I was having a moment in which I was thinking how bad I’ve been with the home school thing in the last little while due to us moving between houses (before we started house sitting), me being sick (it was a really bad week for me), me having assignments to do and the presence of…
Category: science
Not learning at Playcentre
The Ministry of Education worries about me going to work at Playcentre with my child who is more than 2 years older than the oldest child. The Ministry of Education requires me to teach Helena “as often as” and “as well as” what she would get at school. No where does it state that this…
‘my’ theory works
It’s not really mine, it’s as old as the hills. It’s sort of maths.. and It goes something like Input in + time to simmer in child’s head = new ideas, even output. The Montessori method has the concept of the great lessons where you have a big reverent display of a big idea like…
Providing learning experiences..
Today I excelled…. Monday we went to a talk about this couch.Made by a group of community volunteers to commemorate the reopening of the Days Bay track that was wiped out by a big slip, it even took out the phone lines while my father was on the phone. It took years and a lot…
Dirty hands
Five agar plates. One she didn’t touch, one she touched, then she went out and played in the dirt and touched one, the next she washed her hands then touched, the last she scrubbed her hands then touched. (The agar was made with cabbage water – I wanted to see if the growth would change…
Planting trees… and ideas
We went planting trees with some other homeschoolers and some students who were on a course learning how to be rangers. I called the students “teenagers” but I suspect they were older. Helena worked with a lovely young woman called Claire. I heard Helena talking, talking, talking. Helena said Claire thought she was a plant…
This weeks little bits of random…
Why does she have to do this at night… (well apart from her mother and grandmothers being night owls) “I JUST want to see if different countries have different weights of coins”. Or this one… Possibly she’s just delaying bed time by wanting to learn to tell the time- worried I’m sending her to bed…
Home baking
Or is it kitchen chemistry? I did baking at school as a teacher – it’s a common learning tool, process cooking is the lingo at playcentre. All that measuring, lots of language, kids like it, and that following of the instructions thing, with all those steps and the essential instructional language. Well Helena can follow…
When a holiday programme is school
I really like the holiday programme I’m involved in. It’s how I think school should work… we have but three rules. Respect yourself and others. Respect our environment and equipment Respect play Aka the playcentre ‘rules’ which cover everything from going to the loo, keeping warm, staying inside the cones (boundary), saws, games, not being…
Chemistry 7 year old styley..
Chemistry is the properties of material and involves measuring stuff, adding things together watching (and some waiting) for reactions. Not if you are 7 and given free range to experiment. It’s adding everything and feeling it, the texture, colour, trying to get your mixture the same as your co-worker. It uses language like, ‘I added…
homeschoolery 