Daffodil Whisky Pigeon anyone?

Having taken the plunge to get back into my blog, I think it's important to keep going. It's just that life is so, so busy right now. Having arranged an Easter Revision week with my students in London a long time ago, I have now taken on many more students in the local area and so am fully booked this week too. Not that I'm complaining and we have treated ourselves to a coffee machine as an Easter "bonus". It's so lovely to be working from home, the sun is shining, the Dale is beautiful and the lambs are frolicking.
The children are happy to be home and kept us amused on the last part of the journey home with wild tales based on three random nouns chosen by the others - chocolate lamp-post muffins, ginger raccoon jumpers, daffodil whisky pigeons...
It's a little thing, but moments like those give me a warm glow - somehow I think that our lifestyle and home ed has nourished these imaginations, this confidence and these easy relationships in a special way, and the fruit of that is three laughing children in the car at the end of a long journey,

Tired

I'm tired. I''m tired of worrying if they're ok and if I'm doing enough, if I'm good enough. I'm tired of worrying that, right now, they are not learning anything.( I remember feeling that way while I changed the baby's nappy and my  eldest watched Teletubbies.) I'm tired of the relentless argument in my head that it really is ok, they really are learning and that they really are at least as educated as their schooled peers. I'm tired of the doubt. I'm tired hearing that the children feel an insidious pressure to go to school, to achieve 10 A*s and that owning a tea-room isn't ambition enough.
When they are excited about grasping vertically opposite angles, or proving the formula for interior angles or writing an essay comparing Shakespearean sonnet form to Spenserian, my confidence flashes for a moment and is gone, like a match flame.
When they are bored, or sneaky, or ungracious, or can't recite their times-tables, the slow-burn of my fear deepens.
I wouldn't have lived any other way. I just wish it wasn't so darn scary. And I wish I wasn't so tired.

Isles Bridge

A perfect home ed day. Really. It doesn't get better than this.
My eldest son is preparing for his first GCSE exam on Friday and the twin priorities this week are practicing differentiation and keeping him relaxed. We did an hour of maths at the table, packed a bag and walked 10 minutes to the river. Paddling, it seems, is irresistible.

It wasn't long before my middle son had waded to the other side with his sister anxious to join in. My eldest sat down with me while I painted and we talked over the things on his mind and he drew a little. We had lunch and I read to them from the Science book (he is also revising for Biology GCSE) and we discussed genetic engineering and genetically modifed food. There are frost-resistant potatoes with the DNA of Antarctic fish which they thought was "cool" but were concerned about whether they were vegetarian.

The younger two returned to the river to dare each other to swim and my eldest and I read more about cloning and developed the dystopian idea of  football clubs cloning their best players and training them from birth to be even higher levels of brilliance. Who would the parent be? Would corrupt clubs produce clones with defective DNA and sell them to rival clubs? What if the child did not want to play football? My son's DNA clearly hold more novel-writing genes than engineering genes! I left him revising Biology on my iphone app as I responded to the calls of the younger to to watch them swim.
By this stage they were blue with cold, even in the bright summer sunshine, so we headed home and sat in our garden with hot chocolate and cake and read our current chapter book pausing only to gloat when tourists strolled passed, quietly and to ourselves of course, that we actually live here.
The younger two went out to rehearse for their play after dinner, I had some time to head out on a long run and my eldest enjoyed a solitary couple of hours.
Everything I had planned to do was done: Biology and Maths were revised, chapter book was read, art was available and so much more importantly, emotions were heard, attention was given and life was lived!

Dragon

Sometimes it just works. Unexpectedly, the usual amount of vague ideas, lack of "proper planning" and even a little resisitance still all come together.
We have a large box of art stuff, largely different types of coloured pencils, plus pastels, crayons, more pencils and lots and lots of half-used pads of different sizes and weights of paper. Every time I try to clear it out we get stuck with all the still untried possibilities. (But why are they still untried?) So my art curriculum this term has boiled down to opening the art box and using the stuff in there.
So that is what my daughter and I did yesterday. She really just wanted to carry on drawing her pictures to send to a friend (surely, my doubtful voice says, that is just as much art as my idea?) but agreed to give it half-an-hour. We settled on dragons as we have some delightful dragon stencils and I gave her the challenge of doing four pictures, each with a different material and different paper, and I joined her.

It was fun. She developed a character for one of her creations and was inspired to write a poem. She thought it would be "cool" to have a poem in which each line started with the letters that spell out "DRAGON" and my son let her know that this was an acrostic. We played with words and she wrote her poem and then copied it out onto her picture, which now, along with seven other dragons, decorates our mantlepiece.

Dragon

Deep in the wood,

Residing in a black cave,

All his skin green;

Guzzling a young deer,

Orchids scattered everywhere,

Never more to return to the land of men.

 Middle son had, meanwhile, been baking, so we switched chapter book for Poetry Tea. devoured awesome, warm cherry cake and shared poems. Eldest son read us a poem he has written for his English course and a story which he has just heard has made it through to the second round of a national competition. We were reminded of the Geographical Fugue and listened to it on youtube.

Sometimes it just works.

Nest Building

Monday morning. Chapter book, tea, cookies.

We watched a magpie flying to a from a pine tree, huge sticks in his beak, building a safe home to raise a brood.
We finished our book - Because of Winn-Dixie -  and reflected on loss, reconciliation and new beginnings.
We enjoyed the sunshine being warm enough to sit outside and we enjoyed a relaxed start to the week. We enjoyed each other's company and the gentle rhythm of our life.

Titanic

It is 100 years since the tragic sinking of the Titanic.We took the trip to Godalming today to visit the exhibition in the town museum based around Jack Phillips, the ship's chief telegraphic officer. He was undoubtedly a brave man, staying at his post until the last, his final transmission cut off mid-way as the power cut out three minutes before the ship went down. I found the telegraphic transmissions sent and received by the Titanic especially moving - the simple descriptions of the increasingly desperate situation, the frantic responses of ships promising that all their boilers were at full steam, and the last few from the surrounding ships: nothing heard for half-an-hour, for two hours and then the Carpathia reporting that the Titanic has gone down with all hands.
The children all took a ticket from the reception desk, found "their" suitcase and dressed in character. My eldest loves the chance to look smart and enjoyed being William John Parker, ship's crew.

Middle son was also a crew member, although clearly not of such rank, and my little girl part of an upper class family's entourage. Their friend was a first class young master.

We stopped for a runabout and a tree-climb on the way home. Fridays are definitely fun!

Friday Fun!

Sunshine in the park.

Climbing.

Racing.

Looking good.

Bonfire in the garden.

One of the best days!

University

Sometimes I don't feel that I am "doing" home education very well. It all feels a bit random, a bit unpredictable, a bit "colouring-outside-the-lines". I worry that I am not "doing" it as well as I was. I don't feel quite as on the ball or as if I know what the children are doing, learning, all the time. They are growing up, increasing in independence, becoming more and more themselves, the way they were created. My idea of their future seems hazy, but I so strongly believe that they will propel themselves into it. One of my children has his heart set on an English degree at Oxford. I'm not sure if he'll make it, he is unlikely to have A* GCSEs in double figures, but he will have something special, something different. He will  have a strong idea of who he is; hours of reading, writing and film-making; Self-motivation, direction and discipline.
Someone asked me this week if I thought my other son would go to University. Possibly, probably, but maybe not. I replied that I could see him happily working at the local climbing wall, doing something he enjoys and earning enough to live a life he loves: outdoors and adventuring. Would I really be happy with that? Yes, if he was; far happier than to see him trying to live up to anyone else's expectations, having an office job because he thought he should, even studying for a degree because he thought that was the right thing to do.

Dialogue

My kids are amazing. Every mum says that, and I'm sure yours are too, but today I have really seen and felt and enjoyed that.We are continuing on our journey of Dynamic Revision and one suggestion for this week's assignment was to write an imaginary dialogue. My little girl chose the cat and the dog. She wrote from the dog's point of view and I from the cat's. It made us both think about writing in character, how would the cat reply to our dog? Not very nicely. It's not what I would say, but our grumpy feline wouldn't mince words! With my boys we chose people from the chapter book we have just finished and wrote "behind-the-scenes" dialogues, what might have been said but we, the readers, were not privy to. We extended our sense of audience by reading the conversations aloud to a lunch-time visitor. My children have been witty, careful and fun. Their spelling and punctuation wasn't too bad either! Much more that "good" pieces of work, these were fun times, a joint effort, a connection between mum and child. It is experiences like these that make me love home ed!

Winter Sunshine

Sunshine in the park.

Pythagoras

There's a certain look in my son's eye that he gets when he is upset with me but doesn't like to say so. Coupled with his exaggerated sniping at a no-more-than-usually annoying sister, I was pretty sure this indicated that something was up. He told me how hard everything was and how he was looking forward to next week, when his school-teacher-dad will be on holiday, and not having to do any work. I refrained from telling him that he didn't know he was born and that children who went to school worked much longer hours and then came home and worked some more (somehow, that never helps!) and inquired further as to what was up. Maths, it transpired, was up. We are preparing for the Junior Maths Challenge in May and, after he told me yesterday that working through past papers was going fine, I had told him to carry on. Apparently it was not going fine: he was stuck and couldn't do any more. Pausing only for a brief lecture on my inability to read minds, I told him I'd sit down and we'd do some together. We sorted out a few simple misunderstandings and careless errors and soon moved on to some simple geometry. This, I decided, was a good moment to introduce Pythagoras' Theorem. Serendipity indeed that my middle son was at that moment working on perimeters and needed to work out the length of triangle sides. So, I set them to drawing right-angle triangles, measuring, squaring, adding and square-rooting. Suddenly there was energy, enthusiasm and helpful brotherly explanations of what a square-root actually is. Triangles were drawn and tables completed. I suggested that, when they had done a few each, I had an extra idea for what they could do. "Oh, goody!" exclaimed my eldest. Was this the same child who had been telling me how much he disliked maths? That's what I love about how we do things. The opportunity for an individual approach, the opportunity to find out and sort out what's wrong and the learning that just happens when it all seems like fun.

More things I love

I love the fact that my eldest, who is not the best of friends with maths, comes to me to tell me it's possible to make a triangle of odd numbers, where each consecutive line adds up to a cube in sequence, (1, 8, 27 ...) and the central number of each line in a square. It's not often I see his eyes light up about maths!
I love the fact that my middle son can tell me all sorts of facts about First World War tanks, gleaned from books and many visits to the Tank Museum in Dorset, and that we can work together on his writing skills while indulging his love of all things armoured vehicle.
I love the fact that I can share a table with my daughter while we paint watercolours together, and she paints herself and her brother "asleep under the stars", a hoped for treat this summer.
I love days like today where we touch all the "school-y subjects", like maths, english, history, art and geography, and it all feels like fun, and I still have time to spend over an hour on the phone to my best friend while the children play in the garden. This is what I want it to be like, more days like today.

Cake

I love the fact that when, needing change for the car park, I pop in to Waitrose and buy a cake, my daughter instantly suggests that we read poems when we eat it. Poetry tea is such an ingrained part of our life-style. I love the fact that she read aloud her first non-rehearsed poem today, a page-and-a-half long: an old favourite so the words are familiar, but still, for this newly emerging reader, a triumph. I love the fact that both sons also choose old favourites, humorous poems read with inflection, enthusiasm and laughter. I love the fact that I can read World War I poetry to them, and they can listen, and be shocked, and understand something of the passion and pain of young men on the front line, another aspect to our loose literary study of war in preparation for a visit to the Imperial War Museum's new exhibition. I love poetry tea time.

The Reasons I Home Educate Number 6

The schedule for today was full. It all fitted, as long as nothing went wrong. I had a few minutes before the first item on the agenda, puppy class and I chose to get a few bits and bobs of admin done and leave the children to their own devices. My eldest opted to continue working on his National Novel Writing Month novel. He has set himself the goal of 20,000 words and has stuck to his daily allotment without fail. My daughter decided to write out the alphabet, complete with little pictures for each. If you look very closely, you can just see me under 'M', between a Lion and a (K)not.
(My middle son was quiet in his bedroom and I snuck in to take a snap of what he was up to. But he was lying on his bed playing with his DS! I was tempted to get him to pose with a book ...)
Education happens, they learn, sometimes I'm involved, sometimes I'm not.

I have my wobbles about my educational choices for my children, I am not always sure I'm getting it right and there are times I worry that will have disadvantaged them for the rest of their lives. I try hard to remember that learning does not stop at 18 and that much of what I have learned has been since I left school and that the most important thing that my children need to learn is that they can always learn. What I hope they see in me, at least sometimes, is someone who is willing to try new things, to embrace new experiences, who is willing to learn. I hope they see it in me as I, with no experience of dogs, take on two King Charles Spaniels and muddle through the day-to-day routine, as I take them to the rock wall climbing and they can climb higher than me but I'll give it a go, as I figure out how to put a horse-rug on a nervous horse and as I start adult ed Watercolour classes next week.

Waterloo Road

There had been some mention of 'Waterloo Road' in the Home Ed e-group, about how the BBC1 school-based drama was to open the new series with a story-line involving two home educated children, about how prejudiced and ill-informed this was going to be, replaying a typical stereotype with no regard for truth. I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch, after all I have better things to do than deliberately let myself get wound up, but I didn't want to miss out on the ensuing discussions, so at 8pm last night I settled in front of the TV. Sure enough the portrayal of the home educating family was ridiculous, exaggerated and like no family I have ever come across in the Home Ed world. The children really were, in the words of one of the other pupils, 'home ed freaks'. However, the school seemed to have a staff of around 7, including the ex-pupil, pregnant, teen-aged Head's PA and the highly unprofessional and over-emotional Headmistress who, apparently, had nothing better to do than sit in her office and deal with naughty children who had been sent out of lessons for talking too much.

While the younger of the newly-integrated home ed siblings was determined to get herself expelled by making a smoke bomb in Biology and aggravating another student into assaulting her, the older lad was more philosophical. His turning point came when, while watching some other lads kicking a ball around, the Head drew alongside him and let him know that the way he could thank his dad for all his hard work was by "being your own person, doing your own thing." This inspired the boy to join in the football game, a symbol of his new found freedom from the shackles of his father. At the climax of the episode, this boy shouted at his dad, "you made us too different, like we were supposed to forget about having mates, going out, talking to girls."

One of my primary reasons for my educational choice, and I think many of the home ed mums I know would say the same, is to let my children discover and delight in who they are, to do their own thing, free from the shackles of imposed curricula and intense peer pressure. Part of that is meeting a wide variety of other children, experiencing all sort of places and, even, talking to girls! We spent yesterday hanging out in the Hampshire countryside with a crowd of other home ed families, playing, racing, riding tractors and enjoying ourselves. There were no families there remotely like the one the BBC would have the world believe we are. Although, I guess, if they did exist, somewhere, they would be locked away, indoors, on their own!

Hard Times

People often ask me why I Home Ed and I often answer that it is fun. It ought to be fun, I believe that it's fun, but some days it just doesn't feel that way. Sometimes the four of us seem unable to say one kind word to each other, sometimes maths feels impossibly hard, sometimes the last thing on earth I want to do is go swimming.
Perhaps it is the change of seasons and the approach of winter; perhaps it is the return of my husband and many of my friends to their proper jobs after the summer, leaving me home alone; perhaps it is the last few swine flu viruses flowing in my bloodstream, but today feels like that. It's hard to believe that I'm getting it right, that my chidlren really will grow up literate and numerate and will fit into society, that I'm not wasting my own education, that it really is worth living on one salary to do this.
Yesterday the sun was shining. One child and then another went to scoot on the drive. Requests to cycle in the road were turned down on safety grounds. When the third child asked if he could go out on his scooter or his bike, I threw my carefully planned afternoon out, grabbed the keys and we headed for the local park. Lots of energy was expended and fresh air breathed, I got to read a magazine article and we all got some sun on our faces. And I remember that this, among many other reasons, is why I continue to Home Educate my children.

The Reasons I Home Educate - No 5

It was warm(ish) and sunny yesterday afternoon. I had 'educational' activities planned, but instead ....

The Reasons I Home Educate - No 4

Writing and reading poetry with the children; tea and home-baked cookies!

Reasons 1-3

The Reasons I Home Educate

(This is a scheduled post. I am on retreat until 25th October.)