What learning looks like...

I'm the kind of person who worries about everything. I literally lose sleep over the smallest things and spend hours of my life planning for every eventuality. With home education, however, I'm starting to let that go a little. The main reason for beginning on our home ed journey was because we really felt that our son, at 4, was far too young to be starting at a school. Being away from us for such long days, being expected to follow rules and learn blind obedience, beginning to have structured lesson time included in his day... far too young for all these things. So it didn't make sense to begin a programme of learning at home which would have ticked all my anxiety-ridden achievement boxes of structure, order and routine. The only approach that made sense was just to carry on doing what we'd always done - play, read stories, discover stuff together, more play. Eighteen months later, that's still what we're doing - the difference now is that I'm confident that while we do this, the learning is happening spontaneously. Here's what our learning looks like:

Trips to the library are a favourite part of our week. The children spend a huge amount of time choosing a DVD for the week and less time choosing books - they both love reading but the DVD shelves are very enticing and they love this treat... My boy has always been very resistant to being directed. If I suggest reading, he always has a better plan. In the last few weeks, he's decided he really wants to learn to read - I think because he sees his friends reading - and is flying through books, reading every sign in sight and working very quickly through the Reading Eggs programme. That's the only thing we do that is a 'programme' of sorts, and he really enjoys it. He's got a flair for numbers and is very interested in maths, so although we do nothing formal there, just answering his questions is educational enough for both of us.

We spend a lot of time outdoors. We're very lucky that we're surrounded by amazing countryside and a brilliant home ed community, and we go to an all day outdoor learning group one day and a forest school another day. These are much more pleasant for me when the sun shines, but the children visibly gain so much from being engaged with nature and the land throughout the seasons. This experience inspires so many questions and ideas and I think their knowledge and understanding of the way the world works is certainly better - and more intuitive - than mine. This week we harvested beetroot and salad at one group, above, and made clay creatures at the other:

Our week also invariably involves a lot of bike riding. Again, we're lucky that we live somewhere that means we can just grab the bikes and go. Learning to ride confidently - over-confidently, sometimes! - has been wonderful for our boy, who whizzes around the bmx track in the nearby forest to the envy of children twice his age. Little sister is learning too, although often prefers chauffering her toys around in the basket of a very old trike. She's got a balance bike, which we didn't have for the others but it's working well for her and is interesting to see the different way of learning.

I didn't take pictures of the tantrums and bickering that are also a part of our week - they never feel particularly educational at the time, although I'm sure they are! I didn't take pictures of myself, watching them, exhausted, trying to summon up the energy and will to be the mother they deserve. I find pregnancy very draining and I'm desperately trying to boost my iron levels to stop the threats about refusing me a homebirth so this week I've spent a lot of time sitting, watching and going to bed early. I still feel lucky that life allows me to do this, that we have this flexibility and freedom within our days. And I'm sure that when I stop working as a childminder, in a couple of weeks, I'll be able to rest more and hopefully be more patient and relaxed again. For now though, this very informal approach to learning and to life means that I can muddle on, knowing that my children are learning incredible things everyday. And that feels good.

Back again!

I haven't blogged here in a very long time but I've been drawn back, feeling the need to connect again with writing about our lives and sharing in the journeys of other bloggers.

I've been trying to write more frequently and really enjoying the process - it's sometimes frustrating not finding the time but I'm trying to be ok with that. This is my more personal blog and won't be publicly available but I love the record of our lives so far and, although there's a big gap in the posts, I'm looking forward to catching up.

So, here we are:

This was a very wet and windy walk at Haytor, where we managed to spend approximately 1.5 minutes out of the car! Our arrival coincided with a terrible hailstorm and Haytor is never the easiest place to be even in a light wind! So, very dishevelled and disappointed, we struggled home for unearned hot chocolate and a film. We did manage to get our first whole family photo in months, though, courtesy of a lovely couple who were much better than us at timing their walk, so it wasn't a wasted opportunity.

And here's why I'm so keen to start blogging here again:

That's right, another little person is on the way to join our family! This little one is a very special addition, arriving totally on his/her (we think his!) own agenda - the very best kind of surprise and we're all so excited to meet him/her. Littlest girl is especially over the moon about becoming a big sister - she's very keen on babies and is the most helpful child on the planet already, so I think she'll be a natural!

I'm looking forward to catching up on what's happening in our lives and being part of this community again. Next post coming very soon, I promise!

A birthday girl!

 Well, the last two years have seemed a bit of a blur to me! My baby girl is two already, I just can't believe it! She's an outdoor bunny, so we went for a picnic at a local nature reserve to guarantee lots of squirrel viewing - squirrels are her favourites at the moment so it was the highlight of her day watching them collecting nuts and acorns. Here she is with her beautiful big sister, and this is the best photo to demonstrate her birthday dress, which has cost me much stress and my sewing machine many insults in the last couple of weeks! However, I now know what a placket is (that bit the buttons are sewn onto - who knew?!) and I have mastered buttonholes. Only because my machine is much better than I give it credit for - I need to develop my patience!

 A fun cake for a gorgeous girl. We had to have three separate 'cake and singing' sessions throughout the weekend due to several family visits as well as our picnic with friends so the train cake was ideal as we ate three carriages each time and then I added more from the spares tin! I had made a huge traybake style sponge and cut it into chunks and when they were iced and decorated with the beautiful sugarpaste animals my sister and my biggest girl had created, it looked great. Well, the children were impressed, anyway! The animals got a bit battered when we carried the cake around the nature reserve, but it was worth it :-)

The weekend was really rewarding. We spread out the visitors to stop it from feeling overwhelming and that worked really well. Every present was really appreciated and enjoyed individually and it felt really lovely. In this picture, she's falling in love with some gorgeous wool-felted finger puppets. Plus, when a two year old first discovers the 'Happy Birthday' song and walks around singing it to themselves for days, well, it's just really sweet!

 

A lazy day...

 Today we discovered a fantastic solution for a small boy who is fairly addicted to the TV at the moment and asks to watch it every five minutes from about 8am. I don't mind him watching a little bit, it's nice to relax and zone out sometimes, but all things in moderation. So. We decided yesterday that he shouldn't even ask to watch it before he's dressed and ready for the day, because that just isn't going to happen. And today, we used that new idea to it's best advantage. We got dressed at 2.15pm. This may well be the latest I've ever got dressed - I'm a little obsessive about showering first thing and being ready. I've acknowledged today that this is a lesson I needed to learn: it's ok to slow down sometimes.

It's not that we've been doing nothing, though, just that we've been doing it more gently than usual! We read lots of stories and did some cooking, made a lovely lunch and started the evening meal for us all to have later, and then the littlies were delighted to have a tea party with their toys (using the tea set I've saved for 25 years and wished I'd saved a little longer when my tiny girl had one of her throwing moments and smashed a cup :( ) while I managed to get halfway through making the dress we're giving the tiny one for her second birthday on Sunday. This was the calm scene as my boy set up the picnic (with playsilk blanket, thank you mamapixie!) and my girl read to the teddies while they waited for their food. She then ate all their food (raisins) but they didn't seem to mind. The funniest bit was watching her read them a story and then shout 'you stay there, I be back soon!' and run to get another book!

Oh and a little bit of spontaneous learning too - have many children learned to read by fridge magnets alone?! I lie, Reading Eggs is really suiting him at the moment, he enjoys working through the sounds with me and he's just very, very interested in words right now so learning is just happening as we go. He's thrilled every time he works out a real word though! I would like some fridge letters that aren't just capitals - do they exist? Off to ebay I go...

It doesn't happen often...

But wow, when it does, it's something special! The children bathing is, of course, something that DOES happen often - they are usually caked in mud or crayon so we can't pass many days without needing a good wash - but the peace that accompanied the bath this afternoon was very unusual. Maybe it's because it's the afternoon: four hours at Forest School in which it didn't stop raining for even a second meant that we didn't wait until bedtime for the clean routine. Perhaps they were just exhausted after all that hard playing. Whatever the reason, I had to catch the moment (before they noticed me and began pouring water on the floor) where the silent absorption in their own play and discovery was so absolute that I sat outside the bathroom and read my book for five whole minutes. I was a metre away but they both were so quiet and involved in what they were doing that I had to occasionally pop my head around the door to check they were still there!

Our days at home have been challenging as our littlest girl has been ill with lots of different bugs in the last couple of weeks. This has made her grumpy and very easy to antagonise - at which point she forgets her words and resorts to bites and headbutts. Not much fun, but she's much better now and is gaining more vocabulary every day so will hopefully be less frustrated as she can explain herself without battering us all! And in the pauses between tantrums, we've been exploring lots of lego and junk modelling and reading a million or so books daily. Room for much improvement as we adjust to our new cycle, but learning how we work best is all part of the fun. Here's to Autumn!

All change!

Wow, what a rollercoaster the last few weeks have been! We set off in September with Finn starting school, mornings only, with the rest of his local friends. He did six mornings before we decided as a family that this didn't work for us. Our instincts said he wasn't ready, but he was keen to start so we thought we'd give it a go and I'm glad we did, because I now feel much more sure of our route and don't feel that I'm imposing my own dreams on him. He said he hated it after a day but we encouraged him to keep going in and to give it a fair trial, which he did. He didn't hate all of it, he enjoyed the singing and some of the toys but was very articulate at explaining that he prefers both of these things at home and at Forest School. So, after much anxious conversation (why does a meeting with the headteacher still strike panic into me at nearly thirty?!), we've withdrawn him. We're not sure where this journey will go, we know some families who have never been to school and some who only do secondary, as well as some who are delaying their child's entry into primary school. And our local school does have a lot going for it so it may be that he feels he'd prefer to be there to be part of the community at some point in the future. It may be that he's desperate to start next term, it may be next year, it may be in the far distant future, or not at all. I just keep reminding myself that any of those options are ok, it will all work out in the end and we will be guided by him. He has a wonderful understanding of his own needs and is so grateful that we've responded to them. And people keep remarking on how happy he looks this week :-)

He's not of 'statutory school age' until next year (a fact that isn't often mentioned to parents of reception children!) so we're not official home-edders, but our week is becoming a lovely mixture of two mornings at Forest School, a drop-in home ed social group, our local toddler group (which I help run so he helps me!) and lots of fun and laughter at home. Today we read tons of books - Evie is addicted to reading right now and won't go anywhere without a stack of books under her arm! And we made a rocket, inspired by the Charlie and Lola story in which the little sister breaks her brother's beautiful rocket...and the little sister tried that today! The little two are getting on so well at the moment - she cried all the time he was at school and they just keep hugging and laughing together now. And both are delighted when our biggest girl gets home on the school bus. She just started secondary and absolutely loves it :-)

In other news, I've decided to train as a childminder and start my training next month but in the meantime, I've set up an etsy shop for my jewellery, which I'm really enjoying getting into again. It's called Jenner's Jewellery if anyone fancies a peek!

 So I'm a self-employed, home-edding mama this week, which is quite exciting!

Brothers and sisters

 I've been useless at blogging again - my computer makes it almost impossible to get a post completed before the frustration causes me to combust, and life has been quite up and down - fun but confused and a bit manic! But I just found these photos and couldn't resist posting them, they are such an amazing record of how much these little people adore each other:

Above, at a garden party for one of my oldest friends. Below, littlest girl took the sling away from me and carried it over to her big sister, who obligingly carried her for about fifteen minutes, both of them laughing the whole time!

And here, both of them had been asleep for three hours, he's on a single next to the double - after I took this she sleep-crawled even further into his armpit and had to be moved as she started kneading his skin as she does with mine all night long!

I love seeing how much they love each other. And I know how normal sibling-rivalries can be, and they aren't the best of friends every day, but I hope that in years to come they'll keep these bonds strong and continue to support each other and have heaps of fun together :-)