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...