being the one who knows – homeschoolery

learning for your kids

I have done role playing because I had friends who were really into it (and some still play) but I was really just a visitor – I turned up, played (and enjoyed my self) but I didn’t learn how to run a game, how to be the one responsible, how it all worked. I saw…

Playing school

It turns out homeschool kids play school. Helena plays it with her neighbors (7 and 4), her toys, and me!!! This has happened before. I go to bed to find a note on my pillow letting me know I have to sign up to some school like activity. I am currently not doing my Science…

Focus

Helena has been doing pottery for a while now. We tend not to do it in the summer terms as I think we will be away more than we are! Helena really likes it on the whole. It is after school social contact with kids who go to schools during the day (not that that…

the farm

Yesterday Helena told me that although one of the projects (making an island) a friend of hers did at school appealed to her there were aspects she was glad she didn’t have to do with a similar project she is working on…. a project started months and months ago! One was that she got to…

it’s not fair

We have been back home from work in Wellington for 2 days. So far every morning Helena bounces out of bed and goes off to do one of her weird and wonderful tasks… In fact the moment we walked in the door off the bus she was making flour and water glue to start doing…

independence

Today Helena caught the bus into town by herself and brought some tissue paper, took her books back and went to her book club ALL BY HERSELF…. all by herself. We have done a little work to get here.. we use to catch the bus at the same time and pretend we weren’t together. We…

being the boss

Helena catered for a tea party in the weekend… a full on tea party for 4. There were choices – popcorn, pikelets, chocolate cake and hokey pokey biscuits washed down with lashings of homemade lemonade. I did nothing to help, I’m not even sure that we even had a conversation about it, – permission or…

rules

H and one of her friends were having a water fight one evening, for ages and ages.. It turned out it was a highly structured game with rules, they decided rules would be a “good idea”. No two cans No throwing if opponent paused Be fair Only throw at players Be gentle No throwing cans…

homework

I don’t like homework as I have seen how it is detrimental to parent child relationships, all that nagging, all that implying that whatever project the kid had in their head is less important than what someone external to the family believes is important… I did get kids to take home stuff they didn’t finish…

they learn from what we do

When I wrote my homeschool application I had such grand plans. One of which was that we would somehow build our own tiny home and I imagined Helena by my side measuring, sawing etc. Of course reality was someone else built us a sleepout sized building with no internal finishing…. and I paid cash, so…