Making It Up

as we go along

how we do it

Not starting school.

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Smallest isn’t starting school this september. I *think* that the letter we had implied she would be due to start this time – she’s 5 in November, so would presumably be one of the oldest in her year. I think there are a lot of things about school she’d love, but overall, I think that she’ll enjoy life more out of school, and we’ve got plenty of education lined up for those moments when she wants to feel like she’s learning (as opposed to all those moments when she doesn’t realise she is 😉 )

So yesterday on our walk through town to the beach, we might have bought a couple of extra little bits for her. Starting to Write Wipe Clean Practice Book A cheap spirograph to practice pencil control. Some pencils with soft grippy bits. Oh, and an insect collecting box that has a magnifying section in the lid. This one is particularly popular.

Today we made use of all of these things. There was drawing on ordinary paper, practice with the spirograph (must try to find her a decent one of these) and practice in the wipe clean book. (Look, it’s a pen *and* a rubber.) There was some computer time, although today she tried to tell me she’d finished mathseeds. Um, no. Reading Eggs got a quick looksee, as it often does (still waiting for her to pick up her next book to read, but there’s no rush) and then we went outside with the insect pot and her camera.

She’s very good with the camera. We talked about the macro setting, and how to half depress the button to check focus. She got some good pictures of various creepy crawlies (I must find some easy resource that shows me how all of those fit into their kingdoms, I can’t remember any of it!) and we looked closely at caterpillars.

Then there were bubbles, and running and skipping and playing generally. Yesterday I signed up for Project Wild Thing and pledged to swap 30 minutes a day screen time with outdoor time. That will be more of a challenge as the weather breaks – this morning wasn’t outdoor playtime at all as far as I’m concerned, although I did manage to get my running gear on and stagger round 0.8 miles for the first time since early June. Oh, and while she played, I read the first chapter of The Secret Island to her. I was quite surprised that she seemed to like it, as it is very different to the type of thing I’ve read her before. Her books are either picture books, or Milly Molly Mandy, which is broken up in short stories complete in a chapter. This is a full length story. There are chapters, but they aren’t stories in themselves, you really need to keep going to get the whole thing.

We’ll see how that goes. I’d love it if she started to like that sort of thing – maybe I finally have a child I could educate sonlight style with read alouds? We didn’t get to our What Your Year 1 Child Needs to Know today, that’s my fallback for when she wants more than I have ready.

All in all, I was very happy with our home education today. Smallest is a very different child to the older two, and she’s receptive to a different type of education. And while she’s learning, Tigerboy is generally trailing along behind and joining in – so he did drawing, bubbles, and probably heard some of the story.

I’ve got more to say on home education – particularly about secondary age children. But I think this post is quite long enough for one night. Pictures when I retrieve them from the phone.

My educational philosophy.

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a b c 1 2 3 chalkboard

The law in this country relating to education states:

Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age

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.

(section 7 of Education act 1996)

And case law states:

The responsibility for a child’s education rests with his or her parents. An “efficient” and “suitable” education is not defined in the Education Act 1996 but “efficient” has been broadly described in case law as an education that “achieves that which it sets out to achieve”, and a “suitable” education is one that “primarily equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member, rather than the way of life in the country as a whole, as long as it does not foreclose the child’s options in later years to adopt some other form of life if he wishes to do so”.

(From edyourself.)

All of that was just to explain what your responsibilities are. (And I’d add, parents are responsible for education, even when your children are in school. LAs and headteachers don’t want to get sued for not providing it after all 😉 ) Very often when people set off home educating, one of the things that they are advised to do is write out an educational philosophy. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not sure I ever did 😉 Looking back though, it’s easier to pick out the strands that have remained constant over the years. One is that bit about fitting children for a life in their community, and this quote from Time enough for love has always stuck in my head.

Perhaps our kids had a weird education…but a girl who can shape a comfortable and handsome saddle starting with a dead mule and not much else, solve quadratics in her head, shoot straight with a gun or arrow, cook an omelet that is light and tasty, spout page after page of Shakespeare, butcher a hog and cure it can’t be called ignorant by New Beginnings standards.

Now, I’m not quite sure why any child living on a frontier farmsteading world (it’s a science fiction book (amazon link)) needs to be able to solve quadratics in their head (or indeed any child in this rather more high tech world) but that apart, the point is about having the skills to get by, and bend the world to your own needs, rather than being bent by it.

So my philosophy is very much in line with the law. That I should equip my kids to cope and more than that, to be successful at being independent adults. This to me means not just academics, but independence and social skills, and the ability to earn a living one way or another. But I’m flexible on how we achieve that, and our methods have changed several times over the years.

My attitude to education was shaped by exposure to the writings of John Holt, primarily How Children Learn (kindle link) and How Children Fail (amazon link). I still think they are massively important books, and highly recommend you read them. But I’ve discovered that unschooling doesn’t really suit my family. So we mix and match. A bit of structure, a bit of autonomy. Small is probably the most structured at the moment, as he does some maths, some english, some history or geography or science most days. Broad and balanced, that’s us.

He also does extensive minecrafting, which has taught him lots about software, computers, and programming. He recently completed an Android app development course using Java, and reads lots and writes reviews.

Weekly both of the big children has responsibility for cooking one night a week. Big does the washing one day a week – Small often helps hang out and fetch in, though I’ve yet to let him loose on the machine. They are involved in meal planning and budgeting, and both aware of our business, Big increasingly so.

So I guess if I had to sum it up in one line, our philosophy is really that education is life is education – it’s difficult to split them apart.

It works for us fairly well. Except in that I’m a bit of a resource hog, so we’re drowning in stuff that *might* have an educational purpose, so I can’t possibly get rid of it can I? Worked nicely the other day though when Small sat down and read through most of What your year 6 child needs to know (amazon link) which I’d been sent for review. Books like that are massively useful actually, for giving you a one stop resource that can help you devise a rough plan. I don’t think it’s something I would use exclusively, but as a core to build an approach around, for the academic bit of education, it’s really not a bad start. I’ll be using the Year 1 book with Smallest over the next year or so, mainly for us to springboard ideas off. On top of that we’ll go on doing what we do. Including the children in day to day life. Spending part of that life in the past 😉 Building websites for sale, blogging for cash from time to time. Our life has a portfolio approach to it, and so does their education.

If you’ve an educational philosophy post to share, please pop it in the linky. And if enough people (five or so?) join in, I’ll write up a proper carnival post next week.

Pointless education and missing caches.

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You can take the boy out of the school, but can you take the school out of the parent?

There’s a constant balancing act here, to discharge our legal duty under Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act

7. 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.

and to reflect what I see as the needs of the real world and my children.

So for example, maths and english qualifications are held to be an absolute must by many journalists/employers/politicians *but* it’s not actually straightforward to get those if you aren’t in school. GCSEs are difficult because of the coursework aspect – many home educators go for iGCSEs instead, but there’s still the issue of finding an exam centre and working out how to jump through the hoops, which for people many years out of the exam system themselves is not straightforward.

But, and it’s a big but, should exams/qualifications really be the be all and end all of education? I can see that an employer wants to know how capable a prospective employee is, but should the education system just be set up for employers?

And, if we home educate at least partly because of our disenchantment with the constant testing and encouraged comparison within the system, why do we (ok, why do I) so easily drift back into the requirements of it?

All of this pondering is brought on by yesterday’s experience with quadratic equations.

Now, confession time. I’m a geek. A computer programmer, sudoku lover, I wander around with numbers and patterns in my head all the time. Shopping I’m keeping a running total of expenditure as I go round, driving I’m working out our average speed. I can’t help it, it’s just who I am. And I love quadratic equations – they are a good puzzle. So I was genuinely confused by the complete resistance I encountered from the highly numerate Small yesterday.

Hours we spent on it. Hours and hours. There were tears. Not mine, although I felt like it at times. And I was the worst kind of parent – after I’d done all the calm, quiet explanation, I shouted and threatened. I could *not* understand why he couldn’t get it.

Eventually, after about 5 hours on and off of this, I gave up. I wrangled him and the two smallest into sun kit, and we headed off out to geocache, as a much more sensible use of a beautiful sunny day. He carried my phone very carefully and navigated beautifully with the compass setting in c:geo (free app) and although we didn’t find the cache it was a lovely walk, we saw a lizard, and finished up with icecream and sand angels on the beach.

Then, once we got home and I’d put tea on, we sat down together and went through the whole quadratic thing step by step. And I realised that I’d been misunderstanding the problem – it wasn’t that he didn’t get the maths, he just couldn’t see the point of it. Right at the moment the point is to finish the year in mathletics, and I turned to twitter to find the wider point

The tweet is still going strong with 27 RTs, and lots and lots of really helpful answers. The parabolic paths of angry birds are plotted with quadratics. You can use them to work out picture sizes for magazine layouts. There were links to articles on 101 uses for quadratic equations, youtube videos on parabolas and all sorts.

So, quadratic equations are useful. (It should be said that they were introduced via area calculations on mathletics, which does seem to be a fairly real world application, and appears to be used in farmville too 😉 ) And after our discussion last night, Small sailed through that section this morning, and polished off another gold bar with ease. I’ve yet to show him all the real world applications of it, but what I’m still grappling with is how I work out that balance, how do I work towards what society thinks my children need, without imposing the parts of school based education that are the worst aspects of it?

sandangel

The Not Back to School Carnival – because education is mandatory, but school isn't.

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Bubbles on the beach

Home education is a valid and legal option. And there are lots of people doing it. This is a carnival of celebration, of encouragement, and I’m thrilled that so many people have joined in.

So without further ado, let’s take a wander. You may remember I posted some prompts – a few people have taken me up on some or all of them.

Hannah of Caterpillar tales covers the lot, including some wonderful pictures. In one of two posts, Anni addresses the daftest question she’s been asked about home education – that’s not actually a question I’ve been asked, but there you go. Keris is wondering how anyone could think that home education removes the children’s choices – she’s got a reasoned response to the question though.

Someone who has made a life out of following your heart, Nic brings on the dancing ponies as you would for a carnival – I’d call her inspirational, but I know that makes her giggle 😉

Tech is another person who has upped stakes and travelled. They are settled at the moment, and she describes a primal sort of education in her carnival post.

Jo has done a round up of how home education has worked for them over the past 4 years. Mamacrow had a think about what her ideal home education would look like while Jo is growing weeds. Peapod is waiting for exam results as she ponders my questions.

Momma of mojo shares a lightbulb moment while Zoe answers why she home educates her hobbits. Mother Scuffer has a mix of back and not back to school children as does Alison of the Portico, who thinks this may be her last not back to school year.

Heading towards flexi schooling Leoarna wants to know whose curriculum is it anyway? and Nikki chooses this time of year to do an annual reevaluation of their education and how it works. She has also written up a fab post describing what home education looks like for them now.

Some older posts – Mamacrow chases away the doubts of I couldn’t do that Vanessa shares why they chose to home educate, Tania has compiled a why, where and how and Katie answers everything you ever wanted to know. We’ve even a post from down under, from when Shae’s children didn’t go back to school in January. And here’s the last carnival I shared, back in 2010.

Some fabulous posts there. I’m really hoping I’ve included everything I’ve been sent, but if I’ve missed something, just yell! If you’ve one you’d like to link to, please do pop it in the comments and I’ll add it into the post when I’ve a minute. Grab a cup of tea and enjoy.

Not back to school carnival prompts.

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I’m happy to have any posts on home education/ flexi schooling or whatever really that people can come up with. I want to post the carnival early september – so if you can get links to me by end of August that gives me a bit of time to get organised. There’s a contact form up there in the menu, or you can leave links in the comments, or stick them in a tweet 🙂

If you need a prompt though, here are a few questions.

Why do you home educate?

How do you home educate?

Is there anything you’d do differently if you did it all again?

What’s your favourite resource/book/website?

What’s the daftest question you’ve ever been asked about home education.

And anyone who has advice for the people who say I’d love to home educate but I don’t have the courage, I wouldn’t know where to start, we can’t afford it, I could never do maths, that would be particularly great.

Ooh, and typical day photo posts are always great – if words aren’t your forte 🙂

I’ve written in the past about what got me started – it was reading John Holt while I was on a PGCE. I decided to home educate long before I had children. I’m lucky that it’s worked well for us – although we’ve mixed it up along the way. The children did have several years in a montessori school, and I had 9 months there myself. I’m even a qualified Montessori teacher now – I’d love to get the elementary qualification, and even the secondary one, though I can’t see me fitting it in while I’ve still got children around. And by the time they aren’t around it would seem a bit pointless.

My absolute ideal environment would be a sort of lending library of montessori equipment, with other families using it as a base, preferably with a nice large outdoor wilderness and a place to grow food and keep chickens. Wonder if anyone would noticed if I just set up home in the barn at Kentwell…

That’s another good question. What would your perfect home ed life look like? Let’s hear your dreams folks, as well as your realities.