It’s a funny old life this; back when I used to sit in the house, spend my days chatting with friends or hanging out online I had utter confidence in the kids gaining an education. Now I am travelling the country, exposing them to a different lifestyle every couple of weeks with a huge array of new experiences on hand every single day I am questionning if they are learning! I guess the issue is that when we were together all the time I knew they were curious about the world by the questions they asked, the answers I gave, the programmes on TV I had half an eye on alongside them as they watched, the days out I planned and new ideas I introduced them to. I am so used to our autonomous approach I am able to defend it without even really thinking; pulling examples from the last 24 hours of learning in action like rabbits from a hat without any need to dig deep. Somehow this feels slightly more contrived – I could certainly lay out an impressive list of ‘new experiences’ the kids have had, places they have seen, people they have met but I’d struggle to pinpoint what is child led about it, what is a natural consequence of simply living. I suppose in order to demostrate this as an education I’d almost need to consider it structured, planned, formal – which certainly in terms of the four of us as a family it is – I spent as long planning this as we’ll be doing it, there were indeed spreadsheets, maps, long, long, long lists and plenty of forethought, unlike my approach to Home Ed. That’s not to say it doesn’t have room for being flexible and seeing what crops up along the way which is much more our Home Ed style but for all the crazy living in a campervan-ness of it there is also the sniff of a workbook somwwhere ;).
It may be guilty conscience, it may be a need to salve my own fretting or (as I’d like to imagine) it may be my deep and intuative connection with my offspring that has led me towards spending some time with them, having some deeper chats and opening my eyes to observe a bit more. I started today planning to do the photoblog but realised this is totally the wrong place to do so; it’s not WWOOFing, it’s not even what we are predominantly doing this year – it’s working, both of us all but full time and mostly away from the kids. I did task them with taking pictures to illustrate what they are learning and they did take some which showed Davies’ current project which is writing and drawing a pirate story, Scarlett feeding and communing with Jill’s chickens, both of them sitting on the quad bike but I would struggle to put words alongside them, so I won’t try and next week when we’re back to WWOOFing proper I will have another go.
I am concluding that this year is one of those best viewed in retrospect learning opportunities, that it will be the experience as a whole, the journey AND the destination, the having done it and completed and achieved it that will be what impresses on their CV rather than the being in the middle of it, that it is only at the end we will be able to conclude what was gained. I guess it’s a bit like Home Ed itself – I know in choosing not to send Davies and Scarlett to school I will have made them different, changed the course of their lives, altered things that can never be changed back, it’s just that we may never know quite what they are because we never did live the alternative, the parallel path.
It feels a bit like being in Big Brother sometimes, all my predictions about how each of us might cope, might change, might falter, seeing if they come true, working out which were simply personality quirks that will remain regardless of the circumstances and which were a result of one lifestyle and are simply not there in another. A diary room would be an interesting addition to Willow ;).
Anyway today the kids and I all slept in which was blissful and clearly much needed. I had a small number of tasks I wanted to complete and so did Ady and we both managed them all. I finished the library off, took some toothbrush holders down off the wall in our cottage and finally remembered to take a dishwasher tablet over to the function room to wash all the crockery and cutlery from breakfast on Sunday. The kids got themselves breakfast, tidied their room and took some photos. Ady finished off the job he was doing of clearing some overgrown stuff around a greenhouse.
We then all took some stuff out of Willow so we could go and collect Jill and Maggie from the station. We allowed way more time than needed and arrived with a good ten minutes to spare so sat in the car park to wait. On the way we drove past Worthy Farm, venue for the festival so I pointed that out to Ady and the kids, hard to picture just what it will be like here in a matter of weeks now.
Jill and Maggie collected we drove into Shepton Mallet which has indeed been killed by the big retail park, despite best efforts and the TV show the town centre remains a ghost town while Tescos, New Look, Boots etc just out of town is thriving. Jill bought us lunch and then we headed to Happy Landings, an animal sanctuary where she was hoping to get some more chickens but they were all reserved. They are looking for staff there, a couple of live-in positions which Jill had noticed and rung me about after we left here last time so I chatted to them about that but they are not right for us.
Back at the cottages the kids settled down to watch a film while Ady and I dug out several boxes of games from the garage. I then spent time cleaning them all down and checking that all the pieces were there. We played a couple just to road test them and then took them to the library which is now stocking games and looking really good. 🙂
Ady and I headed to Morrisons for food supplies for the rest of the week and left the kids at the cottage watching a film. Back at the cottages Ady and the kids went for a swim while I got dinner sorted – lasagne all round. The kids ate first then headed off to bed while we ate and watched The Apprentice.