Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

one of those days?

5 replies

chatterbocs · 19/05/2009 22:26

How do you all deal with the days when the kids are driving you bonkers? We all have those days whether home educated or kids go to school. But obviously when the kids are with you everyday you don't have 5hrs apart.
Sometimes when they aren't doing formal stuff I'm not always sure what to do with 'em.

OP posts:
Kayteee · 20/05/2009 08:25

I stick em in front of the telly or pc, lol

Seriously though, what would they do, other than formal stuff, normally?

julienoshoes · 20/05/2009 09:39

Didn't do any formal work, so didn't come from the same place as you
Ask them what they want to do?

Go out to the park/woods/riverside/beach?
Take a picnic-get them to choose and prepare the food and pack it with you?

Whatever the weather we'd go out. One of the joys of being classroom free for my kids was to go to all of these places when they were near empty.

There is always something interesting to see.

You could build a den in the woods-and think about what you'd eat if marooned there

Go beach combing and see who can find the most interesting things

Take pictures of wildlife/go bug spotting and draw the wildlife.

Runnerbean · 20/05/2009 10:06

My dds love playing Uno, and various board games, or they build dens in the garden, or dress up and dance around the living room.
Horrible History dvds are fab, (tv without the guilt).

Down time is really important, being bored is good because they have to find something to do. Remember being a kid?

I don't think you have to do stuff with them, sometimes we overparent (and I'm definitely guilty of that!) Kids don't learn to do their own stuff any more because we feel like we have to provide it.

How old are your dc's?

emmawil37 · 20/05/2009 11:14

I know that feeling, so I have days when I have other things on my mind or I'm just really tired, and feel so unmotivated to do anything with the kids, those days I find really hard work, especially when the weather is like this. My two are very young 4 and 3 so at the moment I can entertain by making play dough and that keeps them happy for a while or building a camp and them letting them play. But I find it very hard work on times and I worry that I'm not active enough. I'm hoping as they get older and we get to meet more people and join more groups than that will help me keep my motivation up.

julienoshoes · 20/05/2009 12:01

We had a saying 'Your boredom is not my responsibility-what would you like to do?'
Than a discussion would ensue about activities and then whether they were feasible or not at that point-ie did we have transport/money for it? Although I always try and say 'yes' in some form or other. 'Yes we can do that when we have the car' 'Yes we can do that, let's think how we can raise the money/find the time'
Many of their requests would be doing things at home. Or they would just go off and invent things/play by themselves.
Boredom does great things for their imagination!

We used to collect games/books/activities/DVDs from car boots/charity shops etc.
Electrical kits and chemestry sets and construction kits were used time after time.

I got the Krampf's experiment of the weeksent free to my inbox-generally using easy to get hold of household obejects, it was a ready made source of interesting things to do.

Lego was fantastic for all of my children.
Older ones built the kits but youngest spent hours building villages-including pubs/post office/shops etc that she thought were necessary for village life.

This has just reminded me, she was mad on the idea of travelling for a while and used Lego to begin to design the van she is going to live in.
We also went off to caravan showrooms and looked at the interior designs-so she could get some idea of how she would fit it all into her ideal van and that led to discussions of scale drawings etc-and that kept her busy for hours.

We did lots of salt dough models. Making and painting them took up long periods of time.

For inspiration about home ed, and living together, I like Joyfully Rejoycing
"This site is about unschooling. And it's about parenting more peacefully. But overall it's about living more joyful family lives."

New posts on this thread. Refresh page