New School Year

Following on from my last blog post on my thoughts on learning to read and write, I've been thinking more about the different styles of education and why there are so many, which led to these thoughts. When you decide to home educate changing your mindset on what is education and how it can be implemented can be one of the hardest things to do. Once you start looking at home education you are introduced to so many different styles and philosophies, do you do unschooling, unstructered style, or follow a structured time table, do you like the philosophies of Waldorf, Montessori, Charlotte Mason, or a more eclectic style.  Finding the right style/path that suits your child and your family's learning  style and lifestyle can be an education in itself, everyone brings different things to the table and they all affect how we live and learn, there is no rush, learning is not a race, it is something to fall in love with (well hopefully). Some will come to want structure and some will not, go with what works for you, if you and your child are happy, then you are on the right path. For us our path involves some structure and routine but not a set time table of we are doing maths at 9am, art at 10am etc but more we are doing x. y and z today and then time to see what else happens etc.

As I've said before L is happy to dip in out of phonics but is loving working through her Saxon maths book and I had been planning ahead, expecting to have more surgery so wanted something we could do together. Surgery isn't going ahead due to me developing an allergy to part of the treatment and need to wait till my appointment in January to find out what I might of reacted too. Anyway I came across Funschooling with thinking tree books and they seem to fit, what I was after, she is loving the variety and different drawing activities, without the need to write and read. Seeing her older siblings with their text books makes her want to have her own, so she is very pleased and proud of her book. They are kept in her work basket and it is up to her how much and when she does them, this week so far we have 2 pages, one on drawing anything and then she has been telling me about her picture and I have added her words to the page, at her request.

She has just started on the thinking time page and loved colouring all the pictures different ways.

A couple of times a week we get out one of our Eco Kids magazine and have a read through, today we learnt about the chimpanzee and a bit about giraffes along with a picture to colour in, we watched a short you tube video on chimpanzees. The articles raise many points of discussion, opportunities for crafts and documentary watching.

This afternoon we ended up with a walk to the park and round the woods, home to look at the different apples, some from the shop and some from the allotment, we talked about the different colours, their names and

then they drew them. Now I've always liked the idea of a nature journal but at the same time it's only sort of worked with the older two, so now trying it with L, it will be her nature/science/art journal. During the summer holidays, not that we really stop learning, L and I talked about what she wanted to learn about and one of these was about how plants grow, so as we are coming into autumn I thought we would look at trees and their seeds, starting with apples. 

We then cut them up and looked at how the varied inside and how they tasted they all had their favourites.

So for maths we are working our way through Saxon math , usually between 2 and 4 lessons a week, plus board games, its amazing how much maths can be done through games. Add in logic problems and puzzles to supplement this. Reading and writing we are using a mixture of Reading Eggs and Explode the Code books but have a feeling we will be dropping this for a while, though L wants to learn to read, it is a real struggle for her, so maybe concentrate on the speech therapy side and come back to it later, I'm not against hard work but there is hard work and frustration when it doesn't just come together and it is so important to enjoy reading. Add in what ever else we find that takes our fancy and of course lots and lots of story telling. Art and craft, goes without saying there will be plenty of this. Science/nature study we will be following the seasons and anything that grabs Ls attention, so this month we will look at apple trees and oak and horse chestnut trees and see were this leads, add in Eco Kids magazine for some interesting variety. She has also fallen in love with cosmic yoga and we are using this 2 or 3 times a week.

On an organising and sorting front, my bedroom is coming on well, we have a large wardrobe as in the cupboard that goes over the stairs, I swear this holds a room full of stuff in it, as well as clothes, there's books, crafts stuff, paperwork, shoes. So had a sort through and organise and will probably go back through everything in another week or so, it will give me a chance to read through a couple of the books and think about what craft bits to keep etc. Have in the meantime cleaned out all the drawers, behind cupboards and cleaned windows. We've also finally got round to replacing and doing up the bathroom, replacing toilet and bathroom floor is not an easy job when you only have one toilet and little ones around, we had a leak a while ago, so the floor needed to be replaced but the toilet cistern kept on leaking, not major but much to my husbands annoyance one he couldn't fix and a spur of the moment trip to Ikea meant we ended up replacing the basin with a vanity unit, its fantastic having some drawers in the bathroom, have somewhere to store the toilet rolls, cleaning cloths and spare hand towels, all in easy reach.

On a crafting front, have done a small amount of dress making and some knitting, finally finished Granny Favourite and L loves it, there is growing room in it too. Reading, have just finished reading The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, really enjoyed it, the true story of one families life and how it changed after the Taliban came to Afghanistan. The changes in their lives, going from being able to study at university, to not being able to leave the house without wearing a chadri, having a chaperone and not talking to any males that aren't family. How financially they struggled with the loss of income when the women weren't able to work and the ways they overcame this and helped the women of their neighbourhood.  The other is Sane New World by Ruby Wax a lay persons guide to neuro science, mental health and mindfulness, as well as Ruby Wax's battle with depression. Taken from the book that was written in 2013, that mental illness accounts for nearly half the people on incapacity benefit, that in economic terms mental illness costs the UK £70 billion a year, this is in lost hours of work, treatment etc. mental illness affects people early, 50% of cases before the ages of 14. US statistics 1 in 5 children will be affected by mental health only 20% of those will have treatment, some will not want treatment, others can afford it. When mental illness affects so many people, why is their such a stigma about it? Why are budgets being cut? Why are we having an educational system that heaps on the academic pressure , while reducing the creative subjects that might actually give the students a relief from their studies and a chance to think in a different way?

A thought for the month.

Joining Kat for Unraveled Wednesday  and Frontier Dreams for  Crafting On