Mondays are apt to run away from me unless I do some forward planning. When I just have Hannah at home, the question, "what shall we do today?" is enough to start her off, sometimes according to the theoretical timetable and sometimes not, but when we also have her friend L which we do every Monday, it works better if I organise something on which they can work in a cooperative way. They are as intensely competitive as if they had been siblings and have such different strengths that a project in which they can take on different roles works well.
Usually I try to tie that in with something topical as they have such very different interests. This week it revolves round pancake day. So far I have this planned: make a very simple lapbook about pancake day (or at least start it) with info on why we celebrate it, how it is celebrated in different countries, etc. Make buns filled with whipped cream as they do in Denmark and Sweden. Have a pancake race. Make a mask or headdress for carnival.
We shall see!
First though, we have to have a hamster funeral. L's hamster died and they don't have a garden so we said they could bring Barney to join the rodent graveyard here.
Saturday 18 February 2012
Monday 13 February 2012
In which we go to an uninspiring event
Living in London, we are spoilt for choice of fabulous and exciting things to do...which is why it is really annoying to have hauled ourselves into central London (in half term!) to check out the Imagine festival at the Southbank Centre and found it a bit....meh!
On paper, it sounds great. So many performances of music, plays and poetry that I was interested in. In part the meh-ness (I know that's not a word, bear with me!) was down to a delay in communication with the friend I was going with. We left it far too late to decide which events we wanted to see and by the time we did they were fully booked. Of course nothing on the website said "this event is in a tiny room and there are only actually 30 tickets available," or we might have been a bit more urgent about our meandering plans to get together and plan what to do.
So that was one gripe, but I might not have minded so much the long wait for the one event we could attend if there had been anything to do in the interim. I don't count eating our packed lunch and running around pretending to be a dog as things to do. There was an art and craft session advertised as "drop in" but when we attempted to drop in, we were told it was full and the rest of the day's sessions were fully booked. My friend said she could see tables with sheets of drawing paper and pens on. Really??? This is the best you can do? Funnily enough, I can provide her with paper and pens at home. If I go to a craft session at an event I expect it to tie into the event in some way.
There was also apparently a Reading Den, but we didn't go there.
There was so much empty space, largely taken up with bored children running about, that could so easily have been utilised by storytellers, musicians and small quick craft activities.
I did, however, really enjoy the idiosycratic performance of The Comedy of Errors by a group of girls from Mulberry school. Very cleverly put together. I don't think it quite came across to everyone. Hannah was completely baffled by it and I wished I had taken the time to explain the plot beforehand so she could have enjoyed it too.
If we go next year (and I'm not ruling out the possibility), I will be suire to book well in advance for any interesting events and take more cash for the funfair in case of boredom!
On paper, it sounds great. So many performances of music, plays and poetry that I was interested in. In part the meh-ness (I know that's not a word, bear with me!) was down to a delay in communication with the friend I was going with. We left it far too late to decide which events we wanted to see and by the time we did they were fully booked. Of course nothing on the website said "this event is in a tiny room and there are only actually 30 tickets available," or we might have been a bit more urgent about our meandering plans to get together and plan what to do.
So that was one gripe, but I might not have minded so much the long wait for the one event we could attend if there had been anything to do in the interim. I don't count eating our packed lunch and running around pretending to be a dog as things to do. There was an art and craft session advertised as "drop in" but when we attempted to drop in, we were told it was full and the rest of the day's sessions were fully booked. My friend said she could see tables with sheets of drawing paper and pens on. Really??? This is the best you can do? Funnily enough, I can provide her with paper and pens at home. If I go to a craft session at an event I expect it to tie into the event in some way.
There was also apparently a Reading Den, but we didn't go there.
There was so much empty space, largely taken up with bored children running about, that could so easily have been utilised by storytellers, musicians and small quick craft activities.
I did, however, really enjoy the idiosycratic performance of The Comedy of Errors by a group of girls from Mulberry school. Very cleverly put together. I don't think it quite came across to everyone. Hannah was completely baffled by it and I wished I had taken the time to explain the plot beforehand so she could have enjoyed it too.
If we go next year (and I'm not ruling out the possibility), I will be suire to book well in advance for any interesting events and take more cash for the funfair in case of boredom!
Sunday 12 February 2012
In which we throw a party
It's become a bit of a tradition to have a halloween party. Hannah and I both enjoy party planning and entertaining people and Halloween, coming a little over 6 months after Hannah's birthday, fits nicely into a pattern of regular party throwing. We didn't have one last year as it happens because we went on holiday in the October half term (with rest of family for BIL's birthday...sadly we usually holiday with them so are still tied to the school holidays for it), so this year we were ready to make up for it with a BIG party.
Hitherto we have had at most 6 children and had it at home but by the time the guest list had grown to 25, it was obvious home was not going to cut it this year. But having paid for 18 children to do 10 pin bowling in April, my bank account doesn't quite match my enthusiasm for parties. The unseasonably warm October weather gave me an idea though. We would do it in the forest and put up our humungous tent in case it rained.
(humungous tent, although this was at HESFES, not at the party)
I was nervous about the tent because it was a pain to put up at HESFES, but in the event, it took 15 minutes, after which DH pootled off to collect girls from trampolining while I unpacked the bags and hid chocolate eyeballs in the surrounding bit of forest. Afzaul got back with Hannah, 2 of her friends and my friend L about 1.45 and not long after the guests began to arrive. Within about 30 mins we had 14 children so we started the games.
As Hannah's friends are an eclectic mix from a variety of activities, we always start a party with a getting to know you game. In line with the Halloween theme, we played "spider's web" which involved holding a bit of wool while throwing the rest of the ball to someone else. The person holding the ball had to say their name and how they know Hannah. We ended up with a lovely looking web, the ice was well and truly broken as the minute the last person had said their name the whole crowd of them took off into the woods, shrieking and giggling and the resultant tangle provided Tim and Richard, two of the dads who stayed, with hours of entertainment as they determinedly untangled it (they cheated in the end and scissors came into it!).
Once we'd got to know each other, the hunt for eyeballs was on. The children sorted themselves into teams and I set them loose to hunt for the chocolate eyeballs. Great fun was had by all as the children disappeared in giggling huddles into the woods while the parents got to know each other and most importantly I got time to draw breath! After about 20 minutes they came straggling back with 40-odd eyeballs between them and the winning team got a prize (more chocolate...sorry!). After a brief break to eat some eyeballs, we set off in search of a flat open space to do mummy races. Two children in each team volunteered to be mummies and the other 3 were wrappers. Armed with a roll of toilet paper they set about preparing their first mummy who had to run to a log about 25m away, back again, have their bandages removed before wrapping mummy number 2 and the seond person running there and back. Team Irish Dancing won..although I did help them with the wrapping as on the whole they were younger than the other teams.
After that came Zombie Mats...which in all Hannah's explanations made NO sense to me whatever, but in the event involved one person being the zombie who had to walk slowly, zombie-style, round a circle while the other children moved from one mat to another. When the zombie managed to get onto a mat, the child who happened to be standing on the centre mat became the zombie. They played quite a few rounds of this, then followed that up with blindfolded doughnut eating.
I had other games in mind, but the apple bobbing became impossible because we didnt have enough water and, hyped up on chocolate and the excitement of being out in the wood as darkness crept up on us, no one wanted to sit down to play "witches cauldron"...which in any case was a bit of a backup in the event of having to take shelter in the tent. The rest of the party seemed to consist of running around shrieking (children) and laughing at Tim and Richard determinedly untangling the spider's web wool (adults).
Tent in the woods party a fabulous idea....will definitely do that one again!
Hitherto we have had at most 6 children and had it at home but by the time the guest list had grown to 25, it was obvious home was not going to cut it this year. But having paid for 18 children to do 10 pin bowling in April, my bank account doesn't quite match my enthusiasm for parties. The unseasonably warm October weather gave me an idea though. We would do it in the forest and put up our humungous tent in case it rained.
(humungous tent, although this was at HESFES, not at the party)
I was nervous about the tent because it was a pain to put up at HESFES, but in the event, it took 15 minutes, after which DH pootled off to collect girls from trampolining while I unpacked the bags and hid chocolate eyeballs in the surrounding bit of forest. Afzaul got back with Hannah, 2 of her friends and my friend L about 1.45 and not long after the guests began to arrive. Within about 30 mins we had 14 children so we started the games.
As Hannah's friends are an eclectic mix from a variety of activities, we always start a party with a getting to know you game. In line with the Halloween theme, we played "spider's web" which involved holding a bit of wool while throwing the rest of the ball to someone else. The person holding the ball had to say their name and how they know Hannah. We ended up with a lovely looking web, the ice was well and truly broken as the minute the last person had said their name the whole crowd of them took off into the woods, shrieking and giggling and the resultant tangle provided Tim and Richard, two of the dads who stayed, with hours of entertainment as they determinedly untangled it (they cheated in the end and scissors came into it!).
Once we'd got to know each other, the hunt for eyeballs was on. The children sorted themselves into teams and I set them loose to hunt for the chocolate eyeballs. Great fun was had by all as the children disappeared in giggling huddles into the woods while the parents got to know each other and most importantly I got time to draw breath! After about 20 minutes they came straggling back with 40-odd eyeballs between them and the winning team got a prize (more chocolate...sorry!). After a brief break to eat some eyeballs, we set off in search of a flat open space to do mummy races. Two children in each team volunteered to be mummies and the other 3 were wrappers. Armed with a roll of toilet paper they set about preparing their first mummy who had to run to a log about 25m away, back again, have their bandages removed before wrapping mummy number 2 and the seond person running there and back. Team Irish Dancing won..although I did help them with the wrapping as on the whole they were younger than the other teams.
After that came Zombie Mats...which in all Hannah's explanations made NO sense to me whatever, but in the event involved one person being the zombie who had to walk slowly, zombie-style, round a circle while the other children moved from one mat to another. When the zombie managed to get onto a mat, the child who happened to be standing on the centre mat became the zombie. They played quite a few rounds of this, then followed that up with blindfolded doughnut eating.
I had other games in mind, but the apple bobbing became impossible because we didnt have enough water and, hyped up on chocolate and the excitement of being out in the wood as darkness crept up on us, no one wanted to sit down to play "witches cauldron"...which in any case was a bit of a backup in the event of having to take shelter in the tent. The rest of the party seemed to consist of running around shrieking (children) and laughing at Tim and Richard determinedly untangling the spider's web wool (adults).
Tent in the woods party a fabulous idea....will definitely do that one again!
In which she tries an unexpected new activity
And I muse about my educational philosophy and the National Curriculum.
She had a friend sleep over last night and I had promised to take them swimming. We got to the pool, where I discovered that I'd forgotten my swimming costume. Fortunately the girls are old enough and competent enough swimmers to be allowed in the pool without adult supervision so off they went. I hung around the edge and read my book. About half the pool was set up for a fun session with huge floats and the other half was occupied by the local scuba diving club. after they'd been in for a few minutes, there was an announcement that the club was offering 15 minute taster sessions. Hannah immediately wanted to try, but I wasn;t sure they would let her because of her age. I suggested she went to ask, but she got distracted by the game she and A were playing and forgot about it. Until someone from the club came over and asked me if the girls would like a go. Turns out eight is not too young, so they went over. There was only one set of small enough gear so A had to wait while Hannah had her turn. I watched her for a bit and she seemed to be having a blast...which prompted the musing about educational philosophy.
"Do you have to follow the curriculum?" is quite a popular question when we tell people we home ed and mostly I just say no, especially if they have children in school whose learning is contrained by the state-determined, lowest common denominator that is the NC. What I really want to say is "no, thank God." I suppose we are by default following it in maths because Hannah likes workbooks and Education City, all of which are based on the NC, but then we can also discuss very large numbers, make our eyes go funny with the number of 0s in a googolplexian, use all sorts of maths in our everyday life and enjoy ourselves with abstract concepts...mainly on car journeys!
But for the rest of our learning (and I do mean "our"..I am re-teaching myself Latin and learning a lot of biology for the first time and fascinated by astronomy), the NC is so narrow and restrictive. The universe is so big and beautiful and amazing and a lifetime isn;t enough to learn all we want to know about. Thinking about all the potential to learn we have makes me so excited and I want Hannah to feel that buzz of wanting to know something and having the tools at her fingertips to find out and the pleasure of discussing and debating the things that have no answer or of finding the answer to questions that nobody knows YET!
All that from a 15 scuba diving taster session! But it seemed a perfect illustration of how I see our journey, looking at the world as our classroom, our playground, our resource cupboard, our shelves full of interesting things to find out about and launch ourselves wholeheartedly at whatever opportunities come our way.
She had a friend sleep over last night and I had promised to take them swimming. We got to the pool, where I discovered that I'd forgotten my swimming costume. Fortunately the girls are old enough and competent enough swimmers to be allowed in the pool without adult supervision so off they went. I hung around the edge and read my book. About half the pool was set up for a fun session with huge floats and the other half was occupied by the local scuba diving club. after they'd been in for a few minutes, there was an announcement that the club was offering 15 minute taster sessions. Hannah immediately wanted to try, but I wasn;t sure they would let her because of her age. I suggested she went to ask, but she got distracted by the game she and A were playing and forgot about it. Until someone from the club came over and asked me if the girls would like a go. Turns out eight is not too young, so they went over. There was only one set of small enough gear so A had to wait while Hannah had her turn. I watched her for a bit and she seemed to be having a blast...which prompted the musing about educational philosophy.
"Do you have to follow the curriculum?" is quite a popular question when we tell people we home ed and mostly I just say no, especially if they have children in school whose learning is contrained by the state-determined, lowest common denominator that is the NC. What I really want to say is "no, thank God." I suppose we are by default following it in maths because Hannah likes workbooks and Education City, all of which are based on the NC, but then we can also discuss very large numbers, make our eyes go funny with the number of 0s in a googolplexian, use all sorts of maths in our everyday life and enjoy ourselves with abstract concepts...mainly on car journeys!
But for the rest of our learning (and I do mean "our"..I am re-teaching myself Latin and learning a lot of biology for the first time and fascinated by astronomy), the NC is so narrow and restrictive. The universe is so big and beautiful and amazing and a lifetime isn;t enough to learn all we want to know about. Thinking about all the potential to learn we have makes me so excited and I want Hannah to feel that buzz of wanting to know something and having the tools at her fingertips to find out and the pleasure of discussing and debating the things that have no answer or of finding the answer to questions that nobody knows YET!
All that from a 15 scuba diving taster session! But it seemed a perfect illustration of how I see our journey, looking at the world as our classroom, our playground, our resource cupboard, our shelves full of interesting things to find out about and launch ourselves wholeheartedly at whatever opportunities come our way.
Saturday 11 February 2012
In which we catch up after some busy days
I started off yet another intention to write every day; it was good when I did that. I didn't the purely self-inflicted pressure to write something "interesting". Then it can be just a little ramble through our life, mainly for my own pleasure and if anyone else cares to read....good. You're all welcome.
Anyway, Thursday we went to the Science Museum with a small group of parents and children from my favourite Facebook home ed group, Learning Under the Trees. I'm not very good at recognising faces so apart from Tammie, I had no idea who I was waiting for, but am fairly blessed in being the sort of person who doesn;t find it hard to bounce up to random strangers and start chatting. While I was chatting with Janis, Hannah quickly made friends with her son, Nathan. An animatronic dog playing with an iPad, it transpires, is a really good ice breaker! Once Charlotte and Davinia and their families had arrived, we set off for a leisurely wander through the first gallery en route to the Launchpad. And that was that really.
By the time we got up there, Hannah had acquired another new friend in Abigail, no doubt attracted by a similarly funky sense of style and I was able to relax and chat while she went off and had fun. It was fairly quiet as we seemed to have hit the time when the morning school groups were at lunch and the afternoon groups yet to arrive! After lunch we went back there but by then it was massively crowded so we meandered round some other galleries (never been into that history of medical machines bit before and am so relieved I don;t need to be in an iron lung). Naturally there was shopping and goes on the simulator rides. I really wanted the genetics and DNA kit but at £25, no way! Wonder if Helen can get those in the shop????
There was an interesting incident on the way home. One of Hannah's new acquisitions was a tin of "science putty" and she was playing with it on the tube. As we stopped at a station, a piece of it fell out the door and I could see that Hannah's body instinctively went forward as if she was going to get out after it, but she stopped herself. It was quite fascinating, especially in light of all the work on the brain we've been doing, to see that her cognitive development has got to the point that she has impulse control!
Friday is art class. We managed to fit in some spelling and did some maths and literacy on Education City, then went off to Hertford for her lesson, where they finished off the work they had been doing on cakes. Sadly not real ones, but a still life painting of small cakes and a large papier mache cupcake. I love this class; she has made some amazing things at it; my personal favourite so far is a terracotta warrior in clay, painted as the originals would have been. Will have to try to source some sort of work to provide her with background now. Afterwards I took her friends home and they had a short time to play, then we came home, ate some dinner.
In the evening we were out again, to see a production of Hairspray at the local senior school she will not be attending! A friend's brother was in it so her parents had got us tickets. Wow! I knew a lot of the cast, either because they go to Hannah's drama school or because they had come from the primary school I used to work at and it added to the excitment. But it was really really well done and some incredible talents. The girl playing Miss Motormouth was mind-blowing. I absolutely believed that she had had a life full of suffering the indiginities and injustice of segregation and it brought tears to my eyes.
I didn;t know the story before we went which is a shame, it would have been good to do some work before hand on the civil rights movement etc, but Hannah always seems to be more motivated to follow up after the event than prepare before so will do something this week.
Today has been quiet, got up late and we have a friend sleeping over.
Anyway, Thursday we went to the Science Museum with a small group of parents and children from my favourite Facebook home ed group, Learning Under the Trees. I'm not very good at recognising faces so apart from Tammie, I had no idea who I was waiting for, but am fairly blessed in being the sort of person who doesn;t find it hard to bounce up to random strangers and start chatting. While I was chatting with Janis, Hannah quickly made friends with her son, Nathan. An animatronic dog playing with an iPad, it transpires, is a really good ice breaker! Once Charlotte and Davinia and their families had arrived, we set off for a leisurely wander through the first gallery en route to the Launchpad. And that was that really.
By the time we got up there, Hannah had acquired another new friend in Abigail, no doubt attracted by a similarly funky sense of style and I was able to relax and chat while she went off and had fun. It was fairly quiet as we seemed to have hit the time when the morning school groups were at lunch and the afternoon groups yet to arrive! After lunch we went back there but by then it was massively crowded so we meandered round some other galleries (never been into that history of medical machines bit before and am so relieved I don;t need to be in an iron lung). Naturally there was shopping and goes on the simulator rides. I really wanted the genetics and DNA kit but at £25, no way! Wonder if Helen can get those in the shop????
There was an interesting incident on the way home. One of Hannah's new acquisitions was a tin of "science putty" and she was playing with it on the tube. As we stopped at a station, a piece of it fell out the door and I could see that Hannah's body instinctively went forward as if she was going to get out after it, but she stopped herself. It was quite fascinating, especially in light of all the work on the brain we've been doing, to see that her cognitive development has got to the point that she has impulse control!
Friday is art class. We managed to fit in some spelling and did some maths and literacy on Education City, then went off to Hertford for her lesson, where they finished off the work they had been doing on cakes. Sadly not real ones, but a still life painting of small cakes and a large papier mache cupcake. I love this class; she has made some amazing things at it; my personal favourite so far is a terracotta warrior in clay, painted as the originals would have been. Will have to try to source some sort of work to provide her with background now. Afterwards I took her friends home and they had a short time to play, then we came home, ate some dinner.
In the evening we were out again, to see a production of Hairspray at the local senior school she will not be attending! A friend's brother was in it so her parents had got us tickets. Wow! I knew a lot of the cast, either because they go to Hannah's drama school or because they had come from the primary school I used to work at and it added to the excitment. But it was really really well done and some incredible talents. The girl playing Miss Motormouth was mind-blowing. I absolutely believed that she had had a life full of suffering the indiginities and injustice of segregation and it brought tears to my eyes.
I didn;t know the story before we went which is a shame, it would have been good to do some work before hand on the civil rights movement etc, but Hannah always seems to be more motivated to follow up after the event than prepare before so will do something this week.
Today has been quiet, got up late and we have a friend sleeping over.
Wednesday 8 February 2012
In which we go back to work
We've been a bit up in the air since my auntie died, but we are getting back on track now. We have done three trips to the RI this year so far: a schools event on the physics of rollercoasters and fairground rides, a family fun day on the brain and a schools event on maths and magic. Royal Institution, we are so grateful you re-thought your heinous plan to charge home educators four times the school price, because we love your events, we love science and we don't deserve to be penalised for choosing to home ed. (if a school child is sick and the teacher brings 29 kids instead of 30, so what, but if our child is sick, we can't come...which I suppose makes us less "reliable" but it's still not fair!)
Elsewhere, she has made a good start on the Maths Mindstretchers 9-11 book and has set herself the goal of finishing the whole book before she actually is 9. She is getting much more confident working with bigger numbers and she really enjoys it..
We have a few projects on the back burner, still working on one on the brain and now planning one about hiccups! But today we started looking at cave art for the history fair in March (experience has taught me that if we are not organised well in advance we will not be ready at all!). The plan is to do a short presentation on cave art with pictures and then provide a craft activity to go with it.
Elsewhere, she has made a good start on the Maths Mindstretchers 9-11 book and has set herself the goal of finishing the whole book before she actually is 9. She is getting much more confident working with bigger numbers and she really enjoys it..
We have a few projects on the back burner, still working on one on the brain and now planning one about hiccups! But today we started looking at cave art for the history fair in March (experience has taught me that if we are not organised well in advance we will not be ready at all!). The plan is to do a short presentation on cave art with pictures and then provide a craft activity to go with it.
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