Davies, Scarlett and I have seen the error of our ways. We’ve come to terms with the fact that we’ve been doing this Home Ed lark all wrong. What with our non planning, no idea what we’ll be doing next week let alone next year, haphazzard approach to the whole thing. No broad and balanced, no ensuring every area is covered, just one big old free for all.
So we’re turning over a new leaf. We’ve decided to seek help, guidance and inspiration in the form of a curriculum. We thought about Sonlight, we looked at reading schemes, we’ve discussed workbooks and we’ve cogitated over the National Curriculum but finally decided we needed something with a hook to bring it to our level, to make it relevant to us.
So we’ve chosen something that was a bit influence to me in my younger years. Something which covers it all, allows for practical tasks alongside the more structured learning. It’s classical, penned by famous writers and has maybe an element of quirkiness about it. We’ve decided not to follow it in order but to mix it up a bit, give it a twist so to speak
Just today it meant we got some fresh air and exercise outside, some handling of livestock, some language, some IT watching youtube footage, some maths in the form of size ratios debating what would fit into where and some valuable forward planning tasks. There was some music, some poetry in the form of learning verse, certainly a little creativity and imagination and some drama and empathy is planned for tomorrow.
You might know Grant and Naylor better for their fine work in penning the Red Dwarf series and books but before that they were involved in the work we are choosing to study, when way back in the 1980s they wrote The Chicken Song.
Today we did indeed hold a chicken in the air:
and we learnt to say ‘Heebe’ which is ‘Hello’ in Arapaho. We also learnt that the Arapaho tribe are Native Americans living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming..
We have discussed whether we should use a really small deck chair to stick inside our noses or whether we should just insert one small corner of a regular sized one.
We have talked a little about disembowlment and why we won’t be doing that section of the curriculum as a practical and just what other ingredients would make for a nice Gran Casserole.
Tomorrow we’re planning on pretending we are all called Keith and maybe breaking out the green paint for our left knees.
Bring on the annual inspections – we are *so* ready ;).
ha ha!
Comment by Sarah — 04 July 2009 @ 6:05 am