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.

 

 

Social Norms

Socialisation is still the 'go to' issue that rears its ugly head when people ask how Home Education is going. It's all very well getting one on one tuition ... I can see how it would work academically... but what about the social aspect? I mean, really, how can they be normal if they don't go to school?

As time passes it's getting harder to be polite about it : after you've been asked the question for the fiftieth time you get bored of answering.

I have begun to think of it as a tombola; I spin my cognitive wheel and pick an answer :

1. Socialisation is the process of disseminating customs, norms and ideologies and the ones in accord with our family values are best found in museums, the great outdoors and art galleries (I'm an arse)

2. School is an authority based structure which bears little resemblance to the real world and children are forced into a narrow social situation for which they may or may not be developmentally ready (I'm a gigantic arse)

3. We do loads of activities (I'm a bit defensive)

4. School is not the only place to gain socialisation and frankly I provide wonderful socialisation opportunities for the children (I'm very defensive)

5. There's a thriving home ed community (It's true but we're not fully integrated yet)

6. We socialise with a waaaay more diverse set of people than at school (I'm 5. Nur de nur)

7. None of your business (You're the 8th person to ask today)

8. We follow the National Curriculum for Socialisation (I'm being sarcastic)

9. Social children do well at school; less social children don't - I have less social children (I'm being honest)

10. If school is the best place to learn social skills then every adult must have amazing social skills (She shoots, she scores. Boom)

It's not big or clever, but hey, you've got to make your own fun.
Especially when you are missing out on playground politics to keep your social skills sharp.