That was weird?

For some reason the summer holidays have felt odd.  We didn't have any real structure before the holidays but the last six weeks have felt a bit chaotic?  Maybe it is the weather, we never know what we are doing until we get up and look out.
Other home ed families say they feel the same, mainly because every where we go it is really busy.
We have done a lot as a family but not seen much of our friends.  So next week we are kicking off with a Not back to school picnic and hopefully some routine and normality will resume.
Over the holidays we applied for a place at school, which Howabout said he would like to attend, but they have no spaces so he is happy to stay at home whilst on their waiting list.  This is a bit vague as there is no way to know when a space may become available, so until then we are a completely home ed family :)

A cure for a wobble.

This week has been tough, mainly because the weather has brought us down.  Howabouts behaviour has been testing too.  I don't know what to make of it: does he need to go to school or is he adjusting and acting out?  Does he need his own set of friends or time to be on his own? It just seems that he wants to spoil our efforts at doing anything fun.
Well Thursday was a cure for this and left us all feeling super positive.  We met with our group of home edders in the woods.  We all arrived late and it was still raining.  I think everyone felt the same, we were all so sick of the rain that we went anyway!  Even before we left the car park the boys were splashing in puddles and running in and out of trees.  We found a nice spot for base camp and promptly set about building a den.  Boys shot off in every direction to fetch bigger and bigger twigs then branches.

It doesn't matter how small you are if you are determined.

Team den was a fantastic achievement and everyone joined in and enjoyed themselves.  After we made caramalised apples in tin cans and there was more puddle jumping.  All of the boys entertained themselves for more than three hours, no complaining or boredom, they would have stayed longer but we had friends coming for lunch.

Team den just as the fern layer was being added.

We all had a great morning and I realised that this is what I had hope home ed would be like.  We are still struggling when stuck in doors, but outside we love it.

Cola fountains and rainbows.

Yesterday was Why?'s birthday sleep over.  The boys came over in the evening for dinner and we had treats a plenty lined up.

We started by making our own slime, this was a real hit with the boys but I can't begin to tell you how difficult Borax is to find!
Next we made a whirlpool in a bottle and lots of clever thinking and imagination took place.  We had a simple dinner of hot dogs in the garden.  Followed by making our own lava lamps (the 8 year olds didn't know what lava lamps were LOL) and dropping alka seltzers into them, cue lots of ooo's, aahhs and 'awesome' s.

We rounded the evening off with marshmallows by the bonfire and a cola fountain display (tips from the boys at http://www.eepybird.com/featured-video/the-extreme-diet-coke-mentos-experiments/)  Before we unleashed the fountains there was a huge downpour followed by the most amazing rainbow, which lasted throughout the cola display.

All boys were suitably muddy, sticky and tired.  A good evening was had by all.

Stumbling over home ed vocabulary.

As soon as I started to look in to taking our children out of school I immediately saw there was home schooling and home education.  Now, I think, homeschooling rolls of the tongue nicely and people get it, but this is an American term and home edders here in the UK don't seem to like it.  I think that is because it just sounds like you are running a school from your home...? rather than an autonomous approach.

There, see!  In that paragraph alone I have dropped two more terms in to the mix.  Home edders are people that do home education?  Are home educating? Are home educators?  You see my dilemma, the language is tricking and people are quite specific about what they are/are doing.  An autonomous approach is learning on the go, if you like.  We know that children are learning all of the time and this approach follows their led - also known as the child led approach.

I, like many others, struggle with wanting to do some kind of 'formal' learning with the kids, but as others ask themselves "Is this for their benefit or mine?".  I am inclined to think that my boys like a bit of structure/routine in their day, so this may work for them.  Now some home edders don't even like the words structure/routine: by routine I simply mean sometime between getting dressed and having lunch we may try and do some writing or maths etc  But when I think about doing this I don't even know what to call it...

work: sounds like work and not fun at all
learning: sounds like this is the only time they are going to learn today
studying: sounds intense and way too serious
schoolwork: well, speaks for itself

I am stumped by this, answers on a postcard please.

I hope it doesn't really matter what words we use.  Aren't we all just trying to do the best for our kids and making sure they are having a good time doing it?

You get to use food for maths.

Wednesday was a good day.  The two littlies were at preschool so I was going to take the two bigger ones to the woods, to meet some other home ed families.  Unfortunately Howabout was poorly so he stayed at home with Daddy.  So Why? and I went by ourselves.
On the way I asked Why? his thoughts about home education he said it was good because: you don't have to do the same thing at the same time every day and you get to use food for maths.  This made me smile.  I think it will be helpful for me to ask this question more often, the kids just have a nack of nailing it on the head with a simple and honest answer.

Our time at the woods was fun, relaxing and muddy (in JUNE!).  The kids, of various ages, played in and out of the trees whilst the mums had weighty conversations about our hopes for our kids and our disappointment with schools so far.

I would like to say at this point that I am not anti-schools or teachers.  We have just had a bad experience recently and I believe it boils down to one thing = 30 children and 1 teacher.  My child was not encouraged to thrive at school because the teacher did not have the time to give him extra work to keep him motivated, tragic but true.  In essence we took our son out of school because he wanted to learn too much!  We were told that he has too many questions, so on his folder I have put a poster with a quote from Albert Einstein,

"The important thing is to NOT STOP questioning."