Went to doctor’s about Small this morning, referral to community paediatrician set in motion. Not sure what they do, but there you go.
That was after I’d slept in, I’m not sleeping well during the night, so given that I’d arranged for Tim to get up with the children, when he did, I turned over. And slept for another two hours, then shot upright, utterly confused as to where I was, and ended up having to sprint to the doctor’s. Hohum.
Back shortly before lunchtime to be greeted by the HE review. Will save my reaction to that for a separate post. But it took up a couple of hours of my day, that would have been so much better used up doing almost anything, banging my head against a wall, housework (hahahahahahaha) or even, oh I dunno, facilitating my children’s education?
Yes, well. Then I had lunch, and moved over to sit away from the netbook and nearer the offspring. They were playing with the castle and their figures, and after refereeing a discussion as to why Big has more figures than Small, we did get slightly historical when he wanted to know where his blue clad soldier was from. Sadly the best I could tell him was that it was from the American Civil war, as I don’t know myself which side wore which colour, but that lead us on to a discussion of the American Civil war and of the different structure of America (the united states aspects of it) so that was good.
Turned on the tennis, and got to watch Murray going through, which was good. Then we got ready to go to the beach, and of course it rained, so they drifted off into playing Travel Battleship. For once Small actually won a game, so that went down pretty well 🙂 Did discover that he isn’t all that firm on his capital letters though, which is surprising, given how good his reading is.
Finally made it to the beach a little after 5pm, after several diversions to get buckets and spades, snack packs and sketching pads (for a nature journal type thing). Kids spent 40 minutes scrabbling around in the sand and then we walked along to the leisure centre to hand in the rest of the swimming forms, arriving at precisely the wrong time as a classload of children came out of lessons to pick up certificates and so on. Never mind.
Discovered I’d kept the children out a little late, at least I’m assuming that’s why I got the attitude from Big on the way home. And the way home always seems so much further than the way there! It did give time for me to walk along hand in hand with my little boy, who suddenly remarked out of nowhere “if all the babies had been good babies, you’d have a lot of babies now”. Or something like that. I can’t remember exactly how he phrased it, but it completely took me aback that he was thinking about it all. I agreed that this would be baby no 6 in that case, which he thought would be a lot of babies. Odd conversation, but just goes to show that Small thinks about things that I thought went right over his head.
More battleships once home while I was getting their tea ready, and then I reminded Big that she hadn’t written in her learning journal today. “But I haven’t learned anything!” she protested.
Really? Nothing at all? Nothing about how to play battleships, or about the American Civil war? Not to mention the further reading of the Mill Girl diary?
“But I didn’t do any work!”
That doesn’t mean that you didn’t do any learning! She was really quite impressed at the idea that you can learn without working – perhaps this is what I’ve previously failed to get across to her, that incidental learning is just as important if not more so than sit down learn it out of a (text)book. Anyway, she was very excited to take her journal off with her, and wrote about battleships in bed, before asking me to check the spelling. I said that we’d do that together tomorrow 🙂
Small took his journal to bed too. When I went in to turn lights out I asked what he’d been doing, and apparently it’s a list of things to do tomorrow. It starts with researchbluesoilders (yes, I’m going to work on spaces with him 😉 ) which refers to the blue soldier that led us on to discussing the American Civil war earlier, and then goes on to the science questions he wrote down the other day. So I guess he really does want to find out about fire and ice.
Should be an interesting day tomorrow. Don’t you love child-led education?
And just to bring it back to the review, but only briefly, how could I have described all of that back in January in a statement of intent? If I was following a curriculum, no matter how broadbased and inclusive, would we have the time and energy to drift off into discussion of the American Civil war based on the uniform of a toy soldier? Or would I be telling them that that would come up in a few years time and not to worry about it yet?
Food for thought.
Rubbish Parent says
Ooh, have fun with the Civil War stuff. We ended up finding out lots about it when Jess wanted to know why the General Lee in the Dukes of Hazzard was called the General Lee, and why it had that flag painted on the roof.
tbird says
we had discussions about incidental learning yesterday too, Aprilia was really qutie chuffed that I considered all sorts of things to be educational. It hadn’t even occured to her taht Kung Fu could jsut be….
Jonathan says
“This year we shall be applying the well established, child directed, autonomous home education model.”
Nigel Evans says
it always amazes me when the children talk about Lynsey, her illness and passing away, they really do think things over and ask ‘interesting’ questions. (re small’s questions about the babies) Our’s still talk about the baby Lynsey lost in ’06.