What *do* we do?

Some new home educating friends of ours who use much more 'schooly' methods of educating were recently asking what we actually did in our home education. I don't think they meant the question as a criticism - I think they were genuinely curious to find out how it happens when you don't impose a learning regime or stick rigidly to prescribed curricula in sets of workbooks.

Sensing that a wiffly: "Oh, I just follow their interests.." wasn't going to suffice for a reply on this occasion, I tried to answer in a way that would make sense to someone for whom academic learning (the three Rs) was the most important sort.

Here's roughly what I said: "Someone gave her an old Letterland machine and some books last year and she loved them. She learned the alphabet that way, by bringing me the book to read to her hundreds of times, and playing with the machine almost non-stop for weeks.

"Then she dropped Letterland, but remembered the letter sounds. Now she wants to 'learn to read' when I'm reading to myself - newspapers, books, anything. She comes and asks to practice trying to read it and we choose a headline, a chapter title or something else that stands out from the rest of the text and she reads it. Every time she asks, she needs less input from me, depending on the complexity of the word."

[I never expected her to learn to read like that. All the other autonomously educated children we know learned to read almost by osmosis as older children and I thought Lyddie would be the same. But she's a child who likes order and structure, and she wanted to learn phonetically, so I couldn't exactly have stopped her, even though it seems preposterous to many unschoolers.]

"She writes a lot. She can write her own name, and the names of everyone who lives here. She will have a go at writing lots of other words and if they sound like they are spelled, she gets them right, otherwise she spells them as they sound, so I can read what she's writing. She'll write whole sentences sometimes, in notes to people for example. She just forgets to put spaces between the words sometimes.

"In number work, she goes in phases. Three months ago, she was crazy for 'adds', and now it's 'takeaways'. She wants to do them on the blackboard, on whiteboards, on paper and in books. And she plays with the abacus too, making number patterns."

It's not like she just plays on her computer all the time, though when she does she's reading the screen, typing and working out money too. It's enough, isn't it? She really does seem to be learning all the time, as the saying goes.

The older end of our home ed is less easy to quantify, these days. Everyone invariably wants to know about qualifications. Everyone except the young people in question, that is, who aren't remotely interested in taking any exams. And I will not, after years of facilitating their interests, suddenly start laying the law down about GCSEs, A levels or degree courses. Apart from the fact that it's obviously their decision, not mine, I wouldn't want to channel them into the kinds of careers that might result from those qualifications, in case it wasn't right for them.

They knew when they were children what they wanted to do, and they know now they're young adults and nearly-adults.

Of course they're still learning. It never stops, does it? Tom's teaching himself how to wire circuit boards and he and I are trying to work out why the earth's gravity varies, depending on where you happen to be on it, amongst a lot of other things. I know less about what the other two are learning, but I know from what they say in conversation that they are doing.

There's a thing, in the teenage years, about being intrinsically ok, that's very important. Far more important than schoolwork, exams and qualifications. When I was a teenager I didn't fit that category of being intrinsically ok and nor did most of my peers. We were lost souls - drifting, harrassed, hounded through our days by 'must do this's and 'got to do that's. The pressure was immense, and none of the adults seemed to be interested in us as people.

But one or two of my acquaintances stood out from the crowd as being ok. Mentally healthy. Happy in their skin. I made it my business, planning my future family as I was even then, to find out why. What was different about them? So I got myself invited to their houses for tea and was amazed at what I witnessed. Their parents liked them! And trusted them! They seemed pleased to see them when they walked in the door and didn't ignore them, or sneer or snarl or present them with a list of jobs to do or pressures to pile on. This was most unusual - I'd been to everyone's houses for tea and most did not get a happy parental greeting like this.

The 'ok' people in our crowd were popular, didn't get addicted to things and didn't need to do anything extreme - or anything at all - to get noticed. They didn't even have to cultivate a certain image: they were just themselves. I quickly worked out that this was what I wanted for my children more than anything else and have worked towards it since the day they were born. It means accepting them for who they are, being happy with their decisions and trusting them to make good ones, or at least to learn from their own mistakes.

As a plan, it seems to have worked and I'm pretty sure my teenaged children are all 'ok' people. One of them went to look at university and decided against it in the end. He says he doesn't want the debt and he certainly doesn't want to spend four years with staff and students as unenthusiastic as the ones he met there. Another went to look at college, which experience put him off institutionalised learning even if his early years at school hadn't already.

So no, they're not working towards exams at the moment. And no, I'm not worried about that. They'll do whatever they need to do, whenever they need to do it.

Language - and Bo Den

Lyddie has just started being aware of the existence of other countries and languages. This is something else I love about home educating - the pleasure and privilege of actually being there to witness my children's minds developing and opening up to encompass new ideas. Two months ago she had no conception of a place that wasn't like this place, where people might do things differently. But right now, she wants to know all about such places.

"How do they talk? Show me - you do it." LOL, this is not easy. Have you ever tried demonstrating a language you don't speak? I try to remember snatches of the sound of them, to give her some kind of flavour, but ideally we need a website that will play an excerpt of each one. (Suggestions welcome!)

Meanwhile, the baby is learning about colours. She knows they're all different and points to each one in turn, saying her own version of its name. The only thing is (language again) that she seems to think they're all called "Bo Den". Sounds are "Bo Day", possibly springing from bird song, described to her by an older sister as "Birdy", but colours are all "Bo Den".

There might have been a logical process involved in this, I realise, but while she has no more language to explain I can only take it at face value and accept that as far as she's concerned, Bo Den and Bo Day are perfectly adequate descriptions of all colours and all sounds respectively. And by this time next week, they might well be called something completely different anyway.

Family pulls together in crisis

Well, not exactly a crisis - just me being out of action for a few days, ill in bed. But Zara was away and the boys don't usually take a major part in the childrearing/home educating/ babysitting/ running the house kind of jobs, and I was a bit concerned that we might not manage.

But, "like the Royal Engineers", (as my Dad said, quite bizarrely..) they swung into action when needed. (Is that what Royal Engineers do..? I've never known any. Oh wait, maybe my Dad was one in his National Service. Hmm. Well, he didn't swing into action this time, though he did bring us some potatoes.)

The baby was fed, clothed, entertained and kept safe and relatively clean. When I finally surfaced last night I saw that dishes and clothes had been washed and dried, and there were maths workbooks out on the dining table. Impressive! They've done a great job and I'm very glad they had the time and the inclination to do it, otherwise I'd have been stuck - the downside to single parenting.

This morning I'm [half] joking that it's nice to see I'm finally dispensible and that I'll be off for that trek across the Andes any time now, then. Just as soon as I can keep some food down. Actually, I'm just working towards Lyddie's playdate this afternoon and hoping we get that far. I'm giving it as long as possible and eating porrige.. here's hoping I'm fit to drive the car by 3pm!

No more looking at a computer screen and trying to type though. It's not helping.

Real socialisation

Our weekly home ed meetings have started again now that the floor is fixed. Here are some of the children playing a game of their own invention:















I don't quite understand the rules of this one, but I think it might be based on the one called: "Can we cross your golden bridge?" though heavily adapted, of course.

I don't know whether you can make it out from the picture there, but the ages of the children who were actively involved in that particular completely child-led game which was completely free of adult intervention, ranged from 18 months up to 15 years. All playing on an equal footing. All being treated kindly and fairly. All thoroughly enjoying themselves and with no coercion involved whatsoever.

I think that's one of the things I love most about home education.

Stronghold

I think Lyddie is finally moving on from The Sims, as she has now discovered...



- which is a different kind of game altogether. It's meant to be a strategy game, but she's not using the combat scenarios - just the economic freeplay option. So there's no enemy and no fighting. It's all about town-building, the way she's currently playing it.

So first there's a bit of reading and typing required in the intro, and you choose a name for yourself and select the kind of scenery you'd like for your little people. The game begins, and you have to site your castle keep, your stockpile and your granary. Then you have to get on with providing enough resources to keep people happy. Unhappy people leave the town and once they start going the place can empty pretty quickly!

You are provided with a very limited amount of the basics at the start, but once they're used up - which takes about five minutes - you're on your own. You need wood, stone and sometimes gold for building. So you need to find some trees and some stony land and open some quarries and woodcutting stations and build a market so that you can trade resources for gold.

Your people need houses (for which you need wood) and food - four different kinds, ideally. So you need farms, mills and bakeries. They like a few inns, for which you also need breweries, and churches, which use a lot of stone. And for every job created, you need more housing and food supplies.

Then there's the whole issue of politics. What kind of ruler will you be? If you're benign and you build parks, gardens, statues and maypoles your people will love you. But build too many and they become lazy and their efficiency drops until they start consuming more food than they're producing. When the granary is empty, people leave town. On the other hand, if you're too much of a tyrant your popularity drops and they'll leave town anyway. Tyrants can choose from all kinds of grisly installations of the stocks, guillotine and duckpond variety.

Success in the game invoves taking all of the above into consideration and making the right decisions at the right stages of your township's growth.

Lyddie's doing quite well so far. She was learning about how the market system works last night. I like the way she wants to know what every available option means so that she can keep control of the decision-making process and therefore her learning process. She's picked up the numbers very quickly and now understands how to buy and sell resources and why the prices fluctuate.

Is home ed supposed to be always about building real life tree houses and skipping through the daisies? We do that too. But sometimes it's raining.

Circle stories

I forgot to mention these in our list of games, but inventing 'circle stories' are another of Lyddie's favourite pastimes.

A really simple example might be:

"Once there was a little girl, who lay in her bed all tucked up, cosy and warm and listened to her mother telling a story about a little girl, who lay in her bed all tucked up, cosy and warm and listened to her mother telling a story about a little girl..." etc.

But of course they can be very intricate and elaborate - as long as they make a repeatable circle. The game - I think - as well as managing to complete the circle with the story, is to manage to remember it exactly right each time round.

Keeps us amused, anyway..

Playing the game

Lyddie is still heavily into guessing games and we've extended our repertoire since I last blogged about it.

Rock-paper-scissors remains a favourite.



But we also play:

• Who am I? - in which we take turns to guess who the other player has in mind, by means of them answering only yes or no to our questions. Variations on this theme include 'Where am I?' and 'What am I?'


• Clues - in which one player slowly gives the other clues to help them guess the person, place or thing they have in mind. The idea is to start with quite vague clues and work towards more specific ones, while the other player shouts out their guesses. So, Lyddie might start by saying: "I'm white..." and I'd start guessing: "Wall..? Paper..?" Then, shaking her head, she'd say: "I'm made of cotton..." "Sheet? Shirt?" "I begin with C...." "Um.... cloth?" "And I hang in the window!" after which I'd probably - finally! - guess: "The curtains!" And then it would be my turn.


• Spellings - in which we take turns to spell out words while the other one guesses them, or to say words while the other spells them out.


• Sums - which works like spellings, but with sums. (Lyddie will play these two, but not for long.)


• "I went [somewhere] and I took/bought/found/saw..." - which are all variations on a memory game, in which we take turns to add things to the list and must each recite the whole list every turn.


• Alphabet games - in which we take turns to think of items from a group for each letter of the alphabet, so we might, for example, choose food for a category. Then the game might go: "Apple," "Banana.." "Crisps!" etc. Other categories we've used for this game are: animals, names and toys.

We play these games a lot - several times a day. If I added up the time we spend on them, it would probably be up to two hours every day. They don't need any equipment, they don't cost anything and you can play them anywhere. All they require is time and attention - the best learning aids!

And of course they're developing and reinforcing her structural thinking skills and neural pathways in many different ways. And she usually suggests them herself and is in charge of which games we play, and when and for how long. In fact, another game I forgot to list which is fast becoming a favourite is: "Let's think of a new game."

I love the autonomous, free-range learning method for this reason, because if we were following more of a preplanned schedule I don't think we'd have the time to give these games the immediate and concentrated attention we do, and they're obviously crucially important for Lyddie's education at this stage. Having the time and the freedom to be able to identify, recognise and accommodate this kind of need is invaluable.

More to 'not learn' about

Have we had enough 'not learning' yet? ("Are we there yet?")

Today we had some more visitors to 'not learn' from. Actually, this time we didn't dash for the books for once. We were just all glued to the windows, spellbound.















It's a deer, for those who can't tell due to the poor camera and the even worse photographer ;-) Our neighbour saw some a few years ago there (just below the house) but nobody had seen any since then, so we assumed they weren't here any more. But this one was quite brave and stayed around for a good ten minutes, munching on young saplings.

We also finally got a pic (of sorts) of those woodpigeons:














Eat your heart out Bill Oddy, huh? They sat for ages too, like deliberate visitors. If I was superstitious, I'd be researching animal totems by now. *Grabs animal totem book...*

Oh and one more picture. Lyddie was busy with some tissue paper and a skipping rope on the dining room floor for five minutes. She set them out in the shape below, and took some time changing it slightly, just carefully getting it exactly right.














"There, Mummy," she stood back to show me. "It's you!"

"..... Oh! Thanks. Wow. So it is...!" I said. Worriedly.

Still "not learning"....

A white stork landed in our neighbour's field yesterday! I'm not much of an ornithologist, but it was an amazing sight. In flight it was magical - all wings and legs, slowly and carefully coming in to land on his pagoda thing.

We got a pic, but not a very good one. You might be able to make it out:














Oh dear, it's really not clear, is it? One of the few times I (like Qalballah) wish I had a decent camera.

Lyddie grabbed the bird book. She's been doing a lot of that recently, since we saw a couple of big fat wood pigeons waddling up the drive last week and wondered what they were. I ought to have known - I'd heard their call and known from my childhood what kind of bird made that noise - but had never seen one, hence the book being out. Aren't they huge?

"How can I find the page about storks?" asked Lyddie.














"Look it up in the index at the back. It will be alphabetical." We said the alphabet as she scrolled with her finger through to S, read out the page number and found the right page. We read about storks and found out what we wanted to know about them. Then she pulled her boots on and went out "bird-hunting", as she calls it. Creeping up on them quietly and seeing how close she can get.

Our home ed meetings start again tomorrow. We're very pleased - we have missed them.

"I want to plant seeds, but can we do it without learning?"

"...Because learning is boring."

"Sure!" I said, but I'm still wondering where she got that idea from. We don't actually sit down and do any structured *learning* as such, so maybe it's something she's heard on the TV and assumes must be true. Or maybe I made the mistake of once saying: "See? Learning is fun!" which, admittedly, does give it the kiss of death somewhat, doesn't it? (*Rolls eyes @ self..*)

So. To plant seeds without doing any learning. Nothing educational at all. Sure. No problem.

"Ok. So, which shall we plant."

"Flowers. These." She picks up a packet of cornflower seeds.

"Oh, beautiful. Which pots shall we put them in?"

"The window boxes, so I can see them from my PC."

"Good idea. But how big do they grow? Oh - 75cm. That's very tall. You wouldn't see much else out of your window if we planted those there."

"How do you know they grow so tall?"

"It says so on the packet." I pointed. She agreed that it did say that.


















"But," she asked, "How long is 75cm?" We got out a tape measure and looked to see how long it was, and went to the window with the tape measure to see how far up that would be. Lyddie then agreed that cornflowers would be too big for that position.

She checked through our stock of flower seed packets, looking to see which others she liked. "These then," she said, picking out night-scented stocks. "Let me see how tall they grow."


















"30cm..." She checked on the tape measure, held it up to the window. "Yes that would be ok. Let's plant these. What does this say?"

"Position..."

"Full... sun. This window gets loads of sun, doesn't it? I have to keep closing the curtains to see my screen."

"Yes, I think it will be fine."

"What about this? Sow... March... Jun..."

"We have to plant them between March and June. The months."

"What month is this?"

"April. And it's ok, because the months go January, Febuary, March, April..." She started saying the months with me.

"Oh yes, April is fine! Right, let's get some soil."

So I filled up the pots with soil while she opened the seeds.

"How do I plant them?"

"It should tell us that on the back of the packet." I pointed at the relevant bit.

"4-6in apart. What does that mean?"

"Oh, those are inches. We're using centimetres. 10-15cm, look, it says that too."

"Why can't we use inches?"

"We can, but we used centimetres before so I thought we'd stick with centimetres. But we can use inches if you like." We got a ruler and saw how 10-15cm is the same as 4-6 inches. I explained, in passing, why we have both centimeters and inches in this country and how our uses of these measures have changed, even in my lifetime. Lyddie was planting the seeds, using the ruler to help with the spacings. She asked why the measurements had changed, so I tried to explain about the EU and how it had started out as a trade partnership and turned into a law-making body, like the government.

"Am I planting these seeds deep enough?"

"Let's check." We read the packet again and found they needed to be 'covered lightly with 0.5cm (quarter inch) of fine soil, firmed gently and kept moist. Seedlings appear in 14-21 days.'

"Oh, let's get the calendar and see when that will be," said Lyddie. We counted the days together from now to then, and wrote a reminder to check for the seedlings.

"Will you remember to water them?" I asked her.

"Of course!" she said. "I'll be able to see them all the time, so I won't forget."

We carried them outside, set them into place and went to get some water.















"I'm so glad we set this rainwater harvesting system up," I said. "I've always wanted an outside tap for watering plants."

She asked how it worked so I lifted her up so that she could see how the water collects in the gutter and runs down the pipe.















"When we build the new house I'm hoping to get all our washing and toilet-flushing water from the rain."

"Of course!" said Lyddie. "Because it falls for free from the sky, doesn't it?"

We had quite a chat then about reservoirs, water companies, rates and meters, while we watered the seeds. Then we went inside.

"Did we do that without learning then?"

Lyddie looked at me as if I was a bit dim. "Of course we did," she said. "It was just planting. No learning at all."

"Oh good," I said.