Woooooosh...

that's the sound of me blowing the dust off my blog.

Lots of catching up to do, eh.

Life is busy, Rye is growing up far too fast, and I have even more grey hair!

Life has been dominated by setting up a creative space for me to work in, home education and life in a commune.

Once I have finished sorting through my supplies and yarn I will post photos of my new space.  I'm very pleased with it, and the view from my desk is stunning!  (This view is actually from where I sit to drink my morning coffee, but I can see it too from my desk)

Home Education - well, as there is wont to be, I wobbled viciously and fell into the trap of trying to teach and impose learning on Rye.  Unmitigated disaster!  Thank the Gods, I realised the error of my ways and backed off.  This includes the near constant arguments and frustrations over screen time, and the re-realisation that my job is to provide Rye with opportunities - or to use the unschooling term, to "strew".  

That led me to acceptance of Rye's screen time, which, I have to say, is a huge issue for me.  Personally, I don't see how Minecraft, at least the way Rye uses it, is educational, and it feels weak to tell myself that Rye implementing things he's learned about the game from you tube videos in his "world" is "learning".

 I chaff at the hours he wants to spend watching said videos, or playing minecraft and other games, when I feel he should be outside playing, exploring his environment, climbing trees, helping in the garden and with the animals, going on adventures with his friends, riding his bike.  And when he's not doing that, exploring the wide range of books available to him, asking me to make amazing creative structures with him, play educational board games, explore scientific themes and do experiments, exploring the amazing art galleries and museums available to him...

Well, actually, it's not that he isn't, it's that I feel he should be doing MORE.  And I realised this has come from a place of fear.  Fear that his reading will never become fluent, or his handwriting legible and beautiful, fear that he will not have sufficient knowledge, learning, lifeskills... (it's not like he's living in a socially conscious co-operative, where we are all involved in social change...oh wait...)   This led to the cognizance that for some daft reason I've been expecting Rye to be pretty much like me.

Pratt!

How has it taken me so long to get my head around the fact we are different, he experiences things differently to me.  I loathe, detest and despise computer games, horrible time eating, soul gobbling machinations of wastefulness.  My son finds them wonderful, imagination stretching vehicles of fun, he and his friends pour over their screens, cackling at whatever  building they have just blown up, or zombies mowed down by increasingly upgraded vehicles...  shudder  and through his own investigation he's also watched numerous you tube videos on the solar system, on various scientific laws, animals that capture his interest...and yeah ok, a lot of spoof rubbish that has  me rolling my eyes.  But that is all ok.  I've just been a tad dim of late.

He's not a big fan of reading - um, yeah, partly because I pushed a bit too hard to try and "teach" him to read - yet he doesn't refuse to have a book read to him, and he often pops on an audio book to listen to while playing in his room, or at bedtime...so who am I to say he doesn't love books - he simply chooses to experience them in a different way.  In fact as I sit here typing, it occurs to me that Rye even enjoys reading to me - when, and it's a biggy, when I back off and let him decide when he's had enough - rather than insisting his finish the book...  yeah, I know, lost my way rather significantly!

So, back to blogging, I think it will help me to keep centered and to truly see the learning that is happening around me... for instance, today, sat in the cafe having breakfast and we started talking about forces and motion...ok I'll allow that my son's mind does rather perplex me at times;

"Mum, babies are a force when they come out..."  um, not quite, son.  How talking about "tug of war" as an example of forces - both balanced and unequal, led to that gem, I have no idea.  He did know the Earth is a big magnet, that magnetism is another type of force and gravity is a pulling force, so I shan't worry too much.

I'll be blogging about other areas of our/my life too.  My blog would not be my blog without crochet posts, baking, juices...so yeah I'm back.... besides, Rye is growing up so fast, and these days I'm lucky to get more than a couple photos for the entire month.

Lets have a look at what I have for March;

We made a kite from willow sticks, plastic bag and my crochet cotton for the Fly Kites Not Drones international event on the Equinox.

Eating snacks after Sports for Fun, where he played hockey, basketball and badminton.

Pizza Hut after a workshop at the World Museum on Spiders and Scorpions and other creepy crawlies, and afterwards he insisted on going and looking around the World Museum's bug section.
And last week, we visited the Maritime Museum and he participated in a workshop on Endangered animals and smuggling, which he really enjoyed, and again afterwards he wanted to look around the museum.

Today we have, as I mentioned, discussed Forces and Motion, and we've watched a few you tube videos on Newtons Laws of Motion, watched some cool experiments and decided which ones we want to do ourselves, we've been shopping and Rye decided to use some of his pocket money to buy a water gun, and by the sound of it, he's now on Minecraft.

Autonomous, interested led learning is back on the agenda!  We are back!

Yay!

Yule Advent, Day 13

Yesterday didn't quite work out as I planned.

Saturday mornings I have a minded child until 1.30pm.  So the children played and I took advantage to sit and work on some crochet snowflakes, flat baubles.  I saw this, the pentcle I have saved on my ravelry queue and I've been meaning to knock a few up.  But what actually caught my eye was the use of wrist bangles.  It just hadn't occured to me.  So I've been playing.  I made a large lacy snowflake, which needs blocking.  And a few play around dreamcatcher like ones.  Think I need to look at the instructions becuase my attempts to do it off the hoof, aren't spectacular.

Oooh and more yarn arrived.  Yes more.  However, these are colours that I do need for the gifts I'm making.  I do have quite a stock of cotton yarns, but to my suprise I discovered I'd run out of yellow, which is such an important colour when teaming lots of different colour, it's a colour that will pretty much match up with any other and in doing so it help to calm and reunite all colours.  I also did not have red or a dark green.  How can this be!  So I got some more, and well you know me, I couldn't resist adding a few other colours.

Once mindie left in the afternoon the plan was to paint the clay decorations we made a few days ago, and have taken such a long time to dry out!  Rye had other ideas.  He wants to read and write and is constantly asking to do workbooks/sheets/read his oxford tree reading scheme books, and of course reading eggs.
I gave him the choice, fully expecting him to choose painting, but no, he choose to reading eggs. 

Oooh the hooky time was fabulous, and I would be lying if it wasn't a part of my decision to let allow Rye to decide when he'd had enough.  Naturally, I told myself the website if educational, and it's not like he's on there all the time.. infact weeks and weeks can go by...all true, but honestly I allowed longer than normal play on the computer because I have a lot of preparation for Yule still.

I do find myself warring with myself on this issue though.  I do have rules for screen time.  Rye is allowed to pop on a dvd on a morning if he's up before me, which tends to be only once or twice a week.  He is allowed to watch a dvd on an evening after the minded children have left.   That rule has had to be relaxed a little because a mindie's mum works shifts and for 3 days wasn't picked up until midnight.   Similarly, he can forego dvd and use the tablet; which has a couple of educational games on it, as well angry birds.  He will play angry birds for a bit, and then the educational games.  Laptop time is severely limited because of course I use it, and evening time is when I use it most.

However, as he's so keen on reading and writing and has asked a few times this past week to do reading eggs, I've cleared my desk in my bedroom so Rye can sit up there, (also means laptop stays upstairs..I've had it downstairs a few days and spent far more time online that I would normally!).  I am not happy with him spending hours and hours though.  So I've decided the plan is to set an alarm for 45 min, with a maximum of two 45 mins sessions a day, (and not consectively).

But anyway, as Rye decided to do reading eggs, it meant the plan to give him the Snowman book & cd has been postponed.   

And now I really must get off the computer and get on with Day 14.
Have a super day, whatever you have planned or not planned :-)