Friday, November 17, 2006

Re-post: Our day so far, in autonomous home-ed report-stylie - Apr 05

From Wednesday, April 06, 2005

We've had a pretty typical day so far, but I thought I'd write it up in an autonomous home-ed report stylie, just for interest. Someone might find it useful! (& that someone might be me, when I'm writing my next autonomous home ed report!) I probably should do this more often, but I forget we're supposed to be doing this *education* thing as well as living - as if you can separate the two things out. It's like, um.... taking a tree and saying "OK, we've got to write a report only about the wooden bits." Or looking at the sun and saying "Let's write a report about the shiny bits." It's ridiculous! Education is life is education. Trying to pull the educational threads out is just a pointless game: tedious at worst and vaguely reassuring at best. That's my little rant out of the way, here's the other stuff: (Though I've probably missed some - I can't be everywhere all the time remembering everything!)

Physics: - Continuing her electric circuitry project work Zara performed an experiment on her extension cable to find out what would happen if she overloaded the circuit. She did this by plugging in her PC monitor, PC, and her speakers. When she plugged the speakers in the power from the cable cut out. On exploring the cable unit she discovered a 'cut out' switch, pressed it and restored the power. She then came to ask me why this had happened and I pointed her at a book which contained the information. She read some of it and went back to her computer.

She's now working on spelling and keyboard skills, which I think involves Inklink. This also includes Socialisation, as she knows and chats to the other people who are playing the game at the same time.

Ali has been doing some internet coding... um... that's IT, I guess, then he went to fix Zara's bike so her could ride it into town, which was either mechanics or design technology or whatever they're calling it nowadays. Whilst in the yard he noticed that the rabbit was looking a little sorry for himself, so took Lyddie to the field to find some dandelions to feed to him. On the way to the field, Lyddie asked "Why does the rabbit like dandelions?" And he explained to her about vitamins and the nutrition in dandelions (Nutrition, animal husbandry, Biology) and in the field he showed her which weeds are dandelions and where they grow. (Botany.)

Then he came inside and asked me why they are called dandelions, so I explained that it's from the French dent de lion (lion's teeth) because of the jagged leaves, thereby covering foreign languages and a bit of history when we spent some time having a chat about why so much of our language is derived from French, or has similar roots.

In more Mechanics (DT, whatever....), Tom continued to work on his computer maintenance project by fixing the switch on Zara's computer, which had gone funny when the extension tripped out. He prepared himself a meal (Domestic Science?), negotiated with his boss on the phone some time to eat it (Time management) and contributed to a discussion with his brother, sister and mother about the Pope's funeral (Religious studies) clashing with Charles's wedding (Citizenship), including whether Charles should abdicate in favour of William and whether it's a good idea for the Vatican to continue with the outdated ritual of Conclave.

Since I started writing this, Zara has continued working on her maths and accounting project as well as more IT, as she's surfing the net to find some boots she wants for her birthday that she can actually afford. This also encompassed Geography, as someone was selling some boots in an Eastern European country and she wanted to work out whether they were part of the EU. She found the place in an atlas, on the globe and found out from a website that it is an EU country.

I didn't actually manage to grasp which country she was finding out about because I'd broken off typing to write a shopping list with Lyddie's 'help' - she's writing her version on one side of the paper and I'm writing mine on the other. She's trying very hard to copy the letter-shapes I've made. She's done some small circles etc. What subject is learning to write? Literacy?

Blimey. And we haven't even stopped for lunch, yet!

posted by Gill at 12:53 PM 13 comments

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