Category Archives: Home education

A typical home ed day in pictures

There is no such thing as a typical home ed day, which is one of the things I love about home education, but this is what we did today anyway.

Owl and Monkey played with Lego in their bedroom after breakfast, and then Monkey came down and joined in with the little ones playing with the wooden railway and Lego Duplo.

After that, we had some Maths table time, and Rabbit continued with a project she started last week, drawing pictures for each number – she is up to number 5. Then she started playing with the small (unifix? not sure what they are) cubes, and I offered her a sheet with numbers 1-12 for her to add the right number of cubes to, which she really enjoyed. Monkey did a page from a workbook about telling the time. I had suggested a different piece of work, about times tables, but he wanted to do the time one instead. He used the Plan Toys wooden clock to help him. Owl did a set of questions about subtracting time from his Galore Park text book. Monkey also made a rather excellent Multilink cube man!

Monkey, Rabbit and Tiddler made an ice cream van and played in it for a while.

Then I took Owl and Monkey to their piano lessons. Their teacher is a friend of mine, and while each one had his lesson I sat at her kitchen table and did Bible Reading with the other one.

When we got back we had a very quick bit of English table time before lunch. Rabbit drew some leaves and traced over the word which I wrote for her, and Owl and Monkey finished off their Autumn mind maps which we started last week. We are planning to write some poems this week. Rabbit then went and made a beach scene in the playroom, and played in it with her baby doll for a little while.

After lunch we played the Tell the Time lotto game, and then my friend came to visit with her three children (4 year old twins and a 2 year old.) We did some French, using flash cards as a starting point. I asked the children if they could match some of their toy animals and vehicles to some of the cards, and they did a few but then one of the children wanted to match a toy helicopter to a card, but there wasn’t one, so Monkey made one for him. We then talked about which French words would be most useful when we go to France, and decided that food words were the most important. I asked Owl what he would like to be able to order in a restaurant, and he said chips, so he made a flash card as well. The other children mainly played with toy animals and vehicles, and Rabbit made a field out of crepe paper for one of the horses.

Owl did some research about France on the internet, and then he and Monkey and Rabbit made French flags. The little ones played and the twins did some excellent drawings (a car in a hole, and a fish with lots of faces!) After that I read some poems to the children, until it was time for our friends to go home.

This evening Owl had his first rehearsal at Strings group, and before, during and after that various other things got done (BBC Bitesize Science, Mathletics, Spellodrome, Piano and Violin practice, tidying up and hoovering.) Looking back over the photos I can see it was quite a productive day, though at the time it didn’t really feel like it, so I’m glad I did this post, even though I am up at 1.30am writing it!

Hama heaven and the MP who came to tea

Friday round up – 19th October 2012

How my children see me meme

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I suppose it’s only fair that I should join in, having ~~laughed at~~ appreciated the others so much. This meme was started here and I was tagged by Merry. This is what happened when I asked my children to draw me. First I asked Tiddler, but he said “No, you draw me!” So that was that. Well, he is only two. Then I asked Rabbit, and she said “Can I draw daddy?” I managed to persuade her to draw me in the end. It was touch and go. She started several attempts and threw them away, so I thought she was going to give up but in the end she drew this. She even asked me what colour I would like my dress to be. I think I could live with looking like that.

By Rabbit (aged 4)

Monkey and Owl took it very seriously and spent a long time observing me carefully. Which meant Supergirl had to start cooking the supper without me in the end as it was getting rather late and every time I tried to move one of them shouted “Stand still!” They both drew me in the clothes I was actually wearing, which were (as always) jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. I was impressed by their attention to detail. Monkey asked me to take off my patterned slippers (too difficult to draw) so he could draw my socks instead. I did try to explain artistic license, but he wasn’t interested.

By Monkey (aged 6)

When I told Owl the title of the meme, he said “How I see you is with Tiddler clinging to you, which happens quite a lot.” Poor boy. It made me want to go and cuddle him, but I wasn’t allowed to move.

By Owl (aged 8)

I’m tagging The Adequate Parent.

Support for Home Education

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At the beginning of September I was interviewed as a witness by the Select committee on Support for Home Education. I wrote briefly about the day in this post, but intended to follow up with a more detailed summary of the session. I thought I would be able to come back and write more about it after taking the time to process it, but what has happened really is that I have forgotten a lot of the detail. I could watch it but I have no desire to see myself “on TV” so that’s out. I could read the transcript – I have skimmed through it once, and really meant to come back to it, but it never rises to the top of my to-do list. But I know that some people have expressed an interest in hearing more about it, and I really appreciate that, so I shall do my best.

In July I wrote a written submission in response to the Select committee’s call for evidence, after discussing the issues with other local home educators. I went into a lot of detail on the first point, “the duties of local authorities with regard to home education”, because I believe that many LAs, mine included, don’t have a clear idea of what their duties are and tend to make it up as they go along. I spent several enjoyable hours picking apart our LA’s website, highlighting areas where it misrepresents the law on home education, and fails to follow the Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities (2007.) I then rather hastily put together the rest of the submission at the eleventh hour, but there must have been enough in it that was useful for them to consult me further. Let’s just say that in exam terms I did enough revision the night before to scrape through.

The legal basis for home education in the UK is found in Section 7 of the Education Act (1996) which states that

“The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable ;

a) to his age, ability, and aptitude, and

b) to any special educational needs he may have,

either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.”

It is quite clear that the legal responsibility for the education of children rests with their parents. They may or may not choose to use schools to deliver that education, but there is no legal requirement for them to do so. The 2007 guidelines make it clear that “Parents are not required to register or seek approval from the local authority to educate their children at home.” Many local authority websites directly contradict the law and mislead parents to such an extent that the widespread ignorance about the legality of home education is somewhat understandable.

I think most home educators would agree that innaccurate legal information on Local Authority websites is unacceptable. The issues get more complex, though, when you look at the question of what, if any, support should be offered for home education. There are many in the home ed community who are completely opposed to any form of registration, even if it is voluntary, and therefore do not want any support at all. There are others who feel equally strongly that there should be financial and other support available to all families who wish to home educate. I found it difficult to do anything other than sit on the fence on this issue, especially as I was trying to represent the views of our very diverse local home ed community, but I did find that being involved in the discussion helped to clarify my views a little. While I believe that mandatory registration would be unacceptable, I think that there may be a case for voluntary registration to access support. I know that some home educators believe it would ultimately lead to enforced registration, which is a serious concern. However, I feel very strongly that the right to home educate should be available to all families. I believe that single parents and families on low incomes should be able to make this choice freely, and it should not just be another form of private education for the privileged few.

One thing that came across clearly from the discussion was that there is a postcode lottery, with some LAs adhering to the law and providing useful support and others offering nothing but misleading information. Although there are some examples of good practice, there is such a long history of negative attitudes from many LAs that it is doubtful that support could come from them and be welcomed by the wider home ed community. One of the witnesses suggested that a neutral service provider such as the library service would be a better way of delivering support, and I really hope that this idea will be followed up.

The next session of the committee will take place this Wednesday morning, when some of the LAs will be giving oral evidence. It should be interesting to watch, but if you are a home educator you may find this helpful to get you through the morning. Enjoy!

Friday round up – 12th October 2012

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At the end of last week, I thought we were more or less over the sickness bug, though that didn’t turn out to be the case. On Friday we had another day at home with ill and recovering children, but as the day went on they all seemed to be fine and we had quite a nice time. Owl, Monkey and Rabbit did a little more work on their Prehistory project, which we haven’t done anything with since before the summer. We received a parcel from PlayMerrily which caused a lot of excitement, with boots for the little ones, a crystal science kit and a sewing kit.

Owl and I had a go at the crystal science kit, but it wasn’t that successful. I was rather distracted, we were too hasty, I’m not sure what went wrong but we have some rather tiny crystals. We need to wait until all the lovely green water evaporates off and then have another go I suppose. I started the sewing kit with Rabbit, then she did some more knitting and we all continued making the pompoms we had started the day before. Granny (my mum) was here too and the children had a lovely time playing with her. Rabbit also painted a unicorn picture on a canvas that she had been given a while ago, and she and Monkey drew some pictures with chalk.

On Saturday, we took Supergirl to her au pair training day, and then visited my aunt as the training day was near her house. We then had lunch in a pizza restaurant, and went for a walk. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and the children had a great time jumping in a really big muddy puddle, collecting leaves, picking brambles and rosehips and bug hunting (we took some ants home with us!) We also found an interesting snail on a leaf, saw some horses in the meadow, looked at some mushrooms and joined hands around a huge oak tree to see if we could reach round. (We could, but only just.) In the evening we visited Granny (my mother-in-law) and then went to the Harvest Supper at church.

On Sunday, we went to church, and Owl played his violin in the service. We had a quiet afternoon at home doing housework while the children watched a DVD, then they did their music practice and bedroom tidying before Rabbit’s friend came round to play at the end of the day.

As the children had been fine at the weekend, we thought we were over the illness, but Rabbit was sick again on Monday night so we were back to cancelling some of our activities again. We managed piano lessons and swimming lessons – even Rabbit swam as she was fine yesterday and hadn’t been sick for several days. She did really well in her lesson, and swam unaided for the first time. However, last night she was sick again so we have had another day at home today.

We have done lots of things at home this week, and I can probably only remember about half of them. I played Stairs and Slides (a times tables version of snakes and ladders) with Owl and Monkey, and also Scrabble. We have done some Maths work on money and time, English work on homophones and writing character descriptions, lots of Reading Eggs, and a Reading CD-Rom, music practice, hama beads and plenty of playing with trains, cars and Lego. Monkey made a brilliant computer (with monitor, keyboard and mouse) out of Duplo. Monkey has also been to Beavers and Owl has been to Cubs.

Owl spent a lot of yesterday experimenting with bits and pieces from various electricity kits and is trying to design a helicopter. Monkey spent most of the day and part of the night writing long and very detailed wish lists, mainly Lego Ninjago with a few other things thrown in as well.

Today I went out with Monkey to the deli and local shops, and we collected some more leaves on the way back. We also did the Maths and English activities that I mentioned in my last post. In the afternoon Rabbit and Tiddler played in the garden, on the swings, blowing bubbles, drawing with chalk, and collecting leaves in buckets. Owl made a kite from his flying science kit and then he and Monkey tried to fly it, and I then I had a go with Owl as well. We just about got it flying but obviously need to take it out into a more open space sometime. Then we all did some painting for an Autumn display, which was very successful, particularly as the children did it separately in between other activities (kite-flying, Reading Eggs and watching Cbeebies mainly) which made it nice and calm. Tiddler was asleep and I didn’t wake him until everyone else had finished, which worked really well as I could then focus on him completely. We printed with apples, potatoes, carrots and leaves, and painted some trees and various Autumn-coloured splodges which I’m sure I’ll be able to work into a display somehow. It was fun anyway!

More Twinkling

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After I posted my review of Twinkl last night, we have had such a successful day today using some more of the resources that I thought I should write a follow-up post.

This morning Monkey played the clock game, matching written times to the times shown on the clocks, and Owl did it as well this afternoon.

Owl and Monkey have also both done some character description writing. They chose to write about Lego Ninjago characters, and they enjoyed using the worksheets with suggested descriptive words to get them started.

This is Monkey’s description of Garmadon:

Garmadon is Sensei Wu’s brother, and their father was the creator of Ninjago and the first master of Spinjitzu. Garmadon is evil and fierce and he rules an army of skeletons. In year 2012 he got four arms.

And this is Owl’s description of Snappa.

Snappa is a fangpyre snake scout. He is ugly, mean and evil, but in times of peace he is calm and friendly and tries to be a good friend. But it’s hard to be nice when you are really a mean beast. In times of war he is usually quite angry and he is not very popular among his tribe. Snappa bites first and asks questions later. He also gets mad at a drop of a snake’s scale.

(Owl would like me to point out that there are some additions and corrections in the text quoted here, because I took the photos earlier and they have continued to work on it.)

Look here for lots more lovely resources like these!

I think I should have said this on the post I wrote yesterday, but I will put it here anyway: I have been given a premium subscription to Twinkl to write this review. All opinions are my own.

Twinkl: review of an educational website

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Like most home educators, I spend a lot of time looking for educational resources on the internet, and I’m always interested in finding out about websites that others use.

I have been given a subscription to a new (newish? new to me anyway….) educational website to try out and review, and I have enjoyed exploring the resources. I have had a few technical problems, as my rather elderly laptop does not seem to be able to print anything at all from the website, and I have had to rely on Suburban Dad’s superior laptop when he is around, which is not much at the moment. Anyway, he has printed a few resources which we have tried and enjoyed, so I thought I should get on and write this instead of hoping we will have time to explore it further. I think the problems may possibly be because the files are unusually large (according to Suburban Dad) and I have passed on this helpful (?) information to them, so maybe they will be able to change the format.

Initially I found the website a little confusing to navigate, but I have got used to it and I really like the resources. The thing we have used most is very simple. I have printed some number tracks for Rabbit and she stuck them on strips of card and enjoys using them to practise counting forwards and backwards. I also use them to ask her questions like “What is one more than 5?”, “What is one less than 9?” and so on.

I have tried out some worksheets on homophones with Owl and Monkey. They are clear and simple, and the children did the first one very happily which involved filling in missing words in sentences. They struggled with the second one as they were supposed to write two sentences on two short lines for each of the words and they just couldn’t fit them in so they had to make their interesting sentences shorter which was a shame. However, one of the great features of Twinkl is that users can suggest changes to resources and also add their own. Below each one, there is a message which reads “Have you got some new ideas for this resource? Or is there a problem that you’ve spotted?” (I love this – it’s so polite!) and a button which says “Suggest a change.”

Today I was planning to use a game about telling the time but I thought I would laminate it first. My problems with technology continued as one of the pages jammed in the laminator and of course I couldn’t just go and print another one out. Sigh. Anyway, IT support (otherwise known as Suburban Dad) is on the case, and I should be able to play it with them tomorrow. We have also printed out clock fans (similar to number fans, where you ask a question and the children have to hold up the fan with the right answer) and I’ve found a lovely character description worksheet as well.

The website also has book lists for a variety of topics and users can add to those as well. I think that is a very good way of sharing ideas, and I have enjoyed browsing and looking for inspiration. The section on displays is a good place to look for ideas for Art, and I will certainly be trying some of them out.

Overall, I would say that despite my technical difficulties (which won’t affect you if you have a decent laptop) twinkl is a really useful website to add to the range of resources that is available on the net for teachers and home educators, and I would certainly recommend it.

More Hama Bead Fun

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Rabbit has been unwell again for the last couple of days and mainly sleeping or watching CBeebies, but yesterday afternoon she was feeling better and wanted something to do. I gave her a set of Midi Hama Beads and she spent a long time making a lovely picture with them, but it wasn’t suitable for ironing as there were lots of spaces between the beads. She then decided to follow one of the pictures that came with the set, and made this boy (with a little help from me and a lot of help from Supergirl.)

To occupy Tiddler while Rabbit was using the Midi Beads, I got out the leftover Maxi beads from the dinosaur and butterfly kits. He had fun for a while putting random beads on the dinosaur template, and when he had finished Owl and Monkey made these smiley faces.

I love finding craft activities that all four children can enjoy, and I would like to have a go too, so I am going to order some more soon. Here are some links for where to buy them and some ideas for what to do with them.

http://www.craftmerrily.co.uk/section/15/1/hama-beads

http://www.beadmerrily.co.uk

http://www.patchofpuddles.co.uk/archives/category/art-craft-books/hama-beads

http://pinterest.com/merrilyme/hama-beads/

http://www.simplecrafts.co.uk/category/by-craft/hama-beads/

Lavender and pompoms among other things

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We are all still at various stages of illness and recovery, so we are having a quiet week. Yesterday, Suburban dad stayed at home and tried to rest a bit, get some work done and help with the children as much as he could, so we muddled through the day. In the morning, the two little ones still seemed to be quite unwell, and Rabbit fell asleep on the sofa soon after she got up. However, they both felt better after a little while and had a lovely time playing games with Supergirl (Scrabble and Marble Run and probably others as well, I can’t remember.) The big boys did some Maths and English, and played some Science games online. Owl played a BBC Schools game about Rocks which I suggested, and Monkey chose a game on BBC Bitesize.

Then I decided on a whim that it was time to do something with the lavender we picked in July. Last weekend it got moved to the hall when we were clearing out the Laundry room, and when I was tidying the hall yesterday I thought I should probably stop moving it from room to room and just use it instead. So I started stripping the lavender with the children and Supergirl came to help. Then the children wandered off and Supergirl and I finished the job. It was quite therapeutic.

Owl, Monkey and Tiddler made lavender bags, but Tiddler was not quite well enough to manage it, so he had a daddy cuddle instead. Maybe he can make one another day – there is plenty of lavender left.

In the afternoon, Monkey and I went with Supergirl to the local college so she could take a test and register for an EFL course. When we came back, the big boys did their Music practice, I did some knitting with Rabbit, and all three did Mathletics, Spellodrome and Bible reading. As promised, I made a pompom with Tiddler.

Monkey went to Beavers, and then I went out to my exercise class, thinking the children would be in bed by the time I got back, but they had been having far too much fun making chutney with daddy instead!

Today, we were all feeling a bit worse again, with more sickness from some of the children and also Supergirl in the night. So we had a quiet pottering around kind of day, trying not to be too noisy (and probably failing) as Supergirl tried to get some rest upstairs. The big three did Reading Eggs, and then I did some knitting with Rabbit. The big boys went upstairs to play with Lego and Tiddler did some puzzles, while I read a story to Rabbit from an old Octonauts magazine and then helped her to make a Snot Sea Cucumber and two Anemones. She is very proud of them!

In the afternoon, they all did some BBC Bitesize Science games together, and then the younger three watched CBeebies, while Owl read Maths for Martians: Galaxy Getaway.
Then Owl wrote his blogpost and the other three disappeared upstairs. Rabbit came down after a while and asked for some coins as they were playing fairies. I was a bit confused but made her some coins out of paper, which seemed quicker at that point than finding some, and also not a choking hazard. It turns out that Rabbit was the tooth fairy and Monkey and Tiddler were in bed. It was a nice quiet game! After that we all started to make some more pompoms, to be continued tomorrow.

Caterpillar Tales

Reading, Learning and Growing