A Very Wet and Educational Sunday · Sunday May 13, 2007 by Abbie
It was raining really hard here today. I love that sort of melancholy rainy day. When I was younger I used to love to curl up with a good book and some popcorn on a day like today, but we read together so much that reading isn’t really considered special for Ram. Instead we caught up with some TV programmes.
But before that we had a very important radio programme to listen too. Normally we brush Rams very long hair and re-plait it while he sits in the bathroom window watching the wildlife in the garden. But today we listened to Radio5Live as a cyber friend of ours was going to be interviewed about home education opposite Tony Mooney who is a home education inspector who seems to be against home education.
It was great listening to Fiona and her son Theo defend home education, and when I said that Mr Mooney had just shot himself in the foot (he has said that home ed was ok for articulate people like Fiona but not for people in council estates and Fiona pointed out that she lived in a council estate!) Ram said that he hoped they couldn’t get the bullet out! A typical Aspie response to something that was not mean to be taken literally!
Then we watched the extended version of Have I Got News For You. Once again we got to see the funny side of the news. I find it easier to watch it from the recording because we can pause it and discuss what they are talking about and I can fill in on bits of information that Ram doesn’t know about or understand. It is a great fun way of getting a child to understand what is normally considered too boring for children, and even some adults – politics!
We then watched the final episode of The Science of the Superstorm. It is chilling to think that hurricanes have always been hitting New York City, just not in the last couple of hundred years. So maybe the hurricanes we are having now are not just caused by global warming.
I think one of the greatest things we can teach our children is to question things. It is only by questioning things that we can truly learn. Home education is something where children can naturally question everything, and draw their own conclusions after looking at the evidence. At school this is not something that is encouraged. With all the tests that go on, a child at school is taught to pass tests, not to question things. So questioning the current views on global warming is a very important part of home education for us.
After lunch and my nap we decided to sit down and watch our rental DVD which was The Goonies. It was just the right silly adventurous kiddies film for a wet Sunday afternoon. And completely devoid of anything educational!
Having watching TV almost all day (we ‘watched’ the radio interview on the TV because we could only get Five Live on freeview) we decided to not watch any more in the evening. After supper we put together our summer wreath, having taken down the Spring and Easter decorations yesterday. We have lots of craft materials from Opitec that we can put onto straw wreaths that we hang on the inner door to the house.
The summer wreath was already covered with moss, so all we had to do was to glue on some little wooden shapes plus some fabric flowers. Last year we put the wooden shapes on unpainted, but this year Ram helped me paint them. It was a really enjoyable 30 minutes of shared craft work – something that Ram doesn’t often do on his own.
I then read aloud again until bed time. It was lovely to curl up on the new sofa. Ram was pottering around with the Lego after a while but came and sat on the sofa with me too.
We got up to bed early this evening which was good as I have had a couple of disrupted nights with the dog recently. We were reading the same book as when we were on the sofa, but the difference was I didn’t have far to go when I fell asleep!
