We went out and about today, and bought stationery for the new not-school year that’s fast approaching. None of this terminology makes much sense. As I’ve said, we’ve drifted into an unschooling lifestyle where there’s really not a lot of division in the day between overtly educational activities and games and playing and just life really.
Having said that, with me heading towards (hopefully) an out of home work routine, I have put a reward chart type thing up on the wall to remind the younger two of their options. I’ve recently signed up to Skoolbo for them which has a batch of curriculum linked materials – little and often is useful in building confidence particularly in core subjects like Maths and English that they *will* need qualifications in. I’m also looking into Doodlemaths after a reasonably successful trial – yes, the more maths games the better. So they’ve got a line on the charts to remind them to do one or the other of those 5 days a week, and I’ve got a line to remind me to do writing 😉
Yup, I’m on the reward chart too. I’m not using it as a reward scheme, I’m using it as a visual reminder – a prompt for the days when I’m not about all day to do the prompting in person. Obviously there will be one or more other adults about (yes, we have two other adults in the household these days!) but I’ve taken the lead in educational terms, and this is my way of keeping that running smoothly.
As well as that, today we bought some fab cardboard people templates (Poundland, 20 for £1, and some brill Bic crayons, really bright and not messy, 8 for £1) (sadly not a sponsored post, do let let me know if you’ve got any openings there Poundland!), and then spent some time making paper clothes for them. (Spot that sneaky fine motor control, pen work etc etc.) The conversations were brilliant as well, as Smallest made herself a girl doll, and then gave her a naughty younger brother – no idea where that inspiration came from!
One other bargain today – a copy of Britannia, 100 Great Stories from British History for £1.50 from a local charity shop. (Amazon affiliate link incoming).
We read the introduction and the first story tonight, as we did our Whangdoodle chapter at lunchtime. (I like reading to them as often as possible, and from as many varied types of books – fiction, sort of fiction, poetry – they love pretty much anything.)
And that was our home ed day.
I was wondering if anyone wanted to write a bit about their not back to school plans, and we could have a bit of a carnival, say in about 3 weeks time? A carnival is where you write something on your blog, and send me the link and then I write up a post with all the links in and preferably you put a link in your original post to that post and then everyone can find all of them. So like this – from back in 2013. If you’d like to submit something home education, or flexi schooling, or unschooling or alternative school related, either pop a link into my comments, or send it to me on twitter or facebook. Preferably by 31st August, so that I’ve got time to compile the carnival posts 🙂