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!

A Little Wobble

I don't ever seem to get major wobbles - you know, the sort that make you seriously consider if your child(ren) would be better off in school.  Because mine have already done the school thing I am completely confident that they are better off with me (for reasons that regular blog-readers will be familiar with, so I won't take up space by repeating it all here).  However, the little sneaky wobbles where you just catch yourself wondering "am I doing this right?"; "is my child ever going to get interested in anything other than Minecraft?"; "should we be doing X Y or Z?" (argh, "should"... *smacks head*  shoulds are never far from the wobbles!)... yes, I get those! 

So I've been thinking about this again, and I've concluded that I'm feeling a bit directionless.  One thing I liked about teaching was having it all laid out before you - the national curriculum clearly showing the way; a nice broad path, clearly marked out, heading ultimately to one goal: GCSEs (or equivalent).  Subjects, Topics, Workbooks, Attainment Targets, Lesson Plans, Assessment Forms - easy peasy (apart from the phenomenal amount of work involved in creating and maintaining all of the above!!).  Of course, the main problem was guiding groups of different children with different abilities and different passions along the same path.  It wasn't in fact a production line where you could put each child through the same process and get the same results at the end.  Some children flourished, some struggled, some were ruined.  Hence the perceived need for Home Education: the chance for us to walk a different path; one of our own making... a little adventure.  No nice straight path here - more of a meander through the woods, exploring whichever openings take our fancy, with some openings leading to dead-ends, some possibly getting a bit boggy, and some leading to absolutely glorious, soul-flooding places of wonder where you just want to set up camp.  Best of all, getting to share that path with the people I love most in the world.

But... do you see the problem?  Wandering in the woods is lovely - truly; it's one of my favourite things to do.  It's just that sometimes you can get a bit lost.  And at times like this you can find yourself longing to be back on the straight open road with signposts everywhere, and the reassurance of millions of other people all doing the same thing...  No?  Well OK, maybe not - but at least a map would be nice!

So that's where I am: a little bit lost.  Yes, we're dong the English & Maths curriculum.  My twin safety blankets of Reading Eggs and MathsWhizz - the equivalent of those little yellow arrows you get in the woods, giving a vague sense of direction (and a little sigh of relief: "oh good, a yellow arrow: at least I'm on a recognised route; even if it's not the one I started on, it'll take me somewhere civilised!").  If sometimes I get a little concerned that the online 'work' is getting too boring for the boys, or it's going against my desire to have them following only their passions, I give them a few days off (like we have this week), and reaasure myself that half an hour a day is hardly going to stop their brains working for themselves.  And yes, I have given myself permission to make suggestions, to invite them into the things that I think would be interesting.  They make suggestions too.  It's nice; we have fun; we learn... I'm just feeling a bit 'where-next'-ish.

OK then, so when I'm lost what do I do?  Well first I try to work out where I am. In HE terms, this is like taking stock of where we are.  Take Eldest this morning.  I didn't think he'd done anything much except mooch, but after a lovely little chat (I wasn't interrogating him honest, just taking an interest!) it turns out he had...
1/ written a poem for Mummy about Mummy
2/ learned about the Tudors and pirates on 'Horrible Histories Gory Games' (TV)
3/ drawn Spongebob cartoons for Middle
4/ built lego constructions
5/ experimented with building a tornado machine using plastic bottles
6/ learned more about wildlife on 'Barney's Barrier Reef' and 'Natural Born Hunters'
7/ read a few books:  the Ultimate Official Guide to Club Penguin,  Waddle On Joke Book,  Professor Bumblebrains Bonkers Book of God
For a mooch, I'd say he's been quite productive!  What a little star!
And as for Middle and Youngest?  They played together really nicely all morning!  Marble runs, Kid K'nex constructions, imaginative role play... and more.  They were playing so nicely I didn't want to interrupt.  Yes I would have liked them doing things I could more easily tick off as 'subjects', but I know better than to try to make them confirm to my wobbly insecurities.  Personally, yes, I would like a bit more structure (not least because a few of my friends are having very successful structured times of it at the moment, which always brings it to my attention again) - but I'm fairly sure that Middle at least would balk at the idea. Eldest might go for it for a while, but he's doing OK without anyway. Youngest has lost any interest in workbooks etc - but he's easy in the sense that he's very definite about his likes and interests. If he wants to learn something you won't stop him, and if he doesn't want to, there's no point trying to persuade him.  Generally, it's quite clear to me that there is still some deschooling in process.

If I know where we are (we're doing OK, learning, and to a degree still deschooling), we can't be totally lost!  The next question then is: do I know where we're going?  Not in terms of having signposts and maps, or tickboxes no - but generally?  I need to remind myself of why I'm doing this - what's the goal?  Basically, we're aiming at producing happy, well-adjusted individuals, capable of discovering and pursuing their own interests.  Exams are not our goal.  When you've been in educational surroundings for as long as I have, it can seem that exam results are the be-all and end-all of education - so forgive me if I'm stating the obvious... I just need to remind myself so I don't go into autopilot.  You know that feeling when you're an experienced driver - you're driving along and realise that you weren't paying full attention, you're just on auto-pilot, following the familar roads that you're used to, to get home or another well-travelled-to destination?  Well in educational terms, exams are my auto-pilot. I need to periodically remind myself that that is NOT our destination any more.  True, they may well be a valuable stop off along the way, to help any of our boys get to where they want to go, but my focus is on producing enthusiastic and capable learners, and eventually adults who are fulfilled in their lives.  The boys don't yet know what they want from lives occupation-wise, so there's no point looking for a map to follow.  We're back to meandering, exploring & looking for the next inspiration to strike.

To go back to where I started then...am I still feeling lost?  Um... well, still a bit directionless, but given that none of the boys have expressed any desire to learn/ achieve any one thing at the moment, that's understandable.  We are heading in the right direction - and I'm pretty sure at least some of us are still deschooling (I certainly am).  Whatever we do, while writing this post I have come to realise again that the hardest thing about HE for me is that I can't use any one method with all three boys.  I think I need to focus again on the best way to help Eldest, the best way to help Middle, and the best way to help Youngest - and see where that leads us.  Following three individual paths at once? Now there's a challenge!  And a whole other blog post!  Excuse me while I go & let my brain whirr...

Normal Service to be Resumed Shortly

Hooray for time off!  My brain is starting to return to normal again - we've had a lovely week just enjoying being together, with no pressure - I guess it was a sort of half-term, in that we had got to a point of needing a break.  It kind of felt a little naughty, as the schools here aren't on half-term for another week and a half - but then, the boys were gearing up their 'learning' before the schools went back in September, so it's not really surprising that we were a bit tired sooner.  And anyway, one of the many things that I love about HE is that we can just take a break whenever we need to, rather than dragging our feet for weeks until we get scheduled time off :)

So anyway, if you've been following, you'll know I've been thinking about restrictions, suggestions, structure etc, and I think I've decided on the 'tweaks' that I started suspecting we needed a week ago in Not-so-helpful Suggestions. 

Firstly, we had been running a "no-screen-time until after lunch" rule, which kind of bit me on the bum as it seemed to generate a desire for screen-time AS SOON AS allowed.  I'm going to tweak that so that although Mummy will still have no laptop time before lunch (otherwise blogging/ facebook/ photobooks would leech all my time with the boys), the boys are free to watch TV/ go on the PC whenever they like.  After all, it really wasn't an issue when they were deschooling: they watched less then than they do now.  The thing I do have an issue with is the games consoles.  A chat with my wise friend helped me to realise that PC time is actually OK - pretty much the whole time they are on it, they are learning something valuable.  Games consoles however seem to shut down their ability to think creatively.  They're OK for encouraging teamwork occasionally (depending on the game), but on the whole they seem pretty mind-numbing.  So I'm not going to ban them or place set restrictions specifically - but I am hoping to just try to distract the boys away from playng on them if they are mentioned - with the aim that maybe we'll save them for weekends/ holidays... we'll see how it goes, anyway.

Secondly, I was concerned that by making suggestions so frequently, the boys were depending on me for ideas instead of thinking creatively for themselves, and finding their own inspiration.  Where I had viewed suggestions as just a verbal kind of strewing, it turns out that actually they carry more weight than books/ resources just left hanging about, as the boys perceive that I want them to do the things I'm suggesting.  And it's true, I do - although usually just because it looks like fun, and we do usually have fun - but by relying on my suggestions every day they were making noticeably less effort to discover their own interests.  It's not the worst thing in the world in terms of Home Education, but it's just not what I want for them.  So I think I'm going to restrict myself.  Some kind of schedule really does help me, albeit a very gentle, flexible one - so I think I'm going to limit my suggestions to my favourite days, Mondays, and see how it goes.  Tuesday - Friday it will be all about the boys finding/ developing their own ideas, but that still leaves me with a day when I get to suggest things that I've seen that I think they'd like that they otherwise wouldn't have thought of.  I'm not totally convinced about this, but we'll give it a go and see what we learn :)

Thirdly I was thinking about structure: the small amount of online curriculum that I ask of them.  I never get into a fight about it with them - if they really resist, I don't push it - but I do ask them to do an hour each of Reading Eggs & MathsWhizz per week, and I still feel that for us, that is about right.  I've been reading comments from people who home educate in a much-more structured way, and I have to say, it does appeal to my routine-loving teacher-head; I'm just not convinced that the boys would go for it...  actually, I'm convinced one of them would really struggle - so we're going to keep it light and do the minimum that I am happy with, leaving them the rest of the time to be as "autonomous" as they like (as long as that doesn't involve games consoles!!!)

So that's where we're at now - hooray for wobbles that cause me to step back and reboot :)  Tomorrow we have our regular '360 soft play' HE group trip, which is always lovely, and then next week is going to be really busy with Legoland (hooray for them letting Home Educators visit at school prices!), visiting best friends, HE coffee morning & Usborne book sale, barbers visit and non-school photos - so all of the above is on hold until the following week anyway, but I feel better for having had the chance to sort my brain out!

Also, today I received my copy of A Funny Kind of Education by Ross Mountney.  Ross wrote the first book I ever read on HE, Learning without School, when we were first serously considering Home Education early this year.  It was absolutely the best book I could have read at the time - answered all of our practical questions and encouraged me that we could do it.  Ross's experience as well as her practical, humorous, non-judgemental style makes her one of my favourite Home Ed authors (she has a brilliant blog too: here), so I'm really looking forward to reading this new book, a more personal account of her HE journey with her own family.  Actually *whispers* I read a few chapters earlier when the boys were occupied with other things - I couldn't resist - and I can already see that it's going to be a fun and encouraging read.  Having met Ross online since reading her first book, I know she is such a lovely person that she often reads other HE blogs and offers encouragement, so I'm fairly sure she'll be reading this, blushing away (Hi Ross, *cheeky grin*) - but this isn't flattery: I honestly and strongly recommend her books!

Finally, mini-blogger's fans will be pleased to know he has written some more in his diary (so much for my concerns in September that he wasn't interested in writing) - so I'll leave you in his entertaining little hands...

13th October
11:02am
played predator with (Middle).  I was
     1st - snowleopard
     2nd - octopus
     3rd - lion. 
     Yep, (Middle) was the prey and would not survive in the wild.

17th October
8:08am 
at the 14th, 15th and 16th I didn't feel writey!  Feel a bit writey now.

7:05pm 
normal day.  I did
two days ago - waking up, eating, sleeping
one day ago - waking up, eating, sleeping
today - waking up, eating, sleeping
tomorrow - waking up, eating, sleeping
Where's entertainment when you NEED IT!

7:26pm
calmed down
Bored, have a cold, and MESSY room.  "BOOOO!"
I'm so annoyed that my room is a mess, I'm reduced to a puddle.

7:41pm
froze to normal shape, no longer puddle

18th October
9:12am
at night, hedgehog in garden - amazing
morning, woodpecker in woods - amazing
5 min ago, tidy up - not amazing
VERY WRITEY ME

To Plan or Not to Plan

Uh - that would be 'not to plan' this week!

Sometimes things just don't go according to plan, so it is generally a good thing (for us) that our planning is very low-key.  This week we had a Home Ed coffee morning planned at a friend's house yesterday, which was lovely, as expected - much socialising done by children and parents, and an over-all fun time was had by all :)  Monday was a planned PJ day, as always - interrupted by a visit to the doctors, but otherwise lovely.  Tuesday we did hardly anything, which was unplanned but nexessary - and our only other 'planned event' was to be a group visit to a soft play area tomorrow... organised by myself.  I am now in the frustrating position of possibly being late to my own event (am really hoping we won't be stopped from going).  Eldest has had a couple of health issues left over from his nasty virus last month, and for the last couple of days he has really not been himself.  I can't leave it over the whole weekend so I'm going to have to try to get an appt tomorrow, at whatever time they can give me (probably in the morning).  Ah well, these things happen - and I will be soooo glad to get my sunny, happy biggest boy back again once he has recovered.

So Eldest has not been sleeping well at all; Youngest is still getting used to no pull-ups in bed, though I do simply have to boast that he went all night last night with dry pants & sheets (he still woke a few times, but no accidents, clever boy)!!  And then at some point during the night (I've stopped looking at the clock every time I'm woken up as it's too depressing), I developed severe toothache :(  I had an emergency appt this afternoon & am now armed with antibiotics and more painkillers, and an appointment for a root canal on Monday - urgh!

So that said, I wouldn't have expected to have anything to write about today.  Knowing that Eldest was struggling (and I was exhausted), I deliberately did not plan anything for today, except a bit of Wii-playing (if anything can rouse Eldest that would be it), but we just gently carried on with whatever presented itself (not least to take our minds off how rotten we were feeling in our respective ways), and surprisingly ended up doing quite a bit.   See, distractions can be positive!  So Eldest did a bit of Reading Eggspress (he loved the trial fortnight so he is now fully subscribed) and MathsWhizz, and Middle did a LOT of Reading Eggs.  Youngest wanted to play Body Bingo (we made our version last week - see All Learning Together), but when I got out the counters he looked disappointed and asked to play it the "old-fashioned way" (ie using chocolate buttons like the first time as we didn't have the proper counters when we played it last week).  Bless him - we stuck to proper counters but he still had fun shouting 'Bingo' in the appropriate places (and a few inappropriate ones)  Middle and Eldest joined in too (Eldest was reluctant to leave the sofa at this point, so he just answered the questions).

See, another nice thing about HE is that where I thought Middle might have finished with the 'Our Bodies' project that he sort of pursued last term, he's actually still very interested, and Eldest and Youngest are getting involved as well now: we don't have to ditch a project just because we've 'done it' for a term already!  So there was much excitement today when a parcel arrived for me, and when Youngest asked what it contained, we opened it to find "my new body game" - here  (I always call them mine as it immediately makes them want to try it, plus they are also slightly more likely to treat it carefully than if it were their 'own' property!)  It's great: a magnetic board with cut out magnetic shapes showing different body organs, with a little write-up on each organ's function.  All the boys enjoyed working out where each organ went, so I hope it'll turn out to be something they return to again and again.  In fact, Eldest was interested enough to go on to then have a go at this little Interactive Human Body, courtesy of the BBC.  We had fun trying to work out which way round the gall bladder went, but other than that, he did very well :)

All three boys enjoyed watching 'Deadly 60's Top Ten' on the TV at lunchtime, and then Middle and Youngest were inspired to get arty today too... I had noticed on the inspiring Deep Space Sparkle arty website that they do quite a bit Eric Carle - style art using painted paper.  Knowing how much my boys love splashing paint onto paper, we got out a few sheets and had fun mixing colours and covering the sheets with broad brush strokes, that we will save and use for coming projects. I still only have paint in the primary colours + white and black (and a little gold and silver), as it saves on storage space, plus it's a really good way to reinforce their understanding of how to make the secondary and tertiary colours etc.  Well anyway even after painting about a dozen sheets, they still weren't ready to put the paints away and Middle decided that he wanted us all to do something together, so we found a big piece of paper and got to work.  Eldest did a cloud but really wasn't in the mood today - the rest of us painted a big landscape of sky, grass & trees, then once it was dry (which took a while!) the younger two boys stuck on some Autumn stickers that I'd almost forgotten we had, and made a lovely woodland picture.  There was a little disagreement over whether or not a hedgehog should be fying in the sky, but in the end they both embraced the surreal and decided to have a whole host of flying creatures!

Finally, after a bit of Wii-play (Lego Star Wars), with all the boys enjoying killing a variety of droids, today it was Middle's turn to do some baking - and with it being Daddy's birthday, we decided to make a cake to welcome him home from work.  By this point my poorly tooth was playing up quite a bit, but Middle and I managed between us - and after all, you can't go without cake on your birthday!!!

So I was quite chuffed with today's acheivements - although I have to say, my lauded housework routine has slipped in all the 'feeling yucky'ness.  I'll just have to take it a day at a time - hope for a lovely time at Soft Play (eventually) tomorrow, a lovely weekend, and (after the necessary evil that is a Root Canal treatment on Monday), hopefully a lovely week next week with us returning to our usual joie-de-vivre.  Bring on the joie!