Educating Outside the Box

I’ve finally found something I like about the school holidays!

There are loads of great kids events going on, and we’ve been taking full advantage of them.

Last week I took Sukie and a friend to a Creative Writing workshop led by the author Michelle Paver, at the UK Wolf Conservation Trust. (Michelle’s latest books feature a wolf as one of the main characters, and she is a patron of the trust.) Sukie had a great time, learning about the mechanics of writing, picking up tips for getting published, asking lots of questions of one of her favourite authors, and having a go at writing a short story whilst sitting watching wolves for inspiration!

On Friday all three girls did some flint-knapping at a local museum. By the end of the session we all had rather cool replica flint scrapers to take home, and I was the only one to hurt myself, getting a little over-zealous with the whole process! Since then Sukie has been collecting flints when we are out and about, and doing a bit of knapping at home!

Today was a percussion workshop. Despite the doubts of various members of our party, a good time was had by all. They learnt some simple rhythms on djembe drums, did some very complicated body percussion, looked at lots of different musical instruments and learnt an African song. They were all very keen on giving their dad a demo of the body percussion, and Willow is planning to make her own drum. Inspiring stuff!

Art, craft and photography next week!

Back in the distant mists of time when I went to school I’m sure the shops weren’t advertising ‘back to school’ at the start of the summer holidays. I’m also sure that being constantly reminded that the holidays would not in fact last forever would have depressed me no end. 

Ah, the Summer holidays; glorious sun-drenched days of lazing around doing whatever you please…or the bane of home educators everywhere???

Today we had a great afternoon, visiting a local gallery which had a Family Open Day with lots of lovely free kids activities and workshops. We met various home educating friends there, enjoying the sunshine and opportunities to get arty. Sukie, Bobbie and Willow participated in the “drawing and sculpture” and  “make a clay tile or coil pot” workshops, and Sukie had a go at throwing a pot on a wheel, though she was disappointed not to be able to take her effort home afterwards. Best of all, they did all this with good friends, and let’s face it, the right company can make any endeavour a pleasure! Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and we made our weary way home, pots in hand.

Within minutes of being home Bobbie and Willow were playing happily with some of the children who live in our street, who all go to school. All went well for a while- paper and pens were taken out so that they could sit and draw together, then acoustic guitars were required- how idyllic! Right?

As usual, things started to go pear-shaped after about half an hour- squabbles, name-calling, certain girls storming off saying that they were now “worst enemies”. Me sat indoors, sighing at the inevitability!

Bobbie and Willow are rather nonplussed at this seemingly “normal” childhood behaviour. Why do these girls feel the need to boast and lie and fall out every five minutes? This is not something they tend to experience with their home ed friends- no need for constant one-upmanship and trying to impress, they take each other for what they are and value each others differences.

Now, I’m not suggesting for one minute that Bobbie and Willow and their home ed friends get on perfectly- far from it. We have more than our fair share of sibling dramas, and they have been known to argue with their HE pals- but these things tend to pass by without the need for prolonged slanging matches, bitter grudges and side-taking.

So I sat surreptitiously listening and wondering: is this where I go steaming in, the over-protective mother- ordering Bobbie and Willow never to play with these children again, getting embroiled in the petty quarreling? Or should I let things run their course, hoping that they see the situation for what it is, and make their own decisions not to get involved?

I know that this scenario is nothing out of the ordinary- it happens every day up and down the country, in a playground near you. I’m sure that the general consensus is that it’s all essential childhood experience- girls are bitchy and gang-up on each other: that’s just the way it is. Trouble is, I’m not sure I believe that. Surely there are other ways to go about resolving conflict? Is all this really necessary?

I remember the playground politics when I was at school, and the price of fitting in. I don’t recall learning much from it, other than the fact that it was all a bit daft and pointless, and to be honest I think Bobbie and Willow have come to that conclusion without having to go through 11 years of schooling!

So….I kept my thoughts to myself today; will I manage to do so for six long weeks? Well that’s up for debate!

With the current concerns about the latest consultation on Children Missing Education I thought I’d explain to anyone who’s interested why I think giving local authorities an excuse to monitor and judge home education is a bad thing.

Every now and then someone will come out with the old chestnut, “Why are you so against monitoring? What have you got to hide?” How about we turn that around? What exactly have I got to gain?

I’m responsible for my child’s education, the law is clear on that. I pay for it, not one penny of government funding to justify their interest. My LA wants me to give up my valuable time (they’re certainly not considering paying for it) and they’d really love me to surrender my privacy too letting them into my home, and for what? Does my child benefit? Do I benefit? Can the LA actually DO anything for us? No, no and again, no. Just like SATs this isn’t about the child, about the quality of their education, this is about box ticking and control and the illusion of caring. So, I say again. What have I got to gain? Why on earth would I welcome or even tolerate all this extra aggravation when I’m under no legal obligation to and get nothing at all out of it?

I had a major wobble about Home Eding a couple of weeks ago, after dear son and I decided to have the biggest falling out ever.  Resulting in me questioning everything that I have researched and believed in, but as is the way with HE (or so it appears to me) you have these major hiccups and then your children make a massive leap forward.

 A week after the major wobble we went to Legoland for DS birthday, as a treat my husband and I also took his best friend with us.  Now his best friend (BF) goes to the “good” local school and is a great boy, but it was interesting to see that in spite of his two years in full time education, and my sons complete lack of structured education, my son was more than able to keep up in the literacy and the maths stakes (and on many occasion over take BF).  I was also completely thrown when BF informed us that one of the boys had head butted him at school and given him a nose bleed - this was told to us as if it was an everyday occurance, and when a few further questions were gently asked he said “oh the boy does this all the time to loads of the children”

 So all my wobble was thrown out of the window and I realised that we are doing the right thing for our family at the moment.  I am gradually coming to realise that everyone has wobbles - whether you send your child to school, or HE - and in what ever structure (or lack of) that you HE.  I think that having the chance to meet / talk / email with other people that are Home Eding is so wonderful, as it just gives another perspective of what is happening in life.

It also seems that autonoumous education does work (yep I have wobbles about that as well). My DS having shown no interest in writing at all, has now written most of his thank you cards for his birthday presents.  He has had help from me, but compared with two months ago, his concentration, pen control and willingness to write them have amazed me.

Anyway thats enough from me for now, I am sure another wobble will be along soon, but hopefully they will get fewer and less strong as the years go by

Walking along the road, half watching the oncoming traffic, as you do. Car, car, truck with “beer” written on it, car, car. Daughter - “I hate beer”  … long pause … me - “did you just read that?”, daughter - “yes” (like it’s no big deal). OK. I guess she’s started reading then. 

Having a chat with a home ed friend at a group the other day she observed that it would appear that most home-edders grow stuff, have a dog and/or chickens and a lot do all three. Not necessarily as part of their home education, you understand, just as part of their lifestyle. Following discussions with other home edders we extended this list to include having tadpoles in their house each spring. Now this lifestyle element seems to pay dividends when it comes to science as I have found that my children, having grown up around new life and nature take it as read that certain things are required for this nature malarkey to work.

We use Education City as part of our home ed. Now it does follow the national curriculum which makes it a little stifled in some places but its still damn good value for money and my kids find it fun in small bouts! However the science side of the curriculum, frankly, worries me. I’m assuming that tadpoles haven’t disappeared out of classrooms, you can still grow stuff in test-tubes, toilet rolls and tubs and that the nature table is still a good old fashioned staple of halls and corridors and yet even in KS2 science my son still shakes his head, exasperated, at being asked stupid questions about what to give a dry plant (in this case he had the choice of chocolate, water or suncream???!!!!)

Now at no point have we sat down with either of them and explained the intricate ins and outs of plant biology, they have simply “been around” the tending of plants from the get go, either in a sling as babies, pootling around the allotment plot gorging on strawberries and sugarsnap peas as toddlers (and still doing that infact!) or getting involved in the nitty gritty of “growing stuff” as older children and that has been more than enough for them to grasp what is needed for “stuff to grow”.

Learning by osmosis – absorbing information as it happens as opposed to being taught it! So the above question, to even a 2 yr old, seems ludicrous! So we downloaded a Classic Science curriculum designed specifically for home educators by Scott McQuerry. At first glance words like Abiotic and Non-renewable resources jumped out and I considered putting it in the “When they are older” file! However the first two sections have been sailed through smoothly, no hitches; and why? Because we grow stuff and look after animals!

Today we were differentiating between Wants and Needs, Material and Non-material resources, Renewable and non-renewable resources. At the moment we have a broody hen and 4 chicks in our lounge (well doesn’t everyone?). Both my children are completely aware of what this little family needs to keep going so it was just a case of fitting the appropriate vocabulary to this little scenario. I didn’t expect my oldest to have a problem with this but when my youngest started chipping in with his twopenneth that strange “learning by osmosis” thing appeared to have happened again!

A few days ago we had a meeting with our local MP to promote home education and were trying to explain this concept to him. It’s a hard one to get your head around – children? Learning? Without being taught? He did his best and seemed open to the idea if not entirely convinced but then again, I wasn’t convinced till I saw it happening. However we do see it happening everyday, we just don’t notice it or point it out as a successful example of autonomous learning! Babies learn to talk, they single-handedly master one of the most complicated tasks in the world and how do they do it? By listening, absorbing and having a go.

Sadly the eggs we had the broody sitting on hadn’t hatched for our MP meeting and thankfully our broody didn’t do one of those  bi-weekly broody poos that they do (the ones that stink out the entire ground floor in minutes and make you physically wretch) so he didn’t get to see the animal behaviour lessons our chickens have been giving at regular intervals throughout the day. Two little children sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the hutch reporting back to us how our broody is tucking the chicks under her like she did with the eggs, how the chicks tell her when they want to go back under her wings by “doing a little dance” , how our broody makes gentle noises when the chicks have “a bit of a panic” and most amazingly how they observed that one chick didn’t seem to be drinking so the broody took her to the water bowl and gave the chick water from her beak until the chick got the idea. All this in itself fascinating to watch, but wonderful to experience through their eyes. All the more wonderful when the chicks “need” for a feeling of security was referenced as a non-material resource!!

Its little moments like this that remind me why we are home educating. When the children are using the flyscreen as a Tarzan rope, playing catch in the lounge with a golf ball or I catch them debating at the bottom of the stairs as to whether the Dr Who scooter will go down them smoothly or whether they should use the Dalek scooter instead as it has bigger wheels, I console myself with little moments like those above and hope to god the scooter wheel size versus flight of stairs hypothesis stays just that and doesn’t progress to experiment level!!!! 

I woke up at 10 o’clock (well, you can’t blame me- I was reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire until late last night!), I had breakfast and then we went to put our froglet back in the wild. The place we got our frogspawn from has lots of lakes and ponds. I did have a den there, but last year there was a big fire and it burnt down.

Anyway, we found the place where we collected the frogspawn, and we released Grawp (our little frog) back into the wild. Then we walked Pickles.

At home I had a type of curry called Passanda for lunch. It was yum!

In the afternoon we went to our friends’ house to do our history project. Afterwards we had a little play, then we rushed home to get changed for Brownies. I’m a helper there and Hobbes (AKA my mum) is a leader. Bobbie and Willow are Brownies. We made scrap-books out of sugar paper sewn together. At Brownies there are 4 sixes: Rabbits, Hedgehogs, Foxes and Squirrels. When I was a Brownie I was in the Rabbits six. Today I mostly (OK, always) stayed with the Rabbits and helped them. After a very tiring Brownies we went home, had tea and went to bed.

Day Over!

Hi!                                                                                                                                               

My name is Sukie, I’m 11 years old and I’m home educated. I have two sisters, and a dog called Pickles. She is a dalmatian/labrador/collie cross. In this blog I’m going to tell you about the kind of things I do every day.

I love being home educated because I can learn about things that interest me…like dogs! I have lots of time to play with my friends, relax in my bedroom, have fun and read. I don’t have to be stuck in a classroom all day, we can go to loads of interesting places.

Things I love: Harry Potter, dogs, swimming, bowling, climbing, ice-skating, reading, Pickles (my dog), going to Guides, my family, my friends, my bedroom!

Things I hate: boys (well most of them, anyway), cruelty to animals, my bedroom being messy, meat (I’m vegetarian).

In my opinion the Harry Potter books are the best books in the entire universe ever!!!

It seems wrong to start without an introduction, so…

I am Hobbes: home educating mum of three daughters, Sukie, 11; Bobbie, 9; Willow, 7; and wife to Dandy- whose age shall remain undisclosed!

There are a lot of terms bandied about for various Home Education “methods” or styles, but I think the one that sums us up best is probably “eclectic”.

This generally means trying out a little bit of this and that, and seeing how it goes!

It’s fascinating to see the way that each child works, and what excites them. Similarly, when something doesn’t work, we can stop it and try another way.

It’s this ability to adapt an approach to fit your child’s learning style and passions that makes home education so efficient. Well that and the small class numbers!!!

We’re not completely autonomous- I do sometimes try to direct the childrens’ learning, and lately we’ve been doing some project-work with other HE families, so there’s an element of “teacher and pupil” there.

On the other hand, what we do could by no stretch of the imagination be called “structured”!

Some days Sukie will still be in her bedroom reading in her PJs at 11am, while Bobbie and Willow have already made and eaten breakfast, created their own “book”, bounced around on the trampoline, watched a bit of TV and filled in their Tadpole Diaries.

Of course some days have their own routine based around the various groups and clubs we go to. At the moment these include Brownies, Guides, HE groups, projects, climbing and ice-skating.

While the girls love all their various activities, sometimes the days they enjoy most are the ones when we have no time constraints, and if we want to stay at home all day in our pyjamas, reading, talking, cooking and playing games, then we can.

For me, this is the beauty of home education- the freedom it affords us as a family to choose how we spend our time together; and the freedom it allows the children as learners, finding out about the things that interest them and doing things at their own pace.