More Home School :-)

I went to an information evening on tuesday, took the children along since I am doing it solo at the moment whilst D travels to exotic lands. They were actually pretty good considering it was quite boring for them. J found a couple of little girls to share her dolls with and to keep entertained. The boys took 'Hotwheels' and played for ages, the noise level slowly escalating over time of course and a nubmer of hushes had to be impossed upon them, but they stayed exactly where they were suposed to, did not really bother any one, apart from the man W asked for change for the drink machine, he did not have any. I don't need to worry about some one trying to bribe my children away, I ahve to worry about them extorting cash from strange pasersby.

Oh, yes, the information evening. As usuall it is very interesting to talk with people who have been homeschooling for a long time, or even those who have just started. There were people who follow curiculums stictly to those who don't. People who have home schooled for 15 years and some who have been doing it as recently as I have, or are about to start. There was a couple from Scarsdale, but a different school to ours, they are veyr unhappy with the school. I had a quick chat with them and exchanged details, so if they decide to home school I'll see if we can get together. Their son is 11, so a bit older than ours, but that is often a good thing for our boy's.

I spoke with two teenagers (different families) who have always been homne school with as I understand it 'child dicredted learning' and they strongly encourage other families to do the same thing. I asked what if the children don't really 'lead' and they said 'they will!' It is pretty much about the children deciding what they want to do to do and the parents making every effort to get them exposure to the topic/subject matter. I guess this sounds like alot of work, but having tried the 'formal' stick to a curiculum and do 'school work' every day, I can tell you that is a lot of work too, and if the children do not like it or are not interested then it is alot of wasted hard work, or just becomes even harder.

Home school parents seem to have an aura about them of calm and relaxation (I need to add that I am NOT there yet). This aura of calm is something that I aspire to and so I like to meet other home schooling parents and try to find out what it is that they do and how they do it. I have lots of ideas again and I am thinking of changing my PLAN and formula for our home school.

I took away a couple of messages, firstly just about everything that we do in our day can be placed into some sort of curicumlum/key learning area. Of course any relavance to curiculum and KLA's is only of relavance if we plan to return to school and this is undecided. My dear OLD (he he she'll love that) friend L said something to me that made sense, no body learns anything if they are not interested and if the children decide that school is where they prefer to be at scome future point, then they will make it work and catch up where they have to (because it is in their 'interest' to do so. If they don't want to go, however it will make for a very tricky time for us all if we make them go. So, I have to open my mind to long term home schooling and to be honest this is actually less pressure than thinking I have to keep pace with the school in terms of what and when they learn.

The other message was the bit I mentioned about about self lead learning. I am excited this evening because a PLAN is formulating and as you all know I am the Queen of plans and Ideas (I'm an Ideas (Wo)MAN). I have more ideas that any one in the entire world, it is just that mostly they stay as ideas, i get bored with them and move on to knew and different ideas.

I have found out about some different local Nature reserves and activities there and about a farm where we can go and learn about all sorts of interesting things, I have found out about Ice Skating lessons and I might have a place for horse riding, I have even thought of a way we can start Spanish classes, I just have to find a Spanish teacher willing to come to us and some other families who might like to join us.

So, you see a plan, now I need to make an ACTION plan and actually Action it. Some times for me, this is easier said than done, how wonderful life will be for us though, if I can do it.

To finish off, I have decided to involve the children as much as I can possibly do so in preparing dinner every day (lets see how long I can make it happen). This means being organised and not too hungry! So, tonight we began, they all peeled (only one bandaid required :-))and cut up their own potatoes, cut up thier own chicken thigh fillet and floured, egged and crumbed their own chicken nuggets. They put them into the pan but I took over from that point, the chance of a burn too high for them to actually do the cooking. Pretty much all of it was consumed, YEAH a positive side effect I guess.