Worshipping at the Temple of the mighty Cocoa.

Blessed be the Chocolate bar! Today we visited Cadburys World in Birmingham. What better therapy for the winter blues?
It was much much better than I expected, interesting, educational and with a wonderful aroma of Chocolate.
We learnt about Coco beans, the Incas, fair trade and obviously - chocolate. Also a bit about Quakers and life in the late 1800's.

We had a lovely relaxing family day out, which made us realise that we don't make enough effort to get out and enjoy things together. Until September this year, I worked every weekend and Rich worked in the week, we simply haven't had opportunity to spend time together. Since then, we've been using our weekends together to catch up on mundane tasks that need both of us, like painting the landing! But now we are making an attempt to claim our weekends back!

We also came away with lots of chocolate bars. WOW! BONUS!

Inspired by this, we have put aside all other work this week and we are going to have a chocolate themed week, learning more about the production of chocolate, fair trade, Incas, and lots of choccy cooking.

Still struggling

So much for last weeks plans! I still feel as if we are failing to achieve anything. To be fair, it could be because I've had virus after virus for the last fortnight, or the ongoing pressures from work which, at the moment, are immense.
Plodding on...

New Plan...

New Plan...
1. English - continue using the Letts workbooks. Emily enjoys them and they make life easier...
2. Maths - as above, plus mathletics.
3. Science - abandon all sense of direction and go where curiosity takes us; at least, for a little while...
4. History - Never mention dinosaurs again. Never ever. Continue our own journey through time, using the galore park books as a reference not a lead. Might need to recap a bit, since we abandoned our journey in September.

Everything else remains as chaotic as before.
Now where's that Yellow Moon catalogue?

Teeth and worries

Emily has lost 2 milk teeth in the last 2 weeks and this week we find that the next chapter of her science book is about teeth. Good timing! I think we will be looking at this site too.

It has been an extrememly busy week and I am beginning to worry about the small amount of learning that seems to go on. I know I go through this periodically, so to find myself doubting again is no surprise. I know that Emily is learning, but I seem to spend my time worrying about the process! Structure or no structure, maybe a little structure. Workbooks? Writing? Computer? Aggghhh.

I think I need some quiet time to review where we are and where we are going. If I will be able to find that quiet time is a totally different matter. I am under great pressure at work, and whereas being offered as much overtime as I want is a good thing, having to work extra hours isn't so great.

Busy Week

Eeek - a busy week.

Monday - I'm working, Emily will go to the childminders, then she has Badgers in the evening.
Tuesday - Home Ed group, then Shopping. Hopefully we'll get to look at some fractions later.
Wednesday - Cinema (Schools Film Week) to see Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs
Thursday - Cinema to see The Princess and the Frog, then Home Ed craft group, then work.
Friday - Cinema to see Nanny McPhee, then a new Home Ed group.
Saturday - Swimming, then Fireworks.

Agggghhhh.

Spanish

Emily wants to learn Spanish, in fact, she wants to learn Spanish so much, that she's teaching herself!
I have always been totally useless at languages, I have vivid memories of looking aghast at the women at the front of my class shouting at me in French. What did she say? I still don't know, but it obviously wasn't a compliment. It wasn't an occasional occurrence either, it happened twice weekly...
So as you can imagine, Emilys announcement about wishing to learn Spanish wasn't met with the enthusiasm apparently appropriate to a Home Educating Mum.

Thank goodness for online resources.

Learn to sign Week

We've been taking part in "Learn to Sign Week" reminding ourselves of some basic BSL. Emily and I have been signing together since she was a baby, but in the busy social whirl of a Home Educated 6 year old, it's one of those things that has been forgotten. It was good to spend time reminding ourselves of the basics, hopefully it's something that we'll do a little more regularly now.
In the past we have found it very useful to be able to communicate without speech at busy parks, it saves on the shouting!

Colours
Weather
Dictionary

National Poetry Day

We have spent some time reading and listening to poetry today.
This was Emilys favourite:

Macavity the Mystery Cat

Swampy pays up!

Our hard work earlier in the year has led to this:

Loads of carrots, thousands of chillies (not very strong, we will be trying a new variety next year), cauliflowers, several different sorts of squash, lots of apple cucumbers and more runner beans than a runner bean farm.

Also, lots of hazelnuts from the garden. We still have much much more to harvest and we hope we can get to the remainder of the food before the advancing line of slugs.

On Thursday it was Sunny. SUNNY! Emily and I went to the local park, to look for signs of autumn and generally play around. Autumn wasn't hiding, we found lots of conkers, acorns and the leaves on the Horse Chestnuts trees were brown and crisp.

All Change !

Everything is suddenly very different in this house. James and Kate both left home for uni this weekend. I am so pleased and proud they both got the places they wanted at uni and that they are moving on, that's the whole point after all. But I admit to more than a prang of sadness at this change...trying to keep busy...

Onto brighter news.
Emily has been working hard. She continues her love of history and this year we have begun work on the Galore Park books. Having covered a lot of the material in history already, we sailed through the first chapter and began work on dinosaurs yesterday. This lead to a wonderful conversation about evolution and creation, with Emily able to immediately see the holes in both theories!

Here we go again.

Emily and I have been busy planning the next few months ahead.

Emily requested to do more formal work this year, so that has been the basis of our plans. We had some problems finding suitable workbooks, as Emily would be going into year 2 at school but we found that most of the work had already been completed last year by expanding on the work we were already doing. Luckily a friend then recommended Galore Park, which starts at year 3 - so we're taking it slowly.

Back to school (aka: the dining table)

So I haven't blogged since, well, since the dawn of time. So just for the sake of completeness here's a catch up.

Our summer holiday was very wet. Again this year we opted for camping in the UK. We were going down to Cornwall, but the weather forecast was so pessimistic we went over to Norfolk instead.
I recommend Scratby Hall as a lovely campsite.

We spent most of the remainder of the summer at home. Our allotment has been mainly successful, lots of peas, beans and potatoes. The difficulty at the moment is keeping up with all the picking. We've made mead and runner bean wine, so far. Methinks that beetroot wine might be next on the menu.

Nanny was 70 in August so we went to her party.

Then Emily and Rich popped down to Kent to see the other Nanny. They took advantage of the abundance of Romans in Kent and went to visit a Roman villa to round off our studies on that time period.

Waiting on exam results and University places has played a large part in the last few months. Happily both James and Kate passed their courses and have been accepted into their first choice universities. A bit of a struggle to sort out accommodation, but now its all packing and waiting for them to go. Very mixed emotions about the whole thing, especially as they are both moving so far away. I never had twins, I never expected them both to leave in the same week!

Rich has now returned to work in that way that teachers do this time of year, and Emily and I are beginning a whole new year of work and play.

Oh yes - I remember - the blog...

oooopppsss...

Horrible Science

We've been to see "Horrible Science" at the Curve this morning. It was truly brilliant, Milly was transfixed by it, although sometimes a little shaken by the 3D effects (especially the germs which came to get us!).
Afterwards we had a walk around town, popped into Lush to buy lovely smellies and brought another "doodle" colouring book. Milly likes the very complicated patterns.

This evening I have been to see Swampy, I have finally sorted out my peas! (Yes!) Meanwhile Milly has been playing with Kate. She is exploring music at the moment, we have numerous instruments in the house and she is picking them up and trying to make music with them, sometimes successfully. I have been trying to teach her the recorder (on and off) for the past year, but she is not interested, maybe we'll try the keyboard.

Jewry Wall Museum

We have been continuing our exploration of the Romans. Today we visited Jewry Wall museum in Leicester.
Although I've lived here for 20 years, I had never been to this museum before.

James came with us and we had a pleasant afternoon. I think we have to revisit sometime soon though as there was far too much to take in on one visit.

Blaby Park

This afternoon we went for a walk in Blaby park. A very relaxing time after a "run-around-silliness" type of morning.

Pizza!!!

Milly and I met with Home Ed friends at Pizza Express in town today for a Pizza making session.
It was very well presented and the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves. Milly tried a few ingredients that she has never tried before and ate all her pizza when we reheated it for dinner.

Still here - just not blogging

I haven't felt inspired to blog recently. I don't know why.
Hopefully I'll post a catch-up soon and get back to it.

Happy 6th Birthday!

Emily May is 6 today!! Happy Birthday Babes!

We opened presents this morning and this afternoon we met a few friends at a local park. Milly has had a lovely day, and so did I.

Wow, 6 already...

Catch up again...

We have been excessively busy over the past few weeks, so here I am playing catch up again!

We have pretty much finished our work on the Celts, although Emily is enjoying it so much it still seems to be going on (and on and on...hello bored mother here). I think this has been helped by our local museums activity sessions on the Celts and the wonderful pages on the Celts at the BBC website.
We have started our work on weather, but as usual we are off to a slow start! I will have to get a little more organised. We have began work on our weather station, but it needs finishing - hopefully this week!
Emily has continued to enjoy using Mathletics and really hasn't needed much encouragement to do so.

But mostly, as always at this time of year, Mother Nature has been taking up our time.
We have planted peas, sweetcorn, parsley, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, sweet peas, asters, pansies, chillis, peppers....
We have taken cuttings of various plants, chitted our potatoes and spent lots of time at the allotment.
Emily has really appreciated the opportunity to be outside again. The frogs in our pond have declared it to be Spring and the world seems to be waking up around us.

Roman Music

We just got back from a Roman Music Workshop at Market Harborough museum. Emily sat really well through the demonstrations of instruments and showed a great interest when given a chance to look at them.
Then we made a Roman helmet. No trip to the museum is complete without some crafting.
(oh, and that's a bowling ball in her right hand...probably not Roman)

A sad day.

The News is once again full of the terrible death of Khyra, and the suffering of her and her siblings. No-one can fail to be horrified by the events reported surely, and no-one wants to see them repeated EVER. But realistically, children will continue to suffer at the hands of adults who are supposed to care and love them. Sadly, there are going to be lots more Khyras, children will be continue to be abused and there will be no full stop.

We can try as individuals and as communities to protect our young. That's the most we can do - we can try.
We can remove children from abusive parents to place in the care of foster parents or state run homes, are they safer? Often not, abuse occurs in the system that is supposed to protect these children, it is not confined to the family.
However this is not an education issue, it is a safeguarding issue. Monitoring Home Educators because of this case makes no sense.

If we are to monitor Home Educators because of this case, then we will also have monitor the parents of under 5's, 5-18's in the school holidays and ultimately everyone 24/7. Think this is ridiculous? Think again - if home educators can't be trusted to care for their children, can anyone? The answer is obviously not.
Abuse doesn't have a time frame, it can take place over years, weeks... seconds. Death can come quickly, or he can tiptoe in...

The BBC report here states that

"Four months after Gordon pulled her daughter out of school in April 2008 the social work team manager agreed to close the case as home tutoring had been approved, according to the city council. Weeks later the seven-year-old was dead. "

Social services were unconcerned. If they had safeguarding concerns they could have used child protection laws to see Khyra, if they were concerned that education was not taking place they could have issued a School Attendance Order. They didn't, they were unconcerned, there was nothing that indicated that this tragedy was about to take place.
How can we prevent tragedies like this happening again? Treat all parents as potential abusers - this seems to be the governments answer, beginning with Home Educators.
Do you trust them to stop there?

Allotment!!!

It looks like we may finally have an allotment. We have been on the waiting list for almost 3 years - so this is good news!
Apparently it needs a lot of work, but (within reason) that doesn't really matter to us. We are going to meet the allotment man on Saturday to take a look. But as you can probably tell, we're happy!

Maths success

More success with Mathletics. Milly is very pleased with her first certificate. I love the way she is happy to repeat an exercise until she has really got an understanding of it

Eating Snow

The Finished Product

and a beaming smile of achievement!

Market Harborough Museum

We visited Market Harborough Museum today as part of our work on the Iron Age.
They have The Hallaton Treasure there, the biggest Iron Age "Hoard" found in England. There are lots of tiny little coins which we looked at closely and noted the symbols on, brooches and obviously loads of Iron Age information.
It was very busy when we went as our visit unfortunately co-incided with a half term activity day, so I suspect we'll return later this month or next.

Planting time again

Last week we washed up all the gardening pots and equipment from last year, ready to start again. While doing this, we found some old beans we had saved from last year.

We very carefully peeled one to see what it looked like inside. We could see 2 tiny shoots and wondered if one of these became the stem and the other the root - we're not quite sure how to find out, as having taken the bean apart - it's not going to grow! Pondering on this...

Then we planted up our first seeds; sweetpeas, tomatoes, chillis, Asters and Pansies. Emily wrote the labels so we knew what was what, unfortunately she then watered then and now we seem to be growing lots of smudges. 

We also planted up some cress seed we found from last year, and observed it swelling up and beginning to sprout.

Springs on her way!!!

Half Term means learning with Dad...

Emily and Dad made a bird house today, from plans on the RSPB site (they needed a little adaptation apparently).

They found us!! Although we weren't really hiding...

We received the dreaded letter from the Local Authority recently, informing us that they were aware that we "intended" to Home Educate Emily. ("Intend????")
I wasn't surprised, I haven't really been hiding. I refuse to hide.
The paperwork they sent had it's problems, rather patronising. They also enclosed a form for us to fill in a return to them so that we could discuss when the Home Ed officer visits.
And there's the stumbling block...
Oh dear.
So I'm sitting here tippy typing away a report, thinking "Wow haven't we done A LOT" and feeling rather pleased with Emily’s achievements.
But, what purpose would a visit serve? Emily would get worried about being "sent" to school, and the LA would get what extra information? None.
No, we don't need a visit, thank you.

Planet Earth

So far this term we have looked at Planet Earth, Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis.

Swimming Success

After stopping Emilys swimming lessons for this term, we also forgot to take her swimming regularly. So it was with great enthusiam that we set of for swimming today.
She exceeded all of her expectations and was amazed to find that she could swim a whole width of the pool with no help at all.
Brilliant!

Home Ed Dragons

Home Ed group do Chinese New Year!

Success - Mathletics

Emily completed a unit of Mathletics today. She's very pleased with herself.

Chemistry for beginners

After a lovely morning at K & H's house yesterday, when H excitedly showed Emily what happens when you mix Bicarbonate of Soda with Vinegar, we have been doing more of the same today.

We mixed vinegar and Bicarb again and made a lovely foamy mess.

Then we did the cleaner but noisier version with citric acid and Bicarb. Emily found this all very fascinating.

We spoke about how mixing chemicals together often makes different chemicals - in this case carbon dioxide. We then looked at how trees take in Carbon dioxide and give off Oxygen, whereas animals do it the other way round. We spoke about the composition of air. We then talked about how chemicals have symbols and we don't always write out the whole name; O for oxygen for example.

Finally we made a bath bomb, which we will be testing later.

The Waterways folk

We met at a friends house this morning with some nice ladies from British Waterways, who are bidding for a pot of money to provide Home Educated children with some educational sessions.
It went reasonably well, I think. The children certainly enjoyed it and it was nice meeting some new HE parents. Some of the older children will be taking part in a presentation which will hopefully result in the money being released. I have some reservations about the suitability of the activities the waterways folk are planning compared to the ages of the children who attended today - but we will see...
(Thanks to Ceri for the photos)

Back to business

Back to Home Ed group yesterday, after a 6 week break. The session was a creative one, everyone brought in as many boxes (the bigger the better) as they had left from Christmas as the children (and the adults) got creative with them. There were boats, robots, cars and everything inbetween. Emily and I made a hovercraft.
It has returned to its former states as a cardboard box now, all the knobs and levers have fallen off.

Today we have been busy with "real HE stuff". This morning stated with me reading Emily a chapter of "Matilda" by Roald Dahl. Then we got ALL the craft things out and made a get well card for my sister in law, which Emily wrote beautifully. He writing really is improving, The various materials I keep giving her to write with seem to be making her think about the way she forms her letters. Afterwards we made lots of little paper people.

This afternoon Emily has made labels for our cross section of Planet Earth, and again surprised me at the amount she can take in. We only discussed it once and she was able to tell me which part was the inner core, outer core, Mantle and crust (and then if it was solid or liquid!). She does like working on a project.
She then played with the Cuisenaire rods, whilst I did a bit of housework. Then we looked through the recipe books to find something yummy to bake. Again, she surprised me with her ability to read the ingredients lists.
We made chocolate buns, and decorated them with icing. They didn't last long.

Making the most of the space!

We finally made it to the Space Centre, and fought our way round through the 700 schools that seemed to be visiting at the same time. It was VERY noisy which meant that we had a double dose of over excitement to deal with; however it was also very good. We particularly enjoyed the Space Theatre show.

Emily as usual found every "face looker" in the place and demanded a photo...

Yesterday we started out very grumpy - so decided to go to the local Country park for a good walk and a hot chocolate. After that we played with the exhibits in the visitor centre and discussed insulation and wildlife gardening. We have decided that we have a very wildlife friendly garden as we already have most of the suggested wildlife friendly items (pond, log pile, hedge, fruit trees etc) in our tiny garden.