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.