Does anyone one else find HE harder in the winter?

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, I'm finding it quite tricky planning things to do with my nearly 7 year old daughter during the winter months. All the places we all enjoy going to, eg National trust, farm attractions etc are all closed. My daughter loves the great out doors, but I can't stand trapsing around in the cold. (I know I should man up).
It's not easy entertaining my dd at home, as she never wants to play with her toys unless she has a friend around. She doesn't like drawing or arts and crafts. All she wants to do at home is either watch DVD's or take photos of the TV.
I'd love to hear what you do to keep your little ones bussy/ happy in the winter.
She's very into puppets at the moment and I tell her stories with them, then she does the same. She loves pretend play, but it soon becomes very repetative. She also loves being read too.

I just wondered if other people find it a problem when all their favourate places to go, close for the winter?

I've read some bloggs and most people seems to do lots of arts and crafts, but my little one isn't keen. I quite like that sort of thing, not that I'm very good at it.
Lucy goes to quite a few clubs and enjoys them. She seems very happy and is always very loving towards me. I'm just aware that compared to the spring and summer, winter isn't that much fun for her. (We don't have any snow either)

Hi
We're doing stuff on the computer (READING EGGS, BBC bitesize), watching educational tv progs/dvds (the christmas lectures, david attenborough), playing board games, doing puzzles, doing workbooks, going to the library, reading loads. I am finding this cold weather a bit tedious though. Roll on the spring and more days out and about!

I do find winter much harder. Our best interactions seem to be when we are out and about. Indoor play areas are great (except for the blardy diseases that we seem to catch at them).

How about random local train rides?

Thrilling supermarket trips where your daughter controls everything from compilation of the list onwards?

Thanks. Lucy quite likes the jolly phonics songs on youtube. She tends to want to get that bit out of the way so she can watch babies laughing, climbing stairs etc. Oh well. She does like board games too. We should do more of those.

I like the sound of the supermarket thing. She'd love that. The random train rides sound fun too. She likes trains.

She loves certain soft play centres, especially if it's a week day and she's one of the only big ones and gets to play with lots of babies and toddlers. Babies are one of her main loves, and yes, we are working on a little sibling.

Hi, we're finding it a bit challenging atm too. I don't like being in the house for two days in a row (can handle one) and I have 2 boys who need to be exercised frequently! I just tend to use a spurious reason to go out and turn it into at least a 3/4 day event eg go to museum (which we've been to too many times) play with the touchy bits in the kids' section, eat a packed lunch, wander about nearby and maybe go for a cake and a drink then get the bus home. This treatment can be applied to anything! They get as much from chatting to random strangers on the bus as from the main event!

Does your daughter like baking OP? We made some lovely gingerbread men and women the other day. There was the baking bit followed by the dough rolling and playing with the dough (which was incredibly tasty!) then we bought a pack of those little tubes of icing and silver balls etc and iced clothes and faces onto them. Really good fun!

Yes, she loves baking but won't eat cakes or buscuits. She doesn't take after me! I'm now on a diet so I don't want that sort of thing in the house. I could try to find some healthy things tobake with her. She might even eat them.

It'll soon be over! I decided that if I could survive the winter (and a newborn baby) we would probably fine that HE is wonderful. We've had a good time but I'm itching now to get on and get out to a list of fun places to visit!!

We've all had the most horrendous genuine flu recently. Days and days in bed, and then nasty coughs which are clearing like very slow things. My children have not left the house in ten days... it's fine, it's fine

What about making kidney bean burgers? Tactile and fun plus pretty healthy!

We've been in the house all day today. I read to them for about an hour, they drew/did mazes etc for about an hour, played with lego/duplo for about an hour, did 'hand' trees where you draw round their arm on dark paper and hand, cut it out and stick it on a piece of paper then use it as a tree and stick scrunched up bits of tissue paper all over the top as foliage. They also squirted coloured glitter glue merrily over paper (won't even call it art!), watched iplayer cbeebies for about an hour, don't know what else we did!

Why not do some school work?

I take it you are not a home educator, Idratherbemuckingout?

Some home educators may do school work but many do not, especially with little ones. Many home educators prefer to live their family life and "catch" (or look for) knowledge as it is required. They tend not to decide on arbitrary (to their children) topics to study.

On the contrary, I am indeed a home educator, and my son does proper lessons.

My son is eleven, would be in Year 6. I took him out of school three years ago and the first thing I did was make sure he knew his times tables inside out and back to front, right up to 12x12. He now can do advanced mental multiplications.
Then I made sure he could spell, knew all the parts of speech and punctuation and was reading properly.
Then I introduced other concepts in maths, making sure he knew each topic through and through with a lot of practise. He blossomed.
We introduced a bit of history, which he loved, always making sure we had some written works to show for it, some research we had to do online and in books, and we generally managed to find a good book to go with the period we were studying - eg The Eagle of the Ninth when we did the Romans in Britain.
We also did french and a little geography, and science, as he adores all things scientific.
We have introduced Latin in the last year, and he is finding that an exciting intellectual challenge.
We have a proper timetable, we have homework to ensure he can work independently.
If I did not do all of this with him I would feel that I was failing him.

All the things mentioned in the above thread are to me essentials of good parenting, not of home education.

We live in France and he is inspected every year by the Educational Authority Inspector to check we are up to standard and we are ALWAYS way beyond what they want. We are also inspected every two years by our local Maire. (mayor)
We do not at all mind being inspected as we are rightly proud of the education we are giving our son. It's about time they introduced inspections in the Uk or there will be a generation of home educated children growing up unemployable.
My son could slot back in easily at any time to mainstream education either in France or in England with no trouble at all, and have to do NO catching up.
I hope one day he will go on to university and have a rosy future.
He is well in advance of his age in all subjects, some by quite a few years.

This post is intended to give an alternative view to the one advanced by Idratherbemuckingout. It may not have been meant that way, but it seems to me to offer a prejudiced view of what a "proper" education is.

My DC did not go to school except for a term when DD asked (and when she spent a total of 7.5 months in Switzerland and Germany). We did no formal lessons and only occasionally had a timetable. In general, we followed our interests.

My DD had specific needs and I spent time ensuring that they were met while also being satisfied that the DC had time and opportunity for academic and intellectual growth. They both started doing OU courses at 13-14 and have done music grade exams. Both have volunteered in a local toddler group and participated in the young people's music school. DD is now studying law at university, having completed a Certificate of Higher Education with the OU but no A-levels.

DD started to read from about 2 but DS did not admit he could read until 9yo. This was not a problem - he has always been able to spell better than DD and he could learn without needing to read because he was not in school. At 16, he passed an OU course (AA100) which required sophisticated reading and writing on philosophy, history, music, religion and other topics.

DD is fluent in German and it is a significant proportion of her uni course. DS is studying Russian. For six years, we were involved in a local team participating in an international LEGO robotics competition. This took us to the Netherlands and to Tokyo and we researched various areas of science as well as engineering and programming. From the OU, DS gained a Certificate in Contemporary Science at 16 and a Certificate of Higher Education at 17.

We do not at all mind being inspected as we are rightly proud of the education we are giving our son. It's about time they introduced inspections in the Uk or there will be a generation of home educated children growing up unemployable.

No matter how often you measure the pig, it does not cause it to grow fatter. Inspections cannot ensure employability. School attendance cannot ensure employability. It seems unnecessarily insulting to suggest that home-educating parents will not educate their children unless they are watched by the authorities.

Idratherbemuckingout whatever works for you and your child...but have you read any of the research that shows how well home educated children 'measure up to' (if that's what concerns you) school educated children with even minimal 'formal learning'? It is fascinating stuff. Academic achievement does not guarantee employability either...and I speak as someone who is very academic. My brother has a 1st class degree and a masters and cannot get anything more than an admin job in an office...and in this country at least there will be many people in the next generation who cannot afford university.

On a personal note I do little formal learning with my 7 yr olds but their mental arithmetic amazes me and their general knowledge of the world around them is much more than their school going friends. They read, read, read and so their use of language and spelling is great just from that.

SDeuchars you sound like you are doing a good job with your children so congratulations to you. I am sure there are lots of parents like you out there, but there must also be lots of parents going on random train rides desperately wondering how to amuse their children in the winter. You missed my point. Most of what has been suggested in this post, until you put your pennyworth in quite rightly, was good parenting, stuff that should be done AS WELL as educating.

You sound like you have my ethics. Your kids sound like achievers. I did not say that being in school would make someone employable. But not educating your child properly will, whether it be in school or at home.
I am doing my best by my son, in my way, and I do ALL of those other things with him AS WELL as the education outlined above. We go out, we do baking, we do science projects outside etc, visit museums, go on trips, and they are on top of the education, because those bits I consider good parenting, not education.
All parents, whether Home Edders or parents of kids in school, participate int he education of their children.
Your child is taking stuff in when they listen to you read them a story, when you explain what tadpoles are, when you point out prices in a supermarket. But I would not call that teaching them, I would call that parenting them.
I parent my son, AND I teach him.

The trouble is, Idratherbemuckingout, not all children take to formal instruction equally well. It sounds like it is working for you. However, if I remember right, MLL has had some difficulties in the past which seem to be related to attempts to get her daughter to do formal academic work. I expect that is probably why the other posters who were making suggestions above about how she could tackle the current situation were mentioning ideas which didn't involve doing a lot of what you call "school work" at this time.

You know what, Idratherbemuckingout, some children thrive on formal institutionalised education; some thrive on formalised education at home; and some thrive and learn exactly what they need to do while their parents do nothing but parent them.

If you haven't lived autonomous home education yourself, with children for whom that is the best path (at a particular point in their lives), then you really shouldn't be judging it so harshly.

We all try to do what is best for our own children. My daughter has special needs. She went to a very small independant primary up to the age of 6. She was so unhappy, we had to take her out.
She's been at home for about a year now and she's so much happier and more confident. Every day she has speech therapy, physio pherapy, and piano practice. She absoluitly loves music.
Since being home educated her speech and understanding of speech is very much improved. She really isn't ready for formal work yet, but when she is, I'm sure she'll be fine.