Monster & Teeny

A lifecycle blog!

So chicken or egg? Tadpole or frog? caterpillar or butterfly? Life or Home Education?

It’s been an excellent couple of weeks, both for Home Education chez MonsterTeeny and for life and as I was pondering that very thought while cooking dinner tonight I realised that very little seperates the two in our house these days.

Last week we were away in Norfolk, in a hired out Youth Hostel with 7 other Home Educating families - there were 12 adults and 20 children (including a day visiting family who joined us one of the days). A, the children and I would number these people among our closest friends, we have spent 9 camps in the company of some of them, had all of them to stay at our house, been to most of their houses, shared birth celebrations, weddings and other happy times with them, comisserated during the bad times, shared their daily lives through blogs and their real lives when geography and time allows. This was the second such camp I organised myself and I have had a hand in the organisation of others and various other social events for that same group.

Today I spent my day in the company of my SIL, Lucy and a lady who is considering Home Ed for her nearly 2 year old son and wanted to meet some people who are already doing it. We reassured her about various things, introduced her to the idea of autonomy, learning through life, relaxing about the stresses of parenthood and gave her plenty to go away and think about.

I realised tonight that within certain circles I actually have a profile, I am a Home Educator. I am doing it, right now, every day. It is no longer something we ‘are considering’ or ‘toying with’. It is what we do, what we have been doing for four years now and aim to continue doing indefinitely. I realise that I speak with confidence about what we do, I actually am in a position to give advice and reassurance and anecdotal evidence. I have proof, living with me every day that what we do works.

I also realised that this Home Ed ‘profile’, this role within the group that A, the children and I have is a massive part of our lives, it has shaped our family and how we live our lives. What we are doing now will be what our children remember of their childhood one day and our lives, my employment, our socialising, our holidays, our leisure time, our entire lifestyle all revolves around Home Education. The woman we met today expressed concerns at how she would fit educating her son into their lives, I answered that just living life is educating and told her to observe the 7 children pottering around infront of us, from the two small boys looking at a dinosaur book together and telling each other the names of the ones they knew, to the two girls dividing up the My Little Ponies between themselves and giving them all names to the pair of siblings sitting playing with a leappad with the older one coaching the younger one, to her own little toddler wobbling round, picking up things, taking stones out of a plant pot and looking at them, dropping them back in to see what sound they made and taking it all in. All while we four sat and drank tea and chatted. How would she fit in education? How could she possibly prevent it!

This week we spent a lovely blissful afternoon on the beach, the children got wet in the sea, collected pebbles and shells, clambered on the sea defence rocks, shouted into the wind, chased the waves, drew pictures in the sand, talking and asking questions, making observations all the time. I recall learning about the beach by sitting in a classroom with books showing pictures of the beach, my children will probably never recall actively learning about it, but they will cherish happy memories of spending time there and just know all the answers to whatever questions their own children might one day ask.

I recently signed up to a free trial for educationcity. I confess to doing this with the sole intention of refreshing my own mind with just what it was I found so objectionable about it when we had free trials in the past. Educationcity is the new black in some Home Ed circles and I wanted to check I hadn’t missed some wonderful aspect of it before I wrote it off. Both Monster and Teeny have had a go at it, working their way through the entire Science section for their ages on the trial but showing very little interest in any of the other sections. Monster looked at the literacy bit tonight because I clicked on it and answered the first question on one bit in a very bored ‘what’s the point of this nonsense’ type tone before dashing off to do something more interesting instead. Teeny looked at the maths stuff tonight too and having got the first two questions right on 3 different bits she quickly clicked on quit when she realised the subsequent questions were just going to be more of the same. She did do the next year up Science ones though The reason I came to mention this was that loads of the science stuff is on life cycles - frogs, butterflies etc. and this goes only to further prove my theory that far better than learning through classroom type resources is to actually be out there doing it, prove my theory that we don’t seperate life from education and continue the age old question about which did come first. Two years ago we had a butterfly garden from insect lore. We used their caterpillars the first time and then topped the garden up with cabbage white caterpillars we collected from the garden. We watched them grow, make their chrysallis and hatch into butterflies which we took into the garden to let fly away. Last year we took frogspawn from my parent’s pond before all their goldfish ate them, kept them whilst they changed from frogspawn to tadpoles to froglets, transfering them outside ready to become frogs ready to hop off. We currently have 15 eggs in an incubator, due to hatch into bantam chicks this weekend, which we will do a bit of rearing of before handing them back to the farmer who’s hen’s laid the eggs ready to go and live on the farm. I currently live with two small children, changing daily, spreading their wings, breaking free of their shells and stretching their legs ready to jump, leap and fly into the world one day. I’m providing for their needs, including helping them learn everything they decide they need to know, ready to let them go off and have their lives which may well include doing the same for their offspring one day. And just like us observing while we nurture our eggs, caterpillars and tadpoles, I too am learning, discovering and being amazed and awestruck simply being in the presence of this process and being made aware of how very deep an impact this particular life choice has had on me too.

So I thought I’d come and visit it again. There has been lots of interesting posts on the early years blogring about why people do what they do, which I’ve enjoyed reading, particularly the one’s who’s stories I wasn’t already familiar with.

My own story is so old and re-told even to my own ears that I’m not going to bother again, it is not remotely relevant to what we do now anyway but I’m glad we did stumble across Home Education nearly 4 years ago. The reason I started this blog was to have a place specifically for Home Education type blogging stuff, because I felt I’d got a lot out of the HE family blogs I’d read in my early years of the idea and I wanted to offer up some of that back, and record some of the littler, day to day happenings with our own HE journey, that -quite rightly - get sucked up into simple ‘life’ in my other blog. I’ve been a bit rubbish at remembering to do that, mostly because I probably don’t even pick things out as specifically educational myself but I am forever considering what the children need next, what they’re not getting enough of, how I can offer more, what we can do differently and areas where we could tweak and improve things, because I do believe that happy, healthy children with an active, full life simply cannot help but learn stuff and in sweeping them up in my own busy life they are getting all the education they could possibly want - and more.

So our weeks and days do have a pattern, one which we all seem to mostly have our needs met by. We don’t have set time for ‘working’ although A and I work, so they see how we transfer our skills / time into money for us to buy food, shelter, clothes, treats etc. but alongside that we also try to stress the other benefits of working - jobs where people work to help others, jobs where people are offering necessary services and of course spending their day to day lives with me going about my daily business they see people working in shops, banks, doctors, police, builders, the refuse collectors. They know people who work from home and people who work full time, part time and night shifts. They already have a very unconventional view of the world of employment just by seeing how flexible and possible to fit round the rest of life work can be, as well as how it is perfectly possible to earn money for doing something you enjoy and find rewarding - an excellent first lesson about what ‘work’ should be IMO.

Socialising is certainly something we do plenty of. This is far less about ticking off that particular box or wanting to answer the traditional concern about socialisation and far more about the fact we all enjoy spending time with people. We attend a local Home Ed group most weeks, Monster goes to Beavers and Badgers each week where he gets to spend time in a big group of children, away from the rest of the family and spend time developing his own identity and personality with his peers. He gets a taste of group learning, of a bunch of children having information imparted to them by one adult, teamwork and a classroom type environment - something he enjoys for a couple of hours a week for it’s novelty value I think . We spend one day a week with my SIL and the children’s cousins, who are the same age as Teeny (twins) and also Home Educated although from a different perspective attending a small Steiner school several times a week and having a more structured approach than we follow. We spend that day getting out and about somewhere, pretty much whatever the weather so aswell as getting plenty of exercise and the chance to run off some energy and be loud, get filthy and run around in a pack we also watch the changing seasons in a small variety of locations, observing wildlife, plants, flowers and meeting various people as we go, including to Teeny’s delight plenty of people walking their dogs! One day a week I go to work and the children spend time in the company of Lucy with Ms R and Master R in the morning. Teeny and Ms R have developed a friendship and Monster is working out ways to entertain himself in a house of people he doesn’t have an instant and obvious affinity with, all of which is character building if not always easy. In the afternoon of that same day my Dad comes and spends time with the children, a situation which is starting to become enjoyable for all of them having come from an initial need for childcare. I am very passionate about families spending time together, talking across the generations and sharing stories and perspectives. I think my Dad has a lot to give to my children with stories of his own childhood, stories about my childhood and the wisdom and knowledge that comes with age, similarly I think the children have a lot to teach my Dad with fresh, children’s perspectives, new ideas and enthusiasm and wonder at the world. One further morning a fortnight the children spend time in the company of other people while I work too although this arrangement is rather more fluid. But spending time with other adults and just getting a different take on things to what I might offer. Our weekends are often spent with either family or friends too and inbetween the various camps and other HE get togethers we often have houseguests or are houseguests ourselves, again something we all enjoy hugely.

Inbetween all this mixing and mingling, living real life and being out and about we also seem to find time for home based activities. A whole lot of playing first and foremost. Playing imaginary games with their sibling, playing alone. Using props such as geomags, toy animals, toy cars, train sets etc aswell as their own home made constructions with paper, card, toilet rolls, pens, crayons and sellotape. We have hefty amounts of IT / electronic entertainment with Monster spending time on his Xbox and games like Zoombinis while Teeny enjoys websites like Barbie.com. We listen to all sorts of music, watch all sorts of TV programmes and watch a lot of films. We do things like baking, gardening, painting, model making, jigsaw puzzles and probably a whole load of things I couldn’t recall to tell you as well as the things they do that I don’t know about because I’m off doing something else myself while they get on with it. All of which I imagine sounds very familiar to most other Home Educators - just kids being kids, adults being adults and a family being a family

As I say, there are times when I feel something is lacking or the balance is wrong and I endeavour to react to that and even it back out again. There have been times when we’ve not had enough time just being at home with nothing particular to do, times when I’ve gotten too wrapped up in my own pursuits and not had enough time to offer the one to one time with each child that they both need, times when activities like reading stories to them have slipped or when we’ve realised that it’s been way too long since we did X, Y or Z so we respond accordingly.