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.

yet more Science…

“Explain to me what you are doing?” “Well I am balancing like that, goodness that’s not right I had it like that before, then the little side only the ball (golf ball in a baby sock) falls which means the balls much heavier than the other thing (wooden cotton reel) and then it falls down…

To sport or not to sport?

The Steiner schools think sport is for exercise, health, agilty and enjoyment and competitiveness isn’t encouraged except against one’s self. Montessori schools de-emphasise competitiveness and encourage cooperation. Why? There is a certain pleasure in having rules as defined by someone else governing your game, an abdication of responsibility and it’s easy. For me this pleasure…

Topics…

I can’t say ‘doing’ a topic seems to work like I imagined. Mostly I don’t know what sort of topicish stuff Helena thinks about, I suspect that she sort of thinks about lots of things in the back of her mind while doing something else. We occasionally talk about stuff (as in not what her…

Show and tell

Just for fun we have show and tell at our Monday meeting. The meeting is when we talk about what we have on for the week, what we want to do, stuff we have to finish etc but it was a bit ho hum, adult heavy, so then we started show and tell- a reason…

More “set ups”

This time with rose petals collected from the ground yesterday. They were intended for some kind of fairy bed… But lots of dudes got rather lovely beds, all tucked up. “Mum wouldn’t you like a bed like that, that smelt like that”

It works….

Vases, vases, vases..

So I let my child follow her obsessions, learn what she wants… who am I to say what is Important to learn, that her passions are not valuable, however weird they are. This is todays hours of work after an epiphany, “I can draw vases of flowers,” that she had at 10:30pm when she wasn’t…

She’s gone…

well it had to happen… Saturday 9th of March Helena finished a whole chapter book in the morning, in one sitting, from beginning to end. She was pretty pleased with herself. She told me the plot but only because I asked… I guess I will have a part-time child. I wonder when I’ll be supplying…

Life is good

So we volunteered for DoC for a week. We had to collect campground fees for two camp sites in the late afternoon and evenings but most of the days were ours so what did we do? Hiking and biking… well we had to drop the truck off in the morning and walk back to our…