Monster & Teeny

2008 looks set to be a big year for the MonsterTeenies. As a family we’ve been doing lots of talking about our lives, how we want them to be and how to go about getting there. That’s the thing about stepping outside of the norm in one area of your life - it gets you questionning all the other things that you’ve previously accepted! Hopefully over time our MasterPlan may involved a house move, career changes and more.

But, to education! Although of course in debating all these hopes and dreams we are all learning a great deal at the same time. Monster, Teeny and I spent a happy few hours last week talking about all the things we’d like to do this year and making some plans for days out, holidays and other adventures.

Both Monster and Teeny are loving the various group activities they do - they get lots out of both the group environment, the activities on offer and the time away from me. We have started to be more active with local Home Ed meet ups again having dipped out of those for a while. Local Home Ed communities seem to be funny old things really, often with some sort of semi-political undercurrent, different people having very different needs and expectations of the people within them and sometimes the different parenting style not to mention educational approaches bringing about clashes of personalities. They are also rather incestuous with lots of links of friendships, common membership to other things and people finding their way to the Home Ed path by different methods. I often find the seven degrees of seperation is more like two degrees in HE circles with everyone knowing someone who knows someone .I find the much younger children with parents who are Home Educating their 17 month old quite trying at times and much though I am happy to talk to people there are only so many times you can tell your HE story and explain your approach before it starts to feel tired even to your own ears. I think after a year or so out of the loop we are ready to go back in again for a while at least and have made some new friends and contacts just in the last couple of months and found my own passion for what we do reignited from talking with passion, committment (and finally experience ) - it helps that now Monster and Teeny are also passionate and vocal about our path and how we do things and like to join in with discussions about the pros and cons.

I am finding that Monster and Teeny are starting to develop more sophisticated interests and wanting to take them to greater depths. I have always considered my role in our Home Education partnership to be facilitator and am starting to fill that role to a greater extent as I am able to step away more from the supervisor role. Probably a good example of how this is working, and how I anticipate it working even more moving forward is Monster’s art work project. He has always been pretty artistic, turning out very good drawings from a very early age. It is how he expresses himself and his emotions very often, how he plays and a real part of who he is - we have always had loads of pens, paper, colours around and in the summer he will chalk drawings on the paths in our garden, in winter he will rip open cardboard loo rolls to draw on the insides and nothing gives him greater pleasure on a car journey than the blank canvas of a misted up car window. Attempting to steer away from the pushy mum / over enthusiasm killing his interest I have always given his efforts due recognition, given advise and assistance when asked and introduced the ideas of different art techniques over time. At Christmas having spent some time looking at books about watercolours we got Monster various art materials including watercolours, nice brushes and lovely watercolour paper to use. Monster had noticed the display area at our local library (where I happen to work part time so they are very familiar with) and asked me about it as there was a display of someone’s artwork up at the time. I explained that it is free for people to book and display their work and he expressed a desire to do just that. I booked the space for him, a good few weeks in advance and explained that he would need to have a coherant set of work to display but left the rest to him.

Monster took it upon himself to come up with an initial idea which built into a theme of ‘library through the ages’. He has long had an interest in buildings and architecture and is currently quite interested in history so the whole thing seemed to come together beautifully. With A’s help he found an illustrated encyclopedia with some costumes and buildings through various ages so he created a set of drawings from cave men through to the present day. With the idea fully developed we went together to the library again to view the available space and then to the art shop to purchase the card Monster decided would be best for his art. He then worked, admittedly with some support in terms of suggestion of techniques and timescales but all the work was his own to complete the project, culminating with going to the shop to buy fixing pads and putting the display up.

This to me perfectly illustrates every aspect of our Home Education. The techniques of art, purchasing the materials, booking the display space and answering all his questions along the way naturally fell to me. The interest in art, wishing to learn more and better his technique, idea of displaying his work and planning and execution of the whole thing fell 100% to Monster. If at any point he had decided to not continue then that would have been fine - as such he was able to take full credit for it. To me it doesn’t seem any big achievement really. I am, of course, extremely proud of him - he demonstrated all sorts of admirable character traits throughout aswell as oodles of artistic talent and ability to see a tricky project through all the way but mostly this seems utterly logical to me in HE terms - he shows an interest, I give him more information to learn more, offer opportunities to take it further if he wishes, he puts in the effort and sets the bar with support and cheering along the way provided by me where necessary.

We’ve been going along to a monthly meet up of HE folk at the local RSPB site and as a result have joined the RSPB which will hopefully open the gateway to other nature-based stuff - one of the things on both Monster and Teeny’s list of things they want to do more of. We’re already planning to go there twice next week for various events. Another thing on their lists was pony riding, inspired by a trip to the pony my SIL has a part share of. A first go at riding and both of them were hooked! We have a monthly trip there with more pony riding leading to off the lead and possibly even jumping all of which my SIL is more than able to facilitate for them . This of course includes the grooming, feeding and mucking out .

Monster’s fascination with history and architecture has been the catalyst for some local museum trips which have helped with things like costume and culture discussions too. We have a visit to another local museum planned for later this week and I would like to make a trip to the British Museum sometime soon to help take this interest to another level. We have looked at books and often spot buildings of different ages just as we go about. We have also just joined the National Trust and plan to make the very most of every penny of that outlay by visiting as many places as we can, all of which will no doubt be the catalyst for yet more interest in history, buildings and culture. We’ve also been watching lots of Horrible Histories on dvd which has been helping to get his mental timeline of history all in order (not to mention mine!).

Teeny has been asking lots of questions on a more philosophical level - as I recall Monster did around the same age (5) when her mind is getting slightly less focused on Teeny and slightly more on the rest of the world around her. We have talked lots about evolution, creation and other theories, all of which seemed to lead to our world and some of the geographical details about it. Very loosely related and something of an ongoing interest in space and beyond we had a trip to a planetarium where we saw a film in their ’star theatre’ about what to look for this time of year in frosty night skies. This has spun off straight into two nights star gazing, looking at a night sky atlas book we’ve had kicking around a while and tonight we saw the international space station go over before coming in and finding youtube videos to tell us precisely what the ISS is all about anyway. We’ve got some books on the way to help with talking about evolution and will probably dip into a Bible for a bit of help with the creationists side of the story.

Monster has been doing lots of playing with the concept of numbers lately. It’s all in relation to the world around him but along the way we’ve introduced the concepts of ratios, percentages, fractions, multiplication into his world. A lot of it is to do with time or money (lol, isn’t everything!) but things like DS and X box games have helped and he talks about measurements of things - weight, height, length, time (from seconds, minutes and hours to days, weeks and months). It’s quite extraordinary to see the fusing together of bits of number knowledge as it happens with him, he enjoys playing with numbers, sometimes asking for ‘if you had £x and something cost £Y how much change would you have?’ type questions, but always mentally. We haven’t looked at writing anything mathematical down yet although I am sure it will come getting the idea of numbers straight in his head first seems key. As ever Teeny follows not long behind her big brother .

Other things high on our agenda include some camping trips as soon as the weather is warm enough. We finally got our own tent which actually seems suitable for UK camping in and are looking forward to our virgin trip in that. We have various camps and trips away with friends planned as well as some hopeful places to stay if everything pans out for the rest of the year according to plan. We also have plenty of day trips we’d like to do, which again will depend on finances and will be prioritised accordingly. 

During our planning and plotting of what we want to do more of we also talked about what we want to do less of! Top of Monster’s list is going to the supermarket! As part of a move towards a more frugal lifestyle we started to do one big monthly shop 2 years ago which does indeed save us lots of money. Moving towards a more ethical lifestyle over recent months we have started to shop more at the butchers and greengrocers and cherish the notion of one day being more self sufficient. Until then the supermarket remains a necessary evil for basic food stuffs but having ascertained that some food shopping is not just a plain fact of life but can also be enjoyable and educational I am forced to concede that there is little to be gained from dragging two children round Sainsburys! Our plan is to try an online shop next month instead but this will too be something Monster and Teeny can get something from and can assist me in the IT based end of it and again when it arrives and needs putting away!

So we have plans . We’ve had a very good start to the year with some exciting happenings, some promising starts and have plenty more things lined up to look forward to. We have big hopes for 2008 and alongside that I am hoping to try and get more of what we do blogged here too. 

There was a thread on the EarlyYearsHomeEd list recently about the differences in definitions of approaches. I have posted what I would consider the definitions to be over there but it’s set me thinking a bit about autonomy, child-led, unschooling and all the other labels we hear used in relation to Home Education.

In real life I’ve met some new Home Ed contacts lately and spent time with different Home Educators to usual aswell as finding myself talking about Home Education generally to other people. This sometimes makes me all the more evangelical about the idea, sometimes it makes me feel judged and defensive. I guess which way I feel probably depends on how well I’ve put across what we do and how much the person I’m talking to has ‘got it’.

The older Monster and Teeny get and the further down our chosen path we tread the greater my confidence in it is. I’ve been thinking about how we are doing almost exactly what people think couldn’t possibly work by not limited any activities and how just as I hoped the children are self limiting on them when left to their own devices. They have free access to ‘bad’ stuff like TV, DVDs, DSs, X box yet tend to move seamlessly from such pursuits to getting out pens and paper, lego, geomags, toy animals and other toys which require imagination, creativity. I never find time to worry about what they’re not learning as I’m far too busy thinking about how to answer all the questions that they ask anyway and follow up all the ideas they present to me. I never plan anything obviously educational but often things will just arise and it’s only afterwards I realise how much ‘educational value’ there was in them.

Our weeks pass in a flurry of activities; Mondays is Beavers for Monster; where alongside all the obvious Scounting Association agenda he is also getting valuable lessons in just how rowdy a big group of 6-8 year old boys are and how 3 women really struggle to manage them, how best to stay under the radar of the bully without joining him, who Monster himself is when he is not defined by me, his Dad or his sister. He needs to look after his own Beaver uniform ensuring it ends up in the wash when it is dirty and that he puts is away where he can find it again ready for next week.

Tuesdays is swimming lessons for Monster and Teeny. This is mostly about the physical act of learning to swim but they are also getting to grips with taking instruction in something specific, listening in a group situation with the handicap of being in water in a noisy pool.

Wednesdays they both go to Badgers where their Home Ed status is something of a novelty so they are learning to answer questions about ‘what its all about’ in their own words to their own peers. Monster is an old hand at Badgers where Teeny is the new girl so they are getting lessons in being the one with all the information and sharing it and the one with no information who needs to get it. This is in addtion to all the many varied activities St Johns Ambulance are putting on for them too.

One and a half days a week I am out at work so they are both learning how to cope without me and work with other adults and children on their territory. They are watching me work and enjoy it and hopefully getting the idea that there are rewards other than financial to being out of the house trading skills for a salary.

The rest of our time is a mix of being at home where we get on with our own things really - that could be watching tv or films, listening to music, reading books, painting pictures, baking, playing, drawing, chatting. In various combinations of one, two, three or all four of us depending on who is around and who wants to do what. Or we are out and about; there are necessary trips to places like the butchers, supermarket, town, post office, petrol station and so on. We spend lots of time visiting or being with friends - either at their houses, having them to visit us or meeting at various places. We have a bank of places we like to visit regularly - parks, woods, beach, soft play, zoo, gardens. We also travel about to places like farms, museums, sealife centres. We go on at least 4 holidays a year, often with friends, always on a budget.

Sounds very simple doesn’t it? That’s probably because it is. And are they learning? Hell, yes! They are learning all about life, about people, about the world around them. I know this because I’m learning a lot of it alongside them. What else are they learning? Well they are of course learning those all important skills such as literacy and numeracy in much the same was as they learnt to walk and talk, by doing it, by spotting where it is relevant and picking up the skills as they go along. I have my wobbles, as do we all, whatever path we have chosen but usually my reassurance is simply to listen to Monster or Teeny talking, to watch them skipping along the path content that as soon as they need to know something they discover the way to find it out.

I’ve put this post together as a way of galvanising myself into keeping up a bit more with this blog. I like the idea of having a Home Ed blog that is open to general viewing and I know how much I was helped by reading blogs and talking to people. I know that our way is experimental, possibly more a leap of faith than buying into a curriculum or practising a school at home approach. It’s not for everyone but it certainly works for us.