St Brievels castle

Just over a month ago we had the most amazing opportunity to go and stay in a castle with 50+ home educated children (and parents). I write the word amazing, but that doesn't do it justice.

Never have I been with a group of such diversity and felt so completely at ease. Every family was different. Some were structured, some radical unschoolers. Some were single parent families, some were singe child families, others were larger families. There were teenagers and 2 year olds dressing up in medieval clothes and playing board games together. All the children were completely inclusive of each other and within just a few short minutes, the children had left their parents and were not seen again until we left 2 days later. There were no arguments, no nastiness, no "go away you're only 2 and we're 6". It was truly a pleasure to spend time with those wonderful families. I really hope I get to do it again one day!

Autonomous Home Education

I never thought at the beginning that I would become an autonomous home educator. I always thought that structure would be vital. I even wrote a post about it a year or so ago. I felt then that I was drowning in autonomy. I think, looking back, that I was just missing the point. We learn amazing things through living. There's a link here to an autonomous educational philosophy which makes some interesting reading if you're not sure what I'm talking about. http://www.home-education.org.uk/articles/article-autonomous-education.pdf

I wrote a comment this week in response to a question on one of the Facebook groups I belong to. I bought I'd share that same comment with you as it pretty much sums up our days.

'This morning, my autonomously HE son (6) who has never been 'taught' to read or write, wrote a lovely letter to his little brother on a paper aeroplane. All the spelling was correct and the handwriting was beautiful. My older son (8) who was in school and came out hating anything to do with learning anything at all, came down the stairs having read a chapter from Murderous Maths, with a wonderful drawing of a septagon drawn inside a circle. Then he went outside and built himself a catapult using some bits of old wood. He measured it all, drew a diagram and labelled it all, then built it. He then tested different items to see how far they travelled etc. We then found some worms which led to discussion about habitats and what worms eat and the fact that soil on our carrots it in fact worm poo!

We have 7 days a week just like this. It's hard to trust that so much freedom can lead to so much learning, and like I say, it took me about a year to relax into it. I don't intend for it to change much as they get older, and I'm hoping (trusting) that their own desire to study for formal exams etc will win out. I'm already starting to see such a difference in the way they learn from when they were in school.'

Autonomous education isn't about letting children just sit around doing nothing. It's about providing and grasping every available learning opportunity every day. It's exhausting, exhaustive and completely engaging. It's about sharing learning moments together. This morning over breakfast I was telling George 1 about an article I had read in the readers digest about how the Romans told the time. It's about reading stories at bedtime about WW2 and recognising that they're not just bedtime stories. It's about recognising that any writing they do is handwriting practise, even if it's not in a workbook or copying out poems. It's about that moment when your child who vowed never to write another word ever, asks you to do a daily spelling test for him and seeing him get every word right, first time, without hours of failing practise.

It's about TRUST. Trust in your child, trust in yourself and trust in the world.

It's about LOVE. Love of your child, love of learning, love of the world.

It's about JOY. Joy in your child, joy in learning, joy in the world.

Japan

Recently we've been on a voyage. It started as a book club, set up by a fellow home educator. We drew ships, planned our voyage and read a lot of books. We made up some unusual undersea creatures and learned about evolution. We've been on quite a voyage if I'm honest.

We also read Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo which I would heartily recommend reading. The book led us to learning about Japan, samurai's and playing Risk!

Today we got a box from the schools resource library which contains a collection of Japanese artefacts and books. George 1 had fun trotting round in wooden shoes - Geta - with special socks and a Kimono. The Geta are slightly raised off the ground to protect their feet from the wet and mud during the monsoon and typhoon Seasons. George 3 has also had a go at shuffling around on them.

We've learned, (from George 1 who saw it on a TV show) that the square buildings in Japan are not only decorative, but also built to be very strong against the thousand earthquakes they experience each year.

Privilege

priv·i·lege
/ˈpriv(ə)lij/
Noun
A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to one person or group of people.
Verb
Grant a privilege or privileges to: "English inheritance law privileged the eldest son".
Synonyms
noun. prerogative - privelege - charter - franchise - right
verb. privelege

I've thought a lot about this word since I started home educating. It's a word I use often to describe my number 1 joy about the lifestyle choice I've made but I think its more than that. It's about the privilege of being a mother and a wife.

A privilege is a right that one person or group of people have. When I was born, I was born a female. A very privileged situation. I was born with the right to grow up and become a mother. When I got married, I had the privilege of sharing my life from then on with a man who has the privilege of standing on my right hand and becoming my support and guide and love. When I fell pregnant, I had the privilege of giving birth to my son. It was a right reserved only for me. No one else could ever give birth to my son.

Since that day, it has been my privilege and mine alone (DadaSmu has his own rights and I'm in no way trying to diminish those) to help him to grow. To teach him correct principles, to help him learn to walk and talk, feed himself, get dressed, become toilet trained etc etc.

At no point did I ever want to give up that privilege to see him grow and develop. I sent him to school because I didn't understand fully that I didn't have to, but one of the hardest things for me was not being able to witness those little eureka moments, those first steps in learning to read, being able to count in 2s and 5s, learning to swim during school swimming lessons etc.

One of my greatest pleasures in life is have the privilege - the RIGHT - to be a part of those experiences. To see all my children grow and develop. I have had the privelege of witnessing George 2 learn to read. It has been a truly humbling experience and quite remarkable in it's nature. I have loved every frustrating moment of it. I've witnessed George 1 go from refusing to pick up a pencil when he left school because writing was so hated, to asking for spelling tests so that he can write stories based on his dream journal that he's keeping by his bed.

All parents, whether their children are in school or not have the privilege to be a part of another person's life in such a unique way. But I feel that the privileges I have as a home ed parent, outweigh anything that I felt while they were in school.

2013

It's been a long time again since I posted. I'm hoping its because I've just been too busy!

2013 has started off well - once we got over a 16 day combined cold/flu. We are back into the swing of learning again after our Christmas break. George 1 in particular has developed a deep love for learning anything and everything and his reading has led him to all sorts of discoveries. He is a true autonomous learner and loves discovering the world. George 2 is more of a structured child. He prefers at this stage to be taught and know what's coming up and I've tried to accommodate him. They've started a number of groups this year as well which are very exciting. Tennis, forest school, German and Music lessons are all popular and provide variety to out HE lives.

Today we have been learning about the body and we've even made a life sized skeleton. It's been fascinating to draw the organs and really look at how they work. They may not be beautifully to scale or perfectly drawn, but we had fun. The boys have also been listening to my abdomen and have heard my heartbeat and stomach gurglings. They were apply to imagine being unborn abides for a moment.

Happy Anniversary

It's our 1st anniversary of home ed today so it seemed appropriate that I get round to updating the blog. I'm in the process of making a year book and looking back on what we've achieved is great fun.

I thought I might take the chance to write down some of the things that I have learned during the past year. I know it should be about what the children are learning, but I think the two are intrinsically linked.

1) I've learned to trust myself.
This doesn't mean that I am without the occasional wobble. I have little moments of mild panic when we don't appear to have 'done' very much. I suddenly insist on sitting them down at the table and learning in a formal style for about an hour before I realise that they really do know their stuff after all.

2) I'm learning to trust the children
This is going to take a lot more work but I'm definitely getting there. I am in no way an unschooler, I don't want to be and the children prefer to be directed most of the time. However, I am learning to trust in their interests more and to think outside the box. For example, George 2 wanted to learn about duvets. I was a bit stumped until I discovered that I could in fact create my own lapbook which incorporated history, geography, science and maths all about the humble duvet.

3) I can relax and have all the children round me all the time
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not a particularly patient person and I was a bit worried about whether home ed would be right for me even though I knew it was right for the children. I am learning now, that 'me' time comes in lots of different forms and for me, doesn't need to be 6 hours a day during term time. In fact, I've found that because I don't get a break from them, I am becoming more patient as the noise, mess and mayhem is just a part of my life now.

4) Sometimes, they know more than me
George 1 asked me to look up liquid nitrogen on YouTube the other day. Unbeknown to me, he'd already done this and proceeded to tell me all about it's properties.

5) I love maths!!!!
This has probably been my most crucial breakthrough. I hated maths at school. Didn't understand it and although I passed my GCSE with a grade C, I vowed never to do long division again. Well.... That's all changed. Thanks to the The Khan Academy, I can now do long multiplication, subtraction and division. And that's not all, due to Murderous Maths, I know love looking for patterns in numbers and seeing how they all work. This has been quite a thing for me, I've had to change from saying "I hate maths" to "I love maths"

6) Time is irrelevant
I used to be tied to a clock. We would be rushing through breakfast, rushing through shoe finding, rushing through my jobs to get back to school on time, rushing through dinner, rushing through bedtime stories. The children had to rush through their learning so that the teacher could move on and they couldn't rush ahead even if they wanted to.
Since starting home ed, time has become irrelevant, most of the time. We still have odd moments of having to be somewhere on time, and we still have a daily routine. I feel that time discipline is very important. However, the fact that they're growing and developing in front of me scares me less than when they were away from me. The fact that they can read when they're in the mood at 2:26pm instead of at 10:00am means that they enjoy it. The fact that we have time to read 3 books if the mood takes them rather than rushing through 1, means that they get far more out of the experience.

7) There is value in learning anything and everything
Everyday, the children get out of be and learn. They learn about the seasons from looking out of the window, they learn about time by our routines, they learn about the world from looking at the BBC website etc etc etc. George 2 has learned the days of the week because on Sunday we go to church, on Monday their German teacher comes, on Wednesday we have home ed groups, on Friday we have chocolate spread sandwiches. He hasn't learned them because a teacher made him cant them endlessly. George 1 has learned to tell the time because we put a picture of a clock on his wall and he looked at it and studied it every night along with his watch. Not because everyday for weeks on end he was shown a picture and asked what time it represented. He knows what time the weather and news is on in the morning, what time Granny comes in from walking the dog and what time he has to go to bed. He's learned what time means in reality.
People so often ask if we have to follow a curriculum. We wouldn't have time if we did because life is full of endless learning opportunities and the curriculum that is used in schools is far too limiting.

I think it's clear that from these few examples, that I have by far learned the most. Although some days are very difficult and draining, I am glad everyday that I chose to do this.

So, now for some photos of some of the things that we've been doing over the past few months since I last wrote.

This is an apple free apple cake. It was a science experiment and is made using cheese biscuits, lemon juice and cream of tartar. It sound vile but was actually really really nice.

We went to Cardiff to join with other home educators in arguing against the Welsh Assembly proposals to bring in compulsory registration and monitoring. It was a good day and we met lots of people as well as getting our point across.

At one of the groups we go to, the boys had a chance to make Plasticine models. I was particularly impressed with the sheep

We had the great privilege of going to visit the Harry Potter studio tour. What an amazing and educational day that was. I was completely bowled over by the stunning model of Hogwarts castle used in filming various scenes,. A picture can never do it adequate justice.

Volcano making out of jelly. Enough said

We soaked an egg in vinegar to see what would happen. The shell was stripped of its colour and went all rubbery. This was part of the teeth lapbook to witness the effect of certain liquids on teeth

Some soap monsters. These were such fun to make. We're going to do it again for our next home ed group

A Halloween game of Sorry

Here are two of the lapbooks that have been made. Teeth and Volcanoes. They chose the topics themselves and really enjoyed putting all the parts together to create their books

Blood

We had a little planning meeting a week ago or so and one of the things that both George 1 and 2 wanted to look at was Blood. I did a bit of digging and found that you could make blood and then eat it! They thought this was wonderful. It incorporated some maths as well as there was a bit of weighing involved.

The ingeredients were:

Golden Syrup (plasma)
Silver balls (fat, amino acids, waste products)
Red sweets (Red blood cells)
Mini marshmallows (white blood cells) - there were just two in our mix but we talked about what infected blood would look like.

Once we'd made it they had a spoonful each but given the sugar intensity I drew the line at one spoonful!