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…

Lost…

Enid, mostly Enid, has all her attention now… And this is her checking on the rice… It was such a hard thing letting her do it herself, she took so long to start… then wham at the beginning of this year (only 4 months ago) she was reading but in a labored way and reading…

Just us trips…

We are in Wellington, where we use to live and it is my place, the place where I feel at home. There are poems up on the waterfront about Wellington and one calls this beautiful city the headquarters of the verb and it so is, I love the way both the landscape/hills and the weather/wind…

going on Trips

Recently we have been on a few organised trips/events? Things where there is some other adult telling you stuff and being the person who knows. Other people have organised these and there were 3 in one week. We have done 1: Stream Care: This is a model of a water catchment. Helena was most proud…

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…

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…

Tea anyone?

and what do children think one should talk about at tea parties? Well they are apparently quite formal and you have to offer a “spot more of tea” a lot and you discuss the weather and what you have done during the day and for the length of the afternoon tea you all remain sitting,…