Who’s Normal Anyway?

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

Chris and Helen
Bob and Katy
Joanna
Ros
Jan

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.