I need to read this again if I wobble...

It was a funny day today.  We had a delivery coming from Ikea - the shelf set we bought a few months ago worked so well, we ordered another one to try to bring order to the study.  Therefore I needed to spend most of the day sorting things out of the study so that we can get the shelf unit into it once assembled... and then filled of course.  Consequently the kitchen table is now buried under study stuff & there has been no space anywhere for the boys to 'do anything much' - except of course watch TV, draw pictures, play on the computer, pore over photos, tell each other stories, do a bit of baking, read books, make masks, and play games in the garden (and that's just the bits I noticed)!

It's something I have really appreciated about this 'term' - we've had so many interruptions to the rhythms & patterns we had been in, but in each of those interruptions, every single time I have just been easily able to spot the blessings of unstructured time.  We do usually like a little bit of structure - it works for all of us; but I am now so chilled about days without structure when needed - they are still so rich, just in different ways.

So I thought I'd share some of today's lovely little highlights (in between moving books, boxes etc)...  While the boys were watching 'Absolute Genius' (about Brunel), there was quite a bit of footage of the Clifton suspension bridge, and I was able to tell them about an ancestor of ours on my father's side who tried to kill herself in the late 1800s by jumping off the bridge, but her crinoline skirts opened up like a parachute and she floated harmlessly down to the mudflats and was rescued.  They were happy to hear that she seemed to cheer up afterwards, and lived to be an old lady.  She had a poem written about her and even has her own page on Wikipedia... The boys were enjoying the TV programme as it was, but even more so after they realised we have family links to the bridge, and such a great story too!

I also uncovered our wedding album, & had a lovely few minutes looking through it with the boys.  They loved looking at all the family twenty years ago & working out who everyone was.  There is such strength in knowing you're part of a big, supportive structure like a family - it was lovely to be able to share that with our boys today.

This afternoon I realised it was teatime and I hadn't prepared anything, being preoccupied with the study contents.  So I hastily grabbed some home-made hidden-veg sauce from the freezer and we all made our own pizzas.  We didn't have any mozzarella cheese handy, but we're all perfectly happy with cheddar - and they worked a treat.  Eldest's 'boomerang' pizza turned out particularly large, but he was happy to eat every last crumb, so no problems there! 

 top left to bottom right: Youngest, Middle (heart-shaped), Eldest, Mummy

 Afterwards we enjoyed the chocolate brownies that I had made with Youngest as a distraction from something the older two were doing earlier that was leaving him out.  Whenever one of the boys gets left out of a game I always find baking is a very acceptable consolation!

Oh, and of course we had the camera trap photos to explore.  There was quite a mystery attached to last night's photos.  The camera trap is triggered by motion, via a PIR sensor, so every time anything goes past, it is set to go off & take a quick succession of 3 pictures.  Well last night we know it was working, because first we had several lovely shots of our resident fox - and then there was a gap of an hour before another photo was taken.  Nothing unusual there - there are often gaps between creatures passing by.  However, when we checked the next photo, which seemed to have no visitor in the frame (it happens occasionally that the photo is taken a split second too late), a large number of the peanuts that we had sprinkled on the ground had mysteriously disappeared!  What a puzzle: we were baffled by how something managed to take the peanuts without triggering the camera trap.  A mouse was suggested as the culprit, but we know mice do trigger the sensor as we have a few photos of mice (well, photos of their eyeshine, anyway - they're too tiny to make out otherwise).

 

this is where the peanuts disappeared...

 and a visitor in daylight today... muntjac deer!

in fact not just one, but two!

Finally, as promised, I managed to take photos of Middle's fabulous lapbook that he completed the other day.  We used a combination of the excellent Homeschool share volcanoes lapbook templates (Middle loves the ready-printed ones), and some that we made ourselves. He is rightly proud of his work, as am I, so I'm glad to be able to share it here...

Focusing on the right thing

I've been feeling a bit flat lately.  Not in the run-over-by-a-steamroller way - although I have had my moments - but just less sparkly or enthusiastic than usual.  If course, there are some very good reasons for this as regular readers will know - it's understandable & I'm not beating myself up over it - just noting it.  My reason for sharing it here is that I think while all home educators have seasons of real energy and vision (by nature we have to be visionaries, to go against the flow of mainstream education), at times we also have seasons of less energy; maybe less confidence or direction.  And that is OK.  It's natural - in fact, I think it's healthy.  I was sharing with a friend recently the seasonal nature of a child's learning: periods of intense obvious growth and enthusiasm, followed by periods of quiet reflection when there appears to be no interest in anything much - but after which season, when learning becomes more active again it becomes apparent that great strides have been made in their understanding while they were resting.  Well, as with children, so with us adults: I think it's healthy to recognise the seasons in our own motivation and energy, and to run with the strengths of each season - whether the energy & drive of the high-vision moments, or the consolidating strength of the resting periods.

So that being said, I've been focusing on the strengths of where we're at.  I could give in to my slightly dissatisfied feelings of 'not doing enough'/ 'are they learning anything'... the usual wobbles - or I could acknowledge how much is actually going on.  If I was feeling negative I would say 'they just watched TV this morning'.  In actual fact, they were watching "Artzooka" (an excellent art & craft programme that really inspires their own creativity) and "Finding Stuff Out" (this morning's episode learning about the sun, solar power, solar system etc) - and "Octonauts" which helped Youngest to learn about the Mariana Trench (deepest part of the ocean).  I could be discouraged that it's taken Middle a couple of months to finish his latest lapbook - or I could rejoice that his interest in the chosen subject (volcanoes) has continued for that long, despite not having the desire/ opportunity to work on his project book... and indeed rejoice that he completed his lapbook today, still as eager to share what he knows as he was at the beginning!  (*lapbook photos to follow soon hopefully - I ran out of time this evening*)  I am occasionally tempted to worry if I am "forcing" the boys to do their online curricula, and thereby ruining their natural love of learning, despite knowing that they chose MathsWhizz and Reading Eggs themselves - but today I am just so encouraged that Eldest has finally managed to conquer an area in maths that he had come up against a few times and was finding a challenge.  He hadn't complained about it (apart from the first time when he hit the issue and needed me to reassure him that "failing" wasn't a problem: as long as he kept practicing he would get there in the end) - and today, his look of accomplishment was a joy to behold!   And I could, if I was feeling really low (I'm not actually this bad), feel guilty about the amount of time that we're spending outside, and not "doing lessons" - not that we do lessons anyway, but you know what I mean - but actually it's been such a long, cold and hard winter/ spring, we are just rejoicing in the opportunity to top up our vitamin D, to go for long rambles, interacting with nature, often while socialising with friends, before it gets cold and wet again, and we retreat to our cosy home.

Anyway, you get the point: I'm learning with my children that everything about Home Ed is seasonal and there are different strengths and weaknesses to each season.  Oh, and finally, speaking of seasons, I couldn't go without sharing Eldest's latest photos from his camera trap (inspired by the very seasonal Springwatch).  We got some more lovely photos, this time from pointing the camera towards the woodland behind our garden... we were very excited to see the results, and hope you enjoy them too...

 hooray, it's a fox!

 

Foxy's spotted something...

 

whatever it is, he's not happy about it... 

and the biggest squeals of excitement saved for...

the badger (or its bum, at any rate)