NotSheep

That’s what you’re getting, ’cause I forgot to blog last night. Well, I remembered, but only after I’d got myself into a relatively comfortable position in bed, so there was no chance of me moving again

I meant to say before, but forgot, that I thought I’d make an extra effort to blog the (overtly) educational stuff the kids do this week, just as a sort of example. So that’s why you got all the detail on Monday, and you’ll be getting the same today

Yesterday involved times tables for Barney and George, with Freddy joining in with great enthusiasm and volume, if not total accuracy. Then George did some more maths, learning about line symmetry - is it just my kids that all love symmetry, or is that a general thing? Freddy did some maths involving money - figuring out total amounts, change due, that sort of thing - plus some handwriting, and some reading and writing about mammals, and bats in particular. He also did a bit of work from a CGP science project book, about how food keeps us alive. Barney started a page of maths problems about number patterns; he finished it today. They also had Community Circus (Barney and George), Beavers (Freddy) and St. John Cadets (Barney). Scratchy did all the driving for that, because even with power-steering, I’m not coping well with turning steering-wheels or changing gears.

They did some more formal stuff today - apart from finishing his maths, Barney did a bit of literacy stuff - comprehension and identifying different components of writing - alliteration and personification and that kind of thing. Both Barney and George did some geography - they’re doing a bit about towns and town-planning, and today it was the exciting topic of bypasses. They also did more French - the workbook bit of “about jobs” that they were working on earlier in the week. Freddy’s work from his animals book today was about birds and insects; I was quite impressed at how many birds he could identify from their silhouettes. They all practiced recorder too (and Barney would have practiced guitar too if he hadn’t lost his plectrum - again :roll:)

That all sounds very school-at-home-y, doesn’t it? We’re not really - we tend to use workbooks as a starting-point, and then they go off from them in the directions of their own interests. There’s also a lot of stuff prompted by general discussion too. For example, this morning, something Barney said (and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was!) led us into a discussion of principles, and the sacrifices some people have made for the sake of their principles, and that took us off into talking about apartheid laws in South Africa, and looking up Nelson Mandela and Steven Biko on the web. Later today, after I complained about not being able to do something because I’m so sore, George went and found a book about bodies, and he and Freddy looked up the skeleton and tried to work out which rib I’d broken (answer: don’t know, it might be more than one). Yesterday we talked about parasites and fungal infections and the chemicals used to treat them (because we’re currently dosing the aquarium with the latter in order to deal with the former). So we do a lot of spontaneous, child-led learning too - something there just wouldn’t be the time for if they were in school all day. And I usually learn right alongside them

It takes a lot less time to cover all this stuff at home too; most of that was all done before lunch. Fortunately George cheered up after lunch - he’d been a bit ready-to-flip for most of the morning. He’d one wobbly moment in the afternoon, when told it was his turn to change the kitty-litter, but otherwise the afternoon was fairly calm To be honest, it was so calm I can’t really work out what we did all afternoon, except that I know that at some point I polished off the biscuits I forgot Scratchy was on a course today, so he was home late, but fortunately I’d already thrown some food at the oven, so we were able to feed them all before he took George to Cubs. I also managed to glue the Cub badges onto George’s sweater; usually I glue them and then sew them (they’re stiff, so the glue doesn’t hold too effectively, but I’m so bad at sewing that I can’t keep them straight if I just sew), but there’s no way I can do the arm movements required for sewing right now, so either that will wait, or Scratchy will do it. He’ll be picking George up at 8, and leaving Barney off at the same time, then back for Barney at 9.30; I’m sure he’s fed up with being in the car by now. Tomorrow won’t be much better - he’s off tomorrow morning so we can run the necessary errands for Barney’s birthday party