Friday 21 February 2014

Rainbows and Rain

Today we spent our time on a wet and windy hillside at a local community farm with friends. A new Home Ed volunteer group.
The end of another busy week that involved parkour running, drama, dancing, an abundance of music, martial arts, new games and a new Picture Book Explorer to test. And maths, don't forget the maths ;)
And I've nearly finished knitting a new cardigan for Boykin :)
Pretty productive, all in all :)

Saturday 15 February 2014

Busy Girl.


The weather has been awful here, mainly wet and windy, not as bad as lots of places down south though, I have to say. Thank goodness! There are certain advantages to living high above sea level in the middle of the country and I do seem to remember one clear day that had blue skies for a couple of hours.....

The Girl has been busy this week, she seems to be very heavily leaning towards a performing arts education at the minute. She has had a piano lesson, a singing lesson, a cornet lesson, a dancing lesson, a choir practice, a brass band practice and a drama session this week. In fact, these are all weekly activities often with a violin lesson chucked into the mix too. I'm very pleased that she still has lots of enthusiasm for all these activities as she is fast approaching those dreaded years of can't-be-botheredness. I know that it isn't the same for all teenagers, some don't go through that phase and I'm sincerely hoping that my beautiful daughter doesn't take after me and that she stays very bothered :)

I know some people would look at the long list of activities she does and wonder where she gets her energy from, I know I sometimes do. And on the nights when I feel tired and less than enthusiastic about leaving the warm fire and going out into the cold and dark to take her somewhere yet AGAIN, I have to remind myself why our lives are like this. She doesn't go to school. She is Home Educated and always has been to give her the opportunity and energy to follow her natural inclinations. She is now a teenager and she needs time and space to pursue her own interests, to find her own feet and learn to feed her own passions. I don't want her days consumed in a classroom, coming home too tired to do any of the things she would like to do, all peopled-out, and with no time for 'extras' with homework hanging over her head as the pressure to pass 11 GCSEs builds up. To me, her activities are not 'extras', they are the mainstay of who she is, maths and English are 'extras'  - and science, science is definitely an 'extra' - and not a very welcome one as far as she is concerned :/

Looking over my last few blogposts, I'm really aware that they're full of what Boykin does, that I write less and less about The Girl, but I guess that is par for the course. I still have lots of input to her education, but it feels less hands-on and more hands-off. I'm there to help when she asks for it, but gone are the days of singing counting rhymes in the middle of maths, doing Five in a Row and making lapbooks with her about animals. These days, the most directed input I have is when she does the activities I write into the Picture Book Explorers. I'm thankful that she is happy not only to test them out for me, but also to add improvements and suggestions of her own. (This weekend we will be mostly making quill pens and drawing.)


She is full of ambition and luckily seems to have the drive to go with it. Sometimes I feel less like her mother and more like her PA, organising her diary, telling her what appointments she has that day and what she needs to do to prepare for her next activity ;) Even that will fall by the wayside soon enough...

There is a sense of having gone full circle, back to the more autonomous approach I set out with when she was a very little Girl. She still studies maths every morning and keeps to the daily routines which we have had in place for a few years now. Hopefully, this will help her with time management and with the self-discipline she will need to get the exams she wants. She may not feature much in this blog right now, nor in the future, but she is more in control of her education than she ever was and, most importantly, is still enjoying learning.


Monday 10 February 2014

That February Feeling :/

While I've noticed the days are starting to get a little longer, I've also noticed that I'm feeling a lot grumpier. I thought it was just me but there was a whole thread of grumpy feeling Home Edders on one of the forums I'm on. It made me feel a lot better knowing that I'm not alone.
That's one of the beauties of modern technology I suppose, the awareness that there are so many other people to 'talk' to. People that you've never even met in real life, people that you are walking a similar path with nonetheless. It's all so different to when my eldest was a teenager. I used to look forward to the monthly local group meeting even more than he did and I was even more eager to hear the bi-monthly EO newsletter pop through the letterbox. I'd make myself a cup of tea and wouldn't emerge again until I'd read it from cover to cover.
Now, I can turn on my computer or check my phone, log on to facebook or A Little Bit of Structure, or any number of other HE forums and ask for advice and give advice. I can share links, jokes and photos with people not only all over Britain but all over the world. This is great in a way, but can also become cumbersome if I allow myself to get caught up in hot debates or find that the really long post I've just written has completely disappeared, never to be seen again.
While I sometimes feel that my life is dominated by the internet - especially since I started writing Picture Book Explorers - I don't think I would like to go back to the old days, although I still miss that old EO newsletter arriving with the postman. I love the ease with which we can share information and point each other to new and interesting websites. I love how much easier it is to organise Home Ed meetings and trips via yahoo groups and email. I love those spur of the moment invites people put up on the local facebook group. It's so much easier than the old phone tree we had that meant the message never quite made its way round to everyone.
I feel like a bit of a Luddite in lots of ways when it comes to new technology. But my current teenager has it all down pat. She can Skype on her phone with a friend while they play minecraft together. I have to confess the Skype thing baffles me a bit. I might have to get her to see if she can show me how to do it on my phone.....
Anyhow, today it was a bit brighter and I even did some weeding which means it must be nearly Spring :) I also got rid of some clutter and now have 3 bags to go to the charity shop :) My house is too full and I am determined to make it less so this year :/
Boykin did a page of maths - he's working on long multiplication right now and seems to have got it pretty sussed. He also did some handwriting and has announced he needs another book as he only has one page left to go. He found a renewed interest in it after buying himself a fountain pen with his birthday money. He also did a page in his grammar book, all about adjectives. He'd had enough of writing by that time though and cheated showed great initiative by drawing linking lines from the words to the spaces. Other than that, he has sorted Lego, tried to make a motorbike garage, played minecraft, and visited friends.
The Girl has also done maths today. Her section involved looking at volume so she spent ages making cubes and other 3D shapes from the unit cubes in the cuisenaire rods. Then she practised her cornet, had her first piano lesson, then later a singing lesson. She spent a long time with her phone looking up piano tutorials on youtube and practising with those. Then she Skyped and minecrafted simultaneously....