Tuesday.

Fourth week of the new studying structure.  Wow.

Today we started a wee bit later than normal, so his studies continued after lunch:

Taken the rubbish bags down to the bins.

Completed 2 pages of his handwriting book.

Collected wood for the fire.

Read "Dragon Danger" to me and answered the comprehension questions correctly.

Copy work based on "Dragon Danger" and drawn a picture to accompany his writing.

Completed a math lesson on comparing and ordering numbers.

Lunch

Completed 3 pages from his maths practise book, based on today's lesson.

15 minutes break, playing with his zoobs, having a drink.

Finish last 2 pages of his maths practise. (I wrote the answers for him, as his handwriting was deteriorating rapidly)

Read the next part of the chapter on Egyptians from Story of the World, Vol 1.  Rye answers the comprehension questions on the chapter, and narrates the main facts, which I write down for him. 

While Rye colours in Orsis, I read a chapter from The Awesome Egyptians (he attempted to read some himself)

Read together Children's Ancient World Together.  He is particularly interested in the various Gods and Goddesses.  So will explore that more next time we study History.

 

Study time over, Rye continued to look at the book, seems to have captured his imagination.  Eventually I suggest he go play with friends, he's not fussed and instead asks if he could spend some time on the Ipad as it's raining and really cold, so he doesn't fancy going outside.

Fair enough. 

Tuesdays the co-op has a house meeting, so while I'm engaged there, Rye has the choice of playing on the computer or I'll set up the projector and he can watch whatever he wants from Netflix's Kids.

Thoughts on Classical Education and Paganism.

I am a pagan.
My son is not, though he sometimes identifies as such.  I share my knowledge and traditions with him as and when he's interested.  We revere nature, I teach the planet is sacred and to be tread upon as lightly as we can.   Classical Education(CE) is a pedagogy unfamiliar with paganism; it is mostly used by Christian home educators.  The coupling of CE and paganism works beautifully. Specifically, I employ "The Well Trained Mind" route.  CE emphasises classical literature, and exploration of myths and folktales.  The path I tread and which my son skips alongside; is sat upon a bedrock of myth, folk tales and traditions, alchemy, magic and a thirst for knowledge.

The reading and grammar lessons draw upon good literature; supplementing is encouraged, for us this means folktales, myths and legends and yes some bible stories; after all, much of our literature is based on biblical themes.  I include how these stories shape my path and my personal gnosis and in doing so my son develops his own gnosis.  There is room for the ridiculous and imaginative fancifulness; a childhood magic, different, to be sure, from the magic I weave, magic nonetheless.

An oft heard complaint is that CE is christian based.  Categorically, it is not.
Just as I can weave a pagan thread through the curriculum, so can a christian.  The CE curriculum is comprehensive and laid out for the home educator.  Albeit, it can be a little dry, employ a little imagination and flexibility and the curriculum comes alive.  Nor does one need to adhere to the suggestions regarding the amount of time spent each day on lessons, the reading hour and so forth.   All the blogs I've found where the home education is CE based, appear to be school like.  This does not appeal to me, or my son.  I am his facilitator not his teacher.   I used the CE curriculum to set a direction for our learning. We are somewhere in the middle of formal home education and autonomous home education.

How does this work practically?
My son is currently improving his reading ability.  I believe he is dyslexic; he exhibits virtually all the classical cues.   Memory difficulties means he often "forgets" sight words he's learned, and he needs constant reminding to try sounding out the letter sounds.   "The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading" provides the structure, along with useful revision reminders.  Each lesson is short with suggested additional activities.  This is the method I employ:

"Table Time:  we will look at the lesson together, usually taking no more than 10-15 minutes.

Additional Activities:  these often employ magnetic boards, letters, words and flash cards.  I use dyslexic technique of incorporating my son's different senses when learning new words and digraphs. For example, one of the activities is using words written on cards to make up sentences - which can be as silly and ridiculous as he likes.  I may add perhaps lego or plasticine to the activity, and ask him to "illustrate" his sentence with models.  I've found this helps to keep him engaged in the activity, so he's focused on the words.  I encourage my son to complete one activity during our Table Time there's no time limit here, he can spend as long as he likes on the task.

My son likes to sing, those silly sentences make funny songs.  Added benefit, he is also playing his ukulele while singing (reading the words off the index cards); or he's dancing/acting out the sentences.  This allows him to expand that fidgety energy and turns what use to be a trigger for my annoyance, into a positive learning tool.

CE advocates repeating thrice words/poems etc throughout the day.  This works well with an energetic child.  He blasts into the flat, hopping and chatting ten to a dozen.
"Sing your silly song to me," and he'll dance around singing it.
"Your Quest is to read these words to win a magical reward"  If he fails, no worries he can try again, next time he bounces in.
"Read the sentence to gain entry"

Initially, I employed "reading hour" too, which is where the child spends an hour in their room, or quiet space, looking at books, or listening to audio books.  Playing with anything else is not allowed.  The idea being to create a habit of reading.    Sadly, reading hour became a bit of a battle.  CE tutors staying firm, I prefer to be sensitive to my son's feelings and find "Sofa Time" much more fun and productive.  Sofa Time tends to happen on an evening, we snuggle up on the sofa and I read a book of my choosing and I'll read my son's choice(s) too.  I particularly love sofa time in the autumn, light candles, make hot chocolate - becomes a wonderful treat and a magical time to read folk stories and myths.

I had planned for 3 lessons a day - perhaps maths, handwriting practise and reading, another day the space project, history, science and so forth.  I've found reserving 2-3 days for reading only lessons works best.  Reading expends so much mental energy that asking my son to then do other concentrated learning activities is a recipe for disaster.  Those days we play board games, craft, my mobility allowing, we go for a wander in the park noticing the changing seasons, talking about trees, dryads, plant correspondences, whatever tickles our fancy.

For each area of learning I follow the basic structure of providing instruction or information, then cementing that knowledge through activities and crafts and repetition.  Reading is hard work for my son, consequently, so is handwriting, happily CE supports and encourages narration.  I believe this to be very important for my son, his memory is actually very good; his struggle with remembering some words is less a memory retention issue, and more his memory gets scrambled as he becomes stressed/tired/frustrated. My hope is by continually working his memory, and demonstrating his using his memory; memory paths in his mind will be further developed and my son's confidence and self esteem will increase, impacting on his self belief.

I use CE learning strategies when sharing information regarding my path.  My son is about to learn the tarot, specifically the Wild Wood tarot deck.  A beautifully visual pack.  Each card has a myriad of symbolism, and as we learn together, we will use keywords on cards, creating our own decks, exploring our feelings, dreams.  A wonderful way to delve into mythology, symbolism, nature, imagination, psyche and archetypes.

Employ CE as a learning tool with a sprinkle of imagination and its a wonderful curriculum that is suitable for any home educator who desires a literacy based curriculum.  Pinterest contains lots of ideas on how supplement the basic lessons with fun activities; and  to be fully CE led; many blogs and websites are available to show how to implement the CE curriculum.  We choose to cherry pick the parts of the pedagogy that suit us and with some trial and error (see "Pushing"), we are settling into a routine that is working.

CE is not just the purview of christian home educators.  The curriculum itself is secular; there are reading lists which incorporate a christian worldview, read them, or not, there is choice.   The main thing, in my opinion, about  the Well Trained Mind brand of CE is it's written by American mother and daughter duo, so the reading lists favour american literacy, and most of the Pinterest content is also american.   Bear this bias in mind and it's not an issue.  Supplement some of the american literacy with British literature, adapt activities based on american geography/history etc to British and all is good.

















 

Pushing.

I am right now kicking myself, hard!
Rye has had that break through,and it's exciting him enough that he's trying to read on his own - albeit with books far too advanced for him at the moment.  I'm taking his newfound enthusiasm and running with it...

Yeah, that's the problem.
Push, push, push...meltdown!

This morning, we began with handwriting practise.  He quickly developed, what I call "duck lips", give him his dues, he did persevere and finish the set pages.  I was careful to point out the improvements he's making and encourage him to look at the whole page of his writing, rather than concentrate on the letters that were screwy.  He is so quick to criticise himself.

We went onto maths - and I kicked myself that I hadn't checked the lesson in the Singapore Maths book.  Recapping 10s, 100's and 1000, and the exercises asked for the answers to be written in both number and letter form.   Oh dear.  Still, he did really well, and by the end of the page his writing of the word "hundred" had improved dramatically, which again I focused on!  Had I checked today's maths lesson first, I would have be happy with it counting as handwriting practise too.  Rewarded his hard work with a YoYo Bear thingy - it's fruit leather swirls and comes with cards that Rye wants to collect.  So yay, completed those tasks on a high!

I should have stopped there!

I got carried away and suggested reading practise.  First we looked at the lesson in the Classical Education learn to read text book.  Excellent work.  Then I suggested having a go at reading Fox in Socks.  Started off brilliantly, read 4 or so pages really well, he was visibly tiring at this point.  Did I stop.. no push a little more... push, push, push.  Gah!
"Just read this, and we'll stop", I said.  Rye had reached saturation point, he was yawning, stretching, fidgeting more than ever, what did I do?
I got annoyed - boom, a morning of excellent work ruined.

Clearly, I have a bit of a "thing" about finishing what is started, so to combat that, from now on I shall start using the stopwatch on the Iphone, and set 10 minutes chunks.  As Rye progresses the length of time he'll be able to concentrate, without brain scramble, will increase.

We are also still trying to find the right balance of free play time and activities while also living in a co-op where Rye has friends on tap.   Perhaps I need to embrace more learning activities where his friends can join in.  The other day I was babysitting my housemate's daughters while she went away for a couple of days; the children played games, and much to my surprise they all really enjoy playing Fiddlesticks (reading game) - the luck element of the game, meant one of the younger children who isn't reading yet won several times too, so it is suitable for all levels.

Kids playing King of New York

 I think meshing the "strewing" principle of unschooling, with the Classical Education pedagogy will, I think, make it more Rye friendly, and ensuring textbook based activities are well mixed with practical hands on activities, of which some activities can be "group" friendly.

I do like to be "solution focused", which sounds terribly pouncy, in reality it means I learn from the day's lesson(s).  This morning I failed Rye, I could beat the crap out of myself, doubt myself - and initially yes, of course, I felt a failure, I briefly wondered if home education was the right option for us.  Shake it off.
Home Education IS the best for Rye, he loves being home educated.  Today I made mistakes, learn from those mistake, set strategies in place to prevent, well hopefully, a repeat of those mistakes.

Surely, the epitome of learning?

Scholarly Thursday.

One of the joys of home educating - doing it in one's dressing gown and a cup of coffee in one hand!

The morning began with me coaxing Rye to use the pencil grip aid - it's a simple enough wee gadget, elastic that goes over his wrist with a short loop that goes over the end of his pencil, so it encourages him to hold the pencil at the correct angle; and then there's a wee football charm that he holds in his fist with his middle, index and little fingers, the pencil itself he pincer grips between his forefinger and thumb. This alongside with reminding him to angle the paper so it was comfortable for him to write, made a massive difference to his writing.

He wrote a page of numbers, then made up his own sums and wrote those down too, followed by writing a page from the Science Encyclopedia on the Sun.

After a rewarding mouthful of chocolate, we went on to review the past lesson on Proper Nouns, and then I read a fable to Rye and he answered questions that checked his comprehension, along with many reminders to answer in a complete sentence.

The Classical Education books, are fabulous and save me a large chunk of time I would otherwise need to spend researching activities and books for literacy and language.
Anyway, that brought us nicely to break time; juice and toast for Rye and coffee and toast for me - I'd gotten dressed while he was doing his handwriting practice.

Once refreshed, Rye read about half of Thor to me.  I think though it's time to move onto some other books for a while - apparently another common dyslexic trait, is using the pictures as a visual reminder of the story; so while he can seemingly read words like "hammer", "beasts", "monsters" seen out of the context of this story, he wouldn't know what those words are.

Still he did do well, showed that he was considering the context of the sentence, and using the pictures appropriately to help him work out words, and trying to sound out words.  Mind, at one perplexing point, he started reading "had" as "did", I kept saying "try again, it begins with a "h""  but he still kept saying "did".  Rye tends to see the shape of word, again a dyslexic thing, so while it seems daft to me that he's mixing up "had" and "did" in terms of  word shape, they are similar.  So, as he had read quite a bit up to that point, I suspected reading fatigue was scrambling his brain.  We stopped at that point.  We had another chat too, about remembering to look properly at the word and the letters that make up the word - not just the shape.  Next was history.

Looking through the History Encyclopedia.

Funny isn't it, we began the Space Project because I had this idea we could incorporate, science, math, handwriting, reading, history, geography, natural studies etc all into one super project, and have lots of interrelated strands.  Rye doesn't want to work just on a space project, even when we are covering lots of different things and he has a lot of autonomy - he is a boy who does enjoy mixing the freedom a project allows with more traditional learning methods.  So, I've dug out our Story of the World Book 1, and read to him the introductory chapter that explains what an historian is and how they learn about people's pasts.








One of the activities in the history work book was to create a family tree.  I'm out of ink for my printer at the moment, so I'll have to photocopy the sheets for building up the family tree later, so instead I suggested he draw a picture of his family.

So cute, see me, with my colourful dreads.  Rye drew his Great Granddad George, Granddad Graham, Rosemary, his dad and me, oh, and of course himself.  Took him a while to get his head around the task, but once he got past being harsh about his drawing skills, he really enjoyed the task.

He worked hard, and he knows he accomplished a lot today, and felt really good about himself.
I had planned to do some maths, but as it was already lunch time, I decided that was enough for now, and he did kinda set himself sums during his handwriting practice.

The afternoon was spent on lego, a video game, and playing with his house friends.  During dinner I read the next chapter of the "Goblet of Fire".  Thursdays is also house meeting night, so after settling him with a screen, to the meeting I went.

This coming weekend is a work weekend for the Co-op, working on the windows to ensure they have a long life, and maintaining the access ramp to the garden.  It does mean I need to do some preparatory work tomorrow.  This is the beauty of home ed, and sometimes the difficultly, juggling various life needs and commitments.   The vague plan I have in my head at the moment is for some math work in the morning for 30mins to an hour, depending on how Rye responds to the tasks, then he can help me with the work I need to do in preparation for the work weekend.  And if not too shattered from that, maybe a game of fiddlesticks - it's a reading game, I'll explain more tomorrow.

Now, its bedtime!

Revamp.

Why "Freely Educated"?
As an home educator I am constantly aware that our way of life is often under attack, that scrutiny is often blinkered and those who are not on the inside simply do not have the knowledge, faith, heart, or understanding to know home education is a wonderful gift that encompasses more than academic study, and is not comparable to school.  It is about life, and the world is our classroom.

So I've reclaimed this blog; and will once again begin recording our home ed life, so should negative forces attempt to impede our journey, this blog will be the beacon and provide the light back to hearth, joy, learning and love.

So, here goes:

Rye is continuing to work on his Space project, currently he's exploring the sun, which has included facts about the sun, watching documentaries on the solar system, he's also explored myths and legends of gods and goddess associated with the sun, and looked at art influenced by the sun in some way.

We have also been camping at the Welsh Environmental Home Education Camp.   Rye spent a fair bit of time in the craft and science tents; he made hover crafts, rockets, he drew dragons, and joined in huge collages with his new friends.  He had a go at fire poi, circus skills, computer animation, raft building, sports day fun, went on bat walks etc.

Rye took these photos

After WEHEC flu hit, and we had to take a week or so out.  Rye was self directed; he watched documentaries on space, dinosaurs, the oceans, he played minecraft, played with his friends, asked me how to spell words so he could type them into the search bar and look for new videos and games.  He painted, he cooked, cleaned.  Hardly a wasted time.

Life is returning to normal.  I run a Science Club for local Home Ed children, and our topic this month is Electricity.  In preparation for the club, Rye and me watched videos on electricity, and we also used the excellent resources from "The Children's University Of Manchester"  We read about different type of fuels used to create electricity, we looked at how a Wind Turbine works, and Rye then had to reassemble it, (which he did successfully), and Rye learned how electricity travels along high voltage wires, and transformers at different stages to reduce the voltage to make it safe to use in our homes.  I sense a trip the Science Museum in Manchester may be on the cards.

I've bought Rye a subscription to  Literacy Planet and he's flying with it.  His confidence is high and he's enjoying the games, receiving trophies and collecting credits to spend on other games.
I've bought a subscription to Nessy.   Once a couple of issues with the log in have been resolved, Rye can also start using Nessy, which is designed specifically for children with dyslexia and improves reading and spelling.  I found reading eggs was too easily circumvented.  Rye would click, click, click until he got the answer correct, without trying to work the answer out.  Both Nessy and Literacy Planet have limited chances to choose the correct word/sentence/sound and some exercises are timed.  I find this provides a far more accurate record of progress.

I'll probably also buy the Nessy typing programme, the reviews are excellent, and honestly, while I'll continue to work with Rye on his handwriting, it's unlikely he'll develop beautiful handwriting and have a passion for writing by hand; learning to type, particularly in our technological world, is much more useful to him.

He's at his father's for a few days now, so opportunity to plan some more activities for the space project and think about the coming months when our learning naturally becomes more bookish, when documentaries and visits to museums and galleries increase, and being outdoors, nature, and sports take a back seat.

Epithany!

What a ninny!

Weekends!  Yes, weekends.  I have been struggling for months fitting in Rye's learning time with the usual plethora of social meetings, trips, and spontaneous get togethers that a Home Ed child typically has going on each week, along with my own need for some time to do my work, domestic stuff, my own social events etc. It  has been proving very difficult to be consistent.

Difficult, because I've been trying to fit it all in Mon-Fri.  Generally speaking weekends for Home Educators, at least the ones I know, is generally reserved for family time, and family only trips.  Weekends here are a mixture of childminding and pottering/domestic duties/downtime.   The light bulb moment was when it dawned on me that Rye's "learning time", could stretch over the weekend, and a little into Monday and Tuesday, leaving the other days free for other types of learning and play.

That reading time on a Sunday could involve our usual long morning snuggles in my bed, with me reading to him and vice versa - Saturday, easily maths and simply science covered through games - which can easily involve my four year old mindee too!  I do feel a ninny.  Weekends, it's so obvious.

And when one has weeks like last week, usual activities that Rye attends, along with birthday parties, a trip to Manston, me babysitting a friend's 3 children because she was ill, for a couple of days, fitting in the building blocks of academic learning can be difficult.  It is learning that Rye has requested so it is important we fit it in.

To my mind, days/weeks like this are, certainly at this stage, are too important to miss.  It's days out like that, that fires the imagination, sparks new learning opportunities, and practicing social skills.

I suppose, even after all these years, I'm still deschooling, still ridding myself of mainstream educational norms;  of course the more formal stuff isn't restricted to Monday to Friday.

What a ninny!

Exciting Times.

A bit of a splurge here.  This did end up being a lot more expensive than anticipated because the postage was really quite high, so justify it I ended up ordering a whole host of knights too. 

 A hair cut.  A slight regression, Rye had an attack of the anxiousitis.  With some firm words, coaxing, and yes a bribe of chocolate, the job got done.

 Kearsney Abbey.  So frustrating, it was beautiful and sunny in the morning; afternoon it rained and the temperature dropped significantly.  Brrrrr.

 Saturday Rye was picked up by his dad.  That evening I'd organised the Great Trampoline Erection and Bbq.  Trampoline went up super fast, the bonfire tripod bbq was admired, and the food nommed..**cough** and a wee bit of cider and wine might have been consumed too....

Sunday, I was up at stupid o'clock to pick up a friend to drive over to Essex to see another friend, and go car booting.  Amazingly, and thankfully, I did not have a hang over, and despite the five hours maximum of sleep I may have got, I was fine.  On the way back from Essex I called into the ex to pick up Rye.

 And brought him home to show him his surprise.  That grin says it all :-))

 While car booting Sunday, I managed to pick up Rye some of the Bob the Builder vehicles, so today has been mostly trampolining and playing in the sandpit.  Interspersed with me reading the Iliad and the Odyessey, by Marica Williams to him, and the Centipedes 100 shoes. 

Both books arrived in the very large Amazon order.  13 story CDs, most of the Sir Cumference books, several of the Marica Williams books, Kingfishers encyclopedia of history, the rest of the story of world volums, and a few other story books recommended by The Well Trained Mind book.  Plus I also downloaded classic children stories for the Kindle Ap; secret garden, five children and It, the railway children, etc.  Oh and a couple of the Bones series on DVD for me.

So far, my reading into classical education is exciting me; and I'm struck by similarities with Waldorf in terms of child development.  I very much like the classical educations emphasis on language and literature, including how history, science, and literature are linked chronologically.  Back in my day grammar wasn't taught.  Well, I remember the odd lesson on nouns, verbs and pronunciation; and I do mean the odd lesson.  Personally, I feel understanding grammar is important.  It is not a strong point for me, and so will be an interesting learning curve for myself too.

These early years, in Classical terms, are the grammar years; the building blocks of learning to come, that will be built upon.  There is an emphasis on oral learning, memorization, and as writing develops; copying from classical education.  Comprehension, logic, rhetoric, these elements come in much later.

Already I am pondering our circle time, which admittedly has fallen by the wayside recently.  The children enjoy circle time, and the classical reading scheme, the encouragement to learn simple poems to memorise the vowel names and sounds etc; reading fairy tales and adaptions of classics for young children; all these things I can add into our circle time easily.  From a childminder's perspective too, nicely fits in some of the EYFS learning goals.

I like I can bring these elements into our life without ramming it down Rye's throat.   I am enriching his  playing and learning environment, while remaining true to my beliefs that young children need to play and they need freedom to play without undue adult direction or interference.  The caveat being if they ask for input.

I wonder too if Rye's enjoyment of workbooks is a natural desire within him, for a richer learning environment. 

Truly, these are exciting times.