Change

30 March 2012

When we experience change in our life, if we have no control over it, it can be very unsettling.  In my last job during the final year of working there the culture of the organisation was changing in a direction that was not one that I could reconcile with.  I found this so unsettling and started to look around, unsuccessfully, for another job (I then got pregnant so the dilemma was solved for me).   It saddened me that when I finally left a job that I had so enjoyed, I was glad to walk away.

As adults if we make changes in our lives, such as moving house, we have control, we know that they are going to happen and can prepare ourselves.

Our children rarely have control over change.  It is more often than not imposed on them.  Many a time I have heard parents say 'children can cope with anything, they'll be alright' if they are about to put their children through a major change in their lives.  Yes they probably will be alright, but only if they receive the support that they need to help them to make sense of it.  If we are not there to listen to them and see their behaviour as challenging, wearing and inflexible we are setting ourselves up to be challenged and worn down by our own inflexibility.  Our own inflexibility?  Yes, to being able to see that there is another way of looking at the change, through the eyes of our child, which will be totally different to our own way of looking at it.   We all need time to absorb and make peace with changes, we all need to be able to do this at our own pace.

We have been mainly............

26 March 2012

staying at home this week.  My youngest was unwell at the beginning of the week so we made a week of it home to allow recuperation to happen.  We did have visitors to the house to play for a short while on two of the days.  This broke up the the week a bit, and ensured that we were not suffering with cabin fever by the end of the week.

It was the Spring Equinox this week we marked this on Thursday, which wasn't quite the right day but it was the first day we all felt up to it.  We had a special breakfast to start the day with pancakes and fillings.  Then we did a dance to some music, we imagined that we were seeds in the earth, growing up towards the light.  It was such a beautiful day that we spent the rest of the day outside and made flying things.  Using a stick of willow off the tree in the garden shaped into a circle, with different coloured fabric strips tied on, and garden twine to attach a holding string.  The children ran around with them fluttering behind them.  When they had had enough we hung them to blow around in the breeze.  We had our first lunch of the year outside in the sunshine.

We finished our week with our monthly walk in a local wood, as a whole family.  The weather was really hot for the time of year and we were rather overdressed.  There were lots of spring flowers starting to appear and the sunlight in the woods made everything look like it was starting to spring into life after the darkness of winter.

Home Education

24 March 2012

Parents have a legal responsibility to ensure that their children are educated.  Most parents choose to delegate this responsibility to a school.  The law states:   "The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable;  a) to his age, ability, and aptitude, and b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."  It is the last two words of this statement that entitles parents in the UK to lawfully home educate.

Deciding to home educate is a big decision for a family and one that is taken for a variety and complex set of reasons.  This may be because you feel your child is too young to start, they may be at school and being bullied or have particular needs that are not being met, you may feel that the environment in a school will not enable you child to learn, you may not like the idea of your child being tested at a young age.  Whatever the reason it is not one taken lightly.

Home education can and does take many forms, as parents you have autonomy over the way this is delivered, you can choose the method most appropriate for your child(ren).  You my decide on a structured approach for some or all the time with lessons and workbooks, or a more autonomous approach, which means that the child takes charge of their own learning.  Although this may seem like a riskier path to take it is exactly the path that your child follows until they reach school age.  We don't teach out child to sit up, to stand up. to walk or to play they learn this by their own means.

In most school environments, children are taught much of what they learn.  The subjects are taught using the framework of the National Curriculum, a set of guidelines which outlines what should be covered at each 'key stage'.  How a school chooses to follow the National Curriculum varies greatly.  Some take a topic lead approach.  and then apply each area of the National Curriculum for example food, in history you could look at what people were eating 100 to 200 years ago, geography what food is grown in different parts of this county and the world, science how and what plants need to grow and so on.  Others will teach each subject in isolation with no cross curricular activity at all.

Whatever you think of the National Curriculum and how your local school applies it, a child has little or no autonomy.  If they are not interested in a particular subject or topic and find themselves switching off, you have to hope that they will switch on again when they are interested.  If they don't learn to read at the age set down in the National Curriculum will they get extra help later and will this make it harder for them to engage at later key stages?

Allowing your child some or complete autonomy may feel like a huge leap of faith, so why do we feel like that?  Have we become conditioned to believe that they only way to learn now is by sitting in a room at a desk?  That all the learning taking place needs to measured regularly to ensure that learning is actually taking place, that we cannot trust our teachers to enable this?  There are so many ways of learning, if that happens entirely outside of a school, the route is tailored to the needs of the learner as opposed to the education establishment, where they are governed by the teacher(s) and the ethos of the establishment.  

For our family we decided that home education was for us.  I worked for a while in a local school primarily to get to know more people in the village and whilst I achieved this aim, I also got to know the national curriculum.  I completed my own schooling before this was introduced fully, so had no personal experience of it.  For me, the National Curriculum, the monitoring and the testing was not a framework or method that I could reconcile with at all.  I had assumed from what I had read and heard in the media that it is child centred and that each child can and will be able to learn at their own pace.  My own experience in my local schools was that this was far from the case.  The emphasis was on how the children could be taught to improve or sustain good results for the school.  So what else?  My issue with the local schools was the National Curriculum, there were no schools near to me that used any other curriculum unless I was prepared to travel 40 + miles (one way) to our nearest Steiner school.  I knew that you could Home Educate, I had had a friend whilst at school who was home educated and I had met children where I live who were home educated, so I set about doing some research.  I looked on the internet for local groups, for useful websites, for information on how other families went about it.  I discussed it at length with my husband.  I would never have taken this path if one or other of us had any doubts, it was very important to me that we both on board 100% from the start.  I did decide first that I wanted to follow that route, rather than suggesting this to my husband this was the route we should take, I opened the discussion as to what path our children's education should follow.  I didn't present him with a fait accomplit.  We follow an autonomous route at the moment, this could change as the children get older, for now it works for us.

If you are considering home education and you have concerns, fears and questions they will be valid.  Write them all down and do some research, if does not allay your fears and concerns maybe it is not for you and your family.  If your family is two adults and your children, do discuss it!  If you do decide to follow that path then I hope that it will be an inspirational and enjoyable way.

We have been mainly............

19 March 2012

renewing friendships this week.  We meet up regularly with a family, for play dates and trips out.  We have not seen them much this year as they have been away for an extended trip.  It was so lovely to spend some time with them again this week.  The children got together and played as if there had been no time lapse.  It was great to see the time away had made no difference to their bonds.

We also got back in touch with a family we met about nine months ago at a home ed group.  They stopped coming which was hugely disappointing as the children were a similar age to mine.  I had tried in vain to get in touch but only had first names which made it difficult, and then I found them on a forum!  Hurray we are going to meet up this week.  They are coming to our house for the day.  We are all looking forward to it and hope that is the new beginning of a friendship for the children and adults alike.

Scary!

18 March 2012

I have been suffering for the last year with Urticaria on my hands, my left hand is far worse than my right.  I have now identified most if not all the triggers for this and am having longer and longer periods symptom free.

Last night, however, I was cutting up some fish to make into fish cakes for my children and husband.  I have been vegetarian for years and have not eaten fish myself for years and may have never cut a fish up in my life!  As I was handling the fish my hands started to become itchy, like there were ants crawling all over them.  Halfway through my youngest wanted me to do something so I stopped and washed my hands.  I then went back to the fish and the itchiness started again but this time it was accompanied by a rising feeling in my body.  It felt to me, as I have experienced it before, like my body going into an overproduction of histamine.  Then my heart started to race.  I immediately went to the sink and washed my hands, within seconds the heart racing had stopped, but I felt really faint.  I must have looked awful because my oldest said to me 'Mummy are you ok?'  I had a short sit down until I felt more 'normal' and then returned to the fish with rubber gloves on (my husband was not in to help).

I cannot believe that fish would create such an extreme reaction as that.  It was really frightening and immensely powerful.  My body was fighting something very hard, I am just so glad that I am in tune with my body and therefore knew what it was telling me and what I needed to do to stop it.

Simplyfying

15 March 2012

When I awoke last Sunday to a beautiful sunny morning, I felt the need to open the windows wide and let the air in for the first time this year.  The sun also revealed how dusty my house was and then I looked at the floors and looked away quickly.  Time to clean.

I set too.  Putting things away, moving things from one room to another, I seem to spend a large amount of time doing this!  It struck me as I was doing this that we have a lot of stuff.  It all has a home, and can therefore be tidied away, but it is stuff none the less.  What could I pass on?  Clothes got bagged up from my wardrobe and the children's baskets.  Books and toys went into a large box.  Oh the space I feel like I can breathe.

Suddenly the children have found toys that they have not played with in a while and are enjoying them, as I hoped they would.

It is that time of year, time to spring clean to declutter and simplify our lives.

We have been mainly...........

12 March 2012

creating with cardboard this week.  We ordered a number of boxes last week to store some of our kit in the loft which, we have discovered, has mice living there!  We needed some mouse proof storage.  Each box arrived in it's own, larger, cardboard box.  At first I thought what a waste of packaging, but then realised that even though it would have been better to have had less, it provided hours of entertainment for the children.

 I provided the items that were asked for, paints, brushes, scissors and tape.  I gave them the run of the kitchen floor (it has survived!) and an hour later with a small amount of help from me, there was a sizeable ship and a house.  The ship was created by putting two boxes together and was big enough for both children to sail inside.

Over the rest of the afternoon and the following few days the ships and house were played with extensively.  The ship went off on numerous trips to watch whales and sharks, to go fishing, to find an island to live on.  A cardboard tube was found and served as a telescope to look from the rigging.  The house was a home on an island and also served as a lifeboat when the ship started to sink with the cardboard tube as an oar.

The boxes have also been used as percussion instruments, for playing a jack in the box game and hide and seek, to name but a few.  With a little imagination the uses of a cardboard box are endless!




Reading

10 March 2012

I was driving in my car the other day when it struck me how difficult it would be to drive these days if you were unable to read.  Not only that, in today's world we need to be able to read to interact with out TV, use a mobile phone, surf the internet, receive and send emails, go shopping, catch a bus, I could go on.  I recently heard the author Sue Townsend on the radio lamenting the fact that anyone can reach school leaving age, having spent 12 years in education, and not be able to read.  How helpless would it make you feel to not be able to decipher many, if any, words in world where we are surrounded by them?  You would, I imagine, struggle to fully function in society.

I remember when spending time in Greece many years ago how bewildering it was in the first weeks in the country trying to buy anything in a shop, catch a bus or work out what road I was on in a city.  However as I could read my own language learning a new alphabet was relatively easy and whilst I was no master of it, it certainly became easier to read/decipher over time.

Why is it then that we have an education system that a young person can stay in for 12 years and after all that time not have gained such an essential skill?  Is it the education system that is at fault?  If the child lives in a stressful environment, will they learn a wide enough vocabulary by school age to enable the next step, reading, to take place?  A good spoken vocabulary is one of the foundation blocks for reading.

Learning to read English is hard.  Although we have some rules in our language there are so many words that don't follow these and need to be learnt individually.  Is it any wonder that we have young people leaving school barely having learnt.  Perhaps it is not just the methods of teaching reading in schools that is the reason it's a much more complex issue, much of which occurs outside the school.  We wouldn't (and couldn't) build a house without solid foundations, so perhaps we need to look at the foundations skills for reading as well as the teaching of reading itself?

TV

07 March 2012

I live in a house without a TV, I grew up in a house without a TV, I have never owned a TV.  Why have I decided to live without one?  I live a busy and full life and have no idea when I would fit in watching TV, but then I suppose I have never tried to.  We do not live in a 'screen' free house, we have a screen, projector and a means of playing DVD's which we do watch, mostly documentaries.

I am always interested and intrigued to read about TV watching and children.  I have no doubt that watching too much cannot be a good thing but how on earth do you measure how much is too much, does it depend on the age of the child or the type of programmes watched?


As parents it's easy to use the TV as a babysitter, but are you just setting up problems for yourself when the amount of time that it is on increases and increases to the point where, when you do turn it off you are greeted with anger and disappointment at it being turned off and a child(ren) who are at a loss as to how to occupy their time.  Many children have TVs in their bedrooms how is it possible in such a household to be aware of how much TV your child is watching and what they are watching? 

When you are watching TV and for that matter DVDs your brain goes into sleep mode, it pretty much switches off.   If you were to watch many hours of TV or DVDs in a day you brain is not being actively used.  It is therefore not surprising that if children have many hours of screen time, that when this stops they are at loss as to what to do.  Their brains are not used to being used in the manner required for any kind of play.  My children have, from a early age, engaged in self directed imaginative play, which usually involves talking out loud with whatever they are playing with.  They are always busy and never ask what can I do now. 

In moderation, like so many things in life, TV watching has its place, it is working out what 'moderation' is appropriate for your family and sticking to it.

We have been mainly.........

05 March 2012

creating this week,  most of it involving a mess!

I have made a new set of playsilks for the children this week, which involved the sewing machine sitting on the dining room table for a few days, fighting for space with the paper, coloured pencils, drawings and lego. The silks were the object of much joy as always.  Many dens have been made in various parts of the house and then filled with random objects.  If I can't find something usually go look in the den!  I had a small amount of material of each colour left after making them this time, I think I will make some streamers with them and see what play evolves from them.

At a friends house we made a fire outside and cooked toast and crumpets on it covered in butter and jam they tasted delicious.

We had a go at making sourdough bread.  The starter has been growing on the side for a week or so.  The dough was a bit sticky at first and got everywhere, my youngest thought it was great fun (I am still finding harden bits of dough in the oddest of places!).  Eventually we managed to knead it to something resembling a dough with less stick and some gluten.  It turned into a very palatable loaf and lasted a day!

The home ed group were making mini pizza's when we met this week.  We put spinach sauce (spinach, onion, garlic and nutmeg) cheese and olives on ours, they were very tasty.  I will make them again as a lunch as they were quick and easy, with homemade dough from the breadmaker.

Lego has been played with extensively this week.  My youngest loves the minifigures.  Setting them on a board with various objects either those that come with the figures or using bricks.  My oldest made and played with models some built from instructions, but most from his imagination, we have watched Cars 2 recently so has been making various models of things in the film using bricks and other pieces.

I bought the children some new colouring pencils at the end of the week.  They both love to draw and my eldest spends hours each week drawing complex pictures.  I felt the investment would be worth while.  It is wonderful to watch the pictures coming out the paper and watching them as they are concentrating hard on what they are doing, totally absorbed.

My eldest took a recent drawing to Beavers to show the colony for a badge he is working towards.  I thought that he would only want to talk about it to the leaders.  How wrong I was he showed it to all the other children and talked about what was in the picture.  I wish I had been there, he was really confident about it.  He would not have wanted to do that even six months ago he has blossomed with confidence recently, I am so glad he has been able to do this at his own pace.