It often seems that just as it looks as though we might get into the swing of doing a bit more regular structure something happens that gets in the way (illness, a trip for example). Today, having had a very constructively busy day yesterday, Granny arrived for a few days, so I had anticipated that we wouldn't get much done today, particularly since we were having our haircut this morning too.
K & M both went on Pottermore while the other was getting their hair cut and Granny and Big Grandad arrived just as we were finished. After lunch Big Grandad went home, and K, M, G & I all had a game of Mystery at Hogwarts. I showed both K & M about the short story competition that I'd told them about yesterday. Although M is not keen on the idea of other people reading her story, and therefore not yet sure if she will enter, she has made a start by doing a mind map for her main character. She also came out with me when I needed to pop the shops and we went to the library and the park for a while before rain threatened. She and I also had another go at Cribbage, this time most of the time we played without showing each other our cards, although I did help for a couple of tricky hands. While we were doing this K did some baking, having chosen a recipe from one of our numerous books, chocolate chunk cookies. She had very little help from me and ended up with a dough that was far too dry, although we weren't sure why this happened, but we added an extra egg and the final result was pretty good!
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Finding the balance and a busy day.
You will find almost as many different ways of home educating as you do home educating families from very structured, strictly following a curriculum school-at-home at one end of the spectrum to completely autonomous child-led learning at the other. I believe that if it's working for your family and your children, then it's right for you and anyone else's opinion is irrelevant. What can be tricky though is finding out what works for everyone in a family, both children and parents, when different members of that family have different needs and opinions, and this is something that has been an issue for us lately. A, while fully in agreement that trying to force structure and learning is counterproductive, has been feeling that K in particular would benefit from some more structure. When we disagree about approaches to HE, it tends to be that A would like things to be a little more structured, while I usually feel that it would end in conflict and not work unless the girls were up for it. Occasionally my suggestions of a bit more regular overtly 'learny' stuff are welcomed and then it all goes well until something crops up which gets us out of the routine of doing so and then it always takes us a while (longer than A would prefer) before we get back to the point of being ready to do so again. Following the discussion that K & I had, she is up for a bit more structure, but wants to do things on her own with me, which is sometimes very tricky as M frequently still feels the need to be with me.
This morning while M was ensconced on Pottermore, K and I took ourselves off and did some maths. At the weekend, she had found a grid on a whiteboard and had started filling it in with numbers, but had then gone off geocaching and it was abandoned. I suggested she might like to carry on with what she'd been doing. So she filled in the grid with a times table square with just a couple of mistakes which she corrected herself when I pointed them out, while I had a look in Maths for Mums and Dads at the section about simple multiplication and tables. She had put 0-9 along the top and down the side first, so ended with 81 in the bottom right corner rather than 100, which she mentioned herself, so I pointed out that she could just put 1-10 along the top and bottom and use them for the 1x table. Then we looked at the grid and I put a dotted line along the square numbers and we talked about those, she identified them and then when I asked if she noticed anything about the grid either side of the line discovered that it's symmetrical. We then talked about times tables generally and why they're useful to know. I asked K which she was confident in and what order she thought would be good to learn them in, then we compared her order to the order suggested in the above mentioned book. K is confident with 10x and 2x, which I wasn't surprised by, but I wasn't expecting her to say 9x next. She's comfortable reciting the 9x, but needs a bit more practice to know it out of order, so we agreed she'd have a go at improving with this one and with 5x, before moving on to the others. K really doesn't like the idea of being 'tested' but is happy for me to help her practice the tables by asking her questions every so often (but only around the house).
M left us to it for quite a while, but did want to come in towards the end of my session with K, but somewhat reluctantly agreed to leave us for a little bit longer. Then it was her turn for 'Mummy time' (while K had a go on Pottermore) and she wanted to play games, we agreed on Guess Who (although we've got the original version - a charity shop find) and had five very close games, the final one of which M finally one. Then we had a game of Strip Jack Naked, which after getting down to my final three cards I won, which M got rather upset about, since she feels that I 'always' win, and to be fair based on experience I do tend to most of the time in games of chance, which is rather unfortunate at present! Finally I suggested I teach her a new card game and taught her the basics of Cribbage. We just played a couple of hands, showing each other our cards and me showing her how it works and I explained that some card games are completely based on chance, but others are a combination of chance and skill. She picked up the idea of crib pretty quickly, but by the time we'd had a couple of hands it was time for lunch, I think I might be able to persuade her to have another go sometime though.
After lunch we had another couple of goes at the Mystery at Hogwarts game, which M won once and I won once. I'm always a bit relieved when M does win, as it gives me an opportunity to point out that I don't *always* win! Fortunately K doesn't mind in the slightest whether she wins or not.
Later, after popping to the shops, I did some cooking in preparation for Granny and Big Grandad coming for lunch tomorrow (my Dad is bringing my Mum and she's stopping for a few days before he picks her up again at the weekend), as we're having our hair cut in the morning, so it would all be a bit rushed to get it done then. The idea was that K & M would do some tidying while I did this and to be fair they did do a bit, but M appeared saying that she thought she would rather get her (long-neglected) workbooks out and do some work in them, so she did, doing a page of a maths workbook, sorting out words for the four basic arithmetic functions and then wrote an acrostic poem in another one.
At Brownies at the moment they are working on their 'healthy heart' badge and one of the tasks they've been set for this is keeping a food diary for a week, so both K & M started to write down everything they've eaten today after tea and then finished this off when we got home after korfball.
All in all a rather busy day! And M also asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to start doing five minutes writing each day again, something we did for a month a while a go, when I was getting stressed that K & M were doing little or no writing. We made an agreement that we all (me included) would sit down and write for five minutes a day and do so for a month, which worked quite well but we didn't continue it regularly after the agreed month was up. I said I thought it would if she was interested in doing so and told her I'd recently read about a short story competition that she or K might be interested in entering and both girls said they thought they might be.
This morning while M was ensconced on Pottermore, K and I took ourselves off and did some maths. At the weekend, she had found a grid on a whiteboard and had started filling it in with numbers, but had then gone off geocaching and it was abandoned. I suggested she might like to carry on with what she'd been doing. So she filled in the grid with a times table square with just a couple of mistakes which she corrected herself when I pointed them out, while I had a look in Maths for Mums and Dads at the section about simple multiplication and tables. She had put 0-9 along the top and down the side first, so ended with 81 in the bottom right corner rather than 100, which she mentioned herself, so I pointed out that she could just put 1-10 along the top and bottom and use them for the 1x table. Then we looked at the grid and I put a dotted line along the square numbers and we talked about those, she identified them and then when I asked if she noticed anything about the grid either side of the line discovered that it's symmetrical. We then talked about times tables generally and why they're useful to know. I asked K which she was confident in and what order she thought would be good to learn them in, then we compared her order to the order suggested in the above mentioned book. K is confident with 10x and 2x, which I wasn't surprised by, but I wasn't expecting her to say 9x next. She's comfortable reciting the 9x, but needs a bit more practice to know it out of order, so we agreed she'd have a go at improving with this one and with 5x, before moving on to the others. K really doesn't like the idea of being 'tested' but is happy for me to help her practice the tables by asking her questions every so often (but only around the house).
M left us to it for quite a while, but did want to come in towards the end of my session with K, but somewhat reluctantly agreed to leave us for a little bit longer. Then it was her turn for 'Mummy time' (while K had a go on Pottermore) and she wanted to play games, we agreed on Guess Who (although we've got the original version - a charity shop find) and had five very close games, the final one of which M finally one. Then we had a game of Strip Jack Naked, which after getting down to my final three cards I won, which M got rather upset about, since she feels that I 'always' win, and to be fair based on experience I do tend to most of the time in games of chance, which is rather unfortunate at present! Finally I suggested I teach her a new card game and taught her the basics of Cribbage. We just played a couple of hands, showing each other our cards and me showing her how it works and I explained that some card games are completely based on chance, but others are a combination of chance and skill. She picked up the idea of crib pretty quickly, but by the time we'd had a couple of hands it was time for lunch, I think I might be able to persuade her to have another go sometime though.
After lunch we had another couple of goes at the Mystery at Hogwarts game, which M won once and I won once. I'm always a bit relieved when M does win, as it gives me an opportunity to point out that I don't *always* win! Fortunately K doesn't mind in the slightest whether she wins or not.
Later, after popping to the shops, I did some cooking in preparation for Granny and Big Grandad coming for lunch tomorrow (my Dad is bringing my Mum and she's stopping for a few days before he picks her up again at the weekend), as we're having our hair cut in the morning, so it would all be a bit rushed to get it done then. The idea was that K & M would do some tidying while I did this and to be fair they did do a bit, but M appeared saying that she thought she would rather get her (long-neglected) workbooks out and do some work in them, so she did, doing a page of a maths workbook, sorting out words for the four basic arithmetic functions and then wrote an acrostic poem in another one.
At Brownies at the moment they are working on their 'healthy heart' badge and one of the tasks they've been set for this is keeping a food diary for a week, so both K & M started to write down everything they've eaten today after tea and then finished this off when we got home after korfball.
All in all a rather busy day! And M also asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to start doing five minutes writing each day again, something we did for a month a while a go, when I was getting stressed that K & M were doing little or no writing. We made an agreement that we all (me included) would sit down and write for five minutes a day and do so for a month, which worked quite well but we didn't continue it regularly after the agreed month was up. I said I thought it would if she was interested in doing so and told her I'd recently read about a short story competition that she or K might be interested in entering and both girls said they thought they might be.
Monday, 28 January 2013
The Arctic and Antarctica at Asfordby.
The theme at Asfordby today was The Arctic and the Antarctica, so this morning we had a look at some video clips.
When we got there, there were various activities on offer, including paper snowflake making, soap carving (admittedly the Inuit use soapstone, but that would be a bit tricky) and sugar cube igloo making. K enjoyed the soap carving while M and I built an igloo. And as usual both K & M make good use of the outside space and playground.
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| M and my igloo. |
Sunday, 27 January 2013
More chocolate!
Today I made truffles with the left over fillings from yesterday and I took some pics.
Saturday, 26 January 2013
A lesson in Chocolate!
Today was the day that I had my Christmas present from my lovely (and good at presents!) husband, a lesson from Barry, a master chocolatier who also happens to come to our local farmers' market. My friend S came along too to share my present (and make it more fun) and our girls went off with the Daddies to do some geocaching (first time for K & M, A & J their friends had done it a couple of times before).
So we learned how to temper chocolate - temperature being key. Barry doesn't use a thermometer, but then he can tell the temperature by using his bottom lip - the one occasion we tested it he said it was between 27 & 28 degrees C and it was 27.6 - pretty impressive! So we tempered chocolate, both dark and milk, and made two different ganaches, brandy with the dark and amaretto with the milk chocolate, and made some rather delicious chocolates, as well as filling a variety of moulds that I already have to make some things for the girls to have! We ended up with a rather chocolatey kitchen, but apparently it was pretty clean and tidy compared to some other times Barry has done this. I've also got quite a lot of ganache left in the fridge, which I will be using to make truffles tomorrow. All in all a fantastic Christmas present!
So we learned how to temper chocolate - temperature being key. Barry doesn't use a thermometer, but then he can tell the temperature by using his bottom lip - the one occasion we tested it he said it was between 27 & 28 degrees C and it was 27.6 - pretty impressive! So we tempered chocolate, both dark and milk, and made two different ganaches, brandy with the dark and amaretto with the milk chocolate, and made some rather delicious chocolates, as well as filling a variety of moulds that I already have to make some things for the girls to have! We ended up with a rather chocolatey kitchen, but apparently it was pretty clean and tidy compared to some other times Barry has done this. I've also got quite a lot of ganache left in the fridge, which I will be using to make truffles tomorrow. All in all a fantastic Christmas present!
Friday, 25 January 2013
More Potter and Pottermore!
A friend who was telling us about her trip to the Harry Potter Studio tour mentioned that she was in Hufflepuff House, having been sorted on Pottermore. So K, M & I have all registered and are really enjoying it. M was sorted first and was very pleased to be put in Gryffindor, but was a bit disappointed that K and I didn't join her. Both K & I joined our friend C in Hufflepuff.
I'm finding it really interesting to read lots of the background that JK Rowling had in her head or notes but didn't make it into the books, such as Professor McGonagall's parents and past love life. There are also various things to collect, potions to make, spells to cast and more.
We have also now watched the film of The Prisoner of Azkaban, which so far is the one that has diverged the furthest from the books. We now need to decide whether we're ready to move on. M isn't so keen on scary, more so with the films rather than the books. K doesn't mind the scary but doesn't like sad, although thinks that she'll be okay if she can be prepared for the sadness. The trouble is I'm not sure where the balance is between preparing her and spoiling the story. But particularly now she is in Hufflepuff, the next story is very sad. Tricky, very tricky!
I'm finding it really interesting to read lots of the background that JK Rowling had in her head or notes but didn't make it into the books, such as Professor McGonagall's parents and past love life. There are also various things to collect, potions to make, spells to cast and more.
We have also now watched the film of The Prisoner of Azkaban, which so far is the one that has diverged the furthest from the books. We now need to decide whether we're ready to move on. M isn't so keen on scary, more so with the films rather than the books. K doesn't mind the scary but doesn't like sad, although thinks that she'll be okay if she can be prepared for the sadness. The trouble is I'm not sure where the balance is between preparing her and spoiling the story. But particularly now she is in Hufflepuff, the next story is very sad. Tricky, very tricky!
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
It's not all sweetness and light.
Today we have had an exceedingly shouty day. The provocation for me was that, although it was them that choose to do far more thank you's than necessary, K has been dragging her feet hugely, not in a moany way but today she spent over 4 hours sitting at the table, supposedly writing a couple of thank you cards but in reality listening to a story cd and getting distracted by apparently nothing and staring into space. Occasional reminders to me of what she was supposed to be doing provoked little response, and asking her to turn off the cd so she could concentrate didn't work either and eventually I lost my temper and shouted. A lot. There were tears on both our parts, followed by some more shouting, but eventually we calmed down had a huge hug and then some thank you's were done. I hope that something good has come out of this though, because we had a chat and a snuggle and I shared my concerns with K about what I thought she needed to get out of her home education, mostly about English (and we talked about different reasons for writing and why it's important to be able to do so well) and Maths but also how everyone sometimes needs to just get on with things that they're not particular keen on doing sometimes, like the thank you's. I also suggested and she agreed at least in theory, that perhaps the time has come for a bit more structure, so we'll see how we go with that. I've got various workbooks and text books that we can dip into and see how we go anyway, as well as plenty of people I can turn to 'in real life' and online for ideas.
In other news, yesterday I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We started off snuggled in my bed before getting up and found that it was a 'scary bit' every time we got to the end of a chapter, so ended up having porridge and brioche for brunch at about quarter to twelve, before finishing off the last couple of chapters. K & M then immediately put the cd on of Stephen Fry reading the book and have been listening to it pretty much constantly ever since. It's really quite entertaining listening to them reacting to events in a very different way from the first time round, now that they know what is going to happen and the twist about one character in particular!
In other news, yesterday I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We started off snuggled in my bed before getting up and found that it was a 'scary bit' every time we got to the end of a chapter, so ended up having porridge and brioche for brunch at about quarter to twelve, before finishing off the last couple of chapters. K & M then immediately put the cd on of Stephen Fry reading the book and have been listening to it pretty much constantly ever since. It's really quite entertaining listening to them reacting to events in a very different way from the first time round, now that they know what is going to happen and the twist about one character in particular!
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