Nearly the end of my turn · Monday September 3, 2007 by Ann

It’s been a quiet weekend-offspring wise.
Our children have all been off on their travels again
;o)
David has been in Sheffield with home ed friends, since Saturday and Alice and Lucy went up to another home ed friend’s birthday party in Staffs, after Alice finished work on Saturday.
Lucy returned last night as she begins a sailing course today, but Alice stayed another night with their friends.
David and Alice will return today as they both are working tomorrow.

Alice has had some good news-the owners of the shop she works in have offered her as many hours as she can work, from now until Christmas. I spoke to the owners over the weekend and they were so full of praise for Alice.
When she originally went and asked about a job a year ago, they told me that she “stood out head and shoulders above all other applicants-and we get a lot of teenage girls coming in and asking about jobs” They tell me that she is confident and articulate and there is ‘something about her’. The owners are confident enough in Alice’s abilities to let her run the shop on her own, knowing that she will deal with everything that happens professionally.
They also tell me that they know she won’t be working for them long term as she has so much potential and will obviously be university material, but they want her as long as possible.

Tom and I know how confident and helpful Alice can be, and of course many home educated parents will recognise the description of a home educated teenager-but it is lovely to hear others singing her praises!

So Alice has decided to work for them until Christmas, around being home educated-she is looking at this OU course to start with.
The voice recognition software has been ordered for Alice by Speaks Volumes so she is feeling much more confident about being able to write essays and complete assignments, despite her severe dysgraphia

David did well with his A level results, he has now decided to get himself a full time job and do one further A level at evening class around working. He is considering moving out and sharing a flat with a friend and then will later decide whether he wants to go to University or not. David knows that learning is lifelong, and he has the choice to enter Uni as a mature student as his older half brother Thomas did, so successfully.

And Lucy prepares to start her home ed year again.
There are lots of exciting things in the pipeline for Lucy. Today she starts a sailing course, which I will blog about later, her singing lessons continue, the band she sings with have a couple of gigs coming up, and she starts ballet classes at Birmingham DanceXchange this weekend.
There is a philosophy debating group starting a weekly meeting for home ed teens, we’ll be attending workshops and activities-there is one coming up in October about the Gunpowder plot, which will fit in with her interests with democracy and Government in this country.
We are off this month to visit Ragley Hall with our local HE group, where we will also meet up with a Canadian HE family, who are travelling around this area and want to meet up with other like minded folks.
We are deciding which events to go to locally in the Heritage Open Days
We have been told we have been successful in getting the tickets we wanted for the free film sittings with the National Schools Film Week
And of course our local group meetings will restart so we’ll be ice skating, kayaking, playing rugby regularly as well as getting into all sorts of crafts and workshops.
Lucy and I organise a meeting monthly at Blackwell Adventure which is very close to where we live. We have a main meeting for everyone and then there is always some sort of organised activity for the over 8’s. In the past we have done rock climbing, abseiling, grass sledging, and the zip wire, to name but a few.

And the group will be looking into getting funding for activities as we did this year for a drama course for the group, which culminated in some of the teenagers performing in the Malvern Street Theatre and at Hereford’s World Environment Day event.
Pictures of the last rehearsal and then the performance at Malvern Street Theatre can be found courtesy of a friend and with permission of the performers here: Time for Time
This the second time the group performed at the Street Theatre and it was great to see how much they have grown in confidence- they were very professional and put on a couple of great performances and had lots of positive comments from passers by.
Time was chosen as a theme as it interested all of the performers and crew. -It looked at how we as a people are rushing through our lives without regard to the environment or to the harm we do to it and other people. The words were very powerful.

The youngsters involved are now very keen to look at what other fundings are available and youngsters who have so far just looked on, have decided to join in next time
;o)

I have no time left now-Alice has just come downstairs to get ready for sailing-I’ll be back to blog a little more of that later!

Well we have been sailing with Youth Afloat -and had a great time. The weather was lovely-but not really windy enough! This morning they did some work off the water practicing knots and then in looking at the mechanics of how the boats go together and work. We had lunch and then they went out on the water. They had to row to begin with but they went all the way around the lake and then enough wind picked up for them to sail back.
The day ended with them all jumping into the lake!
Another day thoroughly enjoyed by all-Lucy is looking forward to the next session next week.

Lucy and I had lunch together at the cafe over looking the lake and watched the birds feeding their young-and intend to look up more info about the species we saw now we are home.
She also had some questions about the definition of more words and some about the meaning of the words behind one of the songs in Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat.

So all in all we have already covered a wide range of subjects that Lucy is interested in today- I am often surprised at the range of things she asks about and a large part of our educational provision is based on this type of conversation-which will lead onto more study and thought in areas she is interested in.

I’m happy to be spending time with her as I have with the other two, helping her enjoy her education and develop her love of learning things that she is interested in.

I expect I’ll be here again in the future sometime to discuss this further-until then someone else will be taking over from tomorrow and I hope they enjoy blogging about their lives too.

Reading materials-and resumption of Home ed meetings Changes here too!