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)

The Benefits of 'Sleeping On It'

If you read yesterday's entry, Going with the (slow) Flow, you may remember that Middle got stuck while working on a Volcano acrostic.  Of course the beauty of Home Ed is that there was no pressure for him to have to complete it there and then, so rather than let him get frustrated and down on himself, I suggested he leave it until another day.  Well, it wasn't a long wait: he finished it today - I asked if he'd like to get the dictionary out this morning to see if we could find words beginning with the letters concerned, that might give him ideas. It worked a treat - it was so lovely seeing him light up with self-belief again, at being able to do something he had previously found to be difficult, just because sometimes all you need is to sleep on it.
It has been well documented that the brain has an amazing ability to continue working on problems while you rest over night - and it certainly proved to be the case for Middle.  The same thing that was so discouraging for him yesterday became an opportunity to triumph and feel good about himself the very next day.  It made me think about the school days: he would quite often get discouraged because he couldn't do something in time, or if he had the chance to come back to unfinished work, it could be up to a week later when inspiration had faded again.  I know when I was planning lessons that it was often frustrating to me to know that if the children didn't reach a certain target by the end of the lesson, it could be another week before they had chance to pick it up again - and a week can be too long, in terms of momentum.  So for Middle to be able to leave a tricky problem just for a day was ideal: no pressure to finish it immediately, but coming back to it with a rested and fresh mind soon enough to remember where he left off.
I know I'm a super-proud Mummy regardless, but I do think his finished article is just lovely!

Going with the (slow) Flow

It's been a slow day today - for no reason that I can see particularly, except that we've just had a fairly busy weekend.  It doesn't really matter though - we just go with the flow - and seeing as we all felt fairly sluggish today, a slow day it was.

We started off with MathsWhizz.  This time it was Eldest's turn to have problems logging on.  For some reason it wasn't working on his little notebook laptop, so I had to log on through mine - it worked fine on mine, but that had slowed us down.  Middle was logged on to the main PC in the study but somehow managed to turn the computer off three times, in the midde of an exercise!.  So he came and logged on to mine to finish his afte Eldest had finished.  Youngest has lost the privilege of going in the study at the moment, due to the chaos created (and things broken) when he has been in there recently - so he had to wait his turn on my laptop as well.  Consequently, by the time they had all finished MathsWhizz, about 2 hours had passed, instead of the usual forty minutes that it takes them on average when doing it simultaneously.

Youngest and I had some fun with words while waiting for his brothers to finish - we got out our magnetic boards and letters (I got them from Amazon years ago for a teaching resource - but I bet they still do them)... I made the alphabet and we sang the song together; Youngest made up his own "alphabet" of random letters that he read out to me; we had a 'quiz' where I said a word and Youngest tried to spell it; finally he was inspired by something he spotted out of the window, and had a go at spelling that too (I helped with the tricky bits)...

Once they had all finished their Maths (and letter fun), we had a game of Alpha Animals.  Youngest and Middle play with us, but they use the simpler version of the game while Eldest and I play the full version - and Middle was thrilled to win.  They were even more happy that Mummy lost (due in part to some impressive bluffing on the part of Eldest who steered me towards a certain answer on the card... I thought he was helping me; it turned out he was playing me!)  Youngest also showed significant prowess in the con stakes... on being asked for an animal (or bird, fish etc) that began with the letter H, he announced "hamonite".  When given a quizzial look from Mummy and protestations from his brothers, he totally brazened it out, saying "Yes!  It fights things with its hands, and lives in the Savannah!"  It was so funny, we couldn't help but laugh - he loved it.  Every now and then afterwards someone would mutter 'hamonite', and go off into fits of the giggles again.

This afternoon the boys watched "My Genius Idea" (CBBC), a programme encouraging creativity and inventiveness, and then I asked Eldest and Middle if they'd like to do some more on their lapbooks.  Eldest finished another page, and then decided that was enough - he just wanted to flop about.  Middle had a go at a 'Volcano' acrostic, coming up with some lovely ideas (such as the line "Lava pukes on the ground") - but got stuck on the 'O's, and was getting discouraged, so he put it away for another day.  The younger boys wanted to get crafty next - more specifically, doing their own crafty thing, as opposed to Mummy's suggestions - so I got the craft box out (the big one with stuff in that they can help themselves to without my nagging them not to waste things... well, that's the plan anyway, since the lesson learned last year in Craftboxes and Cocktails), and they had fun just experimenting with the contents.  I love the fact that they are still small enough to be excited by glitter and shiny things.  Eldest seems to have grown out of that now - but he was feeling too flobberly to get up to much by this point in the day anyway.  I sat with the younger two and had a play as well - Middle very generously told me I should put mine in an "art museum" (gallery)! 

by Youngest...

by Middle...

by Mummy...

So it may have been a slow day - but it was slow and peaceful (mostly!) - and any day with glitter in can't be a bad day.  Over all, that's a nice way to flow.

Choosing the Right Resources

We have decided that we want to learn about rocks. To be honest, this is mostly my decision, but based on things that I've seen the boys get enthused about lately (volcanoes, mountains, pebble collections, crystals etc).  I'm not expecting a project of deep and thorough academic investigation - just enough exploring every now and then to hopefully capture their innate sense of wonder in the world around them (and then stop before it gets boring for them... well that's the plan, anyway).  So I've been trying to prepare myself with at least some understanding (I know almost nothing about geology), in order to be able to help the boys learn. 

First I picked up a project book called 'Rocks and Minerals'  by Dorling Kindersley.  Given that it's aimed at ages 8-12 I wasn't anticipating too many problems, but oh my!  Did I feel thick after reading it...?! (yes I did).  I was really disillusioned and immediately felt that it was going to turn out to be too boring to be a fun project.  Fortunately it's not the only resource out there (although I'm sure those of you with children who like workbooks etc may find it really helpful).  Happily for us I also found the National Geographic book on the subject from the 'Everything' series... loads of photos and small amounts of text on the page are brilliant for Middle, my visual learner.  And my interest was re-ignited too!  We also found an 'Earth Science' DVD from the Rock n Learn series - the boys loved the Human Body DVD we had from the same series - and they all learn really well from watching TV, so I had high hopes for this DVD, although at £15 I hesitated to buy it without seeing the contents.  I'm glad we did though - another success; they loved it!  To be honest, it doesn't do much for me - but it's about what works best for them rather than myself.  Oh, and a friend recommended a lovely book called Geology Rocks, which has lots of ideas for little experiments the boys can do (eg sand sculpting, making glass out of sugar etc), that Eldest and Middle have already been through, sticking post-its on all the pages with experiments that they fancy doing.  'Hands on' projects are always a success - and memorable too.  I think we're all kinesthetic learners at least in part!  Of course, as this project was partly inspired by seeing how fascinated the boys were with the rocks on the beach while we were on holiday, I do really want to build up our own little collection - you can't beat being able to touch and handle things in order to learn!

With that in mind, we had a couple of 'hands-on' moments today, to see if interest would spark... and it did!  First we did an underwater volcano experiment from Middle's Booms, Bangs & Fizzes kit that he was given for Christmas.  Chemical reactions are always fun to watch!  Then we broke open some geodes that we had bought for just over £1 each online.  It's a lovely activity because the boys needed to exercise patience, and then finding out what was inside each boring-looking little rock was really exciting for them.  I found a lovely page on the web that explained a bit more about them too, without going into excessive detail.

the hammer and chisel (or in our case screwdriver) method was preferred over putting the geode in a sock and smacking it on a chopping board... safety goggles a must, though!

 The boys were all thrilled with their findings... obviously I had to share all of them on my blog!

 Eldest's findings

 

 Middle's findings

 Youngest's findings

Starting a new project has made me think again of the importance of finding out which learning styles most suit each little learner - they may not be the same styles as our own, of course - and they may all be different from each other too.  Having explored a few options now, I'm happy that the variety of resources we have should be enough to get us going... and then if their curiosity really takes off, we'll follow their interest wherever it leads!  If not, I at least have already learned things that I didn't know before, and we've all had fun - so that's got to be a success!

Party Weekend

Wow, busy few days!  It was Middle's birthday this weekend, so since Friday its all been about getting ready for the celebrations.  He had a party on Saturday afternoon - I don't know whether that was more for him or me, as last year's party for him was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back for me, regarding school.  It was when he invited his entire (small) class to his party - he's not the sort of child to leave anyone out - but to cut a long story short they basically (with one beautiful exception) boycotted his party.  That was my penny-dropping-with-a-loud-clang moment: I knew of Home Ed and definitely liked the idea, but I had bought into the socialisation ideal of school life - and at that point (when I heard that one of his "friends" was persuading their peers not to go to the party) I realised what a fallacy the socialising argument was - I had sent the boys to school so they could make friends and have fun social experiences, but for Middle at least it was quite the opposite.  It was tortuous to watch and obviously I still haven't quite got over it.  Judging from his behaviour (showing increased social anxiety) in the few days leading up to his party I would guess that he hadn't forgotten either.  So it was such a joy to have a really lovely party this year.  Considering the dreadful weather and road conditions, the fact that only one of the invitees couldn't make it speaks volumes.  He had so many people he wanted to invite, I even had to restrict numbers, as there's only so much our house will take!  And they were all happy to come, happy to join in and make it a lovely day for Middle. Perfect!

Other than the party planning there have obviously been lots of wintry excursions: snowball fights, sledging etc.  And speaking of making the most of the weather, a few weeks ago we made some giant ice marbles to put in the garden when the temperatures dropped below freezing - and we used them this weekend to decorate outside for Middles party.  Making them was a bit trial-and-error - we eventually got them to work by putting a squirt of food colouring directly into the deflated balloon, then putting the neck of the balloon over the end of the tap and filling it with water that way (holding it so the weight didn't pull it off).  We tied knots in the balloon necks and put them in our freezer.  Friends who have also made them have tried freezing theirs in the garden once the temperatures dropped below zero, but I have heard that freezing them this way takes several days, and you can still risk having them explode due to not being fully frozen - so we recommend the freezer route (although of course, they may take several days in the freezer too)!

When not outside we've been enjoying lots of snuggly time indoors, including TV time, which led on Thursday to a lovely little project.  As you may well know, we record plenty of programmes from the BBC2 learning zone, as well as CBBC and others, for learning purposes.  Then it is up to the boys to choose whatever takes their interest.  Last week it included an episode of "Finding Stuff Out" on volcanoes.  Well that set off the day's activities nicely for Eldest and Middle.  They drew some volcano pictures, they read the books we had at home, Volcanoes and Horrible Geography's Violent Volcanoes - and I found a lovely workbook resource on Volcanoes, from the TES website.  (You have to be a member to download their resources, but it's totally worth joining for hundreds of great ideas, plus it's informative those of us who like to keep up to date with education in this country...).  I said to the boys that they could do as much or as little as they liked of the workbooks, I just thought it would be interesting for them.  Eldest whizzed through his, and loved it.  Middle took his time and stopped when he'd had enough - he can pick it up again later if he likes.  We could have made our own volcanoes (we have a bottle of red fizzy drink and mentos in the cupboard), but with all the snow on the ground expected to stay for at least a week, I didn't want the garden to look like a bloodbath for that long with red splashes all over the once-pristine whiteness! It sounds silly, but I know it would bother me... so we will be revisiting volcanoes at least once again soon, after the snow has all gone!

 Eldest's 'Volcano' (sadly we cant find Middle's)

 

Following on from the theme, there's a programme on CBBC at the moment called "Fierce Earth" - the episode we watched today was about hurricanes,and we had a good chat about why the eye of the storm is safer than being on the edge, ranging from spinning tops to centrifugal force etc.  Also today we watched some clips of my favourite owl, the great grey owl, like this one - and then we got the sketching pencils out.  We've got a set ranging from 5H - 5B, and we definitely need to practice with them, to get the full benefit of the range.  Youngest wasn't really in drawing mood today (he was off playing with some of Middle's birthday presents), but the others loved experimenting with the soft smudgy look, and produced some lovely pictures of the owl hunting in the taiga.

 Middle's 'Great Grey Owl Hunting'

 Eldest's 'Great Grey Owl and Lemming'

 Mummy's 'Great Grey Owl'