Some of you may have noticed that I recently reappeared on the Early Years Blogring. I left the blog ring with this here blog you are reading quite some while ago for various reasons – I was concerned about too much personal information about me and the children contained in the blog and not enough educational content for it to be sitting under a ‘Home Education’ banner. I very rarely read round the blogring (it’s just sooo big!) but when I did a month or so ago I realised that whilst there are many different approaches out there there is probably noone ‘doing it’ quite like us. I’d already set up a blog (you’re shocked aren’t you :oops:) for the children’s specifically ‘educational achievements’ as this has long since become far more a personal diary and far less a HE record, albeit the personal diary of a family who HE. So it’s there and it documents the things that the children and I cover on a weekly basis in the hopes that it will demonstrate to people who don’t know about this approach as an option and should we ever need to have information regarding what we do in the course of our day to day lives in order to tick someone somewhere’s boxes then it will there, ready and waiting, illustrated, dated and categorised for me to point them at.
A year or so ago every time someone else speculated about whether they were doing enough with their children, whether they should consider school, indeed decided school was the way forward or agonised about education generally it sent me into my own personal whirlpool of doing the same. Equally someone waxing lyrical on the great joys and successes of HE would also have me feeling somehow inferior and challenging and questioning how we were doing. I had my mental list of how old all of everyone else’s children were on a sort of mental timeline with my own two and would – in spite of myself – be comparing and contrasting and weighing up a reading a Bob book there with a writing a name here and raising you one act of self sufficiency for your demonstration of independance there.
All of my worries about the children would be equated with their HE status – can’t wipe his own bum? He’d have to if he was at school, can’t persuade her to have her hair brushed? Well it would be in plaits daily at school, still hasn’t been left alone and is still not at all prepared or ready for that to happen? Ha! Pre school would have taken care of that 2 years ago!
There are still things which raise my concerns and will continue to do so over the years but HE vs School seems a bit of a no brainer for us right now. Similarly the approach we are taking with no structure also seems really rather obvious too.
Over the years I have had concerns about various things which have all proved unfounded and in the main I have learnt to let things happen in their own sweet time wrt the children. Davies was right at the outside edge of ‘normal’ with his walking – at 17 and a half months he still wasn’t and I was fretting like mad. Bet none of you have looked at him and ever thought his walking is any way deficient now. I remember when one of his little friends was saying ‘Dada’ way before him how I fretted – now his vocabulary is one of the widest for a child his age I know. So mobility and communication sorted themselves out.
At this point I am very aware that Davies specifically would be well into the tick boxes and standards of measurement if he were at school and it would be all too easy to still do that within the HE community we move in. So Davies can’t read yet – he’s got the mechanics inasmuch as he knows all the letters and the sounds they make, he knows that you blend them together to make words which means that if he is in the right frame of mind then words like cat, sat, mat and so on are well within his capability. But give him the, you, or are and chances are he’d be a bit stumped. Does this have any impact on his day? None whatsoever. Do I think if it did he’d crack those words in about half an hour? You betcha! Am I suprememly confident that as and when he needs to read – and I’m guessing given how much he loves books and he loves information and learning new things it will probably be sooner rather than later – he will do so? I certainly am. Davies says ‘I can’t read yet’ and if he is considering it something he will be able to do but hasn’t done yet then that’s I consider it to be too. When the time is right I have no doubt he will master it with exactly the same zest and enthusiasm and craving to get it done and get it right that he approaches his other passions.
Today we went to the cinema. Films are totally Davies’ thing – watching them, certainly but far, far more that that. He wants to know about the whole process, the actors, the animators, the scriptwriters, the filming process, the sets and he is recently learning about the marketing and advertising too. I started to explain to him about the projector and the screen while we sat there and he shushed me and explained it to me with a better understanding of it that I possessed myself. He tells me he learnt it from watching the extras bits on a couple of his dvds. When I asked him if he thought he’d probably do something to do with cinemas and films when he grew up he looked at me like I was slightly deranged and said ‘of course’. Which could be anything from the person selling the popcorn, to the star of the film, to the director or scriptwriter or the animator. The opportunity to specialise is one so few schooled children seem to be offered and I would argue that far from limiting a child allowing them the time to truly discover things and fully develop that knowledge is probably the greatest gift we can offer. Who knows what future doors I’d be shutting by dragging him away from his exploring so that he can better perfect his reading to see whether it said push or pull on the front.
Well said! I love it that my kids can follow their passions. I find it so liberating not having to compare them with others of the same age.
Comment by Allie — 22 May 2006 @ 6:29 pm
Ever seen Cinema Paradiso? Lovely little film if you ever have an evening to spare. Nothing to do with your post apart from the last paragraph though! Won’t say any more otherwise I’ll spoil it.
I’m still mightily pissed off at my lot for enjoying school so much and keep hoping they’ll get bored of it. No brainer is the right description, honestly. Don’t get me started.
Nice post, anyway, and you’re quite right about it all.
Comment by Sarah — 22 May 2006 @ 7:01 pm
Agree about the specialising – how wonderful that a child might be able to find something they are genuinely interested in and pursue it as and whenever and to whatever level they wish. And all the skills that are learnt under the umbrella of that motivation!
Comment by Ali — 23 May 2006 @ 1:20 pm