That's a Wrap

This has been a lovely process and an even lovelier 2 years. Thank you to anyone who has read my ramblings; Google stats tells me it is in the thousands and I'm very touched.

I'm not sure K&W will realise how unusual their life has been until they're a little older so I've turned this into a book for them to keep. I'm proud of what we've done and this blog is a wrap.

As the kids slot back into 'normal' life I realise I've been way down my own priority list for 2 years and I need to start climbing back up. There are books to read, a gym membership with feelings of abandonment, a bizarre urge to get my wetsuit on and quinoa recipes I want to try - even if no one but me eats it (because "it's grass seed?!").

Life is illogical, preposterous and incredible. It's absurdly good.

Fresh Start

There was no dramatic ping, like a microwave or my dishwasher finishing its cycle; no fanfare or parade. It happened without ceremony - our two years is officially up.

Two years was an arbitrary measure. Just the right length for a pause in our lives. Enough time to stop, hit the reset button, recover some ground, travel, regroup, say 'to hell with it', have some adventures.

Mission accomplished.

Now it's time for W to head back to school and I feel like a parent sending their first born into reception; I'm nervous, I'm sending my baby into the hands of strangers. I don't know how he'll cope but I know he'll be fine.

W was only in school for 2 and a half years before being home educated for the following 2 years. We agonised over schools. We've learnt to be brave, to be bold and to try new things - so we lived what we had learned and settled on a new school for W where there were no ghosts, no history and a golden opportunity for him to start from a blank slate. Going back to somewhere is still going back. These days we only go forwards.

I've watched him grow from a sweet, clever, cheeky boy into a sweet, clever, cheeky boy who can cope with helmets and harnesses, new situations, being lost, wellington boots (sometimes full of mud), difficult questions, singing, short sleeves, splinters, unexpected changes, 3 legged frogs. He has faith in his abilities and so do we.

Not many people get to spend 700+ days straight with their 7 (and then 8, then 9) year old. It's lucky I like him.

K will be off to secondary school in September and W needs the time, space and independence to make friends in his year group and he's ready for the comparison, feedback and assessment of a school environment to challenge him. To enter him at the tail end of the year gives him a gentle introduction back into the system and a chance to get to know his classmates, with not long to go until the welcome break of the summer holiday before year 5 (and the 11+ ramp up <shudder>) begins.

To say I was emotional on his first day would be an understatement but he loved it. He came out smiling and he'd made a friend. S asked how it compared to home school; W's verdict : the work is easy and the waiting is boring.

Edit: Day 4, the work is now hard. But the waiting is still boring...

At home our pace is changing. With only K at home my days feel longer and quieter; my stress has halved in line with my responsibility.

It's not an end. It's just another beginning.

Bonjour Paris

My very modest attempts at French lessons had hit a wall. I'm not a natural linguist and find French hard to teach when K loves it and W doesn't. We did the basics but I was out of steam. We happened across £6 kids tickets to Paris in the budget airline sales last year (it was more expensive to get back to the UK than to leave sadly but still a bargain) so we decided on a day trip to Paris to soak up some French culture and practice the basics.

We pre-booked tickets to the Tour Eiffel which are good value although Storm Doris meant we couldn't visit the summit. A quick marvel at the engineering and the views and we were happy to tick it off the bucket list and head out for more exploring. We missed the Catacombs (I tried to pre-book tickets but was 3 minutes too late the night before - you have to book before 10pm for the next day if you're being spontaneous/disorganised like me!) but stood outside, next to the (3 hour+) queue, and showed the boys some images on my phone. We didn't get to see the bones of 6 million people, but there were roughly 6 million people in the queue so we imagined them all as skeletons and then headed off for lunch.

We ate in a lovely little cafe down a side street, managed our order, pleases and thank yous (with a bit of showing off from Mum with a very passable 'Can I pay by card' - thanks google translate). We experienced the Metro and RER and figured out signs. We walked along the river, outwitted a pick pocket (but only just) and found a play park and free toilets behind Notre Dame.

We had got up at 4am, and arrived home at midnight, as storm Doris caused yet more trouble. We were beyond tired but it had been a fabulous day.

I'd go so far as to say it was fantastique.

Off Grid

As we're nearing the end of our adventure we needed a suitably adventurous send-off and headed off for a short stay in a tree house in North Wales.

Built 30ft above the floor, with wooden spiral steps, rope bridge, no electricity, composting toilet, wood burner and a gravity powered shower (situated underneath the tree house) it's the perfect off-grid location for top quality, back-to-nature family time.

I'm still habitually observing learning opportunities so it would be remiss not to mention the links to the history curriculum - how people lived, washed and cooked before electric lights, toilets and ovens etc - as well as practical PE and DT skills with all the usual log chopping, rope swinging, climbing and walking.

When I holler 'Pack your bags, kids - we're leaving in 20 minutes!' up the stairs, the only question I'm asked is 'How many nights?' As a by-product of our various adventures (mostly to much loved Youth Hostels) they have learnt the +1 rule : 2 nights away means pack 3 of everything. In the spirit of learning through doing I never check their bags : the boys learnt through trial and error the inconvenience of forgetting to pack pants, gloves, PJs or a book. A BOGOF lesson - first in the perils of careless packing and often swiftly followed by a bonus lesson in how to share with your brother or make do (socks make great emergency gloves, turn t-shirts back to front if they're filthy, a bin bag can stand in as a poncho...).

I love the ease with which we can head off on adventures these days. Practice has made (nearly) perfect.

Wales delivered the weather you'd expect at this time of year and we waded, jumped and squelched our way through 2 days of perfect family fun for our last term time adventure.

www.living-room.co

Dad Science

Sometimes I just need a morning off.

I've no idea whether this is on the Science curriculum but they had a great time...

Timberkits

I confess to being very lax on my D&T teaching. I always figured it wasn't really my thing and I don't have the patience or attention to detail required to design and build things which Ikea sell for under £1.

I've started to change though.

It began with throwing a pot (onto a wheel rather than at a wall) which is without doubt one of the most therapeutic ways to get your hands dirty and - if you're my age and remember Ghost - think happily of Patrick Swayze for 15 minutes. As if I needed an excuse.

We found a friendly pottery place which welcomes home ed children and learnt about clay, glazing and firing as we happily made and then decorated some wonky pots. Enthused by the pot making success I went on a hunt for our next D&T project and happened across Timbertech through a face book group.

The Timberkits are a genius little box of self-build automata mechanisms made by Timbertech. We opted for the 4 kit box so that the boys could make one and then in a nod to iterative development, make a second having learnt lessons from the first.

You can download lessons plans from the website and watch handy YouTube videos so we made use of those to learn about the components and backed it up with some Twinkl resources on Automata Animals to look at how animals move and design our machines. We had also visited the Mad Museum in Stratford which ties in perfectly.

It was a fabulous project - I could rave on about the process, the cutting and sanding and sticking but actually the upshot was the boys have some really cool little toys that they are proud of and they learnt lots about design, measuring, axles, cams, followers...

A spider which goes up and down and spins.

A helicopter which goes up and down with rotating blades.

A sheep that eats grass.

I'm a D&T convert. I'm saving up tin cans to make pencil holders.

Mind the Gap

I spent the first year of EHE making a really dumb mistake: I'd figure out what the curriculum wanted me to do and then plan to cover it.

I fretted that there was never enough time or attention span to get through the quantity of material (especially covering 2 different year groups) and so I ended up compromising constantly while carrying a heavy weight of guilt that I wasn't teaching what I was meant to.

And then... an epiphany.

I love a good epiphany and schedule them weekly. It's a wonderful process that starts with me saying 'Hold on a minute...', followed by chewing my lip for a bit and googling for things, then a cup of tea, a bit more head scratching and ending with me running off to find S to declare 'I've had an epiphany!'. This is inevitably followed by feedback ('Another one?' and 'Er ... that's obvious isn't it?') and then the whole process completes with calling myself an idiot for not having realised <insert obvious thing here> and having another cup of tea.

In this case the epiphany is a real gem:

IF MY CHILDREN ALREADY KNOW SOMETHING... 
I DO NOT NEED TO TEACH IT TO THEM.

Wow. Bombshell, right?

When you've picked yourself off the floor and had a cup of tea I'll be happy to elaborate on this achingly obvious statement.

The curriculum at school is a scatter gun approach. With a class of 30 (or more) and hugely varying abilities and attitudes you have no choice but to stick to a plan - the lovely NC - and teach it all, differentiating where you can at a pupil level. The difference at home is that my differentiation can be close to zero, as can my attitude to compromise. I have just two students. Ditch the scatter gun and pick up the laser beam.

The never-ending-to-do-list just got 90% shorter. I don't need to teach long multiplication - they already know it. Equivalent fractions? It's been ticked off. All I have to do is reassure myself that they understand and can apply concept and I can move on. I can be nimble. I can personalise. I can intervene - I watched K working through an exercise of 30 questions and when it was abundantly clear he had the topic mastered I stopped him and we diverted our attention to a new topic.

Schools are a best-fit system to get a lot of children to learn stuff in the (more or less) most efficient/cost effective way the government can muster. When you zoom in and only have to concern yourself with just one, or two, children your efficiency increases 10 fold and you shed all of the baggage of worrying about the big picture.

I spent a year staring at the 'by the end of KS2 all children should...' list until I had the confidence to put it down. When I glance back I'm astounded at how much we've achieved while we were too busy having adventures to follow it.

Billy Goats Gruff

Lasting about a week, W did a literacy unit based on the Three Billy Goats Gruff. We started by reading the story, then there was character analysis, a formal complaint letter to the council about harassment from the goats and an alternative ending. The big task which was to create a cardboard theatre and write a play script to perform.

W threw himself into the art aspect and created a background and bridge. A short diversion into perspective resulted in a river which flowed beautifully into the distance and loads of sheep in the fields. We used cutouts from Twinkl for the characters which we hot glued onto skewers.

Play script writing can be a challenge in KS2. The inclination, from years of reading and listening to stories, is to describe and explain. Play writing requires an abstract view; W had to step out of the story and recast himself from describer to director - delegating the job of story-telling to his characters and scenery.

The start point is identifying and understanding that plays happen in scenes not chapters (which are typically set out by time). For plays, the location takes priority and each location change will determine the scene. We have to identify:
1. Location of this scene
2. Characters in this scene

After that, we start the dialogue with a new speaker on each line. It was a challenge to convince W that we don't need to say 'he shouted' after the words as we're using direct speech (but confusingly, without the speech marks). Stage directions (shouting) can be added in brackets.

Writing plays is a specific skill. It feels clumsy and flat to strip a story down to only what is said and requires faith that what's on paper will spring into a magical masterpiece when it's brought to life on stage. Accents must be decided upon, lines and their expression practiced and entry/exit timings perfected.

None of those things happened in our play.

The stage doors fell off, the troll entered facing the wrong way, W dropped the script, I forgot my lines and the bridge collapsed.

It was a triumph. 5 stars.