Domestic Science / Home economics?!

Well whichever of those 2 are more appropriate (can think of good reasons for either) it's not exactly Rocket Science. At least not in our house!

This morning we started back into Miquon with a little bit for everyone - even LittleH#3 did some geometry on a page requiring identification of squares and triangles and then a funny little picture of a man made out of shapes to colour in. That kept him busy for about 2 minutes and my 'village school' type idea of teaching everyone in the same room was good / interesting / still needs work but on the right track!

LittleH#1 had some multiplication pages to do, and I also tore some sequential work out for LittleH#2 as well as finding him some number handwriting pages for practice. Learningpage was the best in the end, but I also did some in orange highlighter for him to trace over. He got frustrated and was sad because his numbers don't look good on paper, and a lot came out backwards today for some reason. That hasn't happened for a while (he is left handed and has done more backwards writing than LittleH#1 did when he was starting out). I told him his head was ahead of his hand and that I know how frustrated he feels. I told him that he was really good at 'mental arithmetic' but that we need to work on 'writing maths' and am kicking myself for letting him do a year of letter writing practice as and when it was appropriate, but not having practised numbers in the same way. So a numberwriting crash course required. He's only 5, it doesn't matter, but he really wants to do maths and writing work so I need to have some 'handwriting time' organised as part of each day.

The multiplication went well for LittleH#1, and a few pennies dropped along the way. We discussed how you describe the sentences - 2 times 4, 2 lots of 4, 2 4's etc, and 4+4. In fact I am pleased that we got a lot out of a fairly simple page - that is what I like about Miquon - it isn't too prescriptive. I am also kicking myself for not buying the online version because LittleH#2 could have done that page as well, and wouldn't have had actually to write any numbers. Think I may well be downloading it later because I am trying to use the Orange Book for both of them and I randomly copy pages before I use them but I didnt do that from the start... I sound like I am in a muddle... I'm not, I'm just trying to save money on resources! For now we are sharing the book. LittleH#1 is further ahead in the book, and I left some of the early pages for LittleH#2 intentionally.

Following lunch (the strangest cheese on toast I have ever made - bacon, eggs, toast, peanut butter and honey on toast - spot the deliberate mistake - no cheese...) we had a lesson in first aid when LittleH#3 fell over and hit his head and nose on the floor. Nosebleed was quite distracting and it wasn't till I put him to bed I saw the bump. LittleH#1 was very good - brought me the frozen peas and teatowel, phone (for moral support!) and then picked up the runaway peas when the drama was over. Lots of good pea jokes and the boys are getting very good at making puns. Need to teach them some other literary devices but for now that one is keeping us very amused. Better than the joke book LittleH#1 is reading. Maybe a school project might be for him to write some of his own jokes down?

I was very pleased with LittleH#1's emergency situation response - something that is a goal for us this year actually.

Currently the home ec project is in the oven. We have jokingly called it Domestic Science (because they like science so I gave the kitchen some Importance in our school!). Today's 'lesson' was a mix (ha, get it?!) of both. We had to 'make' some ingredients before we could make the cake.

• Had no vegetable oil. Needed 100mls. So I 'tested' with LittleH#1 whether 100g of margarine will make 100ml of oil - it just about did. Not sure either measurement was THAT scientific but it did the job.
• Had no caster sugar. Did something I have wanted to try for a while. We put the raw sugar in the blender and made caster sugar. Apparently if you keep going you can make icing sugar. I do believe that. I think ours was a halfway house between caster and icing.

So we have learned how to be economical with what we have got, how to make oil from solid margarine, reinforcing what we know already about 'matter'. As well as how to cook.

Next stop: walk to the shops. I think we will continue with 'tables walking' as really that is the next landmark I want to get to - learning a few of our tables.

In the meantime LittleH's 1 & 2 have been teaching themselves geography with the Leapfrog globe. Reporting exciting things to me as I wash up the dishes and now they are drawing flags. LittleH#2 just showed me the Libyan one he's just drawn. They began looking at continents and discussing volcanoes / islands made from volcanoes / funny names they'd never heard of before. I must record all this 'extra' / natural learning because it makes a very interesting picture overall when I look back, as we have for the review. I really do see these extra 'learnings' as God's provision to us as a family - his provision in the form of their learning.

Registration...Moderation...

Well we have come up to our first Registration review!!!! Blog's been a bit quiet for that reason as have other things because, hey, we've been doing a bit of ' real life' (and enjoying it!) and also tidying papers (they were in pretty good order but we wanted to knock the year on the head in order!) and preparing for The Review. Thankfully it was with Sally Robbins (I don't know if she currently has anyone else working with her) and we saw her last year for the original registration so I didn't expect any surprises.

It was great (though a bit rushed in the end, having spent all last week ill when I was thinking of getting the review ready that week) going through all LittleH#1's work and remembering and summarising in report form the year's work. I'd had the bright idea of bringing the review forward so that we can get it done before we go to England in 2 weeks. (2 Weeks!!!!!!!!!).

The Report I prepared was longer than you are probably expected to do and I prefaced sitting Sally down with a cup of tea with an apology as to length and I think I said I am incapable of writing anything short. (Are you feeling that?). She was actually really pleased with the detail, it helps her with her job, because she has to write a 4 page report on us and it saves her having to tease out the information that she needs so that she can write it all. A fun job at times, I am getting the impression.

Oh it was such a wonderful meeting. LittleH#1 was there (the others were all accounted for, asleep / quietly reading etc!) and he sat through the whole meeting and played a good part in it too. She took time out from reading it every now and again to say "Oh, you went to xxxxxx did you?" and then he told her a bit about it, or found something in his folder to show her.

We were so encouraged. Matthew was there for most of the meeting too so that was brilliant and he talked a bit about some of the things he has done with the boys. She said we have had a very good first year, and lots of other complimentary things. I am not saying this to boast - actually I am really just wanting to share how encouraged we were from the meeting. Sometimes it is hard to see the wood from the trees. In the midst of a difficult day, week, or season, or just having had a baby, I have wondered whether we are doing the right thing by the children, whether we have achieved anything good and what on earth the review would look like. I have worked out some things:

We are saving more time than we realise by learning at home.

The extra distractions that teachers have in the classroom cannot be underestimated - crowd control, constraints of curriculum and protocol, timetabling, etc.

When we do a big project, like volcanoes (the only one I have blogged on so that's the best example) the work is more intense than I realise.

We work longer days than is necessary for home educating, for the above reasons. I like that. It gives us freedom to have a bad day, an 'unschool day' or just go shopping and do school out of the house like the day we played 'Phonics Detectives' at Tea Tree Plaza while I bought some essential items, whatever they were.

I had thought our school day (being, maybe unusually for homeschooling, but it works for us) say around 9 -4 or something was long because I allow for play periods, sleeps (some or all of us) and maybe taking longer to get dressed than we might otherwise, housework etc. Actually we are getting more than I thought done during that time. But I can't see that when I am in the middle of it, I see it now I have summarised and looked at what we have produced this year.

Oh they are a few random thoughts but it gives me more confidence, and maybe the difficult wading-through-treacle-learning days will be less worrying as we move ahead because I know the bigger picture is a little different. I am having the perfectionist smoothed out of me (it's a gentle refining process, largely, rather than a chip-chip one) and I can be a little more gentle perhaps with the perfectionist child(ren) that I appear to have given birth to.

I need to have some free time now (we are about to watch a film we have diligently put off till the registration thing was finished) but I will come back and post again about what I really think about registration, how my views on it have changed, and for now, (while we are in Australia and whilst it looks nothing like the draconian measures being threatened in the UK) why it feels like a good thing. In Moderation. Ha ha.

Mount St H...

We had an eruption of Mount St H finally! I am ashamed to say it was the 4th May and I haven't had a chance to announce the details yet, or share the photos. Little Miss H enjoyed the drama as much as the boys, and we have kept the model village (and the volcano) for a future eruption. I suppose that means the volcano is currently inactive, or resting, or something.

I know, what a fantastic filming that was. I'll stick to my day job.

The volcano work continues, LittleH#1 is making a volcano shaped fact book, and I will decide whether we are actually going to go the full way to making it into a lapbook display of his work, or whether to just leave it in his folder. I think possibly just the Learning Story folder this time because there is a whole section in there of stuff we have read, and things they have drawn, so I don't want to take stuff out for a lapbook and have it all over the place. He's just as happy to get his folder out and show people anyway.

In sickness and in homeschool...

The wheel really came off this week when I was ill! I lost my voice on the weekend and so have been practising 'parenting without voice' (God has a sense of humour) and schooling without teacher!! Ha ha. Actually Matthew has been around (he had to stay at home for his own health at the beginning of the week, and then I have been incredibly ill for 2 days with mastitis so he had to stay at home as much of yesterday as possible, and then all of today). Of course Matthew is the teacher too (the Biblical homeschoolers say he is Principal of our Homeschool - I do agree with that but I don't think we are as Biblical as them in other ways). Seeing as this blog is fairly new (although not widely read!) I will stay away from *Biblical* controversy for now. :)

So school has been a very natural thing recently! They made a volcano village, it finally erupted on Tuesday (separate post to come about that) and have done various other things.

Good opportunity arose yesterday when Grandma visited and had her magic reading tests in her bag. I don't really care too much for diagnostic-thingys but I can say that because so far whenever we've done one it has been really encouraging. I will say here what the results are (and what they were last August).

Little H#1 is 7 years 5mths old. Waddington Reading Comprehension Test 2: 10 yrs 6 mths, Burt Word recognition reading test: 10 years 11 months, Spelling age 10.2. (August he was Reading Comprehension: 9 yrs 7mths, Word recogntion 9yrs 11mths, Spelling age 9yrs).

Little H#2 is 5 years 2mths old. Waddington Reading Comprehension Test 2: 8yrs 4 mths, Word recognition reading test: 8 yrs 1mth. I spared him the ordeal of a spelling test because we are still beginning writing and he is keen but I don't want to push it. He enjoyed the reading tests though. (Last August his Waddington Reading Comprehension Test 1 was 6yrs 1 mth (at the age of 4 yrs 5 mths).

Very encouraging and a fine day's work for them when I was able to do absolutely nothing myself and was glad of the extra pair of hands for a few hours.

I have to say though, that being so ill (though it rarely happens) seems worse when we are homeschooling. In reality though I have more helpers at home, we don't have a school run and They. Can. Still. Learn.

I forgot to mention that yesterday morning Little H#1 had a craft project in mind (he thinks a lot and reads in his room before we know he is awake a lot of the time) and he drew a jungle picture and tore up bits of different coloured paper to make a kind of mosaic collage. It was a family affair and his brother did it too. They just did it together with a little Daddy help in the drawing stages. This morning before I had braved even calling it morning he came into our room fully dressed and announced he had finished his maths in the playroom. They have a table in there we tend to work together on now, and I haven't cleared it in a few days and put the schoolwork back on the shelf. That was a definite high to start the day.

They ended the day with a Daddy and boys' adventure out to Waterfall Gully after Little H#2's and 3's sleep, and #1's 'reading in cubby' time. I was finally able to stand and cooked the tea and just enjoyed the baby for a bit.

That's how sickness and homeschool have looked in our house recently. Writing it down is good, it helps me to see the light that what we are doing is ok, and works even when it isn't Working.

The Volcano is still growing.

The project continues.

We got some volcano books from the library last week, one turned out to be not suitable for the boys although educating for me.

We haven't done any more written work but today while I went with Little Miss to the dr, Matthew and the boys made a model village in which to place the volcano (he'd been threatening to do this craft with them before but I just wanted to erupt the volcano and be done with it). They all worked really nicely on it together, including cutting, drawing, paddlepop sticks (gradually I begin to use Australianisms), matchsticks, glue gun and food processor packaging. They are really pleased with their result. Rightly so I think.

They decided that their model was of an Icelandic village. We asked them how they thought we might show it was in Iceland. Little H's 1&2 thought we should have a flag on the model. We have a world map with all of the flags of the world around the edge in the Playroom, so they ran in there and came back describing the flag. They set to making a flag each, and Little H#1's went on the bridge. We have had a number of uses for that map and it is at child height. They freely go and study it, and talk about it with each other. Oh I love homeschooling when I hear those comversations! Already they have a better understanding and knowledge of the world map than I do. Somehow I managed to get an A at A Level Geography without having ever needed to know much about the globe. I suppose its all about syllabus but we can't get away with that sort of ignorance, it'll give learning at home a bad name. I am getting better now we are all learning together.

Here are the pictures:

Little H's 1 & 2 have been predicting where the lava will flow, which houses and buildings will be reached first. We all discussed why people live near volcanoes. I also explained to them what makes a natural phenomenon a natural 'disaster'. We will investigate settlements near volcanoes next, I think.

I'm getting the hang of putting in the pictures. Never know, if I can get it right (and of course if it works!) we may even be able to upload the film of the eruption. There's no day and time. It'll be a surprise.

Our Unschooling Accent

I think we have a little of an 'unschooling accent' in our learning together at H Corner. I read a blog recently where someone had had an 'unschooling week' and decided they would do it once in a while. I realised that we tend to be that way on Fridays. However probably due to recent circumstances - like various illnesses in the house - we have been learning with a stronger unschooling accent than usual recently.

I think like most accents we have picked it up and it has grown a bit stronger as we have gone on. I am not prepared to ditch a learning plan for the year completely, and still want to plan ahead and have topics we will cover (my accent hasn't yet developed to using words like "unit studies" - I am quite happy with "topics" for now...!).

I will also have a maths scheme that I am basing our maths on (haven't dropped the 's' yet either - and don't plan to). I am changing tack on English (ok I might be calling that Language Arts now) and am going over to First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind by Jessie Wise.

I don't mind stopping to admire the view or to take a little detour on the way though. Or just take a breather because we can.

I don't really see the point for our particular gaggle of learners if we are not doing things this way. We have an amazing opportunity and privilege to learn this way and it is beneficial not only to LittleH#1 but for the other three, and Matthew and me as well.

I was going to declare Fridays Natural Learning days, or Unschool Days, or whatever. Fridays will perhaps be a dying breed in this house although currently they are my "Life of Riley" days because Matthew is at home on Fridays (for now) so there is a 'whole family' opportunity - which rarely involves the 'ordinary' learning that we do on other days.

I may still do that, call Fridays something special, but recently the Natural Learning (sounds better than "Unschooling") has spilled out into other days too and we have had some great opportunities for conversation and, well, natural learning!

We joined a new library last Wednesday and on the way LittleH#1 began a conversation about law and politics. He checked with me who was in charge of the Police, we discussed who makes the laws that the Police enforce, the Government, Parliament, elections, MPs... and then he pointed out some MP signs on the way to the Library. I quite often don't drive with music on when we are in the car because we are talking about something like that.

We picked up a number of books - the children's non-fiction was fantastic. Volcanoes and weather were the main ones. We still need to do some more on our weather topic - the science club we had joined for that turned out in the end to be a bit disappointing but we were interested enough to want to keep on and will do more ourselves. They have pored over those books, LittleH#2 is cutting his reading teeth on them and wow, he's coming on so well. There were some other stories we came home with, and all in all - a successful trip and I am not sure if we will wait the planned 2 weeks to return.

So we haven't exactly been "Reading, wRiting and aRithmeticking" but nevertheless, good progress and good learning this last week.

I suppose the word that sums it all up is Eclectic.

Wombat's Worldwide Walkabout.

I had a little idea a few weeks ago, that has turned into a bigger project. (Don't they always?). So I have started another blog, under an alter ego (Diggory Wombat). http://wombatswalkabout.blogspot.com/
Wombat's Worldwide Walkabout.

The idea is that our Wombat handpuppet is posted to various friends, and friends of friends. They take him on a little outing, take photos and update the blog. They send us a postcard from Diggory and then post him to the next person. Complete with passport. Eventually he will arrive home with a rather black carbon footprint I should imagine.

For various reasons the blogs remain unlinked, so I am just linking to that one from this, and not vice versa.

As for the volcanoes we are still going on those but a bit slower than planned due to illnesses. Kind of on the back burner, but smouldering no less.