One word? When seven would do…

I read Gill’s recent post on the difference between autonomy and educational neglect with both interest and a small degree of unrest. I do hold my hands up in the air to being really quite lazy and certainly one of the big reasons why autonomy suits us quite so well is that I would probably start each school term filled with the joys of homeschooling, with neatly sharpened pencils, coloured in timetables and vast quantities of new stationery. This would run smoothly for approximately a week and a half before I lost interest and having removed educational responsibility from my children I would leave us all in the lurch! But I did rather gulp guiltily when Gill cited an adult available at all times to facilitate education at child’s will or a very similar sentence as of course that doesn’t always happen here a great deal more than the colour coded paperclips and brimming shelves of workbooks does. Mostly of course because we are not a family who spend a great deal of time just ‘being’, we are more of the ‘doing’ variety which means in the same was as we wouldn’t have time for normals or scheduled work each morning we also don’t have time to answer all questions as they arise either. So I do, from time to time, for very brief moments wonder whether it mightn’t just be all a bit easier to get some pre-packaged curriculum, or even write my own (and yeah, I do reckon I could lay on a key stage one years worth of stuff based on Mr Blobby if pushed 😉 ) and roll it out to them for an hour or two a day and then relax back into doing not a lot with them. Except of course it does indeed go against everything I (currently 😉 ) believe in so I don’t. I wait and know, in more confident moments, that actually when they decide they ‘want educating’ along they will come with their questions and their demands and their needs. I trust them to ask, me to listen and all of us together with the process to make it happen as we go along. And of course it does :).

This morning while I was putting clean clothes away in Davies’ room he came to chatter to me and tidy his bedroom up a bit at the same time. He has a ‘collection’ of empty loo rolls which he spirits away before the slovenly housekeeper (that’d be me then 🙂 ) chucks them in the recycling. He appeared to be just bunging them in the cardboard box I’d told him to put them all in, but he suddenly stopped with the last one in his hand and said ‘when I get one more I’ll be able to count in twos all the way up then’ I looked at him and he said by way of explanation ‘I’ve got eleven now, when I have twelve I’ll be able to count in twos all the way up’. He’d not actually counted in twos up to ten as when I asked him he got to six confidently and then faltered, but he had put them in in twos so he knew what he was on about. 🙂 He then talked to me about the Mr Men books he was putting back on his bookcase, telling me that (Ros’s) Buzz has the whole collection. I explained that Buzz was starting to read so Davies started talking about reading and I explained that it will really only come with practise. It is up to him but if he wanted to get quicker then I would happily sit with him every day looking at books and practising reading, or get him whatever books he wanted to start with from the library. He pulled some red nose reader books off the shelf and told me that they were good for starting to read and that he often looks at them in bed (which I already knew as I frequently remove them from down the side of his bed and put them back on the bookshelf :lol:) so he brought several of those downstairs and we sat and looked at one together. He got well over half way through it and although I wouldn’t say he was reading as such, and don’t for one minute think he will want to do that every day it did reassure both of us that he can indeed do it when he wants / needs to. Very spookily I was telling him about remembering when I learnt to read and explaining about the Peter and Jane books we used at school. I was sounding out ‘Peter and Jane play with the ball’ for him to demonstrate and Ady arrived home not 20 minutes later having stopped at a charity shop and picked up among other things a Peter and Jane book with mention of that very ball!! 🙂

Scarlett was doing more of her princess annuals / activity books, doing some very tidy colouring in and various bits of writing and pretend writing including starting to write her name in all sorts of places (all allowed places I hasten to add). I don’t recall where the request had come from but Davies had asked to make cakes so I’d told him he could make some all by himself with a tiny bit of help. We got out the ingredients and the scales and I told him how to make sponge cakes by weighing the eggs and then equally that weight with butter, sugar and flour. He weighed two eggs at 5oz so measured out 5oz each of butter and sugar and creamed them (I helped a tiny bit with that), he cracked open and added two eggs (no help at all for that one), then weighed out, sifted and mixed 5ox of flour – again a bit of help with the final stirring. Then he put out 12 paper cake cases and split the mixture between them and I put them in the oven. He and Tarly licked the spoons :). They had lunch while the cakes cooked and I got Davies to keep checking them to see if they were done. He took them out of the oven too. Later on this afternoon I asked him if he remembered how to make cakes and he reeled off the recipe and the terms ‘creamed’ and ‘fizzed’ (what he was calling sieving!). I made buttercream icing and he and Tarly decorated them later this afternoon.

After lunch Ady went off to college and while I was hanging the washing out Davies and Scarlett came out dressed as Mike and Sully (thanks Jan 🙂 ) which made me laugh lots. They looked very cute 🙂

When I came in and looked at the clock to find it was only just gone 1pm and it had been so lovely and sunny outside I suggested that we go to the beach instead of staying home indoors. They didn’t take much persuading so we grabbed a couple of carrier bags for shells and other finds, put on wellies and off we went. We’d only been there 15 minutes or so when Ady rang to say his college course wasn’t running today as it was a study day for revision at home, so I told him where to find us and 20 minutes later he was there with us on the beach. The children got wet, scrambled over rocks, found shells and stones, commented on all the differences between Lancing and Hunstanton beaches, threw stones in the sea and made all sorts of sand creations from pictures and writing in the sand to sandcastles with no buckets or spades. Loads of pics on flickr, I might pop some into this post tomorrow, but it was just a lovely, lovely afternoon. 🙂

I’d promised to consider purchasing ice creams so in the end Ady came home via the supermarket and got ice creams while I took D&S home and ran them a lovely warm bath to wash all the sand off. They had their ice creams then a long bath while I mixed up some butter icing for the cakes. They then decorated them, had their tea and ate cakes and fruit for pudding.

Then my parents arrived for dinner. They had a happy hour or so with them while I got dinner on then the children went to bed, we candled eggs, had dinner and a fairly pleasant evening. Tomorrow I’m back to work in the morning so I really shouldn’t still be sitting here at nearly 1am. So I will be off.