Life, Love & Literature

A few months ago Jack made seri­ous indi­ca­tions of want­ing to try school, rather than airey fairy one day type com­ments.  I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t react well and got a bit upset, not say­ing no of course, it has always been their deci­sion just overly neg­a­tive.  2 days later, PMT had gone and I’d done a U-turn. Once the ratio­nal part of my brain kicked back in I know full well it is curios­ity based on the fact most of his friends go rather than unhap­pi­ness at home that is the moti­va­tor, and I am rather proud of him hav­ing stuck to his guns when I was clearly against the idea.  Aca­d­e­m­i­cally it won’t do him any favours but doubt it will be that bad either, we’ve given him a good start and home envi­ron­ment will always play a major role whether a child is in school or not.  Also he’s a social being and I am so not, so the idea of let­ting him go off and do his social­is­ing with­out me is not with­out appeal.  And it might be nice to focus on Sam a bit more (he is very adamant that he doesn’t want to go), he has always kind of had to slot in around Jack.  Of course in the time that it took me to reach these con­clu­sions Jack cooled on the idea.  Based on the fact we have some days out and week­ends away booked we (to clar­ify by we I mean the entire fam­ily, Pete included!) have agreed to put the idea on the back­burner to revisit Feb time, and if he wants make inquiries then with a view to him start­ing after Easter.

With my ‘enjoy the moment’ frame of mind I’m not let­ting what might hap­pen in the future effect too much what we do now.  I let him type most things at home and I think this is some­thing where he does lag behind schooled kids.  And any­way at some point in 3 or 4 years he will start on GCSE’s so will need to write more quickly and leg­i­bly.  We’re try­ing to make it inter­est­ing though by tran­scrib­ing poems that he likes, thanks to work I have the fonts avail­able to pro­duce hand­writ­ing sheets eas­ily.  Aca­d­e­m­i­cally I sus­pect he is way ahead in many areas and where he does lag behind he is bright enough to catch up quickly.

I’ve rejig­gled (or rejigged if you insist — I quite like the word rejig­gled though even if it is a ‘com­edy word’) our timetable a bit to take account of var­i­ous things

• With not aim­ing to attend Home Ed Groups I don’t need to work around them, so it is all about suit­ing us.  I’ve left space for our reg­u­lar catch up with Lisa and her boys and after­noons are always flex­i­ble.  If we’re in then we’ll work on crafty, sci­ence exper­i­ments type things but equally well these can be put to one side to catch up with friends or run errands.
• So we are ‘school’ Mon-Thurs, with Fri­day as a day off for trips and out­ings.  Some vis­its to friends, oth­ers fam­ily days out.
• Boys want to swim reg­u­larly and they don’t want to go to a group ses­sion.  So I’ve hired the local pri­vate pool in the vil­lage on a weekly basis.  Bliss, warm and only us in it.  Has the advan­tage of being near library too so two birds one stone.
• Sam starts Beavers in a cou­ple of weeks.  He’s a bit meh about it.  Per­son­ally I think it will be good for him to do some­thing with­out Jack but won’t be sur­prised if he doesn’t like it.  He’s used to mix­ing with older kids and gets a bit non­plussed by kids his own age.  I’ve con­vinced him to try it for a week or three but if he isn’t keen then fair enough.
• We found when Jack did piano prac­tice mid morn­ing it dis­rupted our flow, so moved it to first thing before we actu­ally sit down
• Split work into two hour blocks , with a break.  Included project work and other extras along­side Galore Park.
• I am not split­ting Jack’s work in to days but ask­ing him to man­age a weeks worth of work. Sam is still at the stage of doing what I ask when, he is not ready to self man­age yet.  Obvi­ously I expect less out of him than Jack and we’ll spend a fair amount of the time Jack is work­ing read­ing and colour­ing etc.

So this week started gen­tly on Mon­day.   We used Activ­ity Village’s New Year Doo­dle Fun to reflect on 2011

Jack’s fun­ni­est moment

Sam’s favourite mem­ory of 2011

Sam’s favourite outing

And the same resource to help with them con­sider goals and make plans for the upcom­ing year.  I am not unaware of the incon­sis­tency here, I want to live in the moment more but am encour­ag­ing the boys to develop plan­ning skills.  I’m good at plan­ning, they’re good at liv­ing for the now (in the way that chil­dren are) if we all get a lit­tle bet­ter and the other, every­one will hope­fully be hap­pier.  For the kids some of this sim­ply means work­ing out plans of sav­ing up for things they want and every­day think­ing ahead.  If they are told the bus is due in 20 mins get­ting dressed and ready (ide­ally in weather appro­pri­ate clothes) in an organ­ised man­ner!  But also par­tic­u­larly in Jack’s case it is about him tak­ing more con­trol over his education.

Jack’s read­ing plans

Also been mov­ing on with galore park.  Sci­ence involved sort­ing food labels

New projects were started, WW2 and Vil­lage Set­tle­ments in Geog­ra­phy.  We are using resources from Plan­bee.  They are les­son plans for school but adapt well for home use and I find them a good way of check­ing we have cov­ered the major­ity of NC top­ics.  Par­tic­u­larly like the geog­ra­phy resources as I strug­gle to find good UK based Geog­ra­phy resources.

Sales have also meant boxes of books turn­ing up with reg­u­lar­ity and caus­ing dis­trac­tion and excite­ment.  I treated us to a globe with my Ama­zon voucher which has given us all (Pete and I included some fun).