Tea Room the 23rd - The Canadian Rockies

[Jacksmania]

Welcome to the 23rd incarnation of the One-Child Tea Room. Not to be misleading - although its inmates inhabitants mostly have just one child, we also have mums of many (but no dads yet... hmmm...). Everyone is welcome.

The usual rules apply - no bunfighting. If you like that sort of thing, go elsewhere.
Other rules: bring . Or [tea]. :o

We find ourselves in a lovely spacious log cabin in the Canadian Rockies. Enormous west-facing windows show a gorgeous view of the sunset over the mountains, and there are log and/or gas fireplaces in every room, even the priest hole (which is a Hiding Spot of Requirement for Those In Need) and the bathrooms. In the open-concept living room, we find the Aga gently simmering against the wall, the bar fully stocked, and the cappuccino bar prepared to dispense any hot beverage of your choice.

Fluffy duvets and colourful pillows abound on the deep, squashy couches and armchairs. Outside, we see a vista of deep snow, dotted here and there with deer and bunny tracks. The walking trails and access roads have been ploughed clear of snow by our able (and hunky) handyman, Mellors, who is also available for massages and facial treatments in the Log Cabin Spa.
There is a hot tub outside on the west-facing deck, with a mini-bar conveniently nearby.

There are no aspidistras in this log cabin, as the cold of the Rockies causes them to shrivel and die. However, the Naked Mohawk Babies have come along and are swarming along the rafters, and in the adjacent stable, the Tea Room horses, Earl and Lady Grey are available for snowy rides. The bison are frolicking in their snowy paddock, and I have no idea if the bishops followed the trail of breadcrumbs or not.

(For newcomers, the last paragraphs obv. makes no sense - just go with, all will be explained.)

I'd never really thought about it till some time last year. Just assumed we would do the school thing. And then I started thinking about it and now I'm really torn. I agree, Serpent, 4/5 is very young to start with a full day, 5 day week, structured learning routine.

It's just the two alternatives are so very, very different and will shape our lives in very different ways. Scout, what propelled you in that direction, if I may ask? I believe it's more common in the States than here, is that right?

I'm thinking I might need to try and meet some Homeschoolers in my local area and take it from there. I have actually looked on a couple of websites but found it hard to see if there were any sort of loose support groups round here.

I think that is a good idea, Agent. We have the advantage that our neighbours and really good friends do this, and their daughter is lovely. I do wonder, though, if her experience is a bit ... narrow. She doesn't know any bible stories or of any religions, for example. Not that I am at all religious; I just think that these things are part of the general culture/heritage or our society and you need them to understand it. On the other hand, I know a primary school teacher who thinks courgettes grow underground and that 'eskimos chew leather when they are hungry' (sic) so schools are no defense against ignorance.
I also worry about the socialisation side - Maud has some pertinent ideas about this.

Aaaargh, I'm getting stupid.
Time to go to bed

Home schooling is always worth considering - it is an option I am aware of if the Young Donk 'fails to thrive' at school....

I have seen good home schooling and bad home schooling...

When good it is very very good. When bad it is awful!

Night night all

Does anyone know where I can use the World Book Day Token BabyScout has received? I can't seem to get the website to work....

Agent, I will answer your questions tomorrow (didn't want you to think I was ignoring you) but I'm shattered after an insane night at Guides and BabyScout gets up early so I really must get to bed.

Good night all!

I'm not sure that my ideas are pertinent, but they are well-entrenched now!

I have only to my knowledge met one HEer - and it was before I joined MN and read more about it here and so did not have the vocabulary to ask what sort of HE she did - whether autonomous or like-school-but-at-home (can't think what the proper term for that is). Anyway, the more she banged on (unprompted, I would add) about how it really didn't matter that her son could not read at 8, the more sceptical I became. GardenGirl has been a voracious reader since she was five and it makes me realise what a big hole it would have left in her life if she hadn't had independent access to all those books. I know other things would have filled that gap (and she could have had the books read to her) but I know too that such a laisser-faire attitude wouldn't have been right for her. Of course, it might for other children.

My (im)pertinent idea about socialisation is that [disclaimer: this is my experience and other experiences are available] family relationships in a one child family can be pretty intense. One of the significant benefits of school, in my view, is the most basic one - that it happens outside the family space. Again, thinking of what would work for me and GardenGirl, I am not at all sure that education in the home would be the right thing for her; she needs to have a significant adult in her life who is not a parent and she needs to have an environment (in this case, school) which is her domain and not ours. Added to this, I would worry too that HE is a very "people like us" sort of thing. Because we live in a very diverse (in every sense) urban area, she goes to school with far more children from far more backgrounds and circumstances than she would ever meet at HE events. One thing she has learnt from being at school day-in day-out with a bunch of children who she would not necessarily choose as friends (and who would not necessarily choose her either) is how to form a functional relationship with people with whom you need to be able to rub along, even if you don't much care for them. That is something I couldn't provide if HEing.

I defer to Serpent's knowledge of what actually happens in the classroom - I've only seen it as a reading volunteer - but I think that before our children start school we perhaps over-estimate how intense or overwhelming it might be for them. The day is far shorter than many children have spent in nursery provision and (if GardenGirl's experience was typical) not very much more structured. I know that German children start formal school at 6 - but presumably many of them spend the years between 4 and 6 in something which is not dissimilar to reception in the UK system? I think too we sometimes project our anxieties and misgivings onto our children. I certainly did. In retrospect, if I could change anything about GardenGirl's schooling I'd wangle her into the school in September instead of making her wait until January.

Anyway, that's more than enough of that. It's late and I'm too lazy to edit. Three cheers for Donki's school, the job offers and the swift resolution to the incident!

Hiya ladies. I see you are all long in bed. My sympathy to UniS. My dear grandma died last year, she was also a remarkable women whose tales from the years she was in service and other anecdotes about her life always tendee to end in ?Oh how we laughed?. I still miss her. A big for your granny's memory and another laced with whisky for my grandma.
I have no knowledge of home schooling, but from memory I think I can safely say I was dying to go to school by the time I was four. I was an independent lass who desperately wanted to escape the home. My ambition as achild was always to leave my hometown and get as far away as possible.
Sometimes I think I may have taken this idea a wee bit too far

Morning all! Got the kettle on, as ever. Not sure how much I'll be around in the next few days, depending on how I get on today with chemotherapy. Still feeling cheerful about it, which is weird/good.
Apologies for not catching up properly with people...

Ooo, it puts the flower in the mug! Cool!

Morning all.

Good luck today Amber. That doesn't sound right, but you know what I mean!

MrTee is now coughing and sneezing and saying his ear feels full, so today's hospital admittance may not happen. He's ringing at 9 to ask.

LCT and I don't seem to be getting any better, now with added runny nappies, so we may be back to the GP.

::coffee, tea, scones, donuts, pancakes on sideboard::

Scout, DD informs me you can use your WBD token on Amazon - this is something new. In the past, WH Smiths and Tesco have also taken them. I would have thought most places like supermarkets and bookstores would?

Good morning all.

Just a brief comment on home schooling, which basically eachoes Donki's - I think if done right and if it's right for the individual family, it can be excellent. My cousins homeschool (well, actually, DH's cousins but I love them so have adopted them as my cousins) but they have three and four children each. I would not consider homeschooling JB. For one, I would hate it, and DH, while very very bright, is not the academic type. But also, I think JB needs to go to school. As Maud said, family relationships can be quite close in a one-child family, and it's that way with us, especially as JB never went to nursery like so many little ones do when their mummies have to go back to work after mat leave. My mat leave was 3 months, no way would we have put a three-month-old in nursery, even if we'd been able to find one that takes such tiny babies.
Anyway. I think he will need to get away from us, in measured doses. :o
On that subject, I've just won an argument with DH regarding what they call "preschool" here. We are planning to send JB to a Montessori school in the area. The way it works here is that from the September children turn 3 (this Sept for JB, he will be 3 1/2), children can (but don't have to) go to preschool, two or three days a week. Usually children go to preschool for two years, then have one year of kindergarten (starting age 5), and then start Grade 1 of elementary school at age 6.
The Montessori school we're thinking of does their preschool five days a week, 8:45 to 11:45, right from the start, rather than two or three days a week. At first I didn't think too much about it, but just lately, got cold feet - five days a week is too much. I can't explain very well, it was just a visceral sense that this would not be right for JB. So DH and I went round and round about it (he saw nothing wrong with it) and in the end I had to say "I just really do not want to do this" and refused to budge. I'm normally fairly reasonable and prefer to reach a compromise, so I suppose that in the end DH decided that if it was that important to me, it was fine with him. I think I felt that JB is going to be in school five days a week for a very long time... and that he didn't need to start at age 3 1/2. I know that's still not a good explanation, and it really was much more of a sense of "not right".

How is everyone?
Hugs to everyone who's struggling, ill, or :(

::Brings a tray of buns and pastries from our fantastic new local bakery::

Hello everyone. At last, we have sunshine here! Hooray!

Ooo buns! Excellent! I am back from first chemo and have had a very enjoyable time with silly staff. There are pictures on Facebook for those vaguely interested in what it looks like. I feel fine! I'm also filled with steroids which have caused me to feel very and

Will now attempt to catch up with messages...

::Ushers Amber to the more comfy end of the distressed chintz sofa and gives her a cup of tea to go with the bun::

Just saw your pics :o
(((((((HUGS)))))))

Lovely tea!! And my fave bun!

Taught the nurse about autism too. She was fascinated. They aren't trained on it yet.

Mmm, buns. Lovely.

JM, you have to go with your feelings - only you know what feels right.

Maud, I totally agree about the need to work together with people who are not your best friend and don't come from your own little cosy group. This is why I think school at some point is crucial.

However, I am not so sure that it is crucial to learn to read at four, or even possible or desirable in many cases. Some children do, some don't. At least if they are not in school they are not experiencing the stigma of total failure if they don't crack it at 5. I have two friends whose sons were assessed as being very special needs at primary school due to not reading and both have turned out to be very very able; one is studying law and one marine biology. The school system sees reading=intelligence, therefore late readers are assumed not to be able to understand about the Tudors or the life cycle of the butterfly.

Would love to know what Donki saw that was very good in terms of home ed and what was awful.

My 2p worth: I will never home school as I am a terrible teacher and it would be a disaster.

Of course, I am much more use to the school system JM outlines, being American. And I must confess, I don't really understand the UK system, especially as there doesn't seem to be anything called Reception in NI.

However, Adam has really thrived since he started nursery. He goes 2 full days a week (or will once he stops being ill!) and has a great time. Naturally, a lot of that is playing, not structured like school will be, but I still think he'll be ready at what ever age he's suppose to start here, which I think is actually 5 for P1. No reception, from what I can tell!

And he'll be a 'young' P1 as his birthday is in June.

Anyway, to each their own and let's just get them as productive members of society however we get them there!

anyone?

I certainly don't equate reading with intelligence, and nor do I see reading at 4 as crucial. Yet because reading does give a child so much freedom independently to explore things that they are interested in - and we live in a culture in which information is overwhelmingly stored and retrieved in verbal form - I do feel that keeping a child who would easily be capable of it away from reading is (can't think of a better word) perverse. A child who cannot read is far more dependent on adults to provide information and many of the other arguments for and against HE are (I think) actually about control. There's probably a related issue about the extent to which school (especially in the first years) suits girls better than boys.

As I've always said, these are my views based on our experience with GardenGirl. It'll be different for other people.

And I really like how we can each have our own views in this TR, and occasionally disagree vehemently, and still remain friends.

Exactly, JM. What I love about the tea room is that you can bandy ideas about with people whose views are diametrically opposed to your own. I know you can do that in other parts of MN but there it can sometimes descend into a bunfight, and we would never waste good buns here!

:o

::Transatlantic air kiss::

Mwah! Mwah!

ohh, have we got good bus? may I have one please?

HE is not my first choice. Boy and I get cross with each other to quickly. We seem to BOTH like school and teh social side of it.

My relative who home schools a sizeable family does IMHO have control issues. And wants to be in full of control of all information / views and attitudes their children are exposed to. The children seem rather sheltered and immature. I wonder what will happen when they hit late teenage and fly the family home with no qualifications and large gaps in their education.

None of which is HE fault, its the parents attitude that is the problem IMHO. Some people do successfully HE children across a broad curriculum and open the doors for them to go on in life as confident successful adults.

More buns please.