This is the Takaro tribe. They live in the internet/TV land and I am delegating to them Helena learning te reo Māori. I have made attempts but they flop – not directed by her, and we aren’t good at making habits. I just haven’t worked out the best formula for making it work. I want…
Author: annebieleski
I am an ex primary teacher... ex because of regulations saying that you have be fully registered within 5 years of graduating and I only ever worked part-time due to art school, a science job... life. (Now temporarily not an ex teacher as I have re-done my qualifications but still haven't gone back to a classroom).
I was never going to be a conventional teacher, I wanted to be like my Mum who was a most awesome teacher and had the freedom to teach how she wanted.
I am intellectually interested in education.
I have spent 20 something years working in early childhood... part time of course! I had nearly 6 years learning alongside Helena at Playcentre.
My daughter has refused to go to school so I am fortunate enough to spend time watching her do her stuff and trying some experiments on her.
I think learning is easy and happens all the time for every one which is what I want to show on this blog. And it turns out Homeschooling is just fun.
Classification according to….
We have a massive collection of plastic animals some of which I brought when I was teaching in a Montessori classroom and we were doing classification so they represent a range of major animal groups. I seem to have lost the birds since then. Helena has always liked these and the collection has grown to…
On a make..
Helena had her making..making..make hat on today. Make no 1: a mask out of the cardboard packet ginger beer comes in. No 2: a clown’s nose out of a cream bottle No sellotape has been used yet! “look mum, I just think about the grass not string..” later she plaited the grass. No 3: a…
I am the bad guy…
It was our last day of having Helena’s friend. I had grand plans of doing all the things they liked best but they didn’t seem interested, not in my list anyway… and there is a storm raging and it’s raining. So what did they do? Making something, it kept changing. I’m not sure it was…
Weird stuff my kid does when I don’t notice.
It turns out she’s secretly actually into gardening… subtly hiding it from me with a “no” when I ask if she wants to help me. This is her garden. I know she really likes pansys. The flowers periodically disappear into potions or get collected for some purpose (colouring cotton buds for instance) then grow back….
You give me fever…
Helena is sick. Last night she had a fever, very unsual, and at one point she woke up but was still dreaming and said something to me about making boats out of clay. She has been wanting to make boats for ages… we mean to make a raft, it was on our list of goals…
How is she reading?
I read this Article which pulls apart how teachers teach learning to read. This is not just relevant to America, it even mentions Marie Clay who was an important part of what we learnt at teachers college – the horrible running records. I was taught to teach the “three cueing” method. When I was a nanny in…
A day in the life
This is what Helena did today while I spent the whole day cleaning the pantry – we have moths and I was worried we had cockroaches but it turns out they just visit the plastics cupboard on occasion. 9am – She’s just got up, is in pjs and she’s microwaving a marshmallow which was in…
Swimming again
Helena is doing the same week long swimming lesson thing again. I am once again impressed by her teacher, she does such good feedback. She really tells the kids what she is looking for, breaks down the elements of swimming freestyle into do able bits. I’ve never quite worked out why the focus is on…
homeschoolery 