Surreh PIA council!

The past two months have involved some serious letter writing of the "Disgusted of Surrey" kind! Despite the new guidelines issued by the DCSF ( which are actually alright - they appear to have taken on most of what the home ed community wanted) Surrey seems firmly stuck in the dark ages and hell bent on trying to push visits and monitor the quality of education being provided as opposed to just checking that an education is taking place. So in Jan a number of things happened; I got a letter yet again either requesting a visit or a report.....coz the fact they recieved one in Aug seems to have been forgotton!!! R found a job vacancy on the Surrey CC website which was so misleading and misinformed it was painful and then she got hold of Pam Berryman's response to the guideline consultation by the DfES.....exceedingly interesting reading!!! so enough is enough they need to dramatically change thier approach and now the guidelines are advocating thatwe've decided to push so the first wave of letters went off 2 weeks ago to the education bods at SCC as well as the head of the council, education select committee councillers and Jeremy Hunt our MP. We had a generic "we're looking into it" response within 4 days, which was impressive considering I am STILL waiting on acknowlegement for a letter I sent to the EbPP team in Sept 2006!!!! It even took them a month to acknowledge my emialed in Ed phil! But its seems if you go a bit further up the food chain you get more of a response. So we'll see...... Its sure to have ruffled a few feathers at least and whilst it would be lovely to think we're going to make a difference I'll not be holding my breath!

Random breakfast questions!

What I love about home ed is the spontenaity (sp) of the learning.....This morning I had my to do list all worked out, the boys chores, my chores and the home ed bits that all needed to be fitted in before home ed group along with the shopping delivery and mealtimes. So we are sitting eating breakfast and T has tha face on that generally means he's percolating a question then suddenly out it pops - "How is soil made?" Totally relevant seeing as we've spent the weekend and past week on the allotment with D rotavating, muck spreading, plot rotation etc. He's been party to conversations about weed mulching, soil acidity and what grows best in previously used areas. So although I have a vague recollection of a test tube with soil and water in it, and the words humus (not to be confused with houmous) sediment and stones I google soil and come across this fab website

www.soil-net.com Genius a cartoon badger explaining many things about soil with interactive games and good graphics! So the list gets postponed, whilst T does some learnin and Mummy gets wistful ideas about chocolate spread jars, soil samples and a magnifying glass!!

So then the playroom gets done and now we are onto times tables.....with cups and buttons and the intrigue of setting it up early has done wonders to engage interest!!! tee hee

New year New Start?

Well November and December passed me by in a whirl of nausea, vommiting and utter disbelief that I could really be that bad at early pregnancy!!!! One minute there we are getting all excited, booking our lovely midwife and laughing about where the birth pool will go since I reorganised the playroom then suddenly the only in depth conversations I seem to be having are with the toilet bowl!!! My lovely Mum had to come down to look after the kids (and me) as I limped my way towards the end of 2007 thinking what and apt ending that was to a pretty pants year! Thank goddess we worked through the summer is all I can say as Nov and Dec was sporadic at best education wise. Telly was watched, walks were had and I believe meals were eaten but its all a bit of a blur really. So imagine my surprise when I sit down with T in early Jan when I'm beginning to feel human again, despite a stinking cold, and I get out his maths workbook and he ploughs through a couple of pages in a matter of minutes???!!!! Apparently the questions were very easy! I was also amazed to see that his reading had improved as well! He sat and read me 6 pages of his new reading book straight off where as it used to be a battle for me to get him to read me two! I was explaining this strange phenomenon to a friend G at home ed group and she directed me to "Free range education" and a chapter called "Lessons from the leg break fairy" in which another Mum describes this continuation of learning despite her being bed bound due to a badly broken leg. Apparently the break just allowed T to consolidate organise the things we had been learning so when he re-encountered them after the break they seemed easier as they had stuck in his brain!!!! I have to say relief was the first emotion followed by immense proudness!

So, sofar we've been cracking away into Jan. Today we sat down with his Live and Learn Space lap book and covered the mini book of the layers of the sun. He also helped D relocate the chooks to a plush new pad in the shed. This involved screwing the rungs on a ladder for them and hammering fance posts into the ground. At this point I had to go inside as 5 yr old + mallet to me signifes a trip to A&E so away I walked and all was well! He even managed to pick up the cockrell without being savaged!

He's storming through Education city now being half way through yr 2 Maths, 3/4 of the way through yr 2 Literacy and having very nearly completed Yr 3 science. Flying through his addition and subtraction books and although its his least favourite thing to do his writing is looking very good.

We sat at the table today with L painting, T writing and me cutting up, and gluing mini books ready for the next page of the lapbook and for a brief moment peace reigned! We're back into Ballet and Gym and enjoying them, he's on about rugby and learning the guitar as well as tennis and swimming and whilst we would love him to be able to do them all and hate to start geting him to choose, the financial pot is not bottomless and with L coming up to the age where he'll start wanting to do stuff soon I think we might have to adopt a suck it and see then choose your 2 or 3 faves approach, especially with baby Mk 3 on the way!

Despite T's happiness with the current situation I still regularly get the wibbles and relish seeing the other parents at our weekly meets to share these collywobbles with. Apparently the doubts stop when the kids are in their 20's with decent jobs!!!!! so only....20ish yrs to go then!!!!!!

And its October

The Ancient Egypt project gradually drew to a close at the end of the summer although the books still piled up in the kitchen would say otherwise! Its quite a good topic to have a go at as there is so much to find out that I'm sure he will get even more from it when we do it again. Minni hatched 3 of her eggs. I was a terrible midwife and kept lifting her up to have a look! She hatched 3 tiny little black chicks and was by all accounts a fantastic first time Mum. The boys adored having them in the lounge as did we until Min did her first poo in 3 days then her presence was felt just a little bit too strongly and she and the chicks were relocated to the section under the hen house!

The summer holiday was a camping trip to the Isle of Wight. First time camping and I won't deny that I was a little nervous but we had a ball. The boys loved it. IOW is fantastic for rock pooling and the first afternoon there was spent dibbing in rock pools with the set that terribly organised home edding Mummy had bought from Sainos. It was a really good buy actually, it contained a net (which I will be very surprised if we can find next year but hey!) A Viewing tank with magnifying bits, sandpaper (we're not sure what for) and other bits and bobs for the general poking and prodding of rock pools! The viewing tank was fab and we ended up with a small collection of children oggling it. All was well until a crab started to eat one of the shrimps in the tank.....nature at its most gross and we emptied the tank back into a pool! T, L and I all had a swim in the sea and the regular swimming meant the T came on really quickly. The camping experience suited us down to the ground! We had a three day cross over with my Dad and his lot so T followed L round which drove her crazy but I'm sure she secretly loved!!!

When we got home we had a day to chill then H arrived with 3 out of the 5 kids she has so they could stay with us for 5 days whilst she had a break with her DH. Thankfully it wasn't the carnage I sort of anticipated and we had a laugh. Both T and L had another child thier age to bug/play with. Dan took the older ones off to fish for crayfish which we made into a risotto. We also went off collecting Elderberries to make cordial. The aim was to get loads this time and not give it away so it lasts us throughout the cold season. We have buckets of the stuff. Even though the summer was shit we still managed to have a fairly good crop on the allotment and the blackberries and elderberries seemed to like the crap summer so there were loads to be had.

This "terms" project is space, so after meptying the library of all the books on space they had we laid out the solare system in the back garden using a selection of fruit, marbles, blu-tac balls and a space hopper for the sun (no expense spared then in pursuit of authenticity!!) After various attempts at lay out we ended up with the sun at the back door step and the planets stretching out into the allotment. Pluto was in a good couple of metres into the allotment and when asked how what is must be like being that far away from the sun T replied "bloomin freezing!" which actually isn't a bad description! I was stuggling to find a through line with the project and did want to go a bit more structured, if only so D would have something to do with T when I was at work. After asking for ideas on an EO list I was pointed in the direction of Live and Learn press - http://www.liveandlearnpress.com/ where I bought a fab lapbook from. For those who don't know (and I didn't) a lapbook is like a scrapbooked folder with lots of mini books or fact files within it. I bought the one aimed at older kids Grades 3-5 which is a little advanced in places but we're modifying bits and T seems to be thoroughly enjoying it - along side the lap book we are creating a wall display with using different art techniques to create the planets accompanied by a mini fact file on each on. So far we have done a balled up tissue paper collage of the sun also using shredded sainsbury's bags, foil and glitter - cue many repetitions of the Mickey Smith quote from Dr Who "sit at the back with the safety scissors and gli'oh!!". Mercury has been created with sand mixed with grey paint and pva glue and Venus has given us cause to crack open the marbling inks (which smell but make for very pretty pictures) Earth is goingt o be another collage and then we are also looking at doing planets using chalk, papier mache, water colour over wax and many ways we haven;t thought of yet! We also did some scratch art . Covering a piece of paper in wax crayon then painting over it with back poster paint and using a cocktail stick to scratch out a pic. came out very well and even L enjoyed it!

Summer and things are very fertile in our household - how about you?

So July is .....wet so far but today we have had one of the first hot days in ages so T started the day by pulling some tatoes from his plot which are currently roasting in the oven to go with our - well their - Sunday roast. He got 19 Anya potatos from his plot along with one bean! an green'un. I picked aload from the rest of the plot and they are going in the pot along with some of the broc frozen a few weeks ago and some of the summer cabbage not eaten by the slugs. The slug soup currently steeping in a bucket stinks to high heaven and is collecting quite a nice posse of flies so I'm going to have to nag D to chuck it before it makes me vomit!Mmmmm dried salted slugs yum!!! I've been doing slug patrol every night at about 9ish much to the amusement of fellow allotment holders as I am usually kitted out in green wellies and little miss chatterbox pj bottoms. I'm sorry I have no shame!!! We gave Minni some eggs to sit on from G, our next allotment neighbour. They are bantam eggs and really weeny! I also stuck in some duck eggs from sainsburys to see if they do anything as there has been some talk on home ed boards of kids hatching free range duck eggs from waitrose...sadly I think they are duds - obviously they're not posh enough!!!! We had a try at egg candling but we didn't do it right - rubbish torch and sunny day - So we're having a go again tonight to see what we can see - two of the bantam eggs were definitely opaque so fingers crossed!!!

Loads of the second wave of seedlings are ready to go in - finally and the allotment really seems to be in full swing. T is very proud of his plot, seems to think that he will probably win the sunflower comp AND takes everyone that visits to look at his plot!

T's reading has been coming along really well over the past few months and last week he started playing on Study Dog again. He got half way though level two about 6 months ago but lost interest as his reading wasn't Strong enough to play some of the games but he went back to it and really went for it this time. On Tues he stayed up playing on it till 8.30 when I had to kick him off it and send him to bed (can;t complain really - if it was playstation or another "game" i would limit the time but it was vowel combinations and spelling) He is now about half way though level three and really steaming though asking if there is a Study Dog 4 so I'll have to find something else for him to play on! I tested his reading, very informal and probably not that accurate, but I wanted to put a level in my statement of Educational Provision to give to the LEA as they like levels and numbers ;-) According to this test his reading age is 6 yrs and 2 months - not 1 month or 3 months mind 2 months!!!! tee hee. He has now finished the Oxford reading Tree Songbirds Stage 4 and is now bugging me to buy stage 5! I'm going to take him to the library again next week as all this book buying is getting a little expensive! L will be able to use them too but things are a little tight at the mo so we have to be careful.

Most local libraries and the Bear Factory are running a reading program where by the child gets rewards for reading 6 books, can;t see that being a problem as he tends to do one every couple of days but we're going to join coz we like the free stuff!!!!!

Oh printed off some fab diagrams to colour in from www.enchantedlearning.com I'd forgotten all the fab print outs they do!

Oh and cornflour play.........really really flippin messy - educational but really, not planning on doing it for a good few years again!!!!

Ah well that will probably be the update for July as I seem to be very pants at keeping up with this blogging malarkey! We've probably done loads more but can;t remember!

All things Egg yupt!

So Ancient Egypt is our project at the mo and after a steady start the Peacehill press books really have helped us along - www.peacehillpress.com The Story of the world by Susan Wise-Bauer -Ancient Civilisations was such a fab find. P at home ed group bought it in, in her book box for us to have a look at and I have to say I nearly wet myself!!!! The teacher in my squealed with delight at the fact that there were lesson ideas and activities in the accompanying activity book AND.....activity sheets!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Added bonus is that it is written by a home educator specifically for home edders!!!! The main book is beautifully written with the sections set up as stories in bite size pieces. You can go through it from start to finish or dip in and out depending on what particular area you are studying. I LOVE IT!!! Although it has given rise to a few challenging questions such as, "Can we visit Mesopotamia?" Hmm Lets look in the atlas shall we? Find out what Mesopotamia is called now?...........Iraq..that will be a no then, yup and the bottom half is Iran.....again I'm going with, no!

So far T has:-

Coloured in a map of Mesopotamia and Egypt including the Fertile Crescent (known as the Fertile banana in our 'ouse!) and the Nile Delta ("Why is it called a delta? coz it looks like a D and D in Greek is Delta. Can you teach me Greek? Erm possibly!!!)

Listened to the Story of Osiris and Set (naughty Set) and on finishing with, "Isis was so sad that Osiris had drowned tat she wrapped his body in linen and he became the first Mummy. But no sooner had she wrapped him that he came back to life....." T comes out with "Just like Jesus!" hmmm not bad RE knowledge for a kid from a Pagan family!!! Have to say I was a little surprised that he remembered this.

Painted the window in the playroom with a sphinx and a few pyramids

Drawn a fantastic picture of the Sphinx, a lion on a pillar and the great pyramid. He's even put his name at the bottom of the pillar! He worked on it for about 3 hours in total.......slightly irritating that I wasn't allowed to look at it whilst he was doing it which meant that every time I walked into the kitchen I got yelled at.....I was hoovering the ground floor at the time!!!!!

We have done a time line to illustrate just how long ago the Ancient Egyptians were doing their thing and its really quite amazing. I managed to demonstrate a shameful inability to count by initially drawing us at 2700 as opposed to 2007 (clever Mummy!!!) T has cut out a picture of the kind wearing the double red and white crown of the united Egypt and drawn a pyramid to put along it in the right place.

The Magic treehouse book was a really nice way into the project and T has referred to it quite a bit. I also bought a ladybird "read it yourself" book on Mummies today which we had a crack at today.

Reading wise he is coming along nicely. I ordered some more Oxford Reading Tree Songbirds books, the next level up at T's request, and he is now almost halfway through 4a on the Peter and Jane series. I am trying to get him to do at least a page a day but we are a bit rubbish and kinda let it slip over the holiday we had last week so I'm trying to get back in it!!! We also bought "First Language lessons for the classical child" by Jessie Wise - Susan Wise Bauer's Mum. These are really lovely and I have been trying to do at least on every other day. There is little or no writing involved in the first 45 lessons just basic grammar, poems and stories. T has learned The Caterpillar by Christina Rosetti and painted a plate to illustrate the story. He ten went on to paint a Mummy on another plate and about 5 other pictures on various plates...at this point we realise that the paint is not meant to be eaten off no matter how hard it dries....so lucky we have LOADS of white plates! From now on only the backs get decorated!!

Today we pulled the first Potatoes from the allotment and yup they were mainly from T's plot!!! I'm on a juice week at the mo so have only tried half of one but it was bloody lovely!! We let the girls onto the plot today to do some slugging for us. Sadly they don;t give a damn where they stand so were shooed off after about half an hour! The seedlings we planted a on Sat are already shooting so we should have a second salad and bean crop on the way for when the rest are peaking.

Right have decided to register most of our reference books on www.bookcrossing.com so I can lend them out. It will hopefully free up some shelf space but mean I can keep tabs on where they all are for when I need them for the shorter one of the two children!!!

Received invite from the LEA for a "Celebration of Home Education" don;t think we'll go as I am far to suspicious of them at the moment...mebbe next year eh!

Fertile Summer

With the Solstice looming it seems like everything has burst into life. We went crayfish fishing and managed to get a very modest haul so hopefully this means the little buggers are in decline in the guildford canal system. T and L loved it and despte muggins ending up chief cracker and desheller of the aforementioned crayfish we had a lovely crayfish risotto that night accompanied with rocket from the lottie - the call of self sufficiency is just SOOOOO tempting!

Lambs jumping in the fields, bunnies just about everywhere and our allotment has gone bonkers! T's plot is awash with green and we got the first sugarsnap peas and strawbs from it a few days ago! How proud was he that his plot has yeilded the first edible non salad crop. The brassica frame is heaving! Everything has been slugged within an inch of its life and from the 11 cucumber plants we HAD we now have 5 and a half left which look very sorry for themselves! So cue many slug hunts which the chooks are very grateful for. The cheeky little moos have now started turning their noses up at fresh veggies from the allotment and looking for for the handful of slugs instead!!!!

This is T's Plot bursting with life!!! Note the really tall sunflower at the back, we're hoping that will win the tallest sunflower competition as its still going!

We had a minor crisis when the potatoes started looking a bit brown, so we dosed them with epsom salts whilst we waited for our comfrey tea to perk! Apparently it's ready when it smells like death! Today it started smelling like death and was liberally sprayed on the plots!