenge to make book-work seem relevant to children. We so rarely pick up a dictionary or use an encyclopaedia when we have google at our fingertips.

I'm part of the transition generation who were taught book-skills but didn't use them much by the time we entered work, thanks mostly to the internet and all the hilarious cat videos it brought us.

Knowing how to search for information, even on paper, undoubtedly supported the acceptance and use of technology that blossomed in the 90s and 2000s. A decade on and the ability to search through an index is not yet obsolete: it translates onto screens in the form of timetables, menus, sub-menus, alphabetical and numerical ordering, contents pages and (my personal favourite) the lengthy PDF document which never quite navigates how you want.

Any skill that helps you sort, locate and order information is more relevant than ever, at a time when the quantity of information being produced every minute exceeds imagination http://aci.info/2014/07/12/the-data-explosion-in-2014-minute-by-minute-infographic/

We tackle the dictionary work at year 3/4 level lightly with a view to keeping it fun; we go on a treasure hunt for words between words, find a few definitions and learn some new vocabulary along the way.

If there's ever a global catastrophe and all internet communications are down, we will be the ones laughing as we confidently check our spelling, from apocalypse to zombie...

Big History

A sense of time isn't the easiest thing for anyone to grasp, especially when the numbers run into billions of years.

I wanted to kick off some work on the history curriculum, but where to start? The past is a very big place.

TED talks came to the rescue via Louise Leakey and her loo roll analogy. Armed with a roll of loo paper and a pack of stickers we started to try and gain a sense of scale. It was all very inexact but then when we're counting in millions and billions of years a few inches here or there doesn't much matter.

We begin in the kitchen, with the Big Bang. Appropriate as it is the scene of many unimaginable concoctions and explosions. We're roughly 14 billion years in the past which is unimaginably far away: "Were there cars then?" No darling, so we side step into the concept of nothingness.

We lasted about 20 seconds before our brains ached and so we carried on unrolling.

As we trek around the ground floor and then up the stairs we note that land formed, the first signs of life started to emerge and dinosaurs ruled - and we add stickers to mark each occasion. A few feet from the end of the roll and we mark the end of the dinosaurs, marvelling at the length of their dominance over millions of years.

Apes appear on our final sheet of toilet paper. We use the smallest stickers we can find in the last couple of millimetres to show the inauspicious arrival of homo-sapiens and our puny 200,000 years of human history.

The house was covered in loo roll and Bailey was happy to bounce around like a giant Andrex puppy. Big picture done and we're all set up to start zooming in on our next history topic.

For the most inspiring and addictive history of our past 14 billion years, head to http://histography.io/

For a rough guide to the universe on toilet paper -
http://www.earthintransition.org/2013/07/how-history-is-like-a-roll-of-toilet-paper/

Holidays

We usually work through the holidays; it means we can take breaks when it suits us the rest of the time ... however ... it's Christmas.

In the interests of honest reporting: we wrapped presents, saw friends, watched too much TV, ate sweets, played games and did absolutely no work whatsoever.

Happy Christmas!

PS The multi-coloured tree was not my doing. I went out for some final Christmas shopping, leaving a very classy all-white-lit tree in the safe hands of S & the boys. I came back to find it had been upgraded to a disco tree and the thing flashed a rainbow for the whole of Christmas.

Coding Magic

Coding skills are becoming increasingly important from KS1. The focus of ICT skills in the NC is firmly based in the process - the logical reasoning, sequencing and problem solving inherent in writing programs to accomplish a purpose.

Without Scratch, I was floundering a bit. We did some background work off-computer looking at flow charts, what 'IF' really means, and repeating actions but we needed something to demonstrate how it works for real.

Imagine my insane level of excitement to stumble across the Learn an Hour of Code initiative at code.org https://code.org/learn

This is one incredible resource. With a number of themes to choose from, it takes you through a simple set of challenges before letting you have free reign to create your own program. Seeking maximum engagement, we started off with a Minecraft challenge.

Starting with simple sequencing using command blocks, there are instructional videos interspersed to introduce repeat blocks and then if statements. Our hour came and went. The boys spent a further 3 hours coding various scenarios. The rest of the timetable went out of the window : they concentrated, planned, designed, built and tested. I only stopped them when it was tea time.

A particularly nice feature is that they can view the javascript behind the blocks. So what skills are key here? The logical reasoning is vital, the sequencing helps in all manner of cause and effect scenarios but for me it's the debugging where the gold lies. When something doesn't work like it should, the boys couldn't blame the computer or anything else. It's their code, whatever it's doing, it does it because they told it to do it.

It's a detail but I love the responsibility aspect. On a practical level, having to go back through to work out why something isn't doing what you expect, fix it and re-test (repeat, repeat, repeat) until it does what you want - it is a profound and powerful lesson in problem solving and tenacity.

And wow - what a peaceful afternoon for me.

Tied up in Knots

W has no patience with tasks requiring dexterity and co-ordination and I'm a massive wimp.

These two forces combined; we'd managed to get to size 3 shoes without ever having to teach W to tie laces.

I spent my days searching high and low for shoes relying solely on velcro. Every time we'd go past a shoe shop I'd just 'nip in' for a scan of the shelves, concluding it's surprisingly difficult to find older boy shoes without laces.

I wish that meant there was a gaping hole in the market and I was just days from Dragon's Den and a multi-million pound velcro shoe franchise. Sadly not. I have to conclude that most 8 year olds have parents who have patiently, calmly, with boundless love, taught them to tie a bow.

When I found a style which was both comfortable and lace-free I bought it in 3 sizes - a testament to my pessimism that we'd ever conquer this particular life skill - but we reached the end of the road and the end of my stock of velcro shoes. His trainers looked like - well, a boy's trainers really. Battered, muddy, with bits hanging off and the toe scraped to bits.It was time to face our lacey demons.

I spent 30 minutes watching YouTube instructional videos and cheering myself up reading the disproportionately angry/excited/rude comments left by other viewers. With a shoe on my lap and a bit of practice I could confidently demonstrate 3 possible methods and, feeling optimistic, we embarked on a lace tying lesson.

K can already do the bunny-round-the-tree method so he decided to try the speedy finger-spin method. Mastered, very proud and tying laces in 2 seconds. Tick.

W tried the 2 stage method, Fail.
A brief attempt at the finger-spin method ended in the same fashion - with a shoe being lobbed in frustration.
Deep breaths, one method to go.

Back to tradition, we made a loop-tree and sent the bunny round the tree. At this point, it kept going wrong and I was ready to throw a shoe again. Luckily, we'd watched the fantastic BBC documentary The Hunt this week, and watched the episode where Arctic foxes chase rabbits (actually it was hares I think, but I don't want to split them). So we added a fox into our method.

The end of the lace is the bunny. The fox is half way down the lace. The bunny runs round the tree, chased by the fox. But - hello! The fox is distracted by a baby bunny sat on your thumb nail! (The one holding the tree trunk.) The fox runs to the baby (*covers eyes*).... but - oh - what's this? The baby bunny is a plucky little thing and grabs the fox - running away with his prize. Phew. Two safe bunnies and one passable bow. Sorry, fox. You did not get kidnapped by a baby bunny in vain.

Ways to tie laces

2-stage method : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm5ItoIJ4sg 

Finger spin method : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtKJOkiCiis

Bunny round the tree : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9tt7iI0VV8

For completeness, the bunny ears method : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsydRalh0ow

Keeping Up

Does a comma ever go before an 'and'?

How do you do long division?

These issues both came up this week and I had to look up the answers. I can hazard a decent guess but am I sure? Is my long division method perfect? Are there exceptions to a grammatical rule?

If I'm not sure then it's not good enough : K&W want to know for certain. My boys love rules so I have to be definite as they'll hang on to anything I tell them and quote me months or years from now. "But Mummy, while we were driving to the shops at Christmas time when I was 7 and wearing a blue jumper you said that all the drivers in <insert a town name> were idiots......"

Big responsibility.

It's a useful learning angle : you don't have to know everything, you just have to know how to find the answer. Which sources to trust, how to filter information to focus in on the thing you want to know, how to decide what's important, how to assess exceptions and differences in method or opinion.

Our days would be disjointed if I had to look up every tiny point and with an 8 and 9 year old I'm relieved to say I can handle most questions confidently. But the cracks are appearing : the questions are getting tougher.

What's an 8 year old doing learning long division? I don't think I learnt that until secondary school but here he is, doing it in line with his National Curriculum level and getting upset when I show the doorstep method that I know and love.

"It's not like that Mummy - there are boxes underneath! You have to take away!"

I battle on trying to show my (perfectly valid) method and we descend into tears because it isn't exactly what he's been taught. We take a break and decide to try again later when Mummy has had a cup of tea and found out exactly how the long division extended method is taught.

By the time I find it, print it, try it, understand it and am ready to teach it I'm also certainly ready to declare it utterly stupid because the doorstep method is better, even if I did see it described on the internet as 'old fashioned'. The cheek.

Keeping up is small tangent with a serious implication. I wouldn't want to teach secondary level outside of the subjects for which I'm trained. Sometimes it's the small things that set your path.


PS: About those commas .... http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/020204whencommabfand.htm

The Simple Joy of a Postcard

Post Crossing is fabulous; it's simple and delightful - send a postcard to another human being and receive a postcard from another human being.

If you're looking for learning opportunities there are plenty: stamps, handwriting styles, addresses, geography, language, postal service, titbits of cultural information from far flung places.

We just love it because it makes us happy and it has a lovely literacy leaning.

Our fridge is covered in colourful postcards from all corners of the world.

Hedgewig

Hedgewig (named loosely after Harry Potter's owl) was spotted by K snuffling about in the garden in broad daylight.

I had some gloves handy and was able to enact a nifty rescue just before Bailey the dog attempted to help. We put all our other topics on ice and learnt a lot about hedgehogs.

Our spiky chap was very small and as a nocturnal beast wouldn't normally be seen sniffing around the climbing frame at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. We weighed him and he was well below the 500g needed to hibernate.

I remember late night hedgehog visits to our back door when we were small and we always put out cat food, bread and milk. It seems unwise to trust any advice from the 80s so I was pleasantly surprised to read that cat food is still the best thing to offer hedgehogs - but unsurprisingly milk and bread are now a no-no.

Hedgewig dined on the finest cat food - the cat is a fussy madam so it's the posh stuff. Why any cat needs something that describes itself as 'deli' is beyond me. This is the same cat that ate half a baby bird this week. Evil, yes. Fussy, faking it. The cat said hello to Hedgewig (although roughly translated I think it was: why are you eating my fancy food?) and got her nose spiked. "It's not funny kids, it's learning". Okay it was quite funny.

Hedgewig was a noisy eater and after a meal liked to tip over his water bowl, poo in as many places as possible and then try and scale the sides of his spacious box. We tried to work out how close we could get before he smelt or saw us. Turns out the answer is very close - hedgehogs have poor eyesight and although their sense of smell is excellent the boys and I were no match for the heady aroma of cat food (phew). He wasn't bothered about us at all as it happens and I'm never sure whether to be flattered or offended when deemed to be zero threat.

K&W enjoyed doing some research. I didn't realise spines are actually hollow hairs and there are about 5000 of them (googled not counted). After a good hour of concentration it degenerated into looking for the cutest picture of a hedgehog we could find. Winner: baby hedgehog (called a hoglet!!) in a tea cup. Highly commended: Hedgehog curled up with a cat.

Tiggiewinkles, the wonderful wildlife hospital, took him in. I had to sign an agreement that I wouldn't insist on having him back which seems fair enough (finders keepers doesn't apply to wild animals) but I hope we'll find time to pop back in to see how he's doing.

We weren't planning to serve him up for tea - this is our little guy on the scales:

Why Don't Snail Shells Fall Off?

I nearly called this post "How do snails poo?" as that was the other pertinent question of the day.

Playing in the garden the boys stumbled across a happy group of snails, looked into their little eyes (Can snails look in 2 directions at once?) and decided they looked lonely.

"Can we keep them Mum?"

I know lots of people happily keep ants, snails, spiders, caterpillars - all manner of creepy crawlies - happy and healthy in their homes in the name of science. There's a whole shelf in John Lewis filled with kits which essentially comprise a plastic pot with holes in and an instruction book.

Two years in a row we have attempted to keep caterpillars. Picture the wondrous glory of a butterfly as it unfolds its wings for the first time and we release it into the garden.

Now scrap that picture and imagine death and tears, with me googling 'How do I know if my chrysallis is dead' and dropping handfuls of the little things into a jug of water to screams of "No Mummy don't drown them, they're not witches!" Note: if they float, they're dead. If they sink, get them out of there quickly - they are definitely not witches. I hardly need to say that all seven of our carefully nurtured chrysalises were floaters.

The boys were philosophical (I think they still suspected drowning) but I was devastated. I'd tried so hard - printed out instructions, checked food, moisture, temperature, hanging positions ... to no avail.

With that form there can be no pet snails in this house. I'm guilt-ridden enough as it is. I pulled the "they live with their family in the tree" line and so the snails were delivered back from whence they came.

Every 5 minutes the oven beeper would sound and K&W would drop whatever we were doing (mid-sentence while reading, mid-mouthful while eating lunch) and race outside to check on the snails. I found it endearing for 2 hours then annoying for a further 3.

We did find out why snails shells don't come off (muscles and ligaments) and that they poo from a hole very near their head so they don't have to move their shell too far to... er... let it out.  Ugh.

With no help from me (honest) our snails had moved location by the next day, probably into a hungry sparrow but I didn't mention that ....

200 Pages

I had a wobble yesterday. Emotional wobbles are par for the course. The physical ones are avoidable if only cake and wine weren't so darn tasty.

We're a half term through the autumn and I want to do a status check to make sure we're on track. With the National Curriculum in front of me I had a sudden overwhelming feeling of wanting to do anything else but drag myself kicking and screaming through the 200+ pages. I loaded the dishwasher, made toffee apples, put away the washing, emptied the bin.

The curriculum was still there.

It's overwhelming because the expectations laid out are high but entire topics are represented in a brief sentence : description of method is low. And thank goodness. Imagine if the government produced a document telling teachers how to teach; now that would be a long, pointless document. Uproar would ensue.

The NC is like a cook book which has a picture of a really yummy ... well let's say cake ... with a list of ingredients alongside but no quantities or instructions, just the occasional hint. You know what you want to aim for, you know what you need, but the magic is in how you actually put it together.

Like baking, some topics will flop. You'll overdo some until they're unpalatable. You'll get quantities wrong and they take too long. Some just won't be to the tastes of your very discerning diners and they simply won't like them. We don't all love coffee cake.

So as a lone ranger how do you begin to break down the NC to extract something useful? The most important thing is to ditch what you don't need.

Step 1 : Read then ditch sections 1-6 and the contents pages.

Step 2 : Hop to the subjects at the end (everything except English, Maths and Science). Focus on one key stage (KS2 for us). Read the KS1 sections and if you're happy KS1 attainment targets are met, ditch.

Step 3 : Back into English, Maths and Science - put the appendices for English and Maths to one side, useful for your reference but no need to be overwhelmed here.
Note: the terminology and spelling lists from the appendices make good check lists.

Step 4 : Consider current academic level, not just school year. Remove the key stage/years you're not interested in for all subjects.

Step 5 : Read the introduction to each subject, absorb and discard.You should now be left with the relevant programmes of study.

If you're feeling really confident then you can get rid of the guidance sections so that you're left with the nuts and bolts (statutory requirements) for each subject, which will probably number around 20 pages in total.

Now you're ready to map the requirements into a teaching plan. Great work so far, you've earned a cup of tea. Maybe do the washing up while you're there... make a quick phone call.. check Facebook....

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-primary-curriculum

Starting Fires

Great opportunities for life skills; today we covered fire lighting basics off the back of Bonfire Night. Proud of my two boys for excellent fire building technique, good attitude to safety and of course teamwork!

Learning links :
Fire triangle : http://www.elitefire.co.uk/news/basics-fire-triangle/
Flame colours : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-certain-elements-c/
Fire safety : http://www.firesafekids.org/
Flammability : http://www.teachingandlearningresources.co.uk/6d-burning.shtml
House fires : http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/z9vtsbk 
Fire escape plan : http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/EscapingFromAFire.asp

Deep Breaths

Even if we're now officially off-timetable our friends aren't so half term is a perfect excuse for a visit to the south coast.

We ended up in the woods - no surprise there - and continued on typical form with 1 ruined t-shirt, 2 injuries (none life threatening) and one incident where S fell over a wheelchair while carrying K. True story, made all the more embarrassing by the fact that said child in wheelchair actually belonged to friends of the friends we were with. Mortifying. But hey, these things happen. (Only to us though?)

Moors Valley is an amazing space. Absolutely huge and criss-crossed with cycle paths, the highlight for us is the play trail. Blending into the woodland are huge, diverse structures for climbing, dangling, crawling and running over.

I sometimes worry we spend too much time in woods as it seems to be a running theme but the diversity and opportunity is the draw. Yes we climb and wave sticks, but we also collect and observe and walk and breathe. I had a warm fuzzy moment when I found the boys sat cross legged, eyes closed, at the top of a climbing frame, with children zooming around and beneath them. 

"What are you up to?" I called up. 

"Meditating."

You can learn a lot from your children.

Firework Night

A quieter week. Just as we got a chance to (metaphorically) breathe after a fortnight of car accidents, boiler failures and eye-wateringly-expensive van services (AND my hair dryer broke - please send help), we have now all caught colds and so find physically breathing difficult.

First world problems. 

Despite the crippling agony of the common cold, a little extra time for me to plan goes a long way in terms of how much we get done in a day... and we're on fire today, which is useful as today is Bonfire Night.

Here's the afternoon topic plan : 

Starter : Bonfire Night mind map

Introduction : Firework safety quiz

Main : History, dates, key characters

Key learning point : Persecution then and now

Wind down : Firework poem

Plenary : Wordsearch

Follow up - the Firework Maker's Daughter story

Most importantly, the real fireworks are on Saturday!

Learning from Experience

Fantastic chat with a long term home ed Mum last week.

I shamelessly absorb other peoples' experiences to help shape my own thoughts and approach. What she was saying is in perfect accord with other families to whom I've spoken who have been home educating for years.

In a nutshell, you loosen up. You become less structured because you begin to see the whole life experience as a learning opportunity. You spot, grab and delight in random opportunities - she'd just come back from 2 days in Rome because they had been learning about the Romans, obviously.

I love their approach, their children, their attitude and their lifestyle.

I'm a cake and eat it girl though. I really love cake. I really love eating it. And so in home ed, like in so many things, I'm keeping a foot in both camps.

Here we are embracing the wonder and flexibility of HE while also picturing my boys going to secondary school with all of the friends, opportunities and learning that it will afford them.

I've begun wondering if perhaps we're viewing home education as a means to an end.

In my head is a gardening analogy; kids are like seeds. Some can be scattered anywhere and they grow. Some can be planted straight out but they need a little care and space. Some need to start out in a greenhouse until they're big enough, or it's warm enough outside, for them to be transplanted.

Maybe HE is our greenhouse.

Breath of Fresh Air

Flexibility is a theme in our life and we don't take advantage of it as much as we should. When we do, it's always brilliant. Like a damp afternoon when the four of us nipped down the hill to fly S's RC plane and get some fresh air.

A gentle wander turned into hide and seek, climbing trees to rescue the plane, racing Bailey the dog and commando crawling through a meadow. Blew away the cobwebs.