Talking politics

Unless you are living in a complete bubble it's pretty difficult to avoid noticing that there's an election happening very soon.  K & M get First News each week and there has been some coverage in there and we quite often have Radio 4 on, so there has been quite a bit of politics talk lately.  It quite tricky, I think, to get the balance right of giving information about the different parties and their policies and explaining your own opinions when asked, while still encouraging children to think about and make their own minds up about things.

Yesterday over tea, we talked about the electoral system itself.  I explained the first past the post (FPTP) system that we currently have and then introduced the idea of the single transferable vote (STV) and finally proportional representation (PR) and attempted to explain them to the best of my understanding.  It was an interesting discussion to say the least, which didn't go entirely to plan!  In order to explain, I introduced the idea of four different candidates and gave them names.  This was a mistake, because they started to ask me about the candidates' view on various issues, particularly home education and the environment, and this detracted somewhat from the point of the conversation.  Ho hum!  K did come back to it though and asked me to remind her of some of the terms, so something is clearly going in.

In other news, M has decided that she really wants another maths workbook in the series of which she completed the final one a while ago.  Since this isn't possible, she is currently making up her own workbook to give me, with the idea that it will show me what she wants me to make for her!  She has done three puzzles for me so far apparently.  K has suggested going back to Basher Maths, which we went through and I made up a worksheet for each of the characters that introduced various mathematical concepts, but with more complicated or harder worksheets this time.

We've also started and are well on our way to finishing Carrie's War by Nina Bawden and have a dvd adaptation waiting for us to watch when we're done.

Finally, tomorrow we are all going on a Bluebell Walk, which I've organised.  It's a fundraiser for La Leche League GB, who I volunteer with as a Leader (breastfeeding counsellor).  Fingers crossed the weather will be kind!