It's 9.10 am in The Chicken Shed household...

...and I've had a physiotherapy appointment, the kids have done their morning chores, have made their own packed lunch in preparation for chess club, have completed a few pages of tick-box maths and writing, as well as some logic problems from their daily folders, (ds1 has read the rest of a chapter on metals for IGCSE chemistry) and now they are taking turns to race down our shared drive in their home-made go-kart.

I take a moment to wonder what the neighbours are thinking as they see my ragamuffin bunch hurtling down the driveway in a plastic crate fixed to a skateboard.

Ok.

Moment over.

Let's get on with enjoying the day :)

Update: 9.31 am and ds1 has just come in for a tape measure to help calculate how many kilometres per hour their go-kart is travelling.

'How many metres in a kilometer?' he asks (and I reply).

'Oh that's good.' he says, and off he goes.

Update: 10.26 am.  apparently 22mph, according to their calculations on  http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/speed. Meanwhile, ds2 is teaching himself to crochet. We discuss 'freeform' crochet, when he explains how he'd like to experiment. Their lift for chess club is due any time. Dd is about to go on minecraft (waiting patiently for me to get off the pc)

The Monopoly Marathon - London destroyed by 600ft walking hairball

After I banned most screen-based activities (too much post-Christmas lethargy caused by a Christmas week plugged in) the children started a two-day monopoly marathon.

Much shouting, fighting, cheating, negotiation, and occasional violence (all of which I did my best to ignore) later, the thought that my children might be money-grabbing materialistic psychopaths began to creep in.

'Loadsa Dosh' ds2 (with dd in the background calculating her projected profit rate on my scientific calculator)

Thankfully the second day of the war monopoly game was cut short by Dogzilla who in a fit of overexcitement dragged his extra large chewy bone in true 'Zilla style through the streets of London, sending the stock market crashing (not to mention the hotels on Park Lane and Pentonville).

Dogzilla - the calm before the rampage

Who needs maths lessons..

...when you can play roulette at breakfast

Golf and the world of home education

I think the world would be a better place if everyone played golf like this. Those tedious golf championships on tv would take a fraction of the time and we could have some good ole sleepy Sunday films on instead.

[By the way, in the world of Home Education this is not called 'cheating'. No, it is called 'using your initiative', or 'thinking outside of the box'...or 'doing it quick so you can get to the ice cream van'. ]

I've been thinking recently about the concepts people have of home education. So many seem to think that home education equates with 'school at home'. Of course there are a number of home edders who do home educate like this, particularly in the US where it seems there are two sorts of home edders: the structured home schoolers, and the autonomous unschoolers.

But in the UK there are many, if not more so, of home edders who do not do 'school at home'. And there are many who have a sort of eclectic mix of home education methods, constantly in flux, somewhere between 'school at home' and a totally child-led education.

For the record, we do not do school at home. We tried. We failed. We didn't conquer. (We chose another path).

But, what you might ask, do we do?

Well, there are days when I do not know what we do.

There are weeks when all I remember is the mounds of washing in and out and in and out, and the muddy footprints, piles of sand and dog hair down my hallway. There are weeks when I can't see beyond the boot rack and I despair over flat fruit cake and cry over lumpy mash.


There are weeks when my children whizz through the kitchen on a mission to something or somewhere, grabbing food on the hoof, hardly stopping for breath (and certainly not to grunt anything as civilised as 'hi') before they disappear off to something 'important'.

There are weeks when learning just happens, in its own wonky unpredictable way, without me teaching, interferring, guiding, enthusing or doing any of those things that are supposedly 'essential' for children's education:

And there are weeks when I am needed, on hand, that very minute, every minute of the day. 'Now Mummy!' they yell alternately from the bottom of our twenty million metre long garden and the highest point of our roof

'Come here!'

'Watch me!'

' Help me with this!'

' Look at this!'

and I'm pulled back and forth like a tired overstretched bit of knicker elastic.

And there are weeks when we play around with experiments from http://www.thehappyscientist.com/ and make sparks out of plain old aluminium foil:

And there are weeks when we go pond dipping

(It was this big, honest)

(no it wasn't, he's a liar)

(who cares, I have a great hat)

And there are weeks when we have fun at museums:

or listen to stories, or play with friends

There are days (not often weeks) when we (I) get the maths books out, encourage the kids to copy out poems to improve their handwriting, use 'Sequential spelling' in some desperate attempt to instil some sort of spelling sense into them.

What will happen to you little children if you can't spell? I wail.

How will you survive in the world without knowing your nine times tables? I wail.

We'll use spellchecker and a calculator, they wail in return.

And I say, fair point, and decide we should instead go out and do important things.

Like flying kites:

and playing golf (our own way):

and seeing the world with fresh eyes:

Workbooks, water and Romans (said with a Jonathan Ross voice otherwise the alliteration doesn't work)

Despite my feelings towards workbooks, they have seen on the conservatory table these past few weeks. Miquon maths, CGP maths and Sequential Spelling. They don't have a huge fan base among junior members, but they tick a fragile little box in my head and once that's ticked, it means that the kids can get on with learning the important stuff.

Dd in the meantime has started a very small 'paint by numbers' picture, which we picked up at the roman villa (see later). Of course it's a completely useless set, with hardly any paint in the teensy paint pots they supplied. What paint there was dried up on contact with air, so she ended up using our own paints that were similar colours. It is still a 'work in progress'.

In between workbooks and more useful learning, we've been carrying on with a Roman theme. Ds2 seems to enjoy it, but ds1 has made it clear that he is far above all of this stuff. It doesn't stop him joining in though{g}.

I've been reading the book 'Across the Roman Wall', which is ok, but feels a bit as if it was written to fit in with the National Curriculum. It probably was. Having listened to book 1 on CD we've also been listening to a few more Roman Mysteries on audio CD ('Vesuvius' and 'Collossus of Rhodes'). Both v.good, though I do wish the author would find some more varied vocabulary. I swear EVERY CHAPTER starts with the phrase 'Presently, he...' or 'Presently, she...'

Last week we finally made it to the Roman Villa that we visited the week before (on the one day it was closed!). The little carry-around commentaries were popular and kept my 3, plus 2 other children that I took with me, interested for a while at least.

Ds1, forgetting for a moment to put on his I'm-miserable-why-did-you-drag-me-to-this-place face:

Ok, I spoke too soon:

He's in training for a life in the public eye (no comment):

Ds2 naturally fleeced me at the gift shop:

So what else? Well the garden/veg plot/allotment is a shameful disaster,so no photos. But here's a photo of what we found coming out of our pond, a dragonfly (I think) nymph, ready to transform:

Dh took the boys on a work trip to Stratford (which apparently didn't just involve eating food and drinking in the pub)

Ds1 tested out his home-made (from plastic fizzy bottles) raft at sailing club. He discovered that although it floated, it floated about a foot under water when he sat on it. Hmm...back to the drawing board then.

The boys show that you're never too old to play in a sandpit:

Dd tests my patience by doing some sewing. Omitting swear words I calmly untangle, mend, untangle, prod, untangle and nurture the sewing machine into action, with small person at the helm. I don't intend to make it a regular occurence. (Perhaps I should hide the sewing machine on the top shelf, like I did with those apalling Letterland books that my children insisted I read to them)

Dd shows how photogenic she is in her new hat that was free from the local swap shop:

A session on World War II at our home ed group.

Even my children participated (a bit). It will go down in history.

Ds2 finds out all about hot air balloons at cubs:

A sign of a fun day - straight to the bath with you missus!

How Children Learn

Amidst my turmoil about workbooks and curriculum, about what my children know compared with other children, there are times when I have to just stop and see what is in front of me. Oh yes, it's LEARNING! And this learning is happening now: like a secret underground volcano, all this stuff all bubbles to the surface. And I'm gobsmacked. How did the child know that? Where did that come from?

Of course we never get to see much of the learning that happens: a child can go from apparently knowing nothing, to knowing lots; from not understanding, to full comprehension.

Perhaps in a school environment, under a routine of externally-imposed one-size-fits-all learning, many of these moments get lost, drowned, smothered or distracted. Perhaps they happen and nobody but the child is there to notice. But in home education, especially when children are left to learn without interference or well-intentioned teaching, these teeny bits of magic are revealed. And if you're still enough and resist interfering, you can tiptoe up and witness wonderful things happening.

The biologist in me would say it's those neurons firing off, making connections, links, mapping the world of information and making sense of it when nothing much appears to be happening on the surface.

When learning happens and I can't see where it has come from I realise what John Holt was saying about autonomous learning. I see how learning is not a direct route from a to z, or a series of routes a to b, b to c, and so on. Often it is a random, higgledy-piggledy, unplanned journey. It is like one huge 3-dimensional jigsaw that doesn't always need all the pieces to make sense, and you don't have to start at the corners or the sides to make out the picture. And, besides, your picture will be different to everyone elses.

Today, I've been watching my 6 year old make sense of maths. I've never taught her maths. She has doodled her way through a few sticker maths books because she begged to, but I do no formal, schooly learning with her. I don't sit and count with her. I don't read counting books to her. We don't have posters of numbers on the walls. We've never practised adding up. I have no idea where her mathematical knowledge comes from, except that it has somehow evolved from her personal experience of the world and the problems she needs to solve. I find it difficult to step back. Maths makes me anxious. I hate people saying 'but maths will come naturally, in day-to-day activities'. I think ' Yes, but I dont' care what you say about your children, I need to see it happening, in MY children.' And it does happen. If I stop worrying and just be still for a moment.

Today dd wanted to find out how much money was in her money box. She emptied the piggy on the floor and spent an hour of counting out piles of tens and piles of pounds, coming to me with occasional questions:
'What comes after twenty?'
'How can I add these ones to these twos?'
'Do these make ten?'

She made a dog design on the floor with the piles of tens and pounds and, satisfied with her work, left them there for us all to trip over.

She never did find out how much was in her money box. By the time she'd got to that part, she'd built on whatever knowledge and experience she already had: her curiosity was satiated. The journey had been far more important than the end result.

Therein lies a lesson for all of us.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe...

This morning I took the herd ice skating, and as usually happens at these things I came back with a few extra children.

I currently have 8 children in the house. Hence the reason why I'm up here, hiding with my laptop - sorry I mean supervising from a position of height.

Two children are digging a very large hole in the garden (possibly burying the dog).
Two are floating dried runner beans in jar lids in the pond.
One is waving a huge pair of tree loppers above his head.
Another is playing with the petrol strimmer (er, I wonder if he should be doing that).
And any that are left (I've lost count) are plugged into some sort of technology (Wii or computer most likely).

You know it's days like this that I want to invite around all those people who say 'what about socialisation?'. Cos these home educated children of mine are obviously so deprived.



So what have my sproglets been up to recently (apart from trying to maim each other with the strimmer).

Well there have been very educational activities going on, like, er information technology studies:

and more IT studies...

Some cross-curricular art and IT studies...

Some business studies combined with Design and Technology...

Scientific experimentation combined with IT (testing the hypothesis: can one use a keyboard at the same time one has a box on ones head)...

P.R training - ie how to deal with fame and publicity ('No comment')...



Design and technology and history (honest - it's Archimedes's Screw for the ignorant among you)...

Some archaelogy, though officially they're not suppose to study that until at least secondary age...

Home Economics (er, actually it's candle wax, but same principal - cook really hard until pan is ruined)...

Italian lessons (it's Cornetto, obviously Italian)...

More physical education (and a lesson in health and safety)...

Foundation stage education (taking turns at teddy bears' picnic)



Interpersonal relationships :
'Mummy, why are you taking a photo of a dead mouse?'
'Because I thought it could go on the blog.'
'Oh, ok.'

And something totally non-educational. Well we like to chill out and relax with those workbooks sometimes. A child's got to have SOME downtime, you know...

Blood and cardboard

My kids definitely prefer it when we are in an autonomous education phase.

This morning I encouraged (forcefully) them to do a page or two of maths and to continue with our project on Ancient Greece. It's not asking alot. Especially when 'doing' ancient greece this morning comprised me reading a couple of paragraphs about Troy and Homer and then them assembling (or not) cardboard model of Trojan Horse. See - how hard can that be? Apparently the words blood and stone come into it. Or blood and cardboard.

Well we got as far as sticking together the background - the Troy bit. And I was feeling so generous I didn't even make them cut any of it out. Last night, well into adult time, I sat watching CSI cutting out the various items required and labelling each with the order of assembly. I actually cut out 12 - or was it 16? - tiny wheels each with little tiny cog-like flaps on the outside. I am such a martyr to home education. Needless to say they didn't appreciate it. And neither did I when my late night slaving away at Troy was rewarded by a cockeral waking me up at 5.45am and some grumpy children thinking they were so hard done by because they had to stick together some cardboard. 'It would be very easy for me to phone up the local school,' I threaten with a malicious grin.

You see, this is why autonomous education works for us. And enforced 'let's be educational' stuff doesn't. There were the kids, happily engrosed in dismantling something on the conservatory table (I think it was the old video player that they'd been using for catapult target practice). Ds1 was painting parts silver to stick inside a large cardboard box which he explained (in technical terms) was going to be a spaceship simulator (you what?). Then I went up to them and said that they had to come and do something educational. Now what's that all about?

Then I fed them lunch. It has to be healthy lunch, which is difficult. Well it doesn't have to be healthy, it's just that ds2 is doing a food diary for his fitness challenge at cubs and I don't want everyone to know that I feed my children crap. Even if I do (sometimes). The thing is, even ds2 is getting the hang of this 'let's pretend we eat healthy' lark. This morning he asked for All Bran (rather than chocolate spread sandwiches which is his staple diet). And then I gave him orange juice which I always mean to but usually never buy. And for lunch he had carrot sticks with his healthy meal. And I am writing HOME MADE next to everything on the diary. Because it is and because even if it is rubbish food at least it's HOME MADE rubbish and not PROCESSED rubbish. Well except for the chocolate spread.

The exercise diary is proving more difficult. I've realised that ds2 is probably the only one of us that does very little - except under duress - exercise (unless you count moving the computer mouse or running around hitting his brother). When I looked at the diary and couldn't think of any exercise he'd done for 3 days I decided we needed to do something. I mean, we're home educators. Not only are we meant to be nice to each other (for the record, I'm an intolerant vicious old crow), but we're also meant to be happy outdoorsy people whose children run through the hills on a daily basis singing the sound of music, while reciting their Latin homework and doing energetic back flips.

So we took the dog to the library, the very long way round. No back flips, just alot of dog poo to avoid through the park. As usual I had very nearly overdue books to return (what again??!!). And the dog barked and barked and barked really loudly outside the library while the adults inside ho hummed in that irritated ho humming way that not very polite adults do. I know because I do it sometimes (except mine is more of a ho huff followed by an irritated sighing noise). And once more I spoke to the librarian about getting a special card for home edders so we can have extended loans, because when you've got 80 books overdue for a week you need to remortgage your house to pay off the fine. And she said 'did you know you can renew them at home on the computer.' And I said.'Yes.' In my nicest politest tolerant voice.

So we're back now from the library. En route Ds1 collected a new supply of red elastic bands that the postman always drops, plus an empty Bob the Builder plastic tub for doing bicarb rockets, plus other assorted crap that will be swilling around my washing machine in the near future when I forget to empty his pockets. And now the kids are all watching Stormbreaker DVD from the library because none of them wanted to take a book out (probably cos I've ranted to them so much about the huge fine that I had to pay last time).

And I can't find the second packet of chocolate chips in the baking cupboard. Perhaps I have already eaten them? This is most distressing.

I am going to go and shout at the cockeral.

The Long Winter

It's that time of year when everyone is feeling tired and longing for signs of spring.

For a brief while it was beautifully sunny today, and equally freezing cold. Then the rain came and we rushed out to see if there was a rainbow (there wasn't). The rain went and came again, then hail, then more rain, and then just the cold greyness, traditional of our British winters. I felt guilty for not dragging the kids and the dog out for a walk, but the thought of trying to anticipate the next half-hour's weather and dress everyone accordingly was just more effort than I could summon up.

Instead I badgered the kids into doing some maths. Yeah yeah I know. I never claimed to be consistently and entirely autonomous.

So ds1 did some stuff on fractions and decimals in his CGP book. It was ok cos we had the accompanying book that explained at least most of what it was all about.

I always struggled with decimals and fractions. Never really understood it. Not sure I do now. And I passed A level maths. Right now, I think an understanding of fractions and decimals would be far more helpful than all that work I did on differential equations (no, don't ask me, I've never used them since). Education is a strange thing, isn't it? Why is it that in school you're made to learn all the unuseful stuff, but never the stuff that you need or want to know?

So today, eventually defeated by the weather and the maths, I started assembling a large flat-packed cupboard unit. We were given two units by friends at the weekend, Ikea storage units, that they no longer needed and had disassembled. No instructions. I thought about leaving it till the weekend, then thought again. I managed most of one unit by trial and error, but found the drawers perplexing. I left dh battling with the problem tonight as I went to work, reassured that it wasn't just me being incapable, the drawers really were tricky.

Today seems such a contrast to yesterday. Today slow, grey, long, and yesterday bright and busy with a packed house and lots of wonderful company. I forget how lovely it is to have a family over, to have adult conversation while the kids play. So often when you home educate it seems that your children have plenty of playmates but there is little adult company to while away the time. Of course I understand that it's a relief to be able to do child-swaps, to get a little bit of time to yourself, but on days when I herd in another 3 child visitors and wave the parent off, it feels as if I am nothing more than an unpaid creche supervisor :)

So thank you, my visiting family yesterday (you know who you are!). You brought the house alive and reminded me that this is what my house is meant for. I plan to do it again. Soon.

And ds1 says a big 'thank you' for the sling shot :)

Catch-up

Well, I've come back from a weekend away at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and already I feel like I'm way behind with my blogging.

My intention is always to write a little each day. Something short, philosophical, whimsical, meaningful, or just plain funny. Why don't I? Well, you know how it is...places to go...people to see...and all that stuff. So I leave it for a few days...and then I have just TOO much to put into a blog post and I can't decide what to write which makes it even more difficult to write anything. You know, I always swore I WOULD NOT be one of those people who just posted up annotated photos of my kids doing things, on their blog. Hmmm...


So, here's another one of my jumbled blog posts dutifully titled 'catch-up'.

Recently my kids have been doing what some people term 'crafting'.

Last week dd and ds2 were doing 'simplified' patchwork at a local home ed group.When I say 'simplified' it was just that the patches were first ironed on to backing material using that bonding web stuff . This held them in place while dd could hand sew them in wonky blanket stitch. (Still, not bad for a nearly 6 year old who's never really sewed before).

ds2, on the other hand, took to the machine...

And the boys have been doing warhammer. Well not really warhammer, but making the scenery for warhammer. The other day they were sawing polystyrene chunks in the conservatory. Have you seen how far little flakes of polystyrene can travel around a house? Bit of a vacuum cleaner job that was...

Here's ds1 being creative:

You know those educational maths 'games' that you see in educational catalogues, and end up buying because, well it seems like a good idea at the time [especially when you are just starting out in home education and haven't quite got your head around the idea that home education has nothing to do with 'school at home']. And then the game ends up sitting on a shelf for years because it's designed to be used in a classroom and just doesn't really fit into anything you would do at home. Well here are my kids using one of those games this week:

It's a number bonds (to 10 or 20) version of dominoes (triangular pieces). In some ways it's a nice set - quite tactile and attractive. But as a game it's rubbish. Nobody wins. Ever. Ever ever ever.There is never a time when you can't use your tiles to complete your turn. So basically whoever goes first, completes the game first. [yawn]. And the only form of entertainment, as my kids have discovered, is to find out what weird animal shapes you can make with the tiles, or to bully your sibling into putting their tile in a particular place. That's not to say they didn't enjoy using them (they did, briefly, this once), but I just wonder what the people who design these sorts of things think about when they make them. I guess they're just thinking...'hmm what can we make that looks like a game, but is actually just another educational classroom tool and some teacher will think is a good idea.' Well I fell for it. Once.

We've been doing quite a bit of maths recently. Conventional workbook-type maths. It makes me feel glum that we approach maths from this angle. I wish I was more maths enthusiastic, seeing the joys of maths in everyday activities [if I had a penny for every time I've heard a home edder say 'don't worry about maths, it's everywhere in every day life' I'd be a rich woman by now]. Science, yes. I see science in pretty much everything. We never have to 'do' science because we are always doing science anyway. Maths? Nope. If I do see it, then I don't appreciate or find pleasure in it. Yet I know others who do. I guess it's just about what floats your boat. Maths is like a very heavy load in my ship.

I guess when you home educate there are always going to be gaps in your child's knowledge, their experience. Unless you are going to farm them out to other families for a few months at a time to absorb the world from a different view, I don't think it's something you can totally avoid. But then, I don't suppose school kids have gapless knowledge either. Should I worry..? Probably not.

dd, contemplating the life of a sandwich