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.

Spooktactular

We needed a low key, minimum fuss Halloween - we were all a bit worn out but the kids were enthusiastic and it's a perfect opportunity to do something fun with friends.

The night before, the Mums had a Pinterest frenzy for quick and simple ideas - as if there is any other way to prepare for a party. Lots of ideas involved too much work (or too many ingredients) to pull off in a couple of hours so we were selective; nothing is scarier than extreme efficiency.

We were all chuffed to bits with the outcome. For very little money and only a couple of hours of work we had a spooktacular Halloween party!

The quick and easy Halloween party list: pumpkins & apple corer, ripped clothes & face paint, glow sticks, witch fingers, spider marshmallows, worms in jelly, apple/donut bobbing. Smoke machine and green lights optional...

Simple Pleasures

Brain ache set in and everyone was grotty. The day was poorly planned, I was juggling too much and the kids detected possible cracks appearing in my no-screens policy which they were trying to widen. Enthusiastically.

When things are going downhill, there is a natural tendency to keep going. By working harder and doing even more I expect to accelerate into a solution. My logic is flawed; it's based on a faulty premise that I'm pointing in the right direction in the first place. So, against all of my instincts, I stopped.

I closed my laptop, put my phone on silent, turned off the hob and looked at the moany faces of my offspring.

"Let's make playdough."

K grumbled that he didn't want to - a position he maintained for about 5 nano seconds, no-one can resist the joy of playdough.

We spent a blissful 2 hours mixing colours, making shapes, moulding and chatting. We've baked our creations and they came out beautifully!

The benefits of pausing.

Stratford Adventures

If you hostelled back in the 80s and 90s it's worth another go just to see the changes. The YHA is awesome. Beds are made up, there's wifi, some of the accommodation is 4*. Oh and did I mention it's still unbelievably cheap?!

Our latest adventure was to Stratford YHA where they have deluxe pods which are in essence a teeny tiny shed with beds, sink, 1m2 wet room and a microwave. Despite being separate you get access to all the usual hostel facilities - lounge, games, restaurant and self catering kitchen.

There was a sports college group staying at the same time so the boys were exposed to typical teenagers in droves.

Horrors.

One boy helped K set up the pool table, another switched the TV to cartoons. A girl stepped in when W was too short to see over the reception counter to ask for water. When the kids were running back to the pod, one pair of hoodie wearing hooligans hanging outside the back door were at great pains to say they'd kept an eye on the little boys they'd seen run past as they were worried they might be lost.

As well as the college kids, there was the usual eclectic mix of European travellers, back packers and a family with younger kids. Oh, but that was us.

We'd originally though we'd do Stratford for Shakespeare but as it turned out there wasn't anything suitable at RSC so we adapted and decided to do the MAD museum and Butterfly Farm instead. It was fantastic - MAD was an inspiring collection of machines, buttons. ball bearings and illusions - perfect for W who loves inventing and for S too!

The Butterfly Farm was an unexpected delight. I thought we'd have to seek out butterflies but we were swarmed as we entered - there were involuntary 'oooooohs'. As well as the butterflies there's a caterpillar area, perfect for discussion of life cycles, and a bug and reptile bit too which has some creepy residents in addition to (inexplicably) a handful of tropical fish in a tank. The highlight for us was the iguana who was very happy to wander about eating all the best plants.

A much needed break and we were already planning the return trip before we'd reached the M40.

The View restaurant on the river overlooking RSC did fantastic fish & chips and proper pub-style blackcurrant squash...

 

Quiet Reading Time

I'm pleased with myself today. It's like when I discovered that if I store all my various sized tupperware pots with the lids on I can save, cumulatively, 20 or so swear words and about 2 hours of my life every year. Genuis.

I spent all morning rushing pillar to post between the boys - K insisted on being at his desk in the office, W at the kitchen table. There had been bickering so the set up was in all our interests. Except possibly mine.

Anyway, we were doing a spot of literacy with W doing compound words and K working on inference and I was going from one to the other with the beginnings of a stitch. We finished quicker than I was anticipating and had some dead air to fill. In a moment of brilliance I declared it was quiet reading time.

2 minutes, a cuddly toy, some blankets and a pile of books later I had 2 kids happily snuggled up on the sofa.... and I had a whole HOUR. An entire 60 minutes of perfect peace. I made lunch, got some work done and had a cup of tea that I actually drank while it was hot.

Why haven't I done this before?!

Rocket Power

Experimenting is great and it's easy to build and stick and smash and throw. The challenge is to start introducing scientific method, control and analysis while still keeping it fun.

Luckily there are numerous resources on the internet and this week we tried out the balloon rockets experiment courtesy of Rolls Royce.

Points for showing your working, here's what we did.

1. Decide on a question we're going to investigate. W went with : What shape balloon will be fastest? and K decided on : What thickness of string will be fastest?

2. Hypothesise. We think the long balloon and thinnest string.

3. Establish the variables and how we'll control them - W was particularly strong on this and quickly grasped the concept of only changing one at a time.

4. Get set up and time the rocket's descent with our stop watches. K did a great job (W chose this moment to have a paddy and returned 10 minutes later!). Bit of discussion about gravity, air resistance and aerodynamics.

5. Conclusions, speed=distance/time and some maths to work out mps followed by a handy google conversion to mph. The long balloon was quickest but in the string experiment is was the middle sized string that won. K worked out it was to do with texture and fiction.

Balloon rockets
http://www.rolls-royce.com/careers/students-and-graduates/education-and-work-experience/resources-for-schools/interactive-resources-for-7-11-year-olds.aspx#activity-worksheets

Everything's Fine

I've been making a conscious effort to look on the bright side as we tip toe our way out of a pretty tough 2 years of change and loss. Upbeat is good, perpetually upbeat is annoying.

I am full of the joys of EHE but it's not all rosy so in the interests of fair reporting I thought I'd emotionally dump a few of the insecurities, tears and stresses that creep up, especially in the wee small hours. EHE is as tough as it is rewarding.

• I am exhausted. Other than toilet breaks I'm on duty for 12 hours+ per day. I juggle school, home, work and feel like I'm never quite on top of any of them. It's a marathon.. but at a sprinting pace. Except unlike a marathon, you never run very far from the fridge/biscuit tin/wine rack so health benefits are not forthcoming.

• I spent £70 on a subscription to a curriculum planner because in a moment of total melt down at 2am I was overwhelmed by the idea of planning the new science curriculum.

• I fantasise about rejecting modern life and adopting a nomadic lifestyle with nothing but our family, the sun on our faces and our wits (HA! Doomed). Being at home all the time really brings into focus the waste and consumption of modern life and I'm not comfortable with it. Small changes are all we can commit too. I can't find a cave with windows that fit my Laura Ashley curtains.

• As the boys grow I've lost my comparisons. In a classroom you've got a 30-strong team of kids applying a check-and-measure approach to development. Without that classroom environment and playground catch ups it's down to us to assess ourselves as normal or otherwise on everything from what films to watch, language, games time, going out alone, hormones, pocket money, etc etc.

• It never stops. Never. Never ever ever. There is always someone eating, drinking, playing, moving or in some other way making NOISE and MESS in the house. I love a bit of happy chaos but when you're the one running around trying to muster the illusion of control, it is like being in a pinball machine. Except no one gives you any points. Once, the online shopping was delivered by a who man cheerfully asked "are you moving in or moving out?" "Neither" I muttered as I cried into my coffee and switched to a less judgemental supermarket.

In calmer moments I reflect that they were all issues we had before we took the boys out of school. They're just bigger now than when the kids were out for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm prone to over-doing things, taking on too much and overshooting the sweet spot where it would have been good enough.

Objective this week is to be a bit kinder to myself. When in doubt, make a cup of tea and keep repeating: everything's fine. Because it is.

PS I don't have marshmallows in my tea, that's hot chocolate. I'm being extra kind to myself.

Lazy Autumn

Today we learned through questions.

It's a quick and easy way to teach to more than one level in an 'impro' style, ie: this is a really good option when you have failed to properly plan for today (ahem).

We start with our headline question : Why is it autumn?

We don't know. I can't answer that and neither can the boys... on with our quest of questions.

Here's our hour as we found out lots of stuff and meandered towards the answer.

How do we know it's autumn at all?
<signs of autumn - nature, wildlife, migration, day/night length, weather>

How near are we to the sun?
<main planets, their order in relation to the sun, Greek gods>

What orbits us?
<moon, moon phases - a quick youTube video and an experiment with a ball and a torch>

Is everything in the universe perfect?
<circles, spheres, ellipses, axis>

What is the Earth's axis?
<sticking a chopstick through a clementine - angles, degrees on a protractor>

Where are we on the clementine?
<hemispheres, time zones, equator>

How long does it take us to go round the sun?
<orbits, leap years, sticking a giant apple on a chopstick>

What happens when we're tilted towards the sun?
<concentration of sun's rays, angle to the sun, equinox>

So it's autumn for us because we're in the northern hemisphere and our wonky axis means we're facing away from the sun.

Now we know.

Resource List:
Moon phases experiment : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz01pTvuMa0
Planets : Science Made Easy by Vorderman - worksheets
Why we have seasons : Woodlands Junior http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/time/seasons.htm
Twinkl : sun and moon resource pack
BBC equinoxes and defining autumn : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-29014886
Clementine, apple, chopsticks, torch ....

Happy Birthday - Home Ed Style

Going on about this could make a person unpopular but being EHE means you can actually do birthday activities on the actual birthday date.

It doesn't sound much but little things are the best : W got to open his presents sat on our bed in his PJs without the old Monday soundtrack of me screeching 'Do your teeth! Properly! I'll do packed lunches! What do you mean your homework is due in TODAY?!"

We had presents (W), a cuppa (me) and a cuddle (all) and bounced out of bed bright and not-so-early at about 9am. We packed a picnic and headed to the zoo which, predictably, was empty - of people, not animals.

It was so quiet that the animals actually seemed pleased to see us. W got sniffed by a wallabee. Monkeys jumped on the car. K got swamped by a flock of lorikeets. The squirrel monkeys surrounded us, even a new mother carrying her baby monkey. A cockatoo said hello. The penguins chased our fingers and the sea lions gave us a fantastic display of jumps and spins when we clapped. The zebras blocked the car in a move that clearly said 'you're the first car we've seen today - stay are marvel at our stripes puny lesser-spotted humans'. The staff were happy to fill time too - we had a private cockroach viewing and the keepers happily answered our barrage of questions about snakes.

At picnic time, the cafe area was blissfully quiet. We brought out the birthday cake and then realised that we had better not light the candles for risk of setting off the fire alarm. Too embarrassed to sing Happy Birthday we struck it lucky because the lady sat alongside with her little girl was an opera singer.

W might be the only child in history to have his 8th birthday marked by blowing out unlit candles at a zoo while a professional opera singer sang Happy Birthday.

The Great Outdoors

Something especially fantastic about home ed is the great outdoors. We get to spend a lot of time in it, exploring it, poking it, marvelling at it and wiping it off our boots.

It probably looks like a large portion of our timetable is spent walking the dog but the truth is that it presents some fantastic organic learning opportunities.

Here's this season's woodland curriculum so far :

• Maps. 16-point compass reading and navigating from the natural environment. Or "I got lost on the way to the meadow and we were nearly late for gym.. let's not do that again."
• Foraging. I wasn't brave enough to trust our mushroom identification book so we stuck to blackberry collecting which resulted in some really superb muffins.
• Geo surveys. How many types of bugs/mushrooms/birds can we find on one walk? Features of the environment and why they live/grow where they do.
• Fires. Safety, how to light a fire, fire triangle and cooking stick bread at Forest School.
• Climbing. Risk assessments, how to fall and how to get a boy down from a tree when they're stuck 2m in the air and don't want to test the falling tips.
• Sticks. Finding shapes, using them as tools, tensile strength, whether they'd make good firewood and why. Throwing them for the dog. A lot.
• More sticks. Dream catchers, sling shots, swords - learning basic knots.
• Flow charts. Identifying trees from their leaves and making a flow chart identifier.
• First aid. Stings, scrapes, breaks and what's useful in an emergency (hiking essentials).
• Seasons. Signs of autumn, how the tilt of the earth's axis causes seasons.

As the nights draw in we'll do a night walk and bat hunt as well as picking up some tracking and whittling skills. I love autumn.