Planning and Gearing Up

Way back in July I came downstairs from settling the younger two boys in bed, and found Eldest on the kitchen floor, surrounded by felt pens and crouched over a 6-page calendar that he was making (to the end of 2013), copying dates off our kitchen calendar.  He looked up at me and asked "When does the summer holiday finish?"  I was tempted to get all deep and philosophical, waxing lyrical about our entire lives being a holiday, not needing to put a "Start-of-Term" date in writing, but I knew that he - like his Mum - really appreciates planning ahead, as long as it's not too rigid... and it was his calendar, his idea after all!  So after a few minutes dithering I finally suggested the first week of September, with the option to review when we got there.  And onto his calendar it went.

Well, here we are (or will be on Monday).  And the timing is pretty perfect.  The boys and I are all gearing up, feeling ready to get back into the flow.  They've chosen their subjects for their next lapbooks (Eldest: food chains; Middle: dinosaurs; Youngest: sharks), and I've drawn up a little plan, with their help.  I love planning, and spent most of our first year of Home Ed fighting my natural desire to order and construct mini-curricula etc, out of a well-meaning but slightly misguided desire to give my boys all the 'freedom' they needed.  Then I found the blog posts mentioned in This is our Home Ed Style, and felt freed myself to incorporate a little structure.

So here is our plan...

You'll notice it's very sparse: just two or three ideas per day, which allows lots of space for the boys to follow more of their own interests for the rest of the day.  It is not a timetable as there are no times when things have to be done (other than the clubs) - it just helps us to have a broad outline to get us focused each day.  If the boys (or I) have an idea that they want to try in the near future, they can write it on a post-it and stick it to the planner, then we will make it happen at the next opportunity!  The subjects with smileys are the only parent-required ones (everything else is optional but stuff I know the boys like doing) - and I thought that seeing as they are "work", they can carry a little reward.  For a long time the boys have wanted some kind of box of goodies to swap their 'merits' for, like they had in school, and although I resisted, seeing it as a form of bribery that I believe has no place in fostering a love of learning, we have compromised on just the bare minimum.  So for every smiley subject that is completed, the boys get to stick a smiley sticker onto their colour-coded post-it (top of planner), and at the end of the week they can swap their smileys for some sweets/ wii-time/ whatever they choose to have in the smiley box.  I'm not 100% happy with it still, but we'll give it a go and see.

So there we have it: our sort-of-plan for the term.  We're all enthusiastic and ready to go... I'll let you know how we get on!

PS If anyone's interested, for our planner we used one of those magic whiteboard sheets that adheres to a surface by way of static - no adhesive needed... love it!

PPS To clarify, for anyone who really wants to know, on Tuesday afternoons a friend and I swap some of our children so she can take her son and Eldest to Science club, while I have her youngest here with my other two for fun with Science.  Oh, and Nature club is on alternating Wednesdays, so on the other ones we visit friends!

July Lapbooks

OK yes I am feeling a bit guilty - it's half way through August already, and this is the first blog post for this month!  I've finally got around to taking photos of the lapbooks that the boys finished in July - sharing here for anyone who's interested...

Youngest finished his first.  His chosen subject was 'Owls'.  We did a lot of it together as he is not really writing yet - so I drew dotted lines for him to draw over, and when a bit more text was required, he dictated to me and I typed.  He loved the cutting and sticking, and created the whole lapbook really very quickly (he would have finished sooner had I not been needed by his brothers as well).  Downloads were courtesy of Homeschool Share's 'Owl Babies' resource ('Five Little Owls' poem with illustration and 'What do Owls Eat?')

Middle's was next.  He had chosen to do his lapbook on the Solar System.  I love the way he seriously considers his chosen subject and then comes up with something apparently completely random!  As usual, he wanted lots of printed out downloads - from Enchanted Learning ('Our Solar System' booklet),  Superteacherworsheets.com ('Planet Riddles'), and Homeschool Share (all the rest).  A slight drawback was that their material was a little outdated in places, with Pluto was still included as a planet - but it didn't cause any real problems, I just explained to Middle that Pluto had been downgraded since the resources were designed.  He put a lot of work into this one - but the information was pretty easy to find as Homeschool Share included some information sheets along with their printable templates, so it was a nice little project for him...

Finally, to Eldest.  Having had an experience in June where he hand-fed Humboldt penguins, he liked my suggestion that he do a lapbook on penguins.  Bless him, he did a really good job too!  Up until now his lapbooks have all been on wider subjects - usually on whole habitats containing several living things to write briefly about.  This time he did considerably more research on a more specific subject (single group of creatures).  I showed him how to do a spider diagram while he roughly planned his lapbook - and gave him lots of tips on how to most easily research the different types of penguins, and where they came from (he seemed to want to group them according to geographical location, which made sense).  The four-page chapter on all the different types of penguin took him the most time, but I am so proud of the way he persevered and finished with a good attitude - that's as valuable a lesson as anything he learned about penguins, in my opinion!  It may not be a traditional lapbook with all the flaps and interactive bits, but it's a really nice project book that he is rightly proud of...

Unschool Holidays

So this is it: apart from the really unfortunate, children all over the country are now on school holidays.  And home educators - who spend their normal lives bristling every time somebody suggests that Home Ed'ors are unsocialised - are retreating from the favoured haunts of playparks and cheap days out as there are 'too many people there'.  Actually, it's not necessarily the volume of people that's the issue (although who wouldn't prefer to visit somewhere when it's not packed with crowds?) - it's the fact that the behaviour of some schoolchildren is distinctly anti-social.  So we head to quieter places and playdates for the summer hols.

I have to say, even though we do still observe school holidays mostly as the boys have friends who are at school, so there are opportunities to play that they would otherwise miss out on - technically, our "term" has not quite finished.  You see, at the moment, Eldest and Middle are still in the middle of their lapbooks (Youngest has finished his), so they are still doing a bit each day until those are finished (more because I want them to learn the character strength of finishing what they start than for an academic reason).  Personally I can't wait for the boys' lapbooks to be done.  If it were me I would just sit down and take as long as it took to get the whole things finished, all in one go.  Not Eldest and Middle though - they are still plodding on a bit at a time while Mummy grits her teeth and learns more patience!   But when they are finished?  Well, then, we will all be on our "unschool holidays".

Unschoolers, I believe, see very little difference between term-time and holidays as dictated by the local schools: all play is learning, and all learning is play - their children are free to explore, play, create, any time of the day, day of the week or month of the year.  However we, although we may not have much structure, we do have a very little as outlined in This is Our Home Ed Style.  And that little bit of structure is what we drop during the holidays.  

We will have six weeks (or maybe five if these jolly lapbooks take much longer) of no MathsWhizz, no Reading Eggs, no lapbooks, no 'educational' activities suggested by Mummy.  The boys will be free to play and I will be free to not think about what learning opportunities they are experiencing.  It will be our version of unschooling - a season of playing, exploring, creating etc, just as they like.  It may not look very different to our usual days - their required "work" really does not usually take them that long before they're off doing their own thing - but it will be different enough. 

And the thing that will make the most difference to me?  I will hopefully get the chance to get back on top of the housework.  There are a couple of mess-magnet areas that really need clearing, but I only usually have time free to just stay on top of the everyday housework - laundry, dishwashing, preparing meals etc (on a good day), not tackle piles of mess as well - because although the boys' required work doesn't take them very long, I need to be available to help all three of them every morning - and that is rarely conducive to getting any of my own work done.

So here's hoping that next time I blog the lapbooks will be done and we'll be on our Unschool Holidays! 

Educating More than One Individual

It's been a really nice season lately - we've been pretty laid back about all the ebbs and flows of our home educating, and I'm increasing in confidence at our methods (or lack of method).  I don't even care much about all those who dictate that theirs is the one 'best' method to do this funny thing called Home Education.  It may be best for them, but I believe I am most qualified to judge what is best for us!

There's just been one cloud in the otherwise sunny sky... and that is the fact that I am educating three very different personalities at home (and elsewhere).  I was about to say three "little" personalities, referring to their age and size comparative to me, the big grown-up - but the truth is, their personalities are every bit as big as mine, and certainly more demanding at times!  Anyway, one of the many reasons why people, including us, turn to home education is the opportunity to tailor the learning to the needs, styles and abilities of the individual.  Only when you have more than one individual with different needs, abilities etc, that's when it can get more challenging.

Educationally speaking for us, it's not too bad: all three boys do Reading Eggspress and MathsWhizz with varying levels of enthusiasm on different days - and on the whole, that presents no problems, other than making sure they each get their turn on whichever computer is in use.  They also all enjoy doing project work and creating lapbooks, in their different styles: Eldest likes creating books with multiple chapters, doing a separate page for each sub-topic, researching information on the web, typing up what he has discovered and finding photos to include - he learns as he creates, but rarely looks at them once finished; Middle likes a simple envelope file with lots of fiddly bits and interactive pop-out bits, he will read books about his subject, and loves me to print off resources so he doesn't have to do too much writing - but he re-reads his lapbooks a few times after he has created them, learning more from them after the process of creating is complete; Youngest loves his lapbooks and takes them every bit as seriously as those of his brothers.  I am a lot more involved as he's not yet up to doing much research (he is just reading, but not fluently yet) - although this week he announced that he wanted to do a lapbook on Alligator Snapping Turtles, based on information he had learned from "Octonauts" on CBeebies.  He told me what he wanted to include - and I typed it up, found the pictures, and drew the dotted lines for him to write along.  He has only just started to learn to write, and I was so proud of him today - he really concentrated and his letter formation is already looking good, for a beginner! *Lapbook photos at the end*

Their further individual preferences are fairly easy to cater for as well: Eldest likes computer games (Grid club a big hit), taking photos, drawing, writing his diary, making up cartoon-strip stories - he needs little input from me as he is older, other than liking to share his findings with me; Middle likes anything creative - baking, art (especially collage), modelling, gardening etc - he positively glows when he gets to do things with me;  Youngest also loves computer games, imaginative play, investigating everything (whether it's his or someone else's - hmmmm) - he is quite independent by nature, but needs a fair amount of supervision still: if he goes quiet somewhere I still need to track him down.  There is a lot of overlap too - they are all happy to do science experiments, make cakes, explore nature, have a go at an art project, make up games together... and today they spent a good couple of hours all playing "Spin 'n' Groove" on Gridclub - a music sampling mini-program where they get to compose their own music from given samples.

So, as I said, educationally things are OK.  Yes I'm busy - there are occasions when one has to wait while I finish with one brother, but it's OK, we seem to have settled into a groove that works for us to make sure everyone is getting on fine, and nobody seems to have to wait for too long.  Part of the reason why this works I think is because we keep most of our mornings free for them to be at home, exploring whatever has their interest at the time, doing the more obvious "learning" - and we are all comfortable with that routine. 

So if not educationally, what is the issue?  Well, it's largely social.  Eldest is a proper people-person.  He loves playing with friends, and not infrequently mentions that he misses school - largely because he misses seeing his best friend every day - although he is always quick to add that he doesn't miss it enough to want to go back.  Middle however is more introverted.  Where at a social gathering Eldest will play with many people at once (the more the better), Middle tends to just make one good friend and focus on having fun with them - he doesn't handle big groups so much.  He is really very friendly to anyone, he doesn't hang back anymore like he did when we left school - but he is much less confident that people will want to play with him, and if he has a discouraging experience it puts him right off going back.  Meanwhile Youngest is mr. independent.  Totally happy playing by himself or with his brothers, he is happy for people to play with him if they want, but he doesn't go out of his way to invite them, and at the moment, wouldn't care if we never went anywhere social.

So my problem is always this: where can we go to 'socialise' (for Eldest's sake at least) that isn't too academic (the range between an eleven-year-old and a four-year-old is really quite a stretch and usually leaves at least one of them uninterested), that is on in the afternoons (to protect our little routine while it is working for us), and doesn't threaten Middle, confidence-wise.

We do have craft club - which is so lovely we make an exception to the 'afternoon' rule.  As it's on Tuesday mornings it follows pyjama day (which is set in stone: the boys are passionate about protecting PJ Day at home), and they boys physically need to get out fairly early. Heather who runs it is lovely and flexible, happy for the boys to do their own thing, which they often do, and there are always children there to play with after they have finished creating.

Other than that, there is a sports group which we used to go to and Eldest loves.  Youngest is ambivalent, but Middle had an off-putting experience when I encouraged him to have a go at something he wasn't sure about, it didn't go well, and he was crushed - I didn't realise how badly until he refused to go back.  I don't see the point in forcing him back - he's the sort of child who needs to be allowed time to be ready himself - if you force him, you just set the process right back.  However, I really need to find another place for Eldest (and his brothers) to have the opportunity for socialising in larger groups (we frequently have playdates with friends in their houses; socialising in general isn't an issue).  Happily for us, a friend has had the genius idea of setting up a fortnightly nature group.  I mean, what could be more perfect for us? (I can't believe I didn't think of it myself!)  So we have our first outing planned next week, and a few more ideas for following that.  I am very excited.  So watch this space: here's hoping it goes as well as I foresee...

Finally, before I leave you with Youngest's lapbook, I was introduced to this blog post today, from tutorspree blog, and am sharing it for anyone interested in reading more about educating individuals.

And now (if you've stuck with me thus far, thank you - that was a bit of a mammoth post!)... Youngest's lapbook.  I admit, it's not a subject I would immediately have thought of suggesting, but bless him: he knew everything he wanted to say, and he did a great job!

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...