Monster & Teeny

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.