what has everyone done today?

[toxicwaste]

good evening everyone,

I am relatively new to home educating my children (6 and 4) and seem to be taking an informal approach to learning.

Here is a little bit of background: the eldest attended school for the half term before the summer holidays in reception year, and then P1 until last half term. I had always been interested in HE but somehow we got swept up into the educational system (I was on my own at this point). We moved house recently and he did not get into the school which is nearest and all the villagers attend. After 6 weeks of commuting to his old school I took him out.

And now I have found that we all really enjoy learning from home. I don't really have an educational plan, although I guess this will develop, but I do feel like I have got my family back.

Really I am just keen to find out how other people fill their days, not to compare or contrast, but possibly to get ideas.

Today we have chatted about different letter sounds while I made the picnic lunch (with flash card things as an aid), all verbal. Spent 3 hours up the hill picnicing and identifying flowers (took book along to help) which worked well until we discovered wild blue berries - lots of eating instead. We then went swimming, both are very confident in the water and are almost able to swim (we had to get out because 'swimming lessons' were starting with kids and their teachers), then shopping, deciding what to eat, choosing food etc. Oh, I forgot about the conversations on the hill such as 'what do you need to make babies' and 'how do helicopters stay up in the air'. Supper and quiet play/role play/play mobile, story and bed. Eldest chose not to listen to the story which gave me and the youngest time to look at letter and word formation without her realising it.

I should think there was more 'learning' going on than I have mentioned but I would love to hear how other people do it.
X

Hi,well this week we havent been too busy as having a little break from "work".

My son is 7 (autistic spectrum ) and doesnt like to go out much so we have been popping to the shop which went well without tears :)

Today we went to the library for some new books normally thats not too bad but there was a group of pre-school children and a man singing with a guitar and it upset my son.

Tomorrow think i will play few games with dice (roll 3 dice and add them ,write it on whiteboard), read new books and wordsearch (he loves these).

Im always looking for new ideas so will have a look at this thread tomorrow

Well, mine's a bit older (12) but we've had quite a relaxed day today.

Up early as usual, piano lesson at 9am, read some speeches by Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela for English/History, a couple of exercises in Conquer Maths before some home ed friends arrived for lunch.

Lengthy Wii session and hanging out, a few Sudokus for a break. We mums put the world to rights over tea and biscuits .

Dropped him off at an old school friend's house about 4.30, picked him up 8pm.

Supper watching an episode of Star Trek Next Generation , bed 9.15pm.

One of our better days, though not much work done. We are going on holiday next weekend so winding down.

We usually work to a lesson plan though, and are quite organised as I plan a week or two (or more) ahead.

Grandson went off to HEROES for the day, so I caught up with housework/shopping/planning. Got some cutting out done for Anne Frank lapbook. Grandson is now into Horrible Histories so went trawling around the charity shops and managed to get 2 for £1!
He got home around 5 and had his friends from the group to play on the Wii.
Sausage and mash for tea. Read some Horrible History together before bath and bed.

Mine's 18. Yesterday he finished installing new operating system on recycled computer and set it up in my kitchen for two-player gaming on Monday (friend of mine coming round to talk business after the weekend, so thinking of something her son can do with Theo) This took quite a bit of time because he won't buy anything if he can bodge it out of spares, so he has to spend forever going through his hoard. (I snuck online to Twitter while he did this, but kept getting called to admire stuff) Then we did some quizzes from the Stanford University website ( I read the questions out and then follow up links on Wikipedia etc if we don't know the answer. Learned serendipitously about meristems, who signed the US constitution, how Benjamin Franklin was involved with the early postal service, first woman Nobel Peace Prize winner, toxic wasps parasitic on ladybirds (this wasn't on quiz but was on BBC site I found while looking up about meristems) Theo explained a bit about Zionism to me, because one of the quiz questions was about the Balfour Declaration. Planned to tag paintings with rats and banjos (T's two favourite things) but couldn't find any in the new online collection. Sidetracked (err it was all sidetracking) to Francis Galton's eccentric ideas. Read a couple of Keats poems. Theo's friend (4 times Theo's age) came round for regular Thursday session borrowing our internet and they talked about IRC chatrooms and using Telnet in Belfast in the early 90s. Then I got Theo to fix my website so when you click on an external link it opens in a new tab. This wouldn't have taken nearly as long if he hadn't treated it as an educational opportunity for me. As soon as we went out the door we bumped into someone who wants Theo to fix his dongle and we arranged to go round to his flat at lunchtime before Theo goes to his volunteer job.