Ooh, just remembered I meant to include this.
I had the boys in the bath tonight and M was talking about a TV show one of his friends really likes and saying how it was “only for kiddies”. I said, “But you’re just a kiddy as well really, aren’t you?” He looked at me very seriously over the side of the bath and said,”No. Actually, I’m a pre-adult.” Couldn’t help going off into fits of giggles over that.
I haven’t felt like blogging for a little while - partly because we haven’t really done much I feel like commenting on and partly because once I stop it’s hard to get going again. Let’s think what I might be interested to read back about, hmm…
Last week we got L his first pair of shoes. He turned out to only have size 2.5 feet, so they didn’t have much in to fit him (being an end of line/factory outlet type of StartRite shop too). I think the shop assistant thought we were dead pushy parents because he does look small for his age and as soon as the shoes were on he refused to walk and reverted to crawling, despite having been tottering about quite determinedly for several weeks. We wanted to get him shoes to keep his feet dry when we’re out places. He figured them out in a couple of days though and is quite keen on them now, bringing them to us to put on or trying to put them on himself. We could only get the “pre-walker” type in his size, but they do the job.
A week ago today we got a new tumble dryer. We have a washer/condenser dryer but the dryer part is rubbish and takes hours to not dry things properly. So a proper one that works is a big improvement and saves having damp washing hung everywhere. The things I get excited about these days, eh?
This weekend we went to a mediaeval day at Pensthorpe nature park. There were loads of re-enactors there doing different things than we’d seen before. M got interested in the old games and sat down to play a dice game (OK cos it wasn’t a Sunday LOL) and the man showed him how to play drop down dead. You shake 5 dice, take out any 2s and 5s and tally up the other dice to get a score. Then you shake the dice that are left in and do the same again, repeating til you run out of dice. On M’s first throw he shook 3 5s and 2 2s ROFLOL. The man was so flabbergasted at him doing that that he gave M a pewter token prize.
A got a new mobile phone during last week, because the previous one died of shock receiving a text message. He unpacked it all and swears he put the charger somewhere safe, but he hunted high and low later and couldn’t find it. So on Sunday we went to try and buy a cheap charger but ended up just getting one online. I can’t think where the other one can have gone unless L found it and binned it. He has a thing for posting things into the kitchen bin at the moment. I’ve rigged it so anything dropped in the front misses the bag now though.
Yesterday we went to a retail outlet place at Spalding to have a look around generally and also try and find M some decent trousers. We have a bit of a do related to A’s work to go to next month and M only has too short joggers and scruffy jeans. Nowhere is selling proper trousers at the moment, unless you want school trousers. So no success there, but we did find a big horseshoe magnet that we’ve been keeping an eye out for. They have a crazy golf course in the gardens behind the shops so we had a game between showers and L toddled about finding all the muddy puddles to sit in and dibbling his fingers in the water in the holes.
Oh, and we’ve been listening to Truckers for our audio book this month - got to recommend it. It’s very funny and clever how he comes up with these quirky takes on the world.
Thanks to the Petits Haricots I’ve been reading some of the entries in the current Homeschool Country Fair.
I especially enjoyed this article Relaxed Homeskool » Chip shot about answering all those questions people ask you (no school today? back to school soon eh?) and I think this gets to the heart of the comments - people are mostly just trying to make polite conversation.
And I enjoyed this article Finding a Balance because I have had similar thoughts on structure and child-led learning. We constantly try and find balance on this, between what M would like to be doing in terms of things he’d like to learn about in more depth (and also just how far are we prepared to see endless computer games as educational or a balanced life) and actually facilitating that. It doesn’t work for me to try and help him with finding resources on the spur of the moment. Google is good, but not that good, and while we do look for things as we think of them some of the time, the better resources usually come up when I have time to plan some things ahead. So yes, I agree it’s about finding a happy balance for everyone in the family.
1) ONE HOMESCHOOLING BOOK YOU HAVE ENJOYED
I’m trying to think what books I’ve ever read on home ed. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by John Holt and I found The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook interesting, though I don’t agree with some things in there. Free Range Education was good for the range of families and styles of home ed. I think my favourite though is possibly Pocketful of Pinecones, it’s such a peaceful book (not like our house LOL).
2) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULDN’T BE WITHOUT
I know everyone seems to put this, but I honestly don’t know what I would do without Internet access! How do people home ed without being able to get online to find out about whatever are the questions of the day, to browse books and internet games/resources/schools radio, to get inspiration from other people who home ed, to arrange home ed meet ups?
3) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BOUGHT
A National Trust membership card for this year. We got the family one last year (yes I know they do an educational one too but don’t you have to book a fortnight in advance and go on a school day? Not that organised!) They sent us the new card last August and we meant to cancel it, but never quite got around to it. We have visited a few NT places this year and we’ve probably noticed more of their laid on activities through having the card and planning to use it, but I doubt we’ve actually *saved* any money over the year.
4) ONE RESOURCE YOU ENJOYED LAST YEAR
All the historical reenactments we went to, both with the home ed group and as a family.
5) ONE RESOURCE YOU WILL BE USING NEXT YEAR
We’ll be carrying on using The Writing Road to Reading because the way it does phonics makes sense of just about any spelling word (far more than other phonics things we’ve used) and M enjoys doing the phonograms, working through the spellings and learning about the basic parts of speech and sentence structure it covers. Though we won’t be doing it for the 2 hours a day (or whatever it is) that it recommends.
6) ONE RESOURCE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BUY
I keep umming and ahhing over Muzzy and / or Rosetta Stone for learning more German, but both are very expensive.
7) ONE RESOURCE YOU WISH EXISTED
I’m not sure really - more home edders so there was more on locally to go to? Local learning centre with lots of classes we could get involved in? Teleporter to get us to home ed activities instantly instead of having long drives and workshops etc taking up the whole of the day.
8) ONE HOMESCHOOLING CATALOGUE YOU ENJOY READING
I don’t think I get any home ed catalogues except for the Sonlight one. Oh, I did see someone’s Schofield and Sims one at some point I think, but it wasn’t interesting enough to read it. We don’t even get an Opitec catalogue anymore (probably just as well). I love browsing the Sonlight catalogue when it comes though, they use such lovely books and there are always lots of things I’d buy, both to use with M and also for myself, if money was no object.
9) ONE HOMESCHOOLING WEBSITE YOU USE REGULARLY
I don’t use any website regularly for home ed. I read some home ed blogs and I think reading the Five in a Row boards is fascinating from a completely different culture (both American and very Christian) POV.
10) TAG FIVE OTHER HOMESCHOOLERS
Yesterday we spent the day at Gressenhall with another home ed family who’ve just moved to Norfolk from “up north”. They have a boy of 9 and a girl of 5, so not too far off M’s age for them to play well. M was pleased to meet another boy he could chat with about Star Wars and they played lots of running about games with pretend lightsabers. I enjoyed chatting to S and D about home ed and all sorts. L was wanting to be down and looking at things more closely and he did lots of toddling, though I also carried him alot - good for me to lug him around for 4 hours in a sling LOL. We got on to talking about computer games and M was introduced to Runescape, so we’ve been playing that alot today and figuring out the quests and what items do what. Must be educational, surely?
We haven’t done an awful lot today. M did some maths and English this morning and then played Runescape. I’ve been too lazy and done very little except stuff on the computer, hanging out the washing (guaranteed to make it rain) and eating chocolate. Not good. Ah well, tomorrow is another day. We’ve a long list of things to sort out in town, so that should keep us busy.
Yesterday started with a bit of a bang. Well, first of all I was really tired from having gone to bed after midnight on Tuesday (got distracted listening to a podcast about the episode when Lost finished) so I wasn’t best pleased to be woken at 6.30am by M shouting up the stairs to ask how to turn on the router. I’d just dozed off again when A shouted up to ask if L had been sitting on the kitchen side the day before. Erm, probably, why? The toaster had just gone bang and all our power went off. L had been playing with the teaspoons and shoved one in the toaster that I didn’t notice. (Toaster is always off at the wall in the day). So that’ll be another £30 for a new toaster.
We got up and sorted eventually and M did some maths and surprised himself I think by doing some fractions in a different book and finding them relatively easy. Which is good, cos he has a bit of an “I can’t do maths, I’m stupid” thing going on recently. Then he did some spelling stuff that he usually really likes, only he had a bit of a fit about spelling “would” because he was totally certain it has a c in it. Not sure what that was all about.
Then we rushed about getting sorted to go out to Norwich castle museum for an art workshop in the afternoon. The plan had been to get there in the morning and look around a bit more (we have annual passes and are doing a bit at a time cos there is loads to look at) and then go in the cafe for lunch. Well we made it in time for lunch and then had about 15 mins to kill before the workshop started, so we went to look at the Boudicca bit again.
The museum has a temporary exhibit Art at the Rockface that the workshop was based on. The workshop leader met everyone and took us to the education room to introduce the plan for the session (they were great with parents staying or going or popping in, which was good with L there) and then everyone went down to the gallery to look at the exhibition and sketch inspirations to take back and make into a collage. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed all the different artwork, sculptures and whatnot. L toddled about and the gallery people were very good with him - I was a bit worried he’d be disturbing some of the people who were looking around (but then the gallery did have 14 kids with clipboards looking for inspiration so it wasn’t that peaceful). They were encouraging families in with a booklet of things to specifically look at and little mats to take round annd sit on while you looked. There was a wide variety of things from old landscapes to sculptures to more modern stuff. I especially liked a large red splodgy picture which was done by putting a large snowball on top of crushed red stone and as it melted it took the pigment down the paper in running patterns. Would love to try that with powder paints. There were some beautifully carved gemstones too. The exhibit is moving to Sheffield at the end of September and I recommend going if you can.
We left M to it when they went back to do their collages and L and I looked around other galleries. We explored the mammals and birds section. I find them both beautiful and completely horrible at the same time. Horrible that they are dead stuffed animals, but amazing to be able to look at them in such detail. L took a shine to the swans and toddled his little legs off exploring.
M enjoyed his art session, particularly because they could crushed up rocks and charcoal and mix them with water and paints to make textured paint and smear it everywhere.
L and I went to sit in on the last 20 mins or so and I got chatting with the woman running the session. She does freelance work and art/green workshops and I thought it might be good to book her for something home ed wise. I got her website details - anyone within travelling distance interested in any of the workshop ideas? She does art of all sorts, puppets, ecological type stuff, beach walks and they are also starting an archeology day where they set up a dig on any piece of land you have so you can have a go at seeing what’s involved in opening a trench etc. I think something arty would be good for a home ed workshop (cos I’m always lacking in arty ideas). Maybe we should bear her in mind as someone we could have to do a session at Kessingland too? (If it’s staying at Kessingland of course).
We walked back to the bus station for the park and ride as soon as the session finished and just avoided the rain. Luckily it had missed our house on the way past and my washing was all dry when we got back.
In the evening once the boys were in bed I finished watching What the bleep do we know (mainly because I ought to post it back today, cos we got our envelopes mixed up when we sent M’s DVD back and Amazon have sent our next one, not his). I started watching it a few days ago and watched the first half hour and was interested, but it was lulling me off to sleep at the same time - wierd. It had the same hypnotic effect last night too, even though I was (mostly) following the arguments. It was one of those films where you’re being sold a certain point of view and some of it sounds a plausible way of looking at things but you never pause long enough or know enough background information to sort out which bits you think are true and which bits you think you would reach different conclusions from. Kind of like reading a scientific paper where they draw conclusions that just don’t follow from the study they’ve done, even though they are what they really would like you to believe they have showed and their arguments sound convincing on the surface, but then you realise they didn’t have proper control groups or something. So I’ll probably ponder on it a bit more and maybe get it again some time to rewatch. Odd how watching it made me feel though, the best description I can give is that it was very like listening to a self hypnosis tape.
Today it’s supposed to rain even more heavily and I arranged last week to meet up with a home ed family new to the area at Gressenhall, so I hope it doesn’t drench us completely!
Yesterday morning was a typical sort of staying in day. I didn’t want to go out anywhere much because my eye was still bothering me for driving. In the end M did a little bit of maths and then we had a chat about home ed and what things he does and doesn’t like doing and what A and I would like him to practise regularly, mainly some maths and English.
M said he likes the spelling scheme we have so we’re going to get back into that again and base English learning more towards working through that. He likes doing projects and FIAR too, but isn’t keen on narrations (because he finds them tricky) so I’ve said we can do more of the projects and not too many narrations but we’d like him to keep trying with them. Getting to the point or main nub of the information he’s relaying is something he really struggles with (much like his father LOL). We have a couple of FIAR books we haven’t done yet and after that I either need to borrow other books or we can re-row ones we did when he was 4 or 5.
I’ve also bought a pile of Sonlight 1 / 2 books secondhand and I’d like to fit in more time to read together, but fitting it in around L is tricky so we’ll have to see how it goes. We have a big pile of books to work through for bedtime stories at the moment anyway.
Then we looked through the BA Science folder and talked about working towards the First Investigators Gold award vs starting the Young Investigators scheme when he turns 8 next month and he wants to finish the gold award first. We picked out which projects he’d like to try and most of them require me buying something or other towards the equipment (be it cans of baked beans in the right size or reflective strip for clothes). We discussed planning science experiments too - M is still at the stage of thinking science is knowing the answer and just demonstrating it rather than setting up a properly controlled experiment to see what happens in practice. So we can work on that process as he does the different projects he likes the look of.
M said he wanted to have lots of time for playing (reading “on the computer”!) and for Lego and for playing with L. We need to fit in time to get some house jobs done too - never seems to be enough time to fit everything in. M likes me to sit with him as he works but I want to get on with stuff and just check how he’s doing. Maybe he’d get on faster if I sat with him more, I don’t know. Anyway, something I’m thinking about at the moment.
A finished work early because his meeting was cancelled so we went out to pick blueberries. They were really easy to pick, there were loads of them literally falling off the branches of the bushes. A had L in the Ergo and he kept making “another blueberry please” noises and the blueberries kept on dissappearing.
Afterwards we went into town to get some fabric and velcro and we picked up some empty shoe boxes for doing Christmas boxes, though I think some of them are too small. M asked to go in the bookshop and they had 3 for 2 on children’s books so he bought Spy Dog 2 and Astrosaurs 8 and I got a Roman Mysteries book to put away for his birthday. It started raining heavily so we hurried back to the car after that and went to Pizza Hut for tea.
This morning we had a slow start and then did some rearranging and tidying in the bedrooms. We need to put some things up into the loft again but we didn’t get that far. A’s friend K that he used to work with called in to see us for a few hours around lunchtime. She was doing a bit of a motorbike tour of friends over this side of the country and arrived in waterproofs and leathers (she brought the rain with her LOL) and it was lovely to catch up a bit. L took a little while to get used to her but then was doing his charm act getting K to play with him.
This afternoon we’ve made blueberry jelly out of most of the blueberries, which we boiled and strained this morning. We kept a few for the freezer for when we make blueberry muffins. We just had enough empty jars and glasses to put the jelly into and the jelly tastes gorgeous. Now A and M are watching Back to the Future 3 and L is finally napping (far too exciting earlier with K here for him to fall asleep). I’m going to sit here a bit longer and then go and start the chilli for tea I think.
Hope it’s not raining like this up in Yorkshire for Jan and Jonathan’s camping in the field house party! It’s very wet and blowy here.
Edited to add that the post below is passworded because it’s more specifically to do with where we live and I don’t want to put that out on the internet for everyone to read. Same password as last time and anyone who knows us IRL is welcome to email for the password.
Thanks for telling me all about BorrowMe.com Jax. They’ve just run their first competition and I’ve won a T-shirt!
I’ve been trying to think of what I can offer on loan to people. I think the overall idea is a good one. But there are some things I don’t use I really should get rid of because the chances of me using them again are so slight. There’s no point keeping those and cluttering the loft. So what do I have that I’ll need in the future but not at the moment, and that I’m happy to lend to people? So far I’ve come up with books I used during breastfeeding counsellor training and some home ed reference books. I’ll have to think if there’s anything M has grown out of that we’ll be saving for L but don’t need for the time being.
If anyone else wants to join BorrowMe you’re welcome to leave me a comment/email me and I’ll send you an invitation.
Get free blog up and running in minutes with Blogsome | Theme designs available here
