So it's Wednesday already.... · Thursday June 21, 2007 by june
Where did the week go.
James has been busy de-cluttering his room. As a result he has found lots of unopened craft activity sets – some of them several years old – most of them gifts from grandma. One is a paint by numbers with glow in the dark highlights, and he has been busy doing this. He has nearly finished now and, although I’m not a great fan of painting by numbers, I have to say he has done a really good job.
While he has been painting he has been listening to a tape of the book “Up The Attic Stairs”, which is a book I had never heard of before. James received this book though his membership of Calibre books for the blind (and dyslexic). From what I’ve heard (while passing through the kitchen) there is a lot of history in this book. Most of what I’ve heard has been about Women’s rights, the Suffragettes, women’s lot in life (how they had to put aside their ‘self’, to be good wives and live up to their husbands expectations of what a wife should be), the introduction of birth control, etc… not your usual male reading material. There’s probably more to it than that, I might have a listen to it myself when he’s finished.
We’ve also been doing our daily Toe-by-Toe, and physics, and playing music.
Liz has been a bit more difficult to pin down. She wasn’t well at the beginning of the week, so we have been slow to get moving with Home Education. She has done lots of music practice, I took her to a music lesson on Monday evening, and then she did dance and tennis on Tuesday. She taught herself to play ‘Ruby’ on the keyboard. She has spent time on the KS2 Bitesize website, read a lot more than usual, and played on Zoombinis…
Today we needed to go to the nearby town where James is going to be attending college – he had a meeting with the learning support officer about help for literacy problems in September. So we took the opportunity to visit a museum we haven’t visited before. Lots of local history, and both James and Liz appeared to get a lot from the visit.
Where I apologise for my bad grammar · Saturday June 16, 2007 by june
Reading through this month’s blog the thing that jumps out at me most is how scrappy the actual writing is – so I thought I should apologise. I am so busy at the moment, and writing this blog is something that I am doing when I find time. Like now: It is early on Saturday, Liz has just left for community orchestra and no one else is up yet. Quick – get on line and write something on the blog!
I have this really long list of things to do, on a piece of paper by my computer. There are forms to fill in regarding James and college next year. Child benefit and Child Tax Credit forms to complete. Tom is going abroad later this year and I need to arrange some jabs. That trip also has a whole list of it’s own – most of which I’m ignoring for now. Liz still needs some shoes (that is what we will be doing this afternoon – after visiting the music shop to buy the next book in the piano tutor series). I have passport forms to fill in – and photos to arrange. We need to find a builder to go up on the roof and find out why it is raining in. Mixed in with the practical house and family list is some Home Ed to-dos, e.g. I need to find the red camera that we are supposed to be turning into a pinhole camera – that we have mislaid somewhere. Then there are some website/work related reminders, mixed in with some personal things I need to get on and arrange for myself.
Then there’s the housework…
I’ve just had my birthday, which is always a time for reflection. Liz would be going up to high school next year if she was in school, James is moving from Home Education to College education, and it very much feels like a time of change. In some ways it isn’t the ideal time to be writing this blog, because much of what is flitting around in my mind at the moment is more personal reflection – and I don’t really want to get too much into that on this blog.
We will have been Home Educating for 10 years this year, so maybe taking time for personal reflection now is something I need to do.
A quick run through of the week · Thursday June 14, 2007 by june
We have been quite busy. Monday was a very successful Home Ed day, with our visit to the beach and all the photography. The rest of the week has been very routine – yet busy all the same.
At the moment all the children have music lessons of one kind or another. Liz had three this week! (although that is unusual). So, much of my week feels to have been running everyone around, and sitting waiting in the car. Liz is now learning both the flute and the piano. James is learning the piano and the accordion. We never set out to do lots of music – it started off as a break from all the art we were doing. It seems that it is here to stay, and both Liz and James are very much involved in their musical activities. If nothing else, they do lots of music practice each day between them. I need to find a piano for them – at the moment they are learning on a keyboard – and I’m not sure when (or if) we are going to be able to afford one. I keep hoping that a piano will just materialize out of thin air ;-)
We are also busy finishing off an art project. This involves making clay bowls. Liz has finished her first and is now making a second. James has just started his. I’ll put some pictures up later.
James and I are still doing Toe-by-Toe and Physics, I really want to get these finished by the end of the month. He is busy doing a painting in the ‘gaps’.
Liz has been working on the computer doing the KS2 activities. She has also watched a school’s TV series about Climate. Whenever I turn my back she is playing “Deadly Chocolate” on the PC.
Both Liz and James have been busy on a writing project about visiting a time in the past. James needs to do lots of writing practice. He is also reading a lot at the moment, which is encouraging.
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Abbie's new blog · Wednesday June 13, 2007 by june
Abbie now has a blog of her own.
Photographs on the beach · Tuesday June 12, 2007 by june
I was still not feeling 100% yesterday so we had a quiet morning. James was very tired after his weekend away so he had a sleep-in, Liz did some music practice, and I read a Dr Who novel This is the book that last week’s Dr Who (The Family of Blood) was based on.
In the afternoon we took the polaroid camera down to the beach. We bought the camera a while ago, from a car boot sale, when we were doing a photography project. Along with quite a few packs of out of date film from ebay (which was fine for what we wanted it for). Now the film is well out of date and the colours are changed – which is quite interesting – so we ended up with almost sepia photographs. Add that to the fact that we were photographing the beach, and it looks like we were taking pictures in a foreign country sometime in the 1960s.
The ‘brief’ was to frame the picture within the square. To make an interesting image – not to take a picture because it’s an interesting rock, crab, shell etc…
We took quite a few pictures of shadows and reflections.
We discovered quite early on that the photographs looked like a foreign country – or even a different planet (we’ve been watching a lot of Stargate DVDs) – so we started to exploit that. By Liz.
This photograph was looking at how the lines of wooden posts look different when you stand up to photograph them, or squat down, look up the row, or across the rows, or through several rows together. By James.
Anyway, we took lots of photographs. Liz enjoyed herself walking/running/splashing back through the channel, and got herself absolutely drenched (which is not unusual at all) and came back with a pocket full of stones and shells and sand. It was just the right place to spend a very hot afternoon.
The Weekend · Monday June 11, 2007 by june
Everyone had a very busy – and hot – weekend.
Liz was busy with community orchestra on Saturday morning, followed by some dancing in the afternoon.
James was away for the whole weekend, helping out at a Badger Camp.
Tom was busy for a big chunk of Sunday with Boys Brigade.
Then Sunday afternoon found all of us (minus James) at the local Matalan. Tom had a jeans crisis – they were either all too small, or too torn, or the zip was broken (or a combination of all three) – so we bought him some new ones. Liz needed some uniform items, black trousers, white shirt, black shoes… we managed to get everything but the shoes.
We aren’t great fans of shopping. Our non-food shopping consists of a monthly trip to Matalan, and Tom still thinks that we shop too much!
So what have we been doing this week? · Friday June 8, 2007 by june
I’ve actually been ill for a big chunk of this week :-( It has been my birthday too – I think it is the first time I have ever been ill on my birthday. So I got lots of chocolate that I couldn’t eat (but I will squirrel it away for another day) and a birthday cake from Liz that unfortunately isn’t going to wait for me to feel like eating again.
People who don’t Home Educate often get upset when I say I’ve been ill, because they can’t see how the children will be receiving an education in that situation. In my experience the children just get on with it without me. It probably won’t be anything planned, but I think true education is more like that… unplanned, and unorganised… messy even.
James took the opportunity to do the animation he has been planning. He did lots of music practice, a maths GCSE paper, lots of reading (which is still very important for him – he still needs reading practice). Together we did some physics (radiation and atoms), and some Toe-by-Toe each day (we are nearing the end). In the gaps I think he has been playing Settlers on the computer and browsing ebay. We have found him a piano teacher since I last wrote the blog and he took himself to his piano lesson on Thursday.
Liz has been watching educational TV. Yesterday it was a morning of geography – the Severn river from it’s source to the sea. Today she is watching “Look and Read” which is too young for her really, but she hasn’t seen any of them before, and it’s her turn to feel sickly today, a good opportunity to lie on the sofa all morning and do something vaguely educational at the same time. We have been using the BBC Bitesize KS2 pages as a kind of revision of what she knows already, so she has spent time on that. She has also spent time on the BBC schools history pages about Victorian children (this relates to a piece of writing she is doing at the moment). She has also been reading her book, writing emails to friends, watching S-Club 7 videos on Youtube (don’t ask me why???), playing “Deadly Chocolate” on the computer, and doing a fiendish jigsaw which has a picture on both sides while listening to an audio book. She also made a birthday cake for me at a friend’s house and designed and made a card.
Anyway, I am feeling much better today, I’m not quite there yet but at least I’m up and about and should be 100% by Monday. All three children have busy weekends planned, and I have lots of housework to catch up on.
The end is in sight · Wednesday June 6, 2007 by june
James is coming up to the end of compulsory education – on the 29th June – so we only have a few weeks left. He wants to chill out and do animation, and I can sympathise up to a point, but I want to finish things off. So we are still working.
We have been spending a lot of time discussing career options and what to do next year. We came to the conclusion that he should study for his GCSE English and Maths at evening college, but that left us with several choices about what else he should do to fill up his days.
He could have gone to sixth form college to study science GCSEs – however he has already covered much of that material, and he wasn’t too happy about the way the sixth form college is still school, and very much based on the same procedures as school. For example his studies only take up 4 days, but they insist on attendance on the 5th day too, because this is full time education. In the end, the biggest issue for both of us was that it didn’t feel like moving forward.
We then looked at the Open University science courses. These look like a much more positive option. We looked at starting with a 10point course called “science starts here” and following that, the 60 point course, “Exploring Science”.
Then… it turns out that he is really interested in the idea of studying music. He went to a music summer school last year and it was an environment he enjoyed.
So the end result is that next year he will be studying music at a local college of further education – the resulting qualification is equivalent to 4 GCSEs – along with GCSE English and Maths. The idea is very much for him to enjoy himself. Next year we can look at whether he wants to carry on with the music, or do the OU courses, or maybe even a mixture.
It feels good to have successfully worked through the options with James, and for him to have secured a place at college on the course that he wants.
...sneaking in the back way · Tuesday June 5, 2007 by june
Sorry about the week’s silence. It has been half term here, and we tend to keep to the school holidays. This is partly a result of Tom attending school, and partly because during the holidays the house tends to be full of the children’s school-going friends.
If you are new to reading the blog, my name is June and this is my second go at blogging my month. You can see my first attempt here
I’m looking forward to updating you on our progress.
The End of My Month · Saturday May 26, 2007 by Abbie
This is my last entry for me for this blog for now. When I first started it I wasn’t sure I would have much to put in, as I had been feeling that we hadn’t been doing much educational, but once I started thinking about it and writing about it I found as usual that we were doing a lot more learning than it initially appeared.
We have had lots of wildlife and nature study with the fish, tadpoles (or lack of them) and the snakes, not to mention the birds and the visit to the pet shop. Ram is reading more than ever to himself, something that a year ago I never thought I would see. We have had a look at what Uganda is really like outside the tourist spots, and a sound grounding in alternative energy at the same time! We have been doing more exercise on the trampoline than before, and we have found the disabled swimming session more suited to Ram.
We have read all sorts of books, magazines and newspapers. We have discussed the political situation, talked about government policies towards home educators and the disabled and even wrote and had published a letter to a newspaper! (sorry, I forgot to put it in the blog but it was about fingerprinting all children who are using libraries, both schools and public ones!).
We have had leaps in social skills from visiting our neighbour to look at the books, to tolerating visiting carpenters.
We have been interviewed and photographed for a newspaper article so we will be able to see how the press put things together.
We have learned how the drains work around out house, taken apart a sofa to see how that is made,
Through computer games we have practised spelling, computer programming and family history. Through television we have learned about the history of the Edwardians.
It isn’t all rosy. We have had our down times too. The home education meetings have been difficult as they are now so busy, public swimming has been a problem, and we have struggled with the DLA forms. We have had days when we are both tired, and have been grouchy with each other. We have had anxious times around family meetings, tidying the house, and a very anxious day when I was at a workshop.
I am tired, but I am always glad that I am home educating. When the journalist asked me what it was like for me, I just said, “Wonderful!” and I really mean that!
What a month it has been. And I am sure that next month will be just as interesting!
I was going to ask Ram if he wanted to add anything, but he is too busy playing the computer game he has just written on Scratch! All he said was, ‘Home eduation is great. You don’t have to go to school!’
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