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

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.

What I want to achieve in 2009:

This past years efforts in HE haven’t really been all that successful and certainly lately we’ve got ourselves into a bit of a rut. Just some rambly thoughts on how we might proceed.

Reading/Literacy etc

This is a tough one. I’m really not sure how to proceed here.

Alex, I think, is still too young at the moment to be pushing the reading. She tolerates Explode the Code and does it well so we’re going to keep up with that. I’m going to try and bring in some more comic books that she’ll like. The beano is very popular with her and I’ll keep looking out for others that will appeal. I’d like to see if she will be more receptive to listening to audio books, she’s always been a bit iffy with them before but as I think M has benefited from them a lot it would be good to try. Maybe I’ll try her at times other than bed time as she def doesn’t like that.

Marcus is reading now but really not much out of choice. I’m not sure how to encourage him to keep reading so he can get more fluent. I’m going to probably try and do as I am with Alex and encourage more comic and audio books and just keep throwing things at him that I think he’ll enjoy. I’m not sure he’ll ever be a kid who devours books but so long as I know he could if he wanted to then I suppose that’s ok.

Maths
This has recently fallen into M wanting to do a page of very easy things and declaring it as enough. I am ok with this sometimes as it’s building his confidence and it’s very easily knocked when doing maths. However we need to move on from just simple adding. I want to incorporate much more living math, games, books etc. We’ve started reading The Number Devil
which they like so far. I have lots of stuff to do, but need to be much more organised with it all really.

Charlotte Mason
I’m going to ease back into our Ambleside Online year 1 which we started ages ago. I like doing this and it eases my conscience when I think other people are thinking we do too little. I enjoy the composer and artist studies too so will get into those. Not much to orgo plan there, all done for me

Science
I’d like to keep up with some nature diaries and study ala CM. I’ve also got the Real Science 4 kids Pre-Chemistry book coming and so we’ll be making a start on that. If it goes ok, we’ll move onto the Pre-Biology. The kids have their own ‘chemistry set’ which they can experiment with to their hearts content so I’ll be encouraging that and doing experiments from books too. They all love experiments so I should do more.

I’d like to do some reading of the lives of scientists and such like. I have a Marie Curie book here and will look out for some others.

Music
Violin has fallen by the wayside here. Alex didn’t like doing the lessons and she was getting frustrated at not being able to make nice sounds. She was starting to think she was rubbish and stupid for not being able to do it so for now we’ve switched to the recorder which is suiting her much better. She loves it and managed to do Jingle Bells for us all on Xmas day. I’d like to continue by maybe getting some music for some simple nursery rhymes (or writing it myself if I can) and going forward with that.

I’m not sure how to get M into anything. He doesn’t show much interest. I guess we’ll just see if he does. We have the composer study for exposure to different stuff at any rate. Actually I’m sure the history of music will be more up his street!

Foreign Language
Have done terribly with this. I’d like it to become something we could work on though. Hmmm. Maybe I need to look at the schools library. I’d like to do a little Latin too with our Minimus books we got.

Groups
Continue going to weekly HE group when we can as both really like it there. Monthly nature group too. There’s a soft play meet up which is really nice that we can go to while M is still 8 so will continue with that.

Alex wants to join brownies so I have some phoning round to do on that. She would also like to do Karate or some sort of self defence. Will be looking into that soon too. M doesn’t want to do anything. No surprises there then

Hmm, not sure what else. Might come back to this later

I really wanted to add pictures to my holiday blog, but have lost my little adapter thing for my memory card so the holiday blog will have to wait Feel I should check in though

Had a nice day today with a trip to the theatre to see a concert type production of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts poems. Lots of instruments to see up close which was great as both mine love musical instruments at the moment. Both really want to learn the violin (as do I) and since I can’t fit a piano in the house (the other thing I want, not so much the kids) I went ahead and ordered some yesterday. Apologies to anyone who will be able to hear them (prob whole of Sheffield!) Kids v. excited though, hope they arrive tomorrow.

Generally feeling much better and have got over my little wobble about M and his reading. I *know* deep down that what everyone says to me is true but at the same time I felt it was something that should be made public if you know what I mean. But yeah, feeling much better about it so thanks everyone for their comments

Loving HE just now, just watching the kids making friends so easily, having such a good time, not feeling stressed out or feeling not good enough. You can’t beat it really

well I suppose it’s not even over yet, but there we go! I’d been feeling ill all the 2nd half of last week with some kind of virus (thankfully no-one else has had it yet) and this week I’ve just felt wiped out. So tired. I normally get up really early with James nowadays but haven’t done all week, I’ve just needed to sleep. Feeling much better today though

So all week, we’ve been a bit lax with anything too heavy workwise. I’ve been keeping up with our reading from AmblesideOnline, we’re on week 4 now, which went well and made me feel like I’ve not wasted the time. M wanted to read the War Boy book I blogged about before so that’s been our history this week. Which reminds me, was supposed to put it in the timeline book - shall do that later this afternoon. Have hardly done any maths, although did a lesson from MUS this morning that went down well. I also got a book about infinity for them called The Cat In Numberland which although we haven’t read yet, looks really good. They’re both kind of obsessed with infinity atm! Also read Katie and the Mona Lisa to keep some art appreciation going But all fairly relaxed tbh.

Wednesday we went out to the nature reserve home ed meeting which was really nice. Managed to speak to some other people. I feel like I’ve been around for a bit and know a few people by their faces, but I don’t know them well enough to chat so sometimes I feel a little awkward at groups. But getting better. Went off to my mums afterwards for a change of scene listening to Bindi Babes (Alex’s choice) on the way. Yes we have more audio books on the go Not so many this time, 3 each. A is getting more into them too.

I’ve been quite enjoying watching M read a few more things lately. It’s been over a month since I decided to stop the reading of ORT books every day and take a step back to see how things would go. I never said anything to M about why, but when he turned round to me one day and said that he gets all confused in his head when he tried to read I took it as meaning I was probably doing the right thing. He doesn’t ever ask to practise reading, but he picks up comics often and will attempt reading lots there. I don’t think it feels as hard for him. The other day we were getting petrol and he read ‘Have you checked your oil?’ only pausing to check he had ‘checked’ right. Ok hardly earth shattering, but what I liked about it was he wasn’t doing it for anyone but himself and that’s how he generally is, doing it for himself. Oh I saw this Artemis Fowl Graphic Novel and think it looks fab. Might have to get it.

And now I’ve lost my train of thought as the kids were fighting over the playstation so have been sent upstairs. Humph.

without me blogging. Oops. Keep meaning to but have had quite a bit on my mind lately.

Ok boring stuff first so I have a record. Wed - er… Oh bollocks. I can’t bloody remember can I? I think we’ve done reading practise and probably a bit more of maths story books. Ugh.

Alex’s reading style has been puzzling me a lot lately and I’ve been looking round the internet trying to gather ideas on how to help her read. On one of the groups I’m on I saw something about Right Brained Learners. Initially I looked into it when M was not doing great with his maths but I discounted it as I figured he could do phonics pretty well and there was other stuff I didn’t hink fitted either. I came across it again when thinking about Alex and it’s got me really thinking about learning styles and stuff. It’s kind of all spinning round in my head at the moment and I’m not sure if any of it is really applicable to my 2 but I’m thinking that in some areas at least they may be more ‘right brained’ and so have been looking for ideas and information on it. I’ve a book coming soon about it and hopefully that will help me work out some more. I’ve joined a(nother!) yahoo group on homeschooling creatively which has a wealth of ideas too. I’m always a bit wary of labels, not because of the label itself causing problems, but sometimes it’s like I think I’d actually like something that would explain why we’re not progressing in whatever (reading, maths, whatever) as it would stop me feeling like it was just me being crap at HE. So before I read too much I started writing down stuff about both A and M even if I had no idea if it was a RB thing or not so that once I did look into it, I didn’t just home in on the stuff that did fit. Don’t know if that makes sense at all. I have been doing *a lot* of thinking!! I’ll probably write some more on it once I’ve thought some more but for now that will have to do.

I really meant to blog before going away this weekend, but managed not to. However there was a few bits and bobs I wanted to make sure I wrote down so I’ll try and remember what I did. Prob only interesting to me though (keep thinking I ought to record something in case an LEA inspector does decide to call).

Last weekend seemed an age ago but we did venture out to Creswell Crags which was a lovely walk and prompted lots of conversations about early people, where they came from etc etc. I’d like to visit the caves too at some point, but M is slightly worried about caves since we went to the Mining museum and went down the mine. he doesn’t like underground!

Monday I headed off to Barbara’s house and we managed to leave my kids with chris while B and I checked out the Schools Library. Wow. What a resource. I could have spent all day there! It was mostly non fiction books but a selection of ficion too. I picked up lots of maths books, some more ‘Katie’ books (the ones where she visits paintings) and a couple of space type books. Am going to take kids one day and it will be so nice knowing that whatever subject they want to know about, we should be able to find books on it. Our local library has had it’s cars, boats and machine books exhausted by M so I think we should be able to find some good stuff in the Schools one.

The rest of the week seems like a blur now, but workwise we’ve started off some copywork. m has really good writing which I think is unusual for a boy, but we don’t do any practise. He idn’t mind doing this as it was nice and quick. The Story of the World book arrived and we did some chapters of that along with spotting the areas on maps. this tied in nicely with the Creswell Crags visit. Our new Electronics Kit arrived so we’ve done some of that too talking about circuits and conductors. We loved the Beans kit and so when a little bit of money came our way I decided that it was going to be spent on that. Also have spent some but not lots of time on maths, been looking through books and finding any maths in the books so lots of looking for patterns, shapes etc.

M read 4 of the level 4 ORT books last week. These were the books where the ‘Magic Key’ was found so great excitement there and have ordered the next level books where the first adventures are had. Definitely getting there with all of it, don’t really want to take too much time off the practise as I think it is doing M the world of good.

And so we come to the weekend spent in a field Off The Path which was lovely despite the weather being slightly against us. It’s always nice to have the kids potter off with all the other kids there and be able to chat with the other adults. Def a plus since the kids have grown up a bit. We did have a small break as we had a cousins birthday party. What a difference! Full of hyper children and an awful dj/party bloke, was glad to get away! I didn’t sleep too well in the tent though, was v cold so on coming home today I had a bath and fell asleep for about 2 hours.

Oh and I managed to borrow a couple of books from Jan - the Time and Space of Uncle Albert and Uncle Albert and the Quantum Quest which are story books about lots of physics-y type stuff. I started reading the first one (just for myself) as soon as we got home and am enjoying it immensely. I know absolutely nothing about these kinds of things so it’s nice for me to learn about stuff!

I need to really be concentrating on Alex with reading. She is normally ok alongside Marcus, but M is getting to the stage that he’s reading well and needs practise. Alex on the other hand is really struggling so I need to be going back to basics with her. We have the Explode the Code books which we all really like so more of that I think and if she’s still struggling with it all I’ll start looking for look-say kind of ways to teach her. Will be hard after all our phonics! M likes the workbooks too and I don’t think it will do him any harm to do some more in them.

Maths is going well, after all my wobbles M seems to have leapt ahead. When we do adding sums Alex used to get them way before M but now it’s swapped over. Planning to much more games, learning through stories (have quite a few maths readers now) and try and be relaxed about it. We really don’t do well with structure and workbooks. I’ve been looking at this Living Math site for a while and have started implementing loads of stuff from it. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it. I’d love to learn everything through books!

History is going to be books too. Have got Story of The World and plan to do some of that. Geography I think will be attached there too. The Magic Tree House books are proving really popular and they cover both sections so we’re sorted I think.

Science is one area we’re going to try and do more of. M really likes it and that’s as good a reason as any. We’ve a shelf load of kits and all the Sonlight stuff too so should be sorted.

Erm, what else have we? Music. Hmm not doing so well there, have recorders and books but haven’t doine any lately. Must start it up again. Art. Well I got some more of the Katie books (like Katie and the Impressionists) which my 2 really like, but on a more practical level we’re pretty crap. Mostly because of the house, but I should be doing more. Argh!

Foreign Language. Again more can be done here. I ‘d like to do Latin and am planning on getting the Minimus course. We should do more French or Spanish I guess.

Ugh, just realised now how little we’ve been doing lately. Oh well, plenty to do. Best get going…

I taught M a new game this afternoon. He wanted to play his xbox and knew that it would entail him doing some sort of ‘work’ so I had a look through Games for Math and saw the Pyramid card game, a bit like solitaire? I’d never played it before but there’s a few versions online. Anyway, point is to get 2 cards that add up to 10. I’d written out the bonds on a bit of paper so M could do it without it being a chore (idea is that maybe he’ll learn them one day before he’s 30). He did two games of it and enjoyed it quite well, especially as he managed to beat his score. This is good for M, I struggle to find stuff that he’ll enjoy, he’s becoming a real tricky one to HE.

Anyway, we didn’t do anymore after that until this evening when we went round to James’s dad’s house. There’s not many toys there and Alex and I often end up playing cards or doing jigsaws and M goes on the ps1 upstairs. I decided to try and get us to play Pyramid again but see if we could beat each others scores this time. Also let me show Alex as I’d not shown her before. They both loved it so much! Why can’t it be like this more often? Someone somewhere was looking down on us as in the first game M managed to win (and got rid of all his cards!) so he was really enthusiastic about it. I even caught him not having to look at the sheet with the bonds on to know what goes with what. So a little pat on the back there.

It really does feel like such slow going sometimes. Alex seems like a much more typical learner and by that I mean I recognise her style from reading round blogs iykwim. She’s enthusiastic about almost everything, will give loads of stuff a go and would be read to for hours. She’ll do workbooks till the cows come home and listens to what I say so tends to understand it. Marcus is such the opposite though, I really struggle to get him interested in anything. He’ll maybe grudgingly do some stuff but he knows it’s part of ‘learning’ and wants to go off and do his own thing as soon as he possibly can. But if I try and capitalise on any of his interests that doesn’t work either. *sigh* If he was coming along better with his reading and maths I’d be inclined to let him be, but at age 7 he struggles with so much, esp maths. I wish I could just find some way to click with him though, but as it’s taken us this long to even have a good relationship with each other (for ages he wouldn’t hug me or ay he liked or loved me, but he’s been fine for the past year or so, extremely cuddly now!) maybe it will take even longer to get us in sync with some form of education. Ponder, ponder…

;)

having constant computer problems. This time it’s really dead, so have nicked my mums laptop again, and am set up for the week till they come back from holiday. *sigh* I hate computers.

I’m really struggling to get back into blogging, reading blogs and all that jazz. I’m craving some sort of stability in our lives at the moment and it’s not happening so I’m just ever so down, every day James does have a new job though, although nothing majorly exciting, and not driving So he’s still restless and wants to be driving understandably, but it’s really taking its toll on me which is spilling over into the behaviour of the kids and my moods (never that good at the best of times!).

Kids both doing well, Marcus was reading something to his Grandad the other day and I felt really proud that we’d got him reading wthout the aid of schools. Alex doing well too, she’s taken to the Big Brain Academy game which James has prematurely got for his birthday. She beats James at it!!! Well not all the time Both have seemed to have had growth spurts, so they are pretty much average now (maybe)

Should be booking Kessingland soon too, I need a holiday!

Another good day here today, helped in part by the sunshine although we weren’t out much in it. Wasn’t it just bloomin gorgeous?? Like summer.

Anyway we started the day with a little recorder practice. Alex seems to really like it but her fingers are just not big enough yet, Marcus was a bit self concious but once he realised I was only after practising one note was a bit better. He struggles as he rushes so much and doesn’t always stop to think what he should be doing iykwim. But a good first lesson I think, not going to go by the book we have yet, but just experiment with rhythms and notes for a bit.

After that we did some maths. I feel this is coming along well now that I’m paying more attention to it. They did a dot to dot from the red miquon book and you had to do it by counting in 2’s. Both of them got the hang of it well, Alex is much quicker at working out the next number though! Sometimes I forget there is 15 months between them as the are quite often at a similar level. Also did a ‘guess my number’ game where they guessed hwat number I was thinking and I had to say higher or lower. More work definitely needed there as it was clear they didn’t have much of a clue about that!!

Also did some Explode the code again, M read another ORT book (still level 1 but gaining confidence rapidly). Actually all of a sudden I’ve noticed M trying to read almost everything, it’s like all of a sudden he’s realised he could do it if he tries. I never realised how long a process reading is and it’s quite an eye opener really (although why I didn’t think it would be a long process I don’t know!!). It seems so long ago that Marcus looked at a word and realised it’s sounds added up to a word, so to still be at that struggling reader stage is quite weird and I suppose a little frustrating. I hope our fairly relaxed last year where we did hardly anything hasn’t kept him back too much, suppose I’ll never know though! Getting some of those DK readers from Amazon soon and think M will be fairly impressed by Spiderman and Star wars books - here’s hoping.

Then we got out some old cereal boxes and did some junk modelling. Well actually what I had in mind was making some magazine holders but the kids had other ideas. Well who can blame them since we hardly do any crafts round here lately? Paint just scares me in this house, so will have to be just sticking I reckon

And then we had lunch And James finished work early so managed to join us so that was nice. I also was looking at some maths games sites so since I was looking at them the kids just had to play them didn’t they? So they did some tessalations, adding, and measuring plus a little more work on higher and lower numbers. Sneaky but good Alex managed to get herself onto some other games that had spanish language in it which kept her amused for a while.

Afternoon was Sainsbury’s shopping (been putting it off as can’t stand to go at the weekend) and then we popped to see W and her daughter and grandkids were visiting. The baby had chicken pox so you never know, we may actually come down with it. Tried to entice M to go closer by saying he could have a day playing the playstation if he was ill, but it didn’t work

Home for tea and telly and M has just read James his book from earlier on so all happy