Home Education: Wonder and beauty before taxonomy and dissection

“if you go back to Greek, there is a word that does not exist in the English language, the word kalon, which means both “good” and “beautiful” at the same time, and it’s specified by another word, kaiagathon, or k’agathon, which is a contraction of to kalon kai to agathon, “the good and the beautiful”. Great marriage.” Peter Kreeft

The children love to go to the park or walk in the woods and one their favourite activities (especially for Heleyna) is to “look for nature” wherever they go. I want them to have a sense of wonder when they look at nature and to see it as beautiful and amazing. So far I think they do. I am not big on poetry and romance (in the old sense, well, and the new) but I do like the philosophical view of beauty as necessary for us to grow.

Charlotte Mason was very keen that children keep a nature journal in which they drew and stuck pressed flowers and such like. In this way they learn to see both the beauty and the “science” of nature. Part of this was based in her respect for the personhood of the child.

It’s the same with music and art. I think it’s very important that the children learn to listen to beautiful music and see lovely art works before I start explaining the methods involved. In learning to draw or play music it should be on a foundation of having had time to simply listen and look.

If the ancient philosophers are right and beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder, but something inherent in itself, I want the children to have the time to see and hear and be, long enough to appreciate it. I think in giving them time to be with something beautiful they can acquire an appreciation of it, and can learn about it, taking it apart, later, if necessary, later. I think it’s a bit like the way a child learns language through first acquiring it in his relationship with those around him, especially his mother. A child can acquire a love of beauty through a relationship with a natural environment. Isn’t there some research out there about depression being linked to lack of greenery in housing estates?

With the Montessori approach to nature there’s a more scientific bent, which is good, but I want the children to appreciate creation as a whole, as well.

This is something that’s been floating about in what’s left of my foggy brain for some time. It began with an online conversation I saw between a home ed mother and a primary school teacher. She spoke of taking her children out to the woodlands and countryside so they could be outside and enjoy the place. She talked of stone walls and lichen and mosses. It all sounded lovely.

The teacher took exception to this. He said he took his group of children out and  by the time they trooped back to school they had identified and marked off various forms of lichen. I assume he armed them with worksheets, for this.

Perhaps he didn’t mean to come across the way he did, but I remember thinking how cold and meaningless his “lesson” seemed compared to hers. It also made me wonder (again) about the impact of closing children up inside institutional buildings with little exposure to the outside world. And then only exposing them in very restricted adult controlled ways.

One major advantage that home ed has over most other forms is time. We can take a summer day and let the children be out and about in it, without any time constraints  There are plenty of cold wet days to do workbook work; and the bright days are not so frequent we should squander them. Anyway, as a good science teacher should know, kids need sunlight to process vitamin D.

I can’t help thinking that many of the great Victorian and Edwardian naturalists that opened so much new scientific discovery to us, would never have been as observant or as in love with their subject of study had they only ever been exposed to the outside world in small time segments with a worksheet on a clipboard.

I think Charlotte Mason had it right. Children need time to be with nature before they need to analyse it. There is enjoyment and interest in learning the names of different mosses and lichens, but if a child is made to spend too much time peering at a stone in a wall and then writing on a worksheet, they are not getting the bigger picture they would have if they had time to stand and stare.

Is that a lapbook I see before me. the glue stick toward my hand?

Come, let me make thee! …or not.

The temptation towards lapbooking is creeping up on me again and yet I have had a rather love-hate relationship with lapbooks over the years.

On the one hand we’ve enjoyed making them and there’s lots of fine motor skill practice for the younger ones in cutting and gluing, but on the other hand I always get a bit depressed at the wonderfully, neatly produced wonder-lapbooks you see online compared to the stuff we always end up making.

I also fret about the time they take to make and whether the children are actually learning anything from them. But they were younger then and perhaps its time to reintroduce lapbooking with a Montessori twist for Heleyna as a way of repeating work for building her memory.

In the past the whole process of making the lapbooks seemed to take forever and then we had the problem of whether to keep them or not and whether, after so much work, they were ever referred to again.  But I realise that they make a great way to return to a subject without making it obvious that we need to go back over something.

I’ve started with a “phonics” lapbook where there are practice pieces for reading and writing phonic sounds and words. As a lapbook that will get used over and over, I think it will be worth the effort.

One of the other things that has me reaching for the folder and the glue stick is that a lot of Montessori free printables are just right for lapbooking.

Homeschool help free lapbook stuff

dynamic 2 moms has some lapbooking stuff

 

Home educating dyslexic children.

Heleyna is certainly dyslexic. I am not going to have her diagnosed as there isn’t any reason to while she’s being home educated. She has been doing some free writing over Easter, because she enjoys it, and it’s fairly obvious that she is going to have a tough time ahead as she learns to read and write properly. At the moment she writes from right to left (she’s right handed) with all letters revered and no spaces between the words. This is very much how Iona wrote at that age. She can’t differentiate between b and d, m and n and u p and q and y and g. She has forgotten the names and sounds of a lot of the letters we learned before Easter.

Thankfully Heleyna is the kind of child willing to work at anything and do so cheerfully. She does get frustrated at times but she is so advanced with other areas of learning that she can turn to drawing, maths and geometry when other stuff gets her down.

We are going to have to make sure she reads every day, bit by bit and give lots of encouragement.  I am going to use more Elkonin boxes with her. I am in the process of designing some for her to use for better phoneme recognition. I remember they worked well for Avila when she struggled with reading – but her problems were nowhere near as broad as Heleyna’s in reading and writing.

There are adjustable Elkonin box worksheets on more.starfall which we;ve been using a lot. It’s a method used by Montessori teachers as well from what I can see.

Repetition, word building using the movable alphabet and memory games will continue.

The FREE DOWNLOADS from HEIDISONGS which I’ve only just discovered look useful too.

Also free printables from the American Dyslexia Association

There’s some good ideas on DYSLEXIX LEARNERS too.

I am also going to read this on a Montessori approach to dyslexia (pdf)

I am hoping to design some stuff for Heleyna to use and if I do – and it’s any good- I’ll make sure I send them to Kalei for posting.

One other decision I think I need to make soon is whether to get her learning cursive writing pretty soon. It’s reported to be better for dyslexic children. But I have also read that keyboard skills are much better for dyslexic children. I am not so sure as I think even in the computer age we still need to be able to write.

This site has some cursive worksheets

I am going to make some cursive cards for her with THIS FREE TEMPLATE from Montessori Materials

I’ve been through all this before with the older two and I thought I was going to have more problems with Miss Avila than we’ve had. She is now fluent reading and writing with only a few issues around spelling.

I know Heleyna can overcome things so long as she’s allowed to find the best way of learning for her.

Home Education; planning Easter term and beyond. Hearing them read and dyslexia

I have made some adjustable planning sheets on Publisher. The idea is that each of the children will have a set of lessons they must have completed by the end of each day. There’s no “time slot” as it doesn’t matter to me when they do the work as such, but only that they do it. We have been using these for a while now and they work quite well. It’s a way to get them to be a little more independent in their learning and how they use their time.

Meanwhile I am determined NOT to buy any more curriculum for them until July or August. It’s time to make sure we make the most of the stuff we have, utilise some of the freebies and let the budget recover from the last two imports from America.

As you can see we work hard for three days and have two fairly light days. On a Wednesday we meet up with another Home Ed family and do a short history lesson together. Friday’s are mainly language days and catching up on stuff that should have been done.

I do want the school day to finish a little earlier than it has been. We’ve been dragging things out to half two or even three o’clock before the Easter hols. I want to be finished by half one or two so there’s more afternoon time for practical stuff like cooking, science experiments and artsy crafty stuff. As Ronan has just bought himself a new recipe book I want to make sure he has some time to use it.

One of the questions I had as Avila finished reading The Mates of the Kulalong is whether I should still have her read out loud to me. My friend is an English teacher and she believes the biggest mistake teachers make in primary school is to stop hearing the children read once they seem fluent.  I had wondered if I should still hear her read to make sure she is accurate and to expand her reading vocabulary. My friend thinks this is the right approach, as she thinks the reason so many children end up unable to read, if they aren’t helped past the basic fluency stage.

So, I’ll continue to hear her read.

I have been looking at some online advice and resources for helping a child with dyslexia learn to read. Heleyna is struggling a great deal, and she’s working hard. She writes from the right side of the page and reverses all her letters if she is left to write unsupervised.

She has good visual spacial skills which makes her pretty advanced in drawing, but not reading and writing. I suspect she has dyslexia and that it’s the same sort of dyslexia that her older brother Alex has. (there are different kinds and levels of dyslexia)

It’s a tough one to overcome but as she is now the third of my six to obviously have some form of dyslexia I already have some ideas. I’ll be using coloured papers to print word worksheets on. She already shows signs of being able to read words on a blue or darker background better than black on white.  This was true for Alex  as well I remember. I also need to get her eyes tested, just to be on the safe side, though I think her inability to see letter shapes is more to do with a perceptual problem than a sight problem.

I am keeping to a very phonics based approach for now with only a few sight words. English is a silly language in written form with way too many words spelt in the most bizarre way.  I am wondering if she will find learning Koine Greek a little easier as it is more phonetically based. We’ll see.

I’m sticking with More.Starfall and Reading Eggs for her at the moment. We are not using the older Oxford Reading Tree books just for now as there’s a little too much whole word for her at that moment. Have picked out some of the Oxford Owl books for her to try.

Montessori and the fairy tales controversy.

When I first starting looking into the Montessori method for my youngest it was because she had such a strong kinesthetic approach to how she learns and I knew Montessori was very hands on, and manipulative based.

I am not a purist. I am not going to follow Dr. Montessori wherever she leads any more than I’d follow Charlotte Mason wherever she went. One of the major reasons to home educate is that we can adjust methods and approaches to suit how our children learn. Any approach that isn’t flexible isn’t useful in children’s learning. In fact one of the major issues I have with the National Curriculum is it’s shallow-narrow approach.

I haven’t read everything Dr. Maria Montessori wrote. I’ve read The Absorbent Mind and some other bits. In what I have read she doesn’t tackle the issue of fairy stories – at least not that I remember. However I’ve come across a few online debates based on the premise that Montessori did not think children should be exposed to fairy tales, at least not until they were around age 6 when their reasoning skills developed. It has been extrapolated that Montessori thought children under the age of reason couldn’t differentiate between reality and fantasy. It’s certainly true that before reason they are more questions about what is real and what isn’t – at least that’s been my experience with both children I’ve worked with and my own children. So, while children under the age of reason may not know which is which, I do think they know there is a difference.

I can’t comment on whether Montessori was right or wrong on this because I’ve never seen a reference to which book or article is being discussed. There is merely the assertion that this is what she taught. Hopefully I will come across her own words on this in time. Some have said she noted the younger children simply weren’t interested in fairy stories and would drift away to do something else. This has been my experience too with the “original” versions. Now that the children are older (Heleyna will be 6 in April and the other two are 8 and 10) they like to sit together and listen to a story, though Heleyna still wonders off in the middle of one sometimes.

If Montessori was saying that the original fairy stories such as those we find in Andrew Lang’s series are not suitable for children under the age of 6 because they may confuse them about the difference between “real” and “imaginary” and in some way stunt their own imagination, I would say; maybe.  But I have found that children will ask questions on this if they are confused.

It is certainly true that the original fairy stories can be heavy going and perhaps really young children would not be able to benefit much from them, but as with all thing home ed, I think it’s up to the parent to know their own child and be able to choose storytelling that suits. One of the joys of the original stories told as they were meant to be told is that they have a depth that makes them appeal to a large age range. There’s something for everyone in them. It has been said that Montessori, much like Charlotte Mason recognised the value of a well told story for vocabulary enhancement.

On the other hand I have a real bugbare with the appalling disneyfication of perfectly good stories so that they are dumbed down beyond redemption. If we respect our children we will not be feeding them a badly written sugar-fest of meaninglessness.  The fairy tales and myths are part of the structures of culture and children do love them.

I can’t help wondering if the reason we have so much dumbed down material aimed at children is to do with the structure of schools. If you have a class of thirty 4 year olds there’s a kind of mono-culture where a big in depth myth seems to have nothing to say. But families are mixed ages and needs so the meat and two veg approach to storytelling is a way of speaking to everyone, even the grown ups.

We are made for stories. Storytelling has been a vital part of human cohesion since Adam and Eve left the Garden. Even Scripture uses story and even mythological language to teach us God’s Truth.

Stories are a way of holding families together. In Africa they still have the traditional family story and news sharing time in families. Immaculee Illibegiza speaks of it in her moving books Led by Faith and Left to Tell as she survived the Rwandan massacres. I can’t remember the proper name for these gatherings but I think this family sharing of story is important to self identity.

So the bottom line for me is this. I don’t know where dr. Montessori said “no fairy tales” and I am not convinced she ever did. I know Charlotte Mason was very keen for strong, “no twaddle” literature being offered to children and it’s something I concur with.

My children do get fairy stories – and I do try and avoid the dumbed down versions, though there are some good quality edited versions we have used.

I think there’s more to be said on this especially on a child’s development of imagination through reality and the difference between a well grounded story and an illusion. I might come back to this one.

Home education; learning to learn. Can you teach memory and concentration?

For children to learn they have to have memory skills and they need to have a concentration span that is greater than a goldfish. But are these things inherent or must they be learned; and if they are learned are they acquired naturally or do they need to be taught?

Neuroscience is not my favourite topic, especially as I almost need an epipen to see a neurologist these days, but having Heleyna is making me wonder.

She’s five and will be six in April. She’s bright, talkative and obviously intelligent, but her memory and often her attention is pretty dreadful. Now I am not suggesting she has ADHD. She is very active, but not hyper, and sometimes she can pay very good attention. But it’s so variable and she’s so distractable that it can get frustrating trying to work with her.  She obviously needs quiet to focus.

Knowing her attention span was/is a bit too short I’ve looked at low stimulus approaches to her education, as there is some suggestion that high stimulus, fast moving images are either adding to attention span problems or causing them. I printed up the Starfall Books so she had plain black and white versions. All the worksheet type stuff from Starfall and other sites are black and white so I thought this would help.

She certainly works well if she can use her hands. The Montessori resources suit her well but recently I’ve let things slip a bit and as we’re using READING EGGS I’ve let her read from the Starfall site as well. Both are brightly coloured but there isn’t a lot of image shifting, and fast movement. None of this should be a problem if we keep it at a little at a time.

To be honest I am not even that convinced by the “anti-screen” rhetoric. The research is not convincing and leaves way too many questions unanswered as there is no differentiation between “bad” screen time and “good” screen time or even the nature of screen use from passive (TV) to interactive (computer and consoles) let alone between influences, type of images, sound and the nature of the content.  Some research suggests that high colour is good for brain power, while other stuff says exactly the opposite. I have come the conclusion I must see what works and what doesn’t with Heleyna by just observing her.

We had two weeks break from the structured learning while we prepared for and recovered from the wedding. In that time I kept Heleyna reading because I had already seen how difficult it is for her to remember what she has already learned. But she was moving forward in maths and geometry without a hitch.

But when we went back to learning this week – she’s forgotten so much she couldn’t even recognise the number 10.

This was a bit of a blow, to be honest.

The question is what do I do now? Do I let things slide and wait until she’s a bit older? Do I carry on regardless, go back over stuff or shorten the lessons or lengthen them…?

At the moment I am not sure how to approach this. I think I will make lessons shorter and try and plan them when the other two don’t need me at all; as the distractions, questions and interruptions are not helping her.  But that does mean working later in the day, which might not suit either of us. (I tend to crash pretty regularly around 4 or 5pm and frankly I’m not much use to anyone then).

The Montessori approach allows her to try things out. I think I’ll do more presentations and then see if she can “play” learn for a while.

She does tend to have sudden “eureka” moments when everything drops into place, but I think we’ll need to do a lot of repetition and some memory games to try and build up her concentration and memory skills.

While the research on the use of computers is somewhat messy there is some better defined work showing that memory is a skill as well as innate. Learning how to remember is part of learning how to learn and being able to concentrate is probably a skill that needs some teaching as well as acquiring.

To Math U See or not to Math U See… and my mathphobia (cue scary music)

We’ve been using the Math U See curriculum for some time now. Even in the beginning I thought it was a bit pricey but as it comes with DVD instruction I was pretty taken with it. The curriculum is very thorough, It layers the skills carefully and logically so the skill base is built up. I do like that about it.

The children are doing well with it, on the whole. The one downside, it seems to me, is the amount of memory stuff which doesn’t work well with any of my lot. But the skip counting songs and adding in some Montessori math method seems to help with that.

Ronan and Avila are both on Gamma and sharing the workbook, using a notepad for the work. I think they will both do ok with this although I know Ronan finds it a right slog. But he loves Life of Fred so he isn’t completely put off maths. I really don’t want him to be put off the way I was. He’s struggling quite a bit. Do I take him off MUS and leave Avila on it while it works for her…or just get him past the bumps in the road?

I am wondering if I need to get a grip of my own mathphobia and use the Khan Academy videos and perhaps leave MUS for a while. Ronan wants to learn more geometry. Heleyna’s curriculum is much richer in this area than his and Avila’s has been. Heleyna’s curriculum is for ages 6 to 9 so although Ronan will be 10 soon he would get a lot out of it. I might just cut back on MUS and get both him and Avila doing more geometry with Heleyna.

Heleyna is just over half way through Primer which she is doing alongside the Montessori math album and geometry.

I already have Delta set aside for them, so we’re set up for the time being. But I was shocked at the price hike to £18 for the student book and £29+ for the teacher set. That’s nearly £50 plus P&P of over £11. It’s cheaper for me to buy the Latin set (workbook DVD and answerbook with flashcards) from America!

So. I think I will not be buying Alpha for Heleyna. We will stick with the Montessori maths, which she is doing very well with. I will slow down the MUS gamma work and add in geometry so that MUS Delta starts a little later.  We’ll keep using Life of Fred and possibly consider an ebook from The Critical Thinking Company.

I am hoping not to need to buy much curriculum over the next few months or more. If I can make what we have work even as Ronan enters Grade 5 I’ll be well pleased.

Of course I had to admit to my abiding shame when Ronan brought me a question from Life of Fred Jelly Beans, that I just couldn’t help him with, I had to ask Iona to help him. And no;  brain fog or crash time wasn’t my excuse. I just couldn’t do it! He’s 9!! Ouch!

Of course, I could comfort myself with what an excellent model of home education we are as a family as the older sibling comes to the rescue…but really…it’s embarressing!

Then, just as I declare I will not be buying any more curriculum, the good Dr. Schimdt produces an Intermediate set of books! Get thee behind me Fred!

Home Education; the purpose of education and the method.

There are a few high profile “thinkers” for want of a better label, who are beginning to speak more often on how schools are not educating our children.

Meanwhile we here more stories of Taliban and Al Qaeda dominated countries who are determined to deny woman and girls the opportunity of an education.

Most people, as far as I can tell, do believe that giving a good education to children and adults is a good in itself. Under natural law we know that parents have a right and a great obligation to ensure the education of our children. For us education isn’t simply opening the empty head and pouring in the information. Education, which comes from the words meaning “to lead out” is a way of helping our children develop and people, morally, socially, physically and academically.

There is a great danger, it seems to me, in reducing education down to holding information and methods of pouring information into children. I am also very suspicious of the push to make all education “Machine” based.  Children need more ways of learning than just what a computer can give them. We use the computer in our Home education, but really there’s very little “online” work that the children do. Starfall and more.Starfall is great, but even there I download and print the stories, workbooks and sheets. So a lot of the time the children are looking at paper, not a screen.

I have a number of reasons for this. First I don’t think the high colour, loud sound, and busyness of online lessons is good for the development of concentration.  Low stimulus is better for younger children as they begin to explore the world around them, build their senses and train their senses. It’s interesting how the Montessori early years curriculum is very much about training the senses of the child so that the gross and fine motor skills are built on strong foundations.

One of the most repetitive and annoying questions home educators get asked is what we call “The S word question.” Someone inevitably says  ”What about socialisation?”

Children need to be properly socialised. That is they need to learn to be with other people, good manners, kindness, listening skills, sharing, conflict solving, turn taking in conversation, and all manner of other social skills are needed to get a child and adult through life. You simply cannot learn this, sat at a computer all day.

If the video maker in the link above is saying we have the technology in most western homes, libraries and community centres to make schools unnecessary, then I would agree. I would say the school system is a failed experiment and it has failed spectacularly; unless, as some people believe, the school system really was set up to de-educate the masses. Even if you put aside the dreadful academic outcomes, schools are not producing well socialised adults.

I think most of us have seen the inability of too many young adults to behave in a “normal” way at mixed aged gatherings. They sit, plugged into their technology, texting people who aren’t there, or playing games or whatever. Anything other than be with other people who are not their immediate peers of their immediate peer group.  My daughter faced a weird issue because she didn’t have a mobile phone. One friend was horrified that instead of texting ahead and have my dd meet her on the pavement, she would have to ring the doorbell and possibly (oh the horror) speak to an adult or a younger child!

One of the things I am sold on with Montessori is her insistence that children be in mixed aged classes. She saw this work really well at ensuring the younger children were taken care of and helped by older ones and that aggressive competition was diminished. She called this “peaceful education” because it encouraged true social behaviour.

If we reduce the purpose of education down to feeding information at children, that is a very narrow and dangerous view. It is certainly the view of those who want to control the information and make it suit their agenda. If we reduce education down to what a machine can tell us, that is more dangerous still. No parents wants their children sat, hunched over a computer all day.

An education needs to be more catholic than that, rounder, broader, deeper. We want our children to know how to learn, how to discern and think things through. That comes through relationships with real, loving people.

Real Education is a dangerous thing for some

This article via Nonna reports that the German minister Norbert Blum has spoken out for intrinsic family rights.

In Germany parents are not allowed to decide for themselves what is the best form of education for their children. They are forced, violently at times, to send their children to school, no matter how bad the school might be.

Parents who have removed children to home educate – which is an intrinsic right – have been persecuted, their children forcibly removed, and parents threatened with prison.

Sounds like a Nazi regime doesn’t it? And that might be because the law against Homeschooling dates back to 1936. It’s one of the few Third Reich oppressive laws that wasn’t repealed.

from the article:

Michael Donnelly, GHEC2012 secretary and director of international affairs at Home School Legal Defense Association, the world’s largest home education organization, underscored this impact.

“Norbert Blum has said what no one else in Germany has been willing to — that Germany’s iron-fisted monopoly on education is unhealthy for children and families. I hope Angela Merkel and others in her party will listen to the wisdom and advice of this German statesman and take action soon so that parents in Germany can homeschool like millions around the world,” Donnelly said.

The German government have received heavy criticism from those fighting for human rights over the years. unfortunately they are somewhat sheltered from proper condemnation by the strange anti-family culture of European power bases.

I am sure the nod-wink of European politics to family oppression is why Ed Balls and his strange sidekick Badman felt comfortable in citing German law as a reason to come after home educators in this country.

One of the primary goals of most home educating parents (as far as I’ve seen locally and internally) is to teach our children how to learn. We want them to be able to make their own discoveries, to discern right from wrong, truth from twaddle (as Miss Mason would say). We want our children to learn to think critically and be able to understand language use and misuse.

The Taliban are quite right to be deeply afraid of a well-educated populace. They are even more right to be terrified of educated women. It has been shown in missionary work that when the woman and girls are educated they educate the men and boys. Then education spreads from families to local communities and out there. A real education is a genuinely empowering thing.

People who want to bully, control and oppress don’t want people who can think for themselves. Spoon fed education and mass dumb media are great tools for them.

I am grateful I can still home educate my children.

Home Education: Quo vadis mater?

I don’t know exactly, is the answer to that question. Where am I going with this?

I started home educating about 8 to 9 years ago and did so because I was cornered. My son’s education was failing him so spectacularly, I had to do something. Feeling that I would never be able to get to grips with home education I read everything I could lay my hands on. I fell in love the work of Charlotte Mason and her gentle art of education with it’s Classical foundation that didn’t destroy a child’s natural love of learning, but on the contrary, cared for it so that it flourished. I also loved her love of books and insistence on good literature and no twaddle.

I heard about Dr, Maria Montessori along the way, but didn’t read much about her.  Now, as I read her work I think there’s more than just a physical likeness between the Northern English school teacher and the Italian doctor. (And you must admit, they do look alike).  They both base their educational philosophy on the solid rock of the child as a person, made in the image and likeness of God with inherent dignity and deserving of deep respect. They are both very Christ centred in their philosophy, which gives the firm foundation to the method. Neither women saw the child as a blank slate for the teacher to write on, nor a machine to be programmed; they understood the child’s personhood and soul.

I began to see that my youngest needed a more hands on, manipulatives approach to education. She learned best when she could touch it, move it around and build it herself. Book learning was proving very limited for her. She wasn’t interested in paper work and I was worried she was actually being put off learning by the method I was expecting her to use.

If she could touch it, smell it, rattle it and run after it, she was happy to learn about it. She has a rather chaotic, leapy-abouty approach to life, which can be a bit wearing at times.

So I began to look at the Montessori method and read her books, and get to grips with her philosophy.

I bought the first set of Montessori materials and found that all three of the younger children took to them immediately. I also began making some of the things Montessori recommends. Using large wooden trays to contain the work has calmed Heleyna down a little in her work. We’re working on this to try and increase her concentration span.

The change over however, feels very rocky for me. I was set up with the CM approach and fed in a classical and workbook side of things without making too many waves, but the Montessori Method is very different and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed at times.

Yes, the approach works very well with my children, but the equipment is very expensive. A lot of Montessori homeschoolers make their own equipment out of wood, clay or by getting hold of wholesale supplies of beads.  But the fact is, this would take up a lot of time and energy that I don’t have.

In reading of the Casa Bambini’s what I find is children who are enabled to independent learning from quite an early age. They explore, self correct and learn using the carefully chosen and designed resources Montessori provided.  As I get sicker, this looks like the perfect solution, at least I hope so. If I can get the children to a point of using the equipment and books themselves, self motivated learners and discoverers, it will matter much less how ill I get. Most importantly I want them to know how to learn and how to discern truth.  I want them to understand that seeking truth is the most important role of education.

I am hoping I have bought all we will need for Montessori lessons, and the rest will be makable or do-withoutable.

Seeking Montessori Albums and Great Lessons.

Having read some background into Dr. Montessori’s Method I have started using some of these sites for albums and great lessons.

Good overview list of Montessori Albums free and to buy.

Karen Tyler’s albums get good reviews. Unfortunately I need the Great Lessons and albums aimed at the next level 6 to 9 and 9 to 12.

I do like Moteaco for albums and great lessons.

Cultivating Dharma is great for albums (free ones) and if you check out the site there’s other freebies and good links to help greenhorn Montessori mums like me

The Great Lessons overview here lead to a link to Miss Barbara’s Great Lesson pages.

There’s a beautiful Great Lesson here, told originally by Mario Montessori, Dr Montessori’s son. It’s called God Who Has No Hands and I love it.

Montessori Materials

Livable Learning has some great free prinables and if you become a member -$50 for a lifetimes access- there’s even more stuff. I haven’t signed up as yet, but I would consider it for her material as they are very good.

I have bought the stuff I have bought from Absorbent Minds in the UK. I haven’t found anywhere cheaper than this Beware of the postage costs and the VAT, but even with these added AM is generally cheaper than elsewhere.

You will have to decide what you can afford to buy and what you can afford to make or substitute.  I am learning that I should try not to substitute too differently as Dr Montessori worked long and hard to make her design choices.  They were not just random as they are designed for all the senses of the child to be used.

I think I am about ready to roll properly now. My ambition is to have the children become independent learners as soon as possible. If I follow the method Dr. Montessori laid out, then theoretically this should happen and the children will have the ability to make their own discoveries and the self-discipline to work together learn, no matter what I’m capable of.

Montessori moment; from The Absorbent Mind on selective mutism.

I am reading The Absorbent Mind which is Dr. Maria Montessori’s seminal work, based on her lectures in India where she and her son Mario lived during the years of the Second World War. I am not sure how this book published in 1947 has become public domain so early, but I am truly grateful. This woman was a genius!  Her understanding of language acquisition outstrips science and her recognition of the child’s need for a respectful and loving relationship with his mother to enhance language is profound.

She said:

Mothers, and society in general, must take special care that children have frequent experiences of the best language. Let the child come with us when we visit our friends…especially where people speak with emphasis and clear enunciation.”

Ignoring this salient advice we have, as a culture, put our babies and children into institutions where they are surrounded by children of the same age and same lack of language skills. When they are not there, we put them in front of the TV for hours on end and then teachers in school complain that Reception aged children (4 to 5 year olds) can’t talk!

Montessori was years ahead of the research in noting that a baby and toddler’s relationship with his mother was the primary source for language development. We now know from lots of research that this is true.

But there is something else Dr. Montessori picked up on, which I think is very oddly ignored by professionals, and that is selective mutism.

I have personally met a number of children who stopped speaking in school. Some were so truamatised by their school experience they stopped speaking at all. Most of the children I’ve met now speak and behave as happy, well adjusted, loved children behave. They have put the trauma of school behind them and are doing really well as home educated children.   There are a number of reasons a child stops talking, and some are very complicated and do get professional notice. However, I think Dr. Montessori’s observations of mute children speaking in her Casa Bambini’s should receive some attention.

We have children in our schools of three and four years of age who had never spoken and then suddenly spoke. They had never even spoken the words of the two year old, they were absolutely dumb and then suddenly they spoke. By allowing them free activity and a stimulating environment they suddenly manifested this power.”

That fascinates me.

Of my six children, one had delayed speech. His speech was so delayed we were referred to a language therapist. The NHS being the way it is, the child’s age and need for language comes second to the waiting list system so we waited a very long time for the appointment. The fact that he was already diagnosed with Failure To Thrive, that catch-all dx for children who are sickly, don’t grow or put on weight and are struggling, was not considered. On the day the letter, with the appointment, dropped through the door my son picked it up, came up to me and said as clear as you like, “Mum, there’s a letter for you.”

You might shrug and say, “Well most 3 year olds could manage that sentence.” And I would agree – except he hadn’t managed anything like a sentence until that moment and then suddenly he was speaking, full sentences.

Why?

I don’t know. But I have a sneaky suspicion my son’s language problem was rooted in how I was parenting him. I did the exact opposite to the things that both Maria Montessori and Charlotte Mason recommended. Instead of spending loads of time with my son, I was sending him to nursery and working my socks off as a student and then newly qualified nurse.

I am not doing a guilt trip here. I had absolutely no other option at the time. We have built an economy on forcing mothers into work. Even now living on one wage is pretty challenging. But the fact is, he was institutionalised, and his language was delayed. Research does show a causal relationship.

While delayed language and selective mutism may seem quite different, there may be a link between them in that they are caused by separating the child from the adult he should be attached to, and forcing them into a group situation that is unnatural and unhelpful.

Montessori wouldn’t have her classes separated by yearly age, but had classes with children aged 3 to 6 and then 6 to 9 and 9 to 12.  The older children helped the younger children and an atmosphere of cooperation was encouraged.

Just about all home educators will tell you that educating our children in mixed age groups makes a huge difference to their language and social development. It’s been known for well over 100 years.

Montessori; math beads Addition facts to 10 story snake game

Heleyna likes stories to I’ve presented her addition to 10 bead snake game as a story.

Despite foggy brain, there’s only one typo so please forgive me.

Not sure what the good doctor would make of this adaption of her snake game. Hope she isn’t spinning …

Montessori moment: perfect teachers and dunce children.

The teacher who poses as perfect and does not recognise that she makes errors, is not a good teacher.”

absorbent Mind

Dr Montessori’s deep respect for the personhood of the child is expressed in her insistence that insulting and humiliating children who have made mistakes in their work, in no way helped them to correct those errors. “Experience and exercise alone correct errors..” she says.

In her method the child is allowed to see and adjust their work to correct for errors themselves.  I think, from watching my children over the last few weeks (and remember that’s all the time we’ve been attempting this method) they seem able to better see mistakes far better when they are working with items in space, than when it is just on paper.

Montessori teachers (and parents) need to have good self awareness but also need to be rooted firmly in reality, accepting that we all make mistakes. If the teacher’s role and position is somehow based on the idea that s/he can’t get it wrong, that’s a very wobbly position to be in. In may explain why some glaring errors in homework my older children came home with were not allowed to be corrected.

Part of a child’s maturing relationship with his parents, it seems to me, is the recognition that the grown ups don’t know everything and can get it wrong. Perhaps this process is easier for parents and children as we live together, so even if a parent did want to pretend to some kind of universal infallibility, it wouldn’t hold up for long under the all seeing eye of children!

Montessori goes on to show that children need to be able to see error and to find their way to correcting them. This not only grounds them in reality, but begins to build the tools they need for mathematics and scientific principles.

How far from freedom! If I do not have the ability of controlling my error, I have to go to someone else who may know no better than I.”

Perhaps it is this vital flaw in modern education that has caused so many scientists to publish papers that not only do not control for error, but in which the scientist insists there are no errors – even when they are glaringly obvious. This self assurance and “high self esteem” does not lead to better understanding, but merely to bigger egos.

In order to see errors and correct them there needs to be a guide of “control” that the child can use to see what they are doing. With the control the child is free to work out what they need to do.

There’s something very neat about the Montessori philosophy: simple and kind.

Home Education; you live and learn.

My youngest, She Who Talks Mightily is 5 years old. It’s amazing to me to think that if she had gone to school she would already be near the end of her Reception year and heading for year 1.

Almost as soon as she started learning I noticed she did best with tactile objects and that she tends to think in pictures. This is shown through her many drawings which are pretty good, and tell lots of interesting and, odd stories.

I did buy a couple of Montessori things back then and I have used them, sort of. But the whole business of getting them out, making the lessons and organising a hands on activity instead of having her so the the same stuff her older siblings did, just went out of the window. It was so much easier to have her do the same as they did, because it’s what I’m used to. I was already having to shift gears in approach thanks to my health problems so I let Heleyna’s learning needs slide a bit.

The fact is, Heleyna has her own way of learning and she needs a more Montessori type approach. Making her do things the way the others did things is frustrating both of us. It just isn’t working.

I should have done what I planned to do in the beginning. So now we are starting again and I will be investing in more Montessori stuff as soon as I can budget for it.

Thankfully being home educated means Heleyna can have an education that best suits the way she learns – as soon as her mother gets her act together – and that adapting to her needs will not impinge on the learning needs of the others.

What stuff do you need to be a home educator?

I thought I would put together a list of must haves for any Home Educating family.

John Taylor Gatto has famously said that a good education doesn’t cost anything. Well, it does cost something. I am assuming he is using hyperbole to say that the shocking amount of money poured into state education doesn’t produce educated people, whereas tightly budgeting homeschooling homes are producing extremely well educated, independent learners.  But it isn’t free and so those of you heading off on the home education adventure will need a tool kit.

This is mine>

A computer and good printer. If at all possible find a printer that doesn’t drink ink like an untreated diabetic. This is a major challenge for me. I bought a cheap printer because that’s the money  I had, but it has proved to be a serious “buy now, pay later” object as it gets through a set of ink once a month! If, like me, you are educating lots of children and your printer gets heavy use and you happen to have the money, I have been told that laser printers are best. However, looking into them, I have found they are very expensive and very big. So, talk it over with people who know and decide how to do this.

Computers are essential to HE it seems to me. They offer access to a whole internet of excellent quality free resources, books, audio, lesson plans, curriculum, you name it – it’s out there and more often than not it’s free. Some of the pay for it stuff is very cheap compared to other methods of doing it. So for example I am paying for More.Starfall because it’s cheap and very useful for all three younger children (even though it’s focus is pre-school to kindergarten). Starfall itself is free. I am also paying for the Children’s Musical Adventure keyboard lessons, which works out very cheap indeed for all three little ones to get lessons every day.

My next must have is a laminator. I use ours a lot for flash cards, mobiles, art projects, place mats, anything you want to keep in good condition for repetitive use. Pockets for the machine can be cheap if you shop around.

Wipe down tablecloth for all those craft things you’ll get up to.

Empty margarine tubs: no home ed mother throws away tubs with lids. They are just right for movable letters, flash cards, glue sticks, fraction blocks, bits of wool,….and so on. Those large round chocolate or biscuit tins. They are good as cake storage for the bakers in the family, but also for larger amounts of manipulatives, flash cards, attribute shapes, blocks and so on. Also there is the excellent extra bit of loveliness that you get to eat the chocolates first. Many people underestimate the essential role that chocolate plays in the lives of home educating mothers.

Essential furniture include a considerable number of bookcases and a large cupboard for all that craft stuff you will be stocking.

You will need an endless supply of glue, paint, pens, paper, salt and flour for salt dough. You will also need scissors, paint brushes, glitter, – well you get the idea.

Transport – This is an area we have some problems with, but we occasionally use a taxi to get us all and the wheelchair somewhere we really need to be.

Most HE mums tells me their highest HE bill is fuel as they drive quite some distance to many of the places they go.

What essentials do you use?

Toddle-bonce Wednesday ( or Preschool Home Education)

On Wednesdays another family joins us for the day. The children are aged 4 and under so they are not that interested in what could be called “formal” education. But they do enjoy having lesson time together.

We do two short sessions with the little ones and the rest of the time is playtime. Ronan and Avila get a more-or-less free day. They tend to read to the little ones and help the out, so they aren’t kept out of the group. It’s a bit of a role change for Heleyna as she is usually the one ‘joining in’ with lessons as best she can while they are really aimed ar the older ones. On a Wednesday the lessons are for her and her friends and the older two are the ‘joining in’ children.

Geography  They do a very short worksheet about the world or how to read a map using picture maps, so that they understand the concept of looking at things from above. There will be a few lessons of map symbols later on. It’s very basic: we started with a print of the 1oo Acre Wood from Winnie the Pooh and they found various things on it.

Then I have a print out of the world which we use with an old children’s Atlas I’ve had since the big ones were little.  We find a country and tell a story. Last week we found Japan and America which lead to me reading them Grandfather’s Journey. This week we found China and had a look at the Yangtze River. This was followed by The Story of Ping.  I have other books for other countries and my friend has soon too.

Music happens after lunch. I use some of the printouts from Kinderbach, but not the lessons. We sing a nursery rhyme and learn how to clap it and then the children have notes to srick down to match the clapping. There’s a colour sheet for the nursery rhymne which they can colour in, or not as they like.

That’s it. Simples (as a Meerkat might say).

Home eduaction finished until next year.

As I am absolutely shattered and getting far too snarkly with the kids, so I’ve decided to finish term today. So no formal learning until the new year.

We’ve got a family joining us for the day on Friday but we’ve postponed the Christmas party until after Christmas because dear ol’K has broken her wrist and can’t drive at the moment – so we’ll wait ’til she’s de-casted (is that a word – it is now) for the party.

The children have been listening to The Cinnamon Bear on Homeschool Radio Shows; they have added more Christmas shows for your delectation.

Then they watched some great little Jesse Tree vids on Youtube produced by Holy Heroes.  It saved me reading the Bible (That sounds awful doesn’t it? But I am sure you know what I mean).

We also belted through another 4 lesson set of Kinderbach. I reckon we’ll have finished the whole lot (stage 6) by the end of Jan. The children have enjoyed this a lot and Ronan and Avila have really started to get to grips with the piano. Heleyna hasn’t got as much from it but she is learning some singing and rythmn with is good.

Heleyna who is 3 is showing a lot of interest at the moment in all sorts of learning. She gets a lot out of More.Starfall and has a set of the Oxford Fun With.[various} books. We got them from Costco so they were very cheap. She loves doing the exercises in them. Then she reads a printed up version of Starfall’s  first reader Zac the Rat followed by The ORt stage 1 book A Good Trick with two to three decodable words per page. Heleyna doesn’t know her phonic alphabet well enough to decode yet but she loves the books.

I finished reading them The Lady of Guadalupe by the very talented Tomie de Paola. Yesterday I read them another book by him The Legend of the Poinsettia.

Home Education; Better Late Than Early: Is it really?

Term is approaching. I had it all planned and had a fairly good idea what we would be up to right up to Christmas. I might have to rethink a few things.

For a start this is the first year when we are not really tied to school term dates as such because no one is in school or college. So we can be more flexible. But then if I am going to be ill I need to re-assess how I go about the whole Home Ed process a bit. One area where I think we have an advantage in that Ronan is a strong reader. While I think Avila finds reading more of a challenge she is reading reasonably well too. A primary school teacher friend pointed out that while I was a bit concerned about how Avila was reading, that she had no children at all in Reception and only a couple in year 1 who were reading at her level; so she is ahead of school children. However, I have to say, having worked in a Rec and year 1, I would hope any home educated child was finding reading easier than those children- because they get one to one or at least one to a few attention and books are everywhere in the home.

I am hoping, that as both of them read well enough that if I am too ill to do as much as I would like- they can read.

During a crisis is home education better, the same or worse than having the children in school?

In the little home education group I host we have gone through some seriously challenging times over the years. Two of the mums have faced cancer and chemo and I’ve gone through some pretty trying health times too both for myself and one of the children in particular. On the surface it may seem that when something bad happens that it would be better for the children to be in school, where they may at least appear to have been shielded from it all somewhat. But is that true in practice?

Serious illness in any family can cause stress and strain to the family set up. Is is worse, better or the same for those of us who home educate? It is not an area that has had  any research t that I am aware of. However from our own little bit of experience I will say this; I wish I had been home educating the children when I became seriously ill. I think they would have felt closer to what was happening and less confused about it had they not been shipped off to school each day. It might also have been less stressful for my husband making sure they got to and from school and then off to visit me in hospital each day. Not easy.

To make matters worse for one child in particular he was facing bullies each day and the concern of what was going to happen to me each evening!

For both K and J as they went through chemo their children were aware of what was happening and when. They had lots of extended family support although sadly K was not as close into a good supportive home ed group when she had her 12 sessions of chemo (pretty extreme treatment) and so didn’t get the support she and the children needed from the HE community. I certainly hope we can rise to the occasion if and when she faces the onslaught of her cancer again. One thing she says though is that while her children suffered seeing their mother so desperately ill through surgeries and chemo, they coped well. As it happened one of K’s friends also went through the same cancer and  similar chemo while her dd went to school. It was noted that it was much harder for that child to deal with. Whether this was because she was sent to school each day or whether it was because of the way different families deal with things is hard to say, but I think my children coped better with some of the really difficult times we faced over Avila’s repetitive hospital admissions and my own health problems because they were involved and not separated from it (artificially).

Charlotte Mason Home Education; Grade 2 (yr 3)

I’m setting out the curriculum for Grade 2 or UK yr 3. There is the joint work Roni and Avila will do together.

Then the following:

Maths

Math U See alpha finish off and begin Beta.  Mathematical Reasoning level C and Complete the Picture Math book 3. I have some other bits and pieces to help him understand money better.

Critical Thinking: Building Thinking Skills Level 1 which he is already working through.

Language Arts: Language of God level B (he could do with C really) and Language Smarts C (I hope to get hold of level D soon) as well as the online Language Arts books from my resource blog. He has been doing some Scott Foreman worksheets which I think we will continue with.

Reading: He is reading the 26 Fairmount Avenuue books by Tomie de Poala but he has a few other things he has been reading too. He can more or less read fluently now so there is more choice of books for him.

Science Find the Constellations H A Rey; Exploring Creation with Astonomy Fulbright and Nature Detectives. I’ve also got Garden Dectectives on order. Alongside this is his big book of Science (Miles Kelly) and the Usborne Energy Forces and Motion book (internet linked) We’ll also continue with little projects and lapbooks based on the Usborne pocket science series. A kind aunt bought us the whole lot some time ago and they are pretty good.

Read Alouds: Still got to finish Benedict of the Hills and then Augustine Came to Kent and Beowulf. (For both the latter books much thanks to Clare). There’s bound to be more especially from the Baldwin Collection.

We are still working through Our Island Story and 50 Famous Stories Retold; I actually tend to use some of the Librivox versions; some of the readers are quite good. (We heard the story of Grace Darling (ch 19) and then visited her museum and grave last year).

Other stuff includes Dance Mat Typing as well as other BBC schools stuff which can be useful for revision and consolidation at times. We will also probably use some homemade worksheet stuff as well as the  great stuff available from That Resource Site.

This isn’t written in stone; I tend to change things as we go along- but it’s the start.

Teaching my child to read.

I am in the process of teaching 5 yr old Avila to read. Ronan reads well already and although I will make sure he continues to practice and build his vocabulary the main teaching side of his reading is done. He knows how to read and so can work his way through new words.

Avila had been learning in much the same way as Ronan but I soon noticed that she was doing things rather differently. When working out what a word said she would start with any letter in the word and then make a wild guess at what the word was based on what she thought the other letters looked like. She confuses b and d and p and q and sometimes b and p and in maths I notice she gets 6 and 9 confused.

I have two older children with dyslexia. Now, these days dyslexia has become a contentious issue. There are mixed views on what it is and what causes it. There is a growing view – that apparently dates back to 1929, that dyslexia is a learned disorder; that is children get taught to be dyslexic because of the school’s approach to literacy. Reading some of the research more closely however it would appear that it isn’t quite so simple as all that.

There are children who apparently have a predisposition to dyslexia and therefore the one sized fits all approach to teaching children to read doesn’t fit all and can lead to those with a predisposition to dyslexia finding themselves with serious reading problems later on.

Alex was taught in two primary schools. In the first one (top of the league tables at the time) he was taught using what they called “The Real Book” approach and later with “Thrash” chartes. He became more and more unable to cope with reading. His younger sister was using the same method and his older brother had learned this way too.

Now interestingly Josh had been on a SEN program for reading because he was struggling but he soon came off SEN as he overcame the problem. Alex didn’t.

When they changed to a different primary school (after we moved house) they were in a school much lower down the league tables but the SENCO soon had Alex under her wing and used a strongly phonics based approach with him.

Meanwhile it was noticed that Iona was unable to read and her writing was appalling. Like Alex she reversed letters and letter order, but unlike Alex she was unable to differentiate the beginning and ending of words so her written work was essentially just a string of letters, some of which were reversed.

Iona had many dyspraxic symptoms too. She couldn’t tie shoe laces (still has to use a special method) and couldn’t coordinate a knife and fork. She constantly walked into doors, chairs, tripped over things, dropped things. She was, quite frankly, a bit of a pain to live with at times.

Alex had not had those problems and soon appeared to have overcome a great many of his dyslexic symptoms. He should have done reasonably well at secondary school had his SEN work continued. But it didn’t and the next two and half years were pretty rough to hellish.

By the time I had the guts and gumption to home educate he was functionally illiterate.

Through home ed I thought his dyslexia was fairly mild and put a great deal of his school problems down to the massive bullying problem and to some extent I think that was right. On attending college he received a full assessment and was found to have dyslexia at level 4. The assessment stated that having an IQ of 136 had helped him overcome many of the dyslexic tendencies.

So, the question remains. Do I have two dyslexic children because they were not taught to read properly at school, or is it just one of those things that happens in our family?

Avila is showing signs of struggling to learn to read. I have been using phonics and Oxford Reading Tree books with her-as I did  with Ronan. I have noticed that she is far more distracted by the pictures in the ORT books than Ronan was and I have read that colourful picture books are unhelpful for children with a tendency to dyslexia. I have no idea if this is true or not. There is so much argument about what is best for dyslexic children that I wonder how any parent or teacher can decide what is best.

Well I don’t know who is right about dyslexia but I do know I want Avila to be able to read well. So this is what I am doing:

She spends time on Starfall each day reading through the strories and completing the games and videos so she learns all the phonic rules. She has the worksheets from their download site to accompany the reading. This is her primary letter formation work as well. I also use some of the printables from MoreStarfall, especially the ones where she can learn the shape of words.

Alongside this we are working through the McGuffey Primer which she enjoys. It is strongly phonic based and doesn’t have too many distracting pictures. So far this seems to be working.

Finally I have bought the ebook Visual, Perceptual Skills Building Bk 1 from Critical Thinking Co.

I think we probably will go back to the Oxford Reading Tree books at some point. She had reached level 5 and was reading the More Stories set which have more sight words for extended vocab. Two or three people, including a teacher have said this puts her well ahead of her peers in Reception at school; but that doesn’t change the fact that we are seeing difficulties in her approach to reading.

A lot can happen in three days.

I feel like I’ve barely stood still over the last few days. It gets like that sometimes.

But we’ve done some great stuff and I’ve had some lovely surprises.

The stand up dustpan that Deb so kindly had sent, arrived and it came in a box that Heleyna really loved. It was a house, a nest and a boat.

Already my new dustpan and brush set are proving their worth.

Lots of learning has been going on and Roni received a visit from his godmother who brought him his birthday pressies – a book called Flat Stanley which he has really got into and Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox. We also got given two whole crates of science kits and equipment. There’s tons of stuff to look at. Ronan has taking a liking to the telescopes and we’ve started making a kind of solar system thing and there’s a stand up star chart. Lots to explore there.

We babysat some younger HE children while their mum went for an antenatal scan. There was a lot of singing and older children reading stories to younger children that afternoon.

Then I rushed off with Avila to her ballet class. She loves ballet. It does seem to really suit her and now the new diet is apparently working reasonably well, she has more energy and can easily keep up with everyone for the full lesson.

Then yesterday we headed off to Think Tank for the day.

There was loads to do there. I bought a family season ticket with a view to going there at least once a month. There is no much for the children to learn about there. They have classrooms as well so I want to ask if we EHE folks can use them while we are there.

J has already asked if -baring in mind we are all buying season tickets-we can have the schools pack. it was said we could so next time we go I think we should ask again.

I was a bit shocked at the price of parking-baring in mind the entry fee-but J knows a cheaper place for next time.

It’s wheelchair friendly throughout with good sized lifts so a disabled parent can fit her children in the lift with her.

Doorways are all easy to access too.

Staff are helpful -which is good because the

place isn’t well sign posted inside.

There was a schools invasion near lunch time and that made things difficult so we left at about 2pm. However I am told that the schools leave after a couple of hours-just after 2ish themselves so next time we might sit tight until the place is cleared again and then we’ll have the run of it until about 4ish.

Then this morning Ronan had a hospital appointment which his dad took him too.

Recap; Ronan has a cataract in one eye which was missed when he was a baby (despite me querying his vision with the HV). Finally it was diagnosed when he was 18mths old-and too late to remove it. It appeared he had no vision in that eye and wouldn’t learn to have any even with surgery to remove the cataract. So we decided not to operate. Then he told me he could see out of his ‘bad eye’ and I tested him and found he had some periphery vision-so back to the hospt we went. They did further tests and yet again it seems he will never really learn to see with that eye so we have decided (again) not to operate. If they did the surgery he would then spend months maybe a year even with his good eye patched to try and force the other eye to see and with no really good outcome. I thought he would loose a lot of learning at a critical stage and Ronan said he would rather just have one eye. So that’s where we are. The Doc has said he wont discharge Ronan but will see him yearly to make sure his good eye remains good.

So that’s it.

Home education can look good!

I have to admit that those of us who educate our children at home tend to be a rather defensive lot. The main reason for this of course is the shocking amount of times we find ourselves having to defend our choice to home educate.  Parents who quite willingly send their children to be battery farmed all day with a shallow, boring and meaningless curriculum are not made to defend themselves. While children tell of bullying, class disruption, porn handed round and far too often teachers who don’t know the subject they are teaching, parents who send their children into these environments are considered fine.

It can seem to us who choose to home educate that it is downright perverse that we are constantly judged and criticised by people who neither know, nor more often than not, want to know what home ed is all about.

It is a lovely breath of fresh air then when someone says something utterly positive about the whole thing.

A friend of mine popped over today for a coffee just as we were finishing off the mornings work. She came fully armed with a sand and water play table, which made her extra welcome .  The children were keen to tell her all they had been learning about and show her some of their work. To my surprise she pointed out that what they had done this morning would probably take about a week in school as there were so many children in the class who would all have to be brought up to speed. She should know as she works in a school. She was (I think) genuinely impressed by what they had done and by their enthusiasm for what they are learning.  She said they would never be able to do what they are doing in school. Even the small fact that Ronan had made a ‘house’ under the table to work in this morning, she pointed out would never be allowed in school.

It is rare that someone who is not themselves a home educator shows genuine interest and appreciation of what the children do and learn. It is good when it happens. I know, I know, it shouldn’t matter what other people think or say-but those of you doing this too, know that just sometimes it is nice to have someone tell you your kids they are doing well.

Home Education with a tornado toddler.

was the first day of term today. Ronan was pleased to be getting back to a more structured approach and Avila was very proud to be officially learning with Ronan. She has been doing a lot over the last few months to be honest, but she enjoyed the fact that today she got her learning box and file and was able to put her work in it.

Heleyna is just under 2 and a half. The sudden change in routine disrupted her view of the world considerably and she was quite cross about it. At first she was loud and clingy and cried at any given opporunity.

Josh was around so he kindly took her off for a distraction time for a while. Even so I needed to find ways to help her adapt to the change in routine and join in with Ronan and Avila, so she could feel part of the process without disrupting the children’s learning time. She settled into her chair to play with the Math U See manipulatives while the other two finished off their work. She had paper and pencils while we worked through chapters of Faith and Life and while the children did a little penmanship. As the morning went on Heleyna was happy to find things to do herself and by lunch time was more or less settled. She had some time singing songs with me and her singing teddy (see photo-that bear has saved us from many a toddler tornado).

I usually try to find a small activity for her that is similar to what the others are doing as she likes to think she is learning too. Sometimes however she just needs to be doing something else entirely.

After lunch she chased bubbles dutifully blown for her by Ronan and Avila and then went to play outside with them.

I am hoping she will be more settled tomorrow. Things were made slightly more complicated by the fact we are potty training her at the moment as well! Getting bottoms on potties while teaching Latin is a novel experience!

During storytime (Caligula and Caractacus from Our Island Story) Avila kindly moved off my lap to let Heleyna sit there. We had a quiet time with the story and although we had a discussion about it I didn’t ask for narrations today. The children have to be patient with Heleyna as she can be fidgety and loud but by making sure she got lots of time for her things haven’t been too bad.