D’you know I reckon I’ve got the hang of this Home Ed lark. Well at least until tomorrow 😉
We’ve had another good day here today although I did lose my temper with Scarlett and yell once I don’t think it was entirely unjustified and blimey did it make her move! 😈
First thing the children were playing with geomags and soft toys while I did some washing and generally faffed around. I got into my head that I wanted to read up on Key Stages and National Curriculum so that I could mentally weigh up any glaring gaps in the ‘stuff’ Davies can do – and probably then just brag to anyone who’d listen about actually how well he is doing, well my Dad anyway. So I was messing around online trying to find a simple laid out basic list of the goals etc. Not as straightforward as you’d think really 🙄
I did read through the Foundation / Reception stuff and was very happy to note that both the children are fine in respect of the 3-5 stuff anyway. I guess it was a semi-pointless exercise as it’s only remotely likely to be literacy and numeracy that are quantifiable anyway (everything else must surely get lumped into general knowledge and just living although I know they categorise it in far more detail – y’know that National Currciculum was obviously written by someone like me wasn’t it – why use two words if a whole paragraph will do! 😉 ) and I’m more than happy with his progress via autonomous educating with occassional forays into forced Bob book reading and supermarket counting!
So I was trying to concentrate on a bit that waffled about children being able to get themselves dressed independantly or with help or not at all or not even knowing what clothes were or something and Scarlett got yelled at for being clumsy and giddy and falling over the geomags so I told them they both had to get dressed by themselves! And they did 🙂 And then I continued my rant having read about getting suitable attire for outdoor pursuits on independantly or with help or not at all and heading out without a vest on in February with bare feet. And they managed that too. Davies was in the hall whispering to himself and I shouted at him thinking he might be muttering bad things or putting curses on me and he came in having made a start of tying his shoelaces (our latest in house row, with me veering between insisting he’d have to do it if he was in school and he’d better bloody learn, being all patient and doing one shoe while he does the other and just doing it for him as it’s quicker and we never leave the house until we are running 10 minutes late anyway so faffing with shoelaces just makes us later!). So it turned out the whispering was him reciting some poem he’d seen on Little Bill or Sali Mali or something about how to tie your shoelaces 😳 …
Off to soft play where we were followed in by Lucy who I’d texted yesterday to say we’d be going there so we sat and chatted for ages and then Julie and the twins arrived too. The kids had a ball, all played together really nicely and me, Lucy and Julie had interesting chats about parenting, Home Ed and other general life stuff. Lucy then headed off, me and Julie and children had lunch and chatted to another woman who just had the look of a Home Educator about her but we didn’t pluck up the courage to ask and then we went back in for a final hour’s play.
It was quite busy in there today, particularly after lunch and we were amused and slightly grossed out by witnessing two urine related accidents within the ball pool and tunnels! Nothing to do with our children although me and Julie did end up dealing with one little boy who’s mother had buggered off to the cafe. I’d thought he’d been there with a bloke and so was asking him where his daddy was which upset and confused him as apparently ‘My Daddy is at work. Why isn’t my Daddy at work then?’ Poor child! Both of my two found new friends there to include in their games as usual which is always heartwarming so it was a very nice day there.
We came home via the Wizard store as I had a need for retail therapy however frugal so for under a fiver we picked up some plasticine, a couple of crafty kits (one with straws and one with sparkly wool for glitter knitting!), some foam beads with a plastic needle and thread, a small globe and some bubble mixture. Scarlett blew bubbles til she got lightheaded while Davies and I looked at the globe for a while and then got out an atlas and compared various things on there. I showed him whereabouts in the UK we live, where we lived in Manchester and where we were at Melrose. We talked a bit about the continents, capital cities and about how the UK is an island very small in comparison to other places. All very basic stuff but still about twice what would be covered in an hour’s lesson at school :-).
We did the straw craft for a very short time and then Davies started playing with the geomags while Scarlett resumed bubble blowing so I ignored them for a while and went online. Davies then brought me a geomag fish he’d made and then turned it into a shark by adding a fin. He made a couple more fish and then I started helping with some more fish, a crab, a very unsuccessful seahorse ;-), a starfish and an aborted attempt at an octopus. Davies did a deep sea diver, a clown fish (doing alternate white and red rods with me having to ‘pretend the red ones are orange Mummy!’ and a few more small fish. It all looked really good 🙂
Then I showed him a variation on the Krampf experiment of a couple of weeks ago based on that executive toy with ball bearings on strings in a cradle. Krampt used coins but we used geomag balls and I lined 6 up and showed him that if you knock one into the row then one moves the other side, if you knock two then two move and so on. He really liked that and was very interested in how it worked and even explained it to Ady in great detail – and very accurately – when he got home so that was physics more than ticked 😉
Finally we did an experiment to test how many balls you could lift with one rod, how many with two rods, how many with three rods and so on to see if it increased with more rods. I got Davies to write down the numbers of rods and balls so he’d remember and he then explained it to Ady referring to his notes and recreating it for Ady too. So writing, maths and the general basics of how to conduct an experiment and record your findings all covered.
All sounds like loads really but I probably spent less than an hour doing it and all with no preparation at all. Coupled with that we pulled off socialising and physical activity too. 🙂
Tomorrow Mum is coming over at lunchtime (and bringing lunch from M&S hurrah!) and on Friday I am looking after Jack and Maisie for a few hours. This is actually a HUGE deal as I don’t think I’ve ever looked after anyone else’s children ever. Infact I know I havn’t. So I’m relying heavily on Davies to entertain all of them for me while I try hard not to think about the huge weight of responsibility weighing down in having all of the next generation of Goddards’s under my irresponsible, unethical, childish and intolerant control! 😉
Yeah, let’s hope there’s not a gas explosion on your corner or something!
And you did look after Elijah, and feed him, for at least an hour or two last Kessingland 🙂 So I’m sure you’ll be fine 😉
Does sound like a very pleasant day indeed 🙂
Comment by Alison — 01 March 2006 @ 9:02 pm
That should end “and then we had lunch”!
Spark island have removed their NC stuff which is a real shame as it was lovely and user friendly.
Comment by Merry — 01 March 2006 @ 9:08 pm
Lol, that wasn’t me Alison, it was Ady. I was hiding in the communal tent drinking gin and lemsip with Layla I think 😉
Yeah, I think I might have glimpsed at that before Merry… ah well
Comment by Nic — 01 March 2006 @ 9:14 pm
oooh that was a good day!
As you say, it’s amazing how suddenly you can find you’ve covered vast quantities of subject matter/investigation/general learningness in just 20 minutes, completely unplanned. I love that.
Comment by Ali — 01 March 2006 @ 10:16 pm
i find the nc site nearly meaningless tbh.
Comment by HelenHaricot — 01 March 2006 @ 11:43 pm
she said in an unhappily insecure and aloof way
Comment by HelenHaricot — 01 March 2006 @ 11:45 pm
NC is just someone’s list of stuff, as far as I’m concerned. The NC and lit and numeracy strategies pass through my hands at work and I do look at them. But in about two minutes I’m struck by how arbitrary it all seems. The people who wrote that stuff don’t know my kids, so they don’t know diddly!
She said in a determinedly secure and belligerent way 😉
Comment by Allie — 02 March 2006 @ 1:12 am
I quite agree about the NC! Yesterday Joe’s teachers handed me some goal or other that they were setting for him which was lifted from the foundation stage thing, and although they were saying what they were supposed to say, iyswim, it was quite clear that even they thought it was a load of bollocks! It was as if they were delivering what they had been told to deliver but they completely didn’t believe in it.
I’m amazed that Davies has laces! Steve’s mum bought Abbie some trainers with laces in the sales and I’m still cursing her (along with Anna’s hooker boots :roll:) as Abbie finds it hard to do laces still, although she does know how – I’m going to stick to velcro for Josiah for a good while yet!
Comment by Sarah — 02 March 2006 @ 7:36 am
He wouldn’t have laces he’s have velco!
Comment by Roslyn — 02 March 2006 @ 1:26 pm
It was Sali Mali, about making a loop and holding it tight, putting the other one round and making a hole and pulling it through but I’m sure it was more poem like that that 😉 The two of my children who are expected to put on their own shoes have velcro, B doesn’t atm but only because I got him a completely bargain pair of shiny red DMs for £3.19 on Ebay plus it means he can’t throw them at people on the bus so easily. FWIW K is “bored” in Reception because (and I quote) “They don’t do work, they just play” so what you are doing would be more than enough! You don’t need to mention that he clarified it later by saying that if they had a PS2 at school he’d be happy 😀
Comment by SallyM — 02 March 2006 @ 5:07 pm
Yeah I think D would find reception very very limiting, hell I think Scarlett would find it limiting! Not because I have two geniuses on my hands but because it would just restrict their freedom, choices and natural inclinations to stuff.
Hurrah for home ed! 🙂
Comment by Nic — 02 March 2006 @ 7:08 pm