What 'subjects' have your home ed DC's done today?

[discoverlife]

I thought this would help those thinking of Home Educating their children to show the spread and depth of subjects that can and are covered by their DC's.

Each childs needs are different so what is commonplace or regular for one will be totally different for another.

So today I did with DS 10yo with SEN.

20 minutes on the trampoline and playing catch to get his neurons warmed up for mental activities.

20 minutes on his gardening project where we have sunflowers seedlings, analysing why one set have not sprouted yet (probable answer 'not warm enough') writing down in his book a few sentances about todays readings eg. height of seedlings.

30 minutes Oragami, (maths) angles etc.

Then as long as he likes on an online game called 'Eve' where to get on you have to mine asteroids and sell the metals then buy new equipment or training etc. (economics and socialising in one).

Ooops, later reading.

Forgot--
birdwatching and identifying using a book.
Cooking making pancakes from scratch and will be helping with the dinner.
Helped me to find out the postage costs for items to be put on ebay, by weighing them and the packaging.

Tday DD age 11 did 1 comprehension, some spellings and a page of maths

HE friends birthday party with a load of other HE friends then on to the park.
Another HE friends house to play then on to dance class.

Far to busy 'socialising' to do any work today!!

Picked DS1 and 2 up from school (we're de registering DS2 after Easter) and walked past a classroom to hear a TA talking to a class of ten year olds as though they were dogs.

Not aggressive. Just sooo patronising.

I'd also been at a govs meeting and heard how PHSCE ( Personal, Health, Social and Citizenship Education) is fitted into half hour lessons and the odd assembly.

And how a Mr/Mrs A.N. Educationalist had decided that ..A child's self-esteem (or lack thereof) determines how well they learn.

No? Really?

we did baking, which involved weighing and measuring and health & safety (hand washing / raw eggs sort of thing), drawing, babycare, outside on the trampoline, computer work, excercising on the wii, and reading. Oh and a bit of social studies - watching the simpsons

Jigsaws featured today too for the first time in months.

Wasn't trampolining classed as exercise then?
At least when they exercise at home you can make sure they do it. Not be stood at the end of the queue waiting their turn when the bell goes.

my dd age 6 did number sequences for maths -triangular numbers, and square numbers. Worked it out for herself, while I was listening to dd age5 read her book.

Then did maths with dd5.

Then no time for other usual stuff - dd6 usually writes her diary for the previous day, and some grammar.

Friends came round, and I chatted to their mum while the kids organised a 'ballet' and performed it to the (very loud) Nutcracker music.

The organisation of said ballet somehow caused their bedroom to get trashed, so after gymnastics (dd6) they tidied it (I'm sure that encompasses some skill or other).

After tea, we read loads of books together, including 'When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit' (history), Farmer Boy (ditto), The Bible, some book about Huskies, a Fairy Tale, and a book about Sir Walter Raleigh (dd6 into Tudor times in a major way).

Now they are watching Mary Poppins. Our days start late, and end late.

Tidying the bedroom,= sorting into groups (maths), and also comes under PHSE.

I do think its rather fun to re-jig normal activities into school subjects

but what I find fascinating is that my kids just don't categorise stuff like this. I can retrofit maths/english/whatever onto their activities, but kids who have never been in school just have no idea that they are doing different subjects. Whereas I, with 20+ years of schooling, see a child making a baking powder boat and think "aha! Science! Art!".

John Holt said that kids don't have a concept of art vs not-art, or striving for excellence or anything, left to their own devices they just do everything as well as they can. And it is so bloody TRUE.

It is also a really obvious point, I suppose, just made me think...

A baking powder boat? Tell me more. We are starting the volcano today.

Proud momma moment coming up-
Our 15 year old dd2 (the one who left school after nearly 5 years of compulsary education, completely unable to read and write a single word) was busy yesterday, she was up in Manchester with the band she sings withFishing for Eyelashes they were playing live at a gig in Manchester last night.
The group were all home educated, although the lads are all at college now.
I think they are doing okay, they write all their own material, and have got a bit of a following now.
Dh, dd1 and I drove up there to see the gig and stayed over at one of the other home ed family's homes. And quite a few home ed teens had travelled from all over to see them, always nice to see friends
dd2 has stayed up there today as there is a vegan food festival in Manchester today, so she has gone there with a bunch of friends and will stay over another night before returning home in a couple of days for her sailing course and a HE trip to see a Holst the planets concert in Brum, later this coming week.

When they left school, we wanted more than anything to restore their self confidence and self belief, so they would be happy and independent-and can go out there and get anything they want.

dd2 has gone from a shy terrified child, who truly believed she was as stupid as the other kids in school, told her she was, to an happy independent person, with a growing self confidence and stage presence, able to travel the country without me know, going out there and getting what she wants.

Thre cheers for home ed kids.

had some fun Papier mache'ing a volcano this evening whilst jigging around the table bellowing loudly to 'My ding-a-ling' By Chuck Berry. I can't call that noise we made singing, but it was good fun.

So far, we have been to see the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra playing Holst the Planets-as it was an educational event, the roles of the instruments in the orchestra were explained and then they focused on parts of the composition were made up-which allowed us to listen for different things in the pieces when they were played in the whole.

On the way on the train we discussed the mechanics of the railway, how the railways changed the world and it's effect on time in this country, when the first railways were built. This led to discussions on GMT and then different times around the world and also onto degrees of longitude and latitude.
We have been looking at the world map (on the bathroom wall) since we got home to discuss this further.
On the way from the train station and the theatre we were looking at the architecture in Birmingham-particularly of the town hall and art gallery. We discussed the 60's architecture that changed Birmingham so much and how it is now being regenerated and changed back to something more elegant.
Dd discovered that the Spring proms are on in march as so rang her grandmother to tell her, so that grandma will book tickets for DD and herself-and ask the rest of her friends from the 'Windows' group she belongs to. (Dd often goes to events with the Widows and has become friends with several of them and learns a lot from their stories of the war and their early lives).
We went to the Dance Xchange and dd arranged to rejoin the ballet classes there.
When we got back my stepgrandaughter is here and so dd is doing more child development and she is researching cake recipes on her laptop, as she has recently turned vegan and therefore can't use her previously favourite recipes.
They are also cooking our evening meal-so we have been discussing nutriton and health again. Dd is getting Dsg to weigh and measure ingrediants.
When everything is in the oven we are going down to the playground, taking the dog for a walk at the same time.
Tonight we are watching a Jane Eyre apparently.

ummm, ds2 has played 'Quake 4' on the computer all day.
Maybe we could class that as computer science

Haloo.I have a ds 8 years old and a ds 10 months old.Ds1 has finally written his Thankyou lettes from Christmas..even though he has said thanks to relaties they like to receive a letter!He has made a birthday card for his dad and read a miscellany book.He has also made a clay handprint for his dad He is now waching Mrs.Doubtfire..DS2 has had 3 poos..crawled after the dogs,shouted,chewed some toys and made a clay footprint for his dad.

We got DH's keyboard (semi-pro music) out of the attic today and set it up for DS to mess with. We gave him a beat and allowed him to add in sounds, it was much easier for him (with his disability) to do that than try to use a recorder. We also had some fun with 'dry-ice' in the kitchen, fog all over the floor he-he. (DS1 bought and uses dry-ice with his computer don't ask me- he's a geek).

Ooops I forgot, this is the reason for writing these down for me.
We walked back from the village yesterday and started talking about the streams we were walking next to, and we talked about how the rain run off the land flowed into little rivulets then into streams then rivers etc. We concluded that the stream than ran beside the road was not the stream that runs past our house as it was a hill away. then we talked about erosion and river formation and flooding, because part of the road we walked up is where we lost our car in the floods in June. So we had the weird sight of a Mum and son on their knee's trying to figure out which part of the road was higher than others to account for the flooded area's.
All of this would have taken 5 or 6 hour long lessons in a school setting, but for me it was natural progression of a pleasant walk home from the village and took about 45 minutes.

This is one of the big advantages of learning out of a formal setting, I think. Rather than finding imaginative ways to explain and represent the world within a classroom, you can just be in the place where the questions are concrete and physical and timely.

I have to ask. Do you not do the sorts of things you are talking about as a matter of course? My children go to school but we do things like gardening, discussing history plus they get formal education. Just wondered...

Okaayyyy.

Who wants to go first??!!!

I'll just bang my head on this table.......

Calm down, it was a genuine question. I tried not to phrase it aggressively unlike your answer. So do you have a sensible reply or will you continue with the toys out of the pram

DANCES. I'll try and answer but I'm a total newbie wrt HE, so bear with me.

The difference is the depth and direction you can go to. If a child is doing a 30 odd hour week at school plus homework there is not much useful time left for in depth exploration of a subject/topic that really interests a child. If a child is HE, a conversation can be followed up with internet research, projects, visits etc. and any tangents that the initial interest throws up can also be explored as they occur.

None of this is possible within a class of 30 children because lessons have to be time-tabled and timed to fit into the structure of the NC and the school day.

Brilliant answer Bubble, thank you. I see exactly what you mean and I agree this sort of exploration is impossible in a classroom. I guess my next question is - reading the other responses on this thread I wanted to ask, how much of time is devoted to the staples of education, learning phonics, reading, writing, fractions and all that stuff? How do you get a child to do that at home, I can understand how the other topic type work is done but making a child sit down and learn things they aren't interested in but NEED to learn, how is that done? Also how does HE progress to further education. Do HE children move to mainstream to take GCSEs etc?