Decision made.

M and I had chat with our lovely neighbour, A who 'child-sits' the girls occasionally, and is in the sixth form at the school, really helped.  She was able to answer questions with much more insight than a member of the senior management team was ever going to, both from a pupil point of view and explaining about what support there is actually like.

So after much consideration, cuddles and talking M made her decision and I am going to be applying for her to start school.  We're keeping fingers crossed that it will be straightforward and sorted as soon as possible.  Obviously the ideal would be for her to be able to start in September with everyone else, but I'm not convinced that it particularly likely.

M is clearly rather apprehensive about the whole thing, but I am really pleased that she made the decision herself, rather than leaving it to A and me.  We have talked about how there isn't a right or a wrong choice and the result for her will either be that she finds school is for her, in which case it is the right choice, or she will find it isn't, in which case she can return to home education and she will not be in the position of having never been to school, which is one of her reasons for going now.

As for the rest of us, it will take some getting used to for me and K in particular and it's certainly not ideal for the family having one child in school and one at home, but I do think that it's the right decision for each of them for now.

In other news - here's a quilled creation that K made, it's a commission that I asked her to do for my best friend from uni, her godmother.

Mr Men!

A visit to school and a difficult decision.

After having been told off by M for 'only' wanting to talk about school with her the subject has been more acceptable lately.  Some of her questions have been pretty much impossible to answer, such as 'Do you think I would like school?'.  Others have been tricky in other ways.  I have been trying to be as impartial as I can and just provide information so that the girls can make up their own minds, but yesterday M was very insistent on wanting to know what I wanted, and the reply that I wanted them each to do what was right for them really wasn't going to cut it.  I stuck with that answer but did add that, like them, I'm not keen on change that is not of my choosing, so purely from that point of view I would prefer to continue with home ed.

This week we went for a tour of the local school with the deputy head, who seemed very pleasant.  She was able to answer most of my questions, regarding streaming and support, although understandably she did not want to make any promises that may not be possible to keep.  The exams were still in full flow, so it was considerably quieter than is would usually be, despite the considerable amount of building work going on.  As far as the girls were concerned, it gave them a reasonable idea of the place, but very little idea of what actually going to school would be like.

We had more discussion after the visit and I told them, that they really needed to make a decision by the end of the weekend, since if they decided that they did want to go we really need to get the application in as soon as possible.  I suggested we get a couple of big pieces of paper and write down all the pros and cons that we could think of for each of home education and school.  Before we had made a start on this though, K announced that she had decided what she was going to do.  She is going to continue with home education for another year and then is planning on either going to school or college in September 2017 (one of our local colleges has for the past few years run GCSE courses specifically for home educated teenagers, available from the equivalent of school year 9, which she will be then).

M is very conflicted and has yet to decide what to do.  One of the things she has said is that she 'doesn't want not to have gone to school'.  I can understand this feeling, but can't help but think it's not a particularly positive reason to want to go.  Her ideal would be to try it for three weeks apparently, but A & I have said that although the choice to go to school would not mean that it was forever, we would expect her to go into it with a positive attitude that she would be giving it a really proper go.  A had a talk with her about it this evening, and told her that he believes education is very important and that she should have a think about which option would be best in helping her to learn.

Having said that the girls needed to make their decision by the end of this weekend, we have said that if she can't (or won't) decide by then, then we would make the decision for her.  It's really not clear cut, as the idea of school is something that probably isn't going to go away, so it's really a question of making the decision for now.  In some ways if we could sort things out quickly, this would be the ideal time to start school, since she would be starting secondary school at the same time as everyone else.  On the other hand, the fact that K has decided not to go to school, means that as a family having one child in school and the other home educated would be difficult logistically and I think M would struggle greatly with the fact that she would be missing out on activities and seeing home ed friends that K would be continuing with.

Making, baking and a birthday.

M & K have both made each other presents for M's birthday (and K's unbirthday from M).

A quilled door name plate.

Bookmark

 M had chosen to go for a round of indoor adventure golf with friends which was fun, followed by a trip to the Dice Cup for games and tea.

We started off with some games that we'd played before, including:

A couple of rounds of Telestrations

A game of Dixit

Amidst eating, we had a few smaller games for few people going on.

Rhino Hero

The last game we played was the one that Matt had mentioned on a previous visit, as one that he thought we'd like.  He was right!  It's called Mysterium, and his description of it as a bit like a cross between Dixit and Cluedo was pretty good.  One person (or we had a team of two) plays the ghost, who has to give information about people, places and murder weapons to the rest of the players, who are pyschics, using only very non-specific pictures (dreams) as clues.  It took a while to set up, but with a helpful person to get us started that was okay and once you know what you're doing it's great.  We will definitely be playing this one again and M is going to be the ghost next time.

Mysterium

M has been baking quite a lot lately, including a chocolate orange cake specially chosen to take with us to share at Fun Club on Tuesday, as it's both gluten and dairy free so those with most dietary restrictions (including particular friends) could have some.  She also made some very good chocolate brownies and flapjack too.  Today I popped out to get a bit of shopping and came home to M in a very good mood who told me that she was inventing a cake.  She melted various things (including sugar, butter, golden syrup and chocolate) in a bowl over simmering water and stirred in others (definitely oats, possibly other things to), so seems to be a cross between a flapjack and chocolate cake, but I'll reserve judgement until I've tried it! 

At Fun Club the theme was 'well dressing', a fairly local tradition of making pictures using just natural materials, mostly leaves and petals, around wells.  The children watched an extract of a dvd about the tradition before making their own small versions on ice-cream tub lids.  It kept most of the children very engaged for quite a while, and K refused to have her lunch until quite a while after everyone else, because she wanted to finish hers.

K's tree is on the left, M's is a picture of a sunset with a cat looking at its reflection in water.

In with her birthday card from Nana, M received a letter in reply to the one she'd sent about her holiday.  I wasn't allowed to read M's letter, but Nana was happy to let us know about it.  She said that the spelling was a bit dodgy in places, but the writing was good and really conveyed M's enjoyment of the things she wrote about.