Little bits

Our real lives are full of little bits of this and that… The witch and the cherry tree in Lego… all just because…..

A lack of inspiration…

I am suffering from a lack of homeschool inspiration. In part that is due to Helena rejecting a lot of my suggestions that I think are exciting.. I have mostly given up. Having said that I have been doing things that are ‘interesting’ like working with a friend to put solar panels on the roof…

history

What we ended up learning in our isolated spot was what our isolated ancestors would have known and always factored into their lives. Life without a supermarket/dairy etc. down the road… There were no roads, it was a days walk to get out and the only fast way in was by boat and it turned…

two weeks out

We are so incredibly lucky! We got to spend two weeks totally out of our normal life volunteering for the Department of Conservation at a Lodge at Nydia bay. Only 5 hours of power a day, no cellphone reception… no roads, shops and not even many people! We got dropped there by boat with our…

Grrr

I wrote a whole post on my bossy child and I thought it morphed into an excellent discussion about people working together, group dynamics and the different roles different personalities take and how this is learned in childhood practice… but the computer swallowed it before I illustrated it with photos of my darling and I…

the candidates meeting

I am delighted my child chose to come to our local “meet the candidates” meeting, in fact she didn’t want to miss it! It is our local body elections and Helena knows that her grandfather and I care… we talk about it, tell each other snippets we have read at the dinner table. The School…

testing

There is always something in the press about testing and how the kids are failing. Testing is a thing I associate with science. The importance in science is a fair test and this requires This makes sense right. If, for instance, you grew a plant in two different places but were actually testing the the…

risky play

The kids lit this fire.. they sorted themselves about keeping each other safe – the big ones decided they should light the fire, there was a discussion on the wind. There was some kind of close/ too close circle rule… They went and got sunglasses for the smoke, they also went and got the marshmallows…

still filing

H is still following her filing schema.. But it is getting more complicated… or is it more recognisable. The library now has categories: making and doing, then alphabetical by author’s first name with a small non fiction bit at the end.. the chapter books are on a different shelf, also alphabetically by author’s first name,…

learning from your kids

I am starting, at 52, to enjoy Shakespeare after nearly 40 years of total aversion. Why? Because my child loves the language and the drama of it all. Weirdo. She is at the moment at the end of the table reciting from a book of Shakespeare’s poems and excerpts from plays… getting more and more…