30 Days Wild

For the month of June we took part in the ‘30 Days of Wild’ challenge. It was set up by the Wildlife Trust to encourage people to be more at one with nature. I read somewhere that a recent study found that on average child spends less than one hour a day outside! It apparently is less than a prison inmate! That's crazy!! It made me feel relieved and reassured to know that our boys spend lots more than that getting muddy and being free every day.

We really enjoyed our month of wild. Here’s what we did...

Day 1 – Bug hunting and identification.

Day 2 – Made a bird feeder.

Day 3 – Had our Friday tea time outside.

Day 4 – Went for a walk along the canal. Fed the duck and swans and collected some elderflowers to make cordial.

Day 5 – Held a tiny owl at the canal boat festival.

Day 6 – Spent the whole day playing outside at one of our home ed meet ups.

Day 7 – Spent the afternoon enjoying (and feeling jealous of!) a friend’s garden.

Day 8 – Planted sunflowers and bought a window bird feeder.

Day 9 – Took part in the Friends of the Earth bee count.

Day 10 – Observed the huge change that had happened in the garden to our plants since all the rain, ate peas from the pod and watched an episode of ‘Life’. Later it absolutely poured down again and the boys danced naked in the rain!

Day 11 – Made a little friend.

Day 12 – Read one of our lovely eye-view library books. This one was 'The Frog' and the boys loved it. It’s a brilliant series of books, I totally recommend them.

Day 13 – Pressed some flowers in a flower press I found in a charity shop.

Day 14 – Made survival bracelets.

Day 15 – The children took charge of filling all the bird feeders.

Day 16 – Riding his bike in the rain naked (I think rain now triggers the need to strip off!!).

Day 17 – Scattered our bee friendly flower seed freebies.

Day 18 – Rode bikes to the park and climbed trees, play football and found some wild mushrooms.

Day 19 – Got thoroughly filthy on the beach.

Day 20 – Went for a barefoot walk!

Day 21 – Squished up some old grapes for fun before chucking them to the chickens.

Day 22 – Went for a walk in the Severn Valley with Daddy.

Day 23 – Wrote out a Shirley Hughes poem about mud.

Day 24 – Had a wonderful time at our monthly farm group making elderflower cordial, collecting grasses to make displays using natural clay, found rabbit warrens, bumblebee nests and badger sets, enjoyed the river and found a crayfish claw! We love this group!

Day 25 – Went strawberry picking.

Day 26 – Observed the house martins in our eaves. The Boys really enjoy finding the tiny eggs shells on the ground.

Day 27 – Harvested the seeds from the grass displays and scattered them in the patchy grass in our garden.

Day 28 – The children did some natural weaving.

Day 29 – Made flower fairies out of the flowers we had pressed on day 13.

Day 30 – Went for a bike ride in the mud.

We really enjoyed putting aside a bit of time each day to do our wild activities. Nature plays such a big part in our education and we will definitely continue to stay wild!  

Finding our own routine

It has been nearly 6 months since my last post!!! Life just seems to fly by these days with very little time to sit and write.

We still absolutely love home education. As time has gone on we have found our own routine and style. We still attend many of the same groups with a few additions like piano lessons and a wonderful structured group run my our local organic farm. We tend to do less of our structured Sonlight stuff and more child led/Charlotte Mason type learning. This was mainly after I was finding that the things I had taught him because “that’s what we’re doing today” were being forgotten and the things they had initiated were staying in. It’s a lot harder for me doing it this way because I have to constantly be facilitating their questions and interests (Pinterest is a good friend of mine!) but so much more rewarding. We spend a lot of time outside exploring nature. I believe nature study is massively important. I am blessed with two boys who love nothing more than to be out digging for worms and searching for badger sets/rabbit warrens etc. 

I intend for us all (myself included) to keep nature journals. Michael is probably ready to start this soon, but it will be a while until Steven is ready. Nature Journals are a brilliant way of teaching children to really observe their surroundings in detail and feed the joy of nature and discovery.   It is also a brilliant way to keep them practicing their skills in recording, drawing/painting. We now spend a lot more time practicing drawing and painting. I want the boys to explore different media and really learn to love expressing themselves through art. Michael’s fine motor skills have been really improving since doing this more regularly and his painting skills (particularly in water colour) have seriously come on. This is a painting he did yesterday when observing the butterfly that emerged from its chrysalis after spending the whole winter in our observation net. It was feeding on the sweet juice of an orange.

We still read all the time and although we might not be following Sonlight so rigidly, we use their books a lot. They are generally really good "twaddle-free" books! Most days start with poetry. We have found it’s a truely lovely way to start the day and gets us all in the right frame of mind. I love ‘The Llama Who Had No Pajama’. Michael’s favourite poets are Michael Rosen and Spike Milligan at the moment. I don’t expect Charlotte Mason would entirely approve of that choice but I’m sure she’d be pleased this 6 year old has “a favourite poet”. At least once in the day we will sit down to read a short story or two. I particularly enjoy reading them a story from James Herriot’s ‘Treasury for Children’ as both boys find them captivating and the pictures are simply wonderful. While I read, the boys will do a quiet activity like Lego, threading, or plasticine (the current favourite). I have found that they will sit and listen for longer this way.

In the evenings I will read our chapter book to Michael (Steven is still too young to join in on this yet). Our current book is the unabridged version of Peter Pan.

Every Friday we have a “tea party Friday”. We bake something earlier in the day together and then all sit down with our best china (we bought specially for this and only get out on Fridays) and drink “chocolate tea” (which is what Steven calls hot chocolate!). There is something really special about the boys being allowed to use nice cups and saucers and pour *tea* out of a teapot themselves. During our tea party I read to them a book that we all agree on earlier in the day. Usually it’s a Beatrix Potter story or an Eye-View Library book (I completely recommend this series of books, they are brilliant!). We love our tea party Fridays, they are so special!

We are still following Singapore Maths. It’s a method that works well for both Michael and me.  It’s a really clear way of explaining how numbers work together and forms a really good foundation to build on. We also play a lot of games together. ‘Shut the box’ and ‘Your Number’s Up’ are still top favourites. We recently stayed with my parents and my Dad (a retired head teacher) did some basic algebra with Michael using our attributes pieces. We have continued this at home and I’ve been really pleased by how quickly Michael has picked up the concept.

I could jabber on for ages about what we’re up to, so rather than continue this now ridiculously long essay, I will save it in the hope I will write again soon! 

One year on

Today is exactly one year since we de-registered Michael from school and I wrote my first blog post.

WOW, what an amazing year we have had!!! It felt like such a scary step to take at the time and I in particular was sick with worry. “What if it’s a big mistake and we fail him”, “everyone will think we’re mad”, “he’ll never have any friends”!! It all seems so ludicrous now. It has been the best decision we have ever made! Our lives have changed massively and we don’t regret a single thing. We have had the privilege to watch our lost, angry, distracted and socially confused little boy grow and change into a confident, inquisitive, funny, and (most importantly!) happy bigger boy! Academically he’s come on so well (which has been so reassuring), but most amazingly (and much to our relief) he has made a ton of brilliant new friends! It seems to us that home educated children on the whole tend to take a child as they are and see new people as potential friends from the onset. 

It was Michael’s birthday in August, he is now 6. This year was the first year he had (because he wanted to) friends to come to a birthday party. This is such a big deal for us as in the past he has only every really had cousins to come and play. He chose to have a Toy Story themed party and had great fun.

The only negative I can think of that has come from becoming a home educating family is that I rarely get a break (hence the lack of blog posts!). It can be pretty full on as Michael is always on the go and I have to be at least three steps ahead. Think of the Tasmanian Devil crossed with Animal from the Muppets and you kind of get the idea!!! But the relaxed (almost holiday kind of feel) start to the day, all I have mentioned above and the joy I get from it well outweighs any negative.

We have become so much closer as a family this year. The boys adore each other and play really nicely together (most of the time!), they are rarely apart. Michael has so much more confidence and belief in himself now. He sees life as an adventure and we have so much fun. He is hilarious and brilliantly quirky! We are so very proud of him!

So I’ll finish up this soppy blog post by saying how pleased and excited we are that we made that step last year. Home education is brilliant!!!

Sprouting seeds

Like most people this time of year, we have been planting out seeds to grow some vegetables in our garden. 

We’ve talked before about “roots and shoots” etc and have watched time lapse videos but I wanted to be able to show him in a more hands on way.

We planted runner beans in cotton wool and clear plastic cups. 

Every day Michael watered them and observed their change. It worked really well. He could clearly see the beans, roots, shoots and leaves and was able to watch the order in which they appeared. He sat and drew them; this is the diagram he drew...

One bonus that we hadn’t expected was that one of the bean’s shoots couldn’t find its way up. We talked about how plants need sunshine and made a channel in the cotton wool to help it up. The shoot had taken too long however so it scrapped that shoot and sent up a new one. This was a brilliant example of nature solving problems for Michael to see!

We also sprouted mung beans and have enjoyed eating them in our wraps and meals.