I feel the sky tumbling down (tumbling down!)

So that went well then – not!

Just thought I’d begin the first of our half an hour of schooly stuff and what sort of a fool am I? We had shouting at each other, sending to bedrooms for being distracting, tears, threats of sending to school tomorrow and much flouncing from the room being followed by the others. All three of us were rubbish really, I wanted to become some sort of teacher figure but turned into an irrational bully, Davies really wanted to play with his lego (which probably teaches him more in half an hour about colour, size, counting, construction and motor skills than me stood infront of him shrieking would in a week!) and Scarlett wanted to either scribble in his workbooks with a pink crayon or do toddler acrobatics ontop of her table to attract attention (as opposed to the bruised chin she actually managed!).

In the middle of all this my Amazon order arrived with the Bob books – a quick glance through had Davies naming all the letters he had failed to do on his workbook and all in the snuggly cuddly environment of sitting on my lap enjoying being together instead of the high pressure environment created earlier.

I think it has more to do with me worrying that I am not doing enough educational stuff with him and that we spend too much time gallivanting about and playing instead of actively ‘home educating’ him. I have of course now been brought back down to earth by several home truths:
1. I am not a teacher, nor do I have any skills relevant to being one – what I am is a good mother who can teach stuff simply by living and doing it with them
2. workbooks are great if they suit you and the child, but instead of him sitting at his table for an hour finding all the letters in a picture and colouring them in, we would be better off going for a walk with me and spotting the letters in street names, road signs and the supermarket.
3.He is only four. Even if he was going to school he would still be doing mainly fluffy playing stuff – E is a whole school year older than him and they still have not introduced letters or numbers. I think I already kurb a lot of his natural four year old boy behaviour by stopping him from marauding the house swiping at his little sister with toy swords and scaring the cats. To then make him sit still and do work is just not natural for him (or me – that sitting down stuff meant that two cups of tea went cold and got poured down the sink, and I didn’t check the comments on last nights blog which were telling me I shouldn’t be worrying anyway!).
4. The whole reason I love the thought of HE is that it allows him to follow his strengths – he is good at learning through discussion, ‘field trips’, watching something on TV and following it up and creative play with his toys.
5. On the plus side Scarlett managed at least four of the letters I was pointing at this morning so I reckon if I need to fulfil my Enid Blyton fantasy of little children sat at desks working industriously then she will be the one to help me play 🙂

So, although the whole curriculum based, workbooks, sitting down doing school at home thing keeps luring me back whenever I have a wobble I think this morning has shown me that for us, at this time we were doing it right as we were. When I compare Friday and all the stuff we did on senses in a relaxed, as it happened way, and the debacle this morning I *know* which day I would rather be living in!