I am still here…

sometimes 😉

I wanted to blog our Sunday, as we had a particularly lovely day. Somehow it’s nearly a week ago, not quite sure how that happens. Still, best not to stop and wonder where our lives are going 🙁

So, Sunday. Must be a good couple of years ago that I saw this book, Drawing with Children, at Merry‘s house. (In the bathroom, iirc :grin:) I’ve had my own copy lying around for nearly that long, and I’ve read and reread the first couple of chapters, and never got as far as actually doing it with the children. However, after my first montessori session last week, I decided it was time to take a leap into the unknown, and now that we have a clear dining room table at all times, it was easy enough to get set up and do some work together on Sunday afternoon.

Small had a little go at the first exercise, and then lost interest in books and went on with drawing. That seemed absolutely fine to me, the last thing I want to do is dent his current enthusiasm, so he continued in his own way, while Big and I worked companionably through lesson one over the course of about an hour and a half.

We were both pretty pleased with our birds – I might even scan mine and upload it at some point.

There are conversations going on around the ring on why ppl are home educating. I can’t point to a single reason, or a single point in time when I decided it would be a good idea, it’s always been something I yearned to do from long before I had children or knew Tim. Once I had the bloke and the babies, the dream became a hope and then a reality without any particular moment of decision I can remember. I know there were lots of conversations about it, I know I did research and read books and websites, but it was just always the way it was going to be. It’s all John Holt’s fault I’m afraid – I found How Children Learn (Penguin Education) and How Children Fail when I was studying for a PGCE (never qualified, I was never going to make a school teacher when the schools I was interested in were places like Summerhill 😉 )

Once I had children, and got to know them, it was even more certain they weren’t going to go to school. There aren’t schools and teachers like the ones I went to – even though one of the teachers is still teaching at the same primary school in the same village. There’s a national curriculum now, and literacy and numeracy hours – there won’t be time to let all the kids figure out maths for themselves and run fake schools in the overly large windowsills. So we started out at home, and it worked well for a while.

And then it didn’t. Not the being at home, but the lack of income. So I went out to work again, and we found the most amazing school opening up just down the road from where I work now.

I’ve been to my second session on Montessori now. She must have really been quite an incredible woman. The materials are amazing – I really enjoyed having chance to get hands on, and I’m quite envious of the children that get to spend time there every day. My kids are there three days a week – and I have to pry them away in the evenings. But the balance still isn’t quite right – indulging in education city and the occasional evening story isn’t giving my children enough of me, and I can feel myself disappearing into the sinkhole of work addiction once again.

I don’t know why I do this. Part of it is in wanting to do the job right – if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. (Don’t ask how come that doesn’t apply to housework, it just isn’t worth doing I’m afraid.) Somehow though I’m scared of committing to child rearing in the same way – possibly because I can’t figure it out in the same way. You can’t really tell from minute to minute whether you are getting it right – there isn’t a pass/fail document from an independent QA tester at the end of each little debate or argument. I’m short changing my children in terms of time and energy and it has to stop now – I’m redoubling my efforts to find a way to move house to see if reclaiming travelling time and money and energy would help.

There has to be a way to make this work.

And while I was blogging and surfing, watching Grand Designs and commenting, I came across this article. Fascinating.