Life is a Highway - it’s the journey, not the destination

I will not give up. I believe wholeheartedly in home education and letting my children learn as and when they are ready and interested in things. I have seen it happen. Ticking boxes and having plans are not going help our process unless we decide that it suits us. Not the other way round. I will not have what my children learn about be dictated to them by someone who has never met them and who doesn’t know them. I will not have someone else decide what is more important for my kids to learn.

I believe wholeheartedly in the quote :

“Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he’s not interested it’s like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating.” - Barbara Lamping

These are my children and I do my duty to keep them safe and to bring them up to be responsible and good citizens. The state cannot parent every child and should not attempt to do so. There must be trust in our abilities otherwise we cannot prosper, we cannot have faith in ourselves. I expect you to trust me to make the right decisions for my children. I expect you to trust me to be a good parent to my children.

With thanks to the many people who inspired me to write this - all linked from Jax’s post here. Afraid mine is not as wordy or shows as much knowledge about the current situation. Well worth a read of the other letters too.

for anyone with an interest in history. Looks kid friendly

history cookbook

I haven’t had a good look yet, but will do once I’m back online, we’re hoping to do rations for 2 weeks if I don’t have too much resistance from the troops!

had a lovely week away in Scotland and around the border. Just what the doctor ordered really and James and I came back really relaxed.

It was a tiny village right on the sea front just over the border. It was so rocky though that sometimes it looked like you were on Mars or something!! James and the kids had fun rock pooling most nights and skimming stones when the tide was in. Good old fashioned fun

We went to the National Museum of Flight one day which was really good, with an excellent interactive zone with flight simulators and loads to do.

Most days we had gorgeous weather and we spent 2 fab days at the seaside. One day we went back over the border to Bamburgh which had the most gorgeous long beach, I loved it there.

The other day we headed only a couple of miles north to Coldingham which was the most lovely little bay. Had a nice walk into St Abbs that day too, very pretty and quaint.

We took James to Melrose. The kids and I have been probably 4 or 5 times now but always without J. We walked lots around, down to the chain bridge and also did a couple of geocaches in the area. He loved it as I thought he would.

Had a great, but tiring, day trip to Edinburgh. We drove to the P&R and got the bus in. We stayed mostly round the Royal Mile and did touristy things, but kept to the free things like the museums. We really liked the Museum on the Mound which is all about money and is housed in the HBOS headquarters. The kids cracked a safe and got 2 choc coins so they loved it too Went to the Elephant House cafe we went to last time we were in Edinburgh and which we loved, such gorgeous views. I was a bit mortified to see a film crew and even more so when they appeared to film me ordering LOTS of chocolate cake. Oh dear!!! No idea what they were filming for or even if I want to know!! Everyone was a bit overtired that day which made it not so fab, but nevermind.

Overall we had such a lovely time. The sun shone almost constantly and I was just so amazed at our luck with the weather. Can’t wait to go back to Scotland

I’m going to be offline this next week though as we’re doing our 1940’s week and I’ve said no TV or computers. Eeek. Hope I’ll be able to do it!! I have our rations bought and a plan of what we’ll be eating. James is being a bit grumpy about it all, as is M, but A is really enthusiastic. Hopefully will be back with a full rundown next week.

Why did we decide to home educate?

Initially we were worried about the local schools that we were unfortunate to live near. It must have been before A was born and I remember just being appalled at the lack of road sense and manners of the kids on the way to and from school (oh the joy of being a new parent and thinking it is oh so simple and that we knew all the answers!!). I vowed mine would never be like that We started looking at the idea of me going to Uni, getting a degree and then a job earning a fortune and sending them to a private school. It seemed like an idea, however impractical, and I set about researching it. I remember being on the UKParents forum and browsing the education forums and of course there was the home education forum. I think I had a quick look and expected everyone to be hippies I can’t remember if that was the first impression or not though. It sounded interesting, but was something I was sure my DH would not go for.

I must have been more intrigued and looked more into it, can’t remember why but it might have been from comments on the cloth nappy forum on UKP that I frequented. These things tend to lead onto other less mainstream things I guess. Anyway I looked into it more, and mentioned it casually to DH that M didn’t have to go to nursery or school and we could teach him at home. He was surprisingly up for it and well I took that and ran with it!!

I then joined the MuddlePuddle yahoo group and started to think more about it. It seemed that most people seemed fairly normal, or at least a bit like me. The more I thought about it all the more I knew it was right and the best thing for us. I knew we could change our mind at any time and so the pressure seemed off.

As I learned about the benefits the ‘why’ changed from just being concerned about the schools to actually feeling like it was a great way to learn. I wanted my 2 to grow up knowing that there was no rush to learn to read, multiply, know historical dates, anything really. I wanted them to do it when they were ready and interested. DH had a hard time at school and was slow at reading and maths and it had created such a mark on him that even to this day affects him. If possible I really wanted to avoid that kind of thing. I didn’t want them being 30 and still thinking they were ‘thick’ due to being put in a different set, or not doing things at the right age.

There are more reasons, not sure I can be bothered to list everything though! I suppose while it’s going well that is the biggest reason. We enjoy the freedom it gives us and I can see they are learning lots and are happy. That seems a good reason.

How do we home educate?

We seem to change how we do it constantly. We’ve looked at Montessori, workbooks, autonomous ed, Charlotte Mason and probably lots more. Since we’ve home educated from the very beginning I suppose it’s normal for us to have evolved in the way things happen.

Now we use Charlotte Mason when we’re needing a bit of structure. We like to learn from literature and from nature so it suits us. We try to keep lots of time for the kids to be kids and they spend lots of time playing. They are still only 9 and (nearly) 8 and I’d like to think they have a good few years of playing left! We also follow their lead a lot, M likes history, and A likes animals and nature so lots of these things go on. We’re flexible in everything, and if something doesn’t work we change it. If there is a museum exhibition on and it takes our interest we run with it.

I try and encourage daily reading, but with M it was becoming a chore so now we ask them to try and read 2 books a month that we can record and do a rating for. They are happy to do this at the moment so we’ll continue. Now that they both can read I’d like them to increase their fluency but not at the expense of making reading horrible for them.

Maths has been a biggy for us. We’re still not in a comfortable place with it. We love the Living Math ideas and try that lots, any kind of workbooks or sheets don’t sit right at all and I see the most improvement when we do nothing at all! Both kids went through a phase of hating doing it and thinking they were rubbish at it so we calmed right down with it. That is the benefit of this I guess, even if it is hard to work through. I’m happy to be hands off at the moment anyway!

So I guess we’re a bit of a mixture in how we do things. Next year might be different though!

aka copying the Beans mission statement idea!!

Well I’ve worked out that M will be starting Y5 this year and A will be starting Y3. It doesn’t mean much to us in the way things are done round here but it might be useful to know when the LEA turn up so I know what they might be expecting.

In the past couple of years we’ve tried ‘normals’ with basic requests of a minimum amount of work to do, Charlotte Mason style work, really leaving them to it and probably lots of different things in between! We change constantly with whatever our lives are like at the time. I’m not really sure how to continue things as whatever we do never works for any length of time. I feel we need to try and have more structure, with the pending LEA contact, but I know that it’s not always the way that produces the best results. But, it makes me feel happier about it all, knowing we have a kind of framework, and we do have to all be happy. So in short I don’t know what to do!! I think if I had a child who excelled in an academic area I’d be happier to let them be more. I don’t. I have 2 bright children but 2 children who are still finding the area they are going to excel at, if they’ll find anything at all. And of course what they will be good at might not neccessarily be appreciated by other people. I guess, rightly or wrongly, I worry about how other people judge us.

I’ve seen lots of change in the way my 2 are lately. I can see they are progressing in areas I might have been worried about before. M’s maths abilities are coming along well, well actually A’s too, just in coversations about time, money and things like that. Of course there’s more to maths than just arithmetic, but it’s nice to see that even with little structure and pushing that we’re progressing. And mostly without fear which is my main aim with maths. I do not want them feeling they can’t do it and getting afraid. Both of them are doing well in reading. A has taken off (still no idea *how* she did it) and can read pretty much anything now. She guesses at big words still and often gets it wrong but she’s doing it M is reading well too, but really chooses not to read much fiction. He likes non fiction books and comics still though.

Actually how we do things tend to be - structure for a little while till they start to feel it’s a chore and then let them be a bit more autonomous for a bit while the lessons sink in. Wonder if I should keep going with that then??? Seems to be working!!

I really like the Charlotte Mason way of doing things and always come back to that when I’m planning. Always seems so right. Maybe we do need to do it in fits and starts though as when we have a week away it always feels hard to get back to it. We’ve made it about 1/3 of the way through Ambleside’s Year 1. We should maybe look to do more of that really. I think it will fit in well with our WW2 week we’re planning too as lots of the stories are ones around at that time too!

They like copywork, so I think we’ll do more of that too. M’s writing and spelling is coming along really well but he probably needs some direction in that area.

Nature study is always popular so that can come back, as is music and art appreciation.

I got a book with grammar lessons in that we might try soon. M was fairly resistant first time we tried (prob a year or so back now) but maybe worth a go again. I don’t think my grammar is the best so might be good to have a book to learn from!

I have no idea what to do with Maths. Shall we keep with Living Maths? Not that we’ve done much by way of that recently. Shall we try some workbooks? Which ones and eeeking to the cost at the moment. Although might be better once back off holiday. Always scared to pay lots out to find they hate it. Stile Maths sounds good and what I saw at Michelles ages ago (eek so long ago!!!!!) so maybe I’ll think about that.

Music. They’ve both given up on the idea of playing the violin. A sometimes plays her recorder, but there’s not huge amounts of enthusiasm. We got a keyboard not too long ago and they both really like that. Pity it is huge and our living room small. We need a good area to put it that is easy to bring it out. Maybe need a new coffee table or something that it can be stored under. I really loved playing the keyboard when I was younger.

Science. I’d like to do more experiments as this is an area they love. They adore their chemistry kit and making potions. Hopefully they’ll have their ‘must mix everything together’ thoughts out of their system so we can do other stuff.

Other thoughts are that I’d like to get out more. We have Magna membership hardly used and we struggle with the home ed group with the location of it. I’d like to look round our locality and make a list of places I’d like to visit that are nearby and free or cheap-ish. I’d like to get a year pass to the local butterfly place too to help A’s animal obsessions! I need to make more of an effort to do local things that are easy to go to. Unfortunately lots seem to be on the other side of the city

I NEED to get our library corner (giggle at thought of library in my shoebox of a house!!) sorted out so it’s easily accessible and comfortable. If I can’t get to things then we’re in a losing battle.

Suppose I have a few things to be getting on with then next week so when we’re back from our holidays we can settle down to it.

I always think that engineering will be right up M’s street and have various bits and bobs throughout the house like Knex, lego, geomags and meccano that might spark some building interest and looking at how things work. So far he’s only been hugely interested in lego and building cars and space ships but you know, not hugely bothered.

Today though he started mucking around with something and it evolved into thinking about things much more. He decided to use a wooden tray and lower it down from his window to make a kind of lift thing. He did all of it himself and tried using one string in the middle, nope didn’t work, tried 2, nope. Then he was getting a bit upset so I suggested one on each corner so he tried that. Hooray!!!

He left it for a while after that and has only just looked at it again. He was trying to sort out how long the strings would need to be to get to the ground and was working out how to do it (it’s dark now and raining). So he was using the length of the stairs (I know it wouldn’t be right, but I’m applauding his thinking of ways to do it|!!!!), we then discussed how it wouldn’t be exactly right due to the height of the window and the length of the stairs not being the same.

He’s so chuffed with himself and as he does this kind of thing so rarely, so am I

Also wanted to write about a programme they’ve both been enjoying on Pop (I think). It’s called Backyard Science and is an australian show. They were very indignant towards it at first saying that it had stolen the idea from Richard Hammonds Blast Lab, but actually they prefer this now and it’s really good with ideas and experiments and all very accessible.

Today’s blog has been brought to you by the slogan ‘blogging the good bits’

just blogging quickly as I really need to sleep but am not managing it easily. Might feel better to brain dump this!!

Kids seem v. interested in wartime things at the moment. M woke up and spent a while looking through The Horrible History of the World and the The Usborne Introduction to the First World War before asking that I try and get the WW2 version of the latter. Do we really need more books?

A has been asking loads of questions about various things to do with the war. Neither of my 2 really do the whole question thing lots so it’s nice to have it. We were talkign about what kids would have read and I said that they read the Beano and then we checked Wiki to see when it started. Apparantly in the war it was available on alternate weeks with the Dandy to save paper and ink. Mine love the Beano so I said they could read them when we have our ww2 week.

Although I’m hoping we won’t have run out of steam by then. I haven’t planned to do all this discussion. *I* need to plan ahead so that I actually do the ration week and know what to buy and have a general idea of what I might cook and what people might have eaten. However either way it’s good. They’re interested and happy and that’s what matters.

We did a supermarket shop in the evening and spent the whole time being bombarded with questions about whether this food or that food would be ok. A was upset when I said no to Muller corner yoghurts!!! We talked about seasonally available food, no freezers back then and not so much chicken availability too. A insists she’s already following rations this week (except the yoghurt of course!!).

Dodged the rain on the way home. I love storms so was nice to get in in time to watch one. Never seems to be enough storms.

Kids have camped out downstairs (A has made a morrison shelter (or just a den) to sleep in) and now I must try and switch off the computer

I normally hate bank holidays. Way too busy and so I normally end up staying home to avoid the crowds. This weekend was looking the same but then we decided on a last minute trip down south to visit Nic and Ady and kids. We left on Thursday night and arrived v. late. The kids had a whale of a time all weekend, nothing much planned so they played and played and played. We did have a lovely bbq on the beach while the kids paddled in the v. cold sea. I do love going to the beach Always feels relaxing to go there, no squabbles and the kids just do what kids do. Thanks!!

Today we were home all day and had planned to go to the Sheffield Fayre, which looked like it was going to be very Festival of History-esque and as we had missed that this year thought this would be a good alternative. It was free as well which is always good. We went with James’ dad who also loves history and had such a good time wandering around the WW2 area. The kids were allowed to sit in an old jeep and M looked so pleased!! There were battle reenactments and weaponry displays. A was sat on my knee lots asking questions. She’s not one for history generally (or at least so far in her life) but she enjoyed this one and now knows much more about the American civil war and WW2. Lots of discussion

I may need a few days to recover now though

hmmm. seems a bit much to try and recap all of that doesn’t it?

One of the main things that have happened lately is the Local Authority have got in touch with us about A. I’m expecting a letter and the request of some info after September when they all start back at work. I think it would be a good idea to have something I can check back on that will help when writing up reports and stuff. They haven’t asked about M so I can only assume she has been highlighted from when she broke her ankle in May.

The summer holidays here have really felt like it here. Not with the weather, but with the kids being out playing constantly with their friends on the street. Just reminds me of when I was on holiday as a kid. I’m trying not to worry too much about the education going on for now. It still goes on of course. They’ve been doing their reading challenge at the library and this is the first time that A has been able to read books all herself. Only small ones but still, she’s very proud of herself M hadn’t really wanted to join in, he still dislikes reading, but he’s done it with non fiction and audio books.

Other things of note (mostly very recently as I can’t think too far back!) -

* staying up late to watch the shooting stars (the Percy whatsits). Didn’t see too many but led on to lots of discussions about space
* fab space party at C & H’s. M and James went as Men In Black. Shall forget the conversations with the kids on the street who said that it wasn’t any good for a space party *roll*
*Lots of walking. Our car died on us and we were without for quite a while. Quite enjoyed it
*A has been learning to sew and knit still. Wish she would concentrate for long enough to make some progress though. M being using the sewing machine too.
*Railway museum. Went there for M’s birthday and loved it. He now has his own railway set which he is loving.
*Trip to the seaside to see Jax and Tim.

and probably more

We have a few more busy weeks ahead of us with trips and finally a holiday (yay!!) before settling down in to a more normal routine again. We’re hoping that when we come back from holiday we’re going to pretend that we’re living on rations and have a couple of weeks with WW2 type food. Can’t wait. I know M likes WW2 but he’s not that fussed about the Home Front, which is what I am really interested in. Hoping it will bring a different aspect to his learning about the war. I’ve been wanting to do it for ages as well. I got 2 fab books from amazon that have reprints of all the leaflets that were given out in the 2nd WW. they are Make Do and Mend: Keeping Family and Home Afloat on War Rations and Eating For Victory: Healthy Home Front Cooking on War Rations. Absolutely fab books. The eating for victory one has loads of recipes in it. I need to have a good think to see how to do it all though.

Annual photoblog time! This was last Wednesday, we had nothing planned so just let the day unfold. Normally I worry that there won’t be anything worthy enough for the blog but actually it turned out ok.

M was up first as normal and started by playing and building with his lego.

A surfaced a little later, she’s more cuddly in the morning than M

Creations - a tank I think.

birdwatching

helping me with the washing mountain!

Meanwhile M was still in Legoland, he’d built some sort of Iraq war scene. Lol, slightly obsessed by war!! A eventually got dressed, apparantly I had to take a photo of her putting on her socks.

They both then decided to take out the science box and do experiments, aka mixing lots of stuff together!

And then cleaning up afterwards - very important!

At the park.

M is very happy with his 3 pound skateboard from Asda

It was lunchtime when we got back and a new dvd had arrived from Lovefilm - Carrie’s War so they watched that while eating.

Engrossed! They really enjoyed it.

Reading time, A is still on The Cat in the Hat and M on his Magic School Bus book.

After enjoying the sun they retreated indoors to play some games. M has nearly completed Super Mario Galaxy and so was keen to play more. A likes to watch him but she also spent some time on the PC on a horse game site. Not sure what it was.

I tend to make a smoothie in the afternoon about 3.30pm ish just in time for James to get home. Here’s M testing it out. Has lots of good stuff in it, as well as fruit also some parsley and spring greens and some wheatgrass powder. Kids love em.

Finished article and A enjoying (after taking her patch off).

Once James came in the photo’s were less. He nicked the camera phone! But they played outside with friends, watched (more - ugh) telly and we had tea. Think we had pasta bake as I was really fancying it. Yum.

Kids helped out with washing up after as is their ‘job’ at the moment to earn pocket money. It’s working well atm.

Just before bed, grandad came round and they read Beanos and M finished the day as he started by doing more lego (James deleted the photo of him though!)

Phew!