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.

More snow.

Yup, we've been graced with more snow - much to my surprise as most of yesterday it was very wet sleet; but towards the evening it turned to snow and by 9ish it was most definitely settling, much to the excitement of Rye.

So today has naturally involved lots of snow play - he's played in the back garden, jumping on the trampoline, riding his scooter in the snow; then he asked to play in the front garden and made a couple of wee snowmen.

 And naturally we had to go sledging.  Apart from another family, we were the only ones out.

 Rye made me laugh, as he rode the sled he shouted, "HO HO HO". 

Climbing back up the slope proved slippy work.


The snow caught me a bit unawares; the past week its been very cold sure, yet beautiful sunny days; that fools the unwary into thinking the warmth of spring has arrived and go out with only a cardy on.... brrrrrrrr.

 We've spent a fair bit of time at the park; Rye riding around, and playing on the various apparatus.  Often we are the only one's braving the cold weather.

 The sea gulls made me giggle; initially I thought they were cold; they were hopping from foot to foot; and then I realised that they were actually trying to get insects/worms to come to the surface so they could eat them.  The ingenuity of nature constantly amazes me.

There have been chats this week about what it means to be Pagan.  Until he chooses otherwise, if he chooses otherwise, I'm raising him Pagan.  So we've chatted about being pagan, our ethics, our responsibility for ourselves, the earth and each other.  I teased him and told him that we could fly - and we can.... in our minds.  Naturally he wants to try - I'll take him on a journey; learning to quiet his mind will be good for my boy - his mind is so often a whirling tornado of thoughts.   Celebrating the festivals with him is that little bit more exciting tis year too; he's that bit older, bit more attention, bit more able to understand, participate.  Wonderful stuff. 

And well, naturally all that talk of flying was bound to end up in his play:

"Look mum, I'm Iron man and I can FLY".

Exciting Times.

Really enjoying the local home educator group.  Sure, our plans do not always pan out.  Today was suppose to be our sand castel competition; alas the weather did not look promising so we cancelled - come 4pm the weather was beautiful, typical eh.   Still we met up at one of the parent's home and the kids had a ball, I sat and enjoyed an hour or so of crochet and natter and it was very relaxed and pleasant. 

Oooh and much to my excitement I think we will be going back to Thursdays as home ed day - which is perfect for me as that's my day off!

On a different tangent, I've started a meal replacement diet for a few weeks, just to get my head into loosing weight mode.  I'm only replacing a couple of meals, and eating one meal, be it lunch or tea depending on which is easier that day - and I'll snack on fruit/veg when hungry.  I've been trying to do this with homemade soup for ages but not getting anywhere (not in the sense of not loosing weight - just I'm eating the soup plus everything else lol), so I thought actually paying the eye watering prices of a meal replacement shake will hopefully give me the kick up the bum I need - plus, I'm going camping in Scotland for Beltane this year, I think a couple of stone removed would make that experience far more pleasant!  Not to mention the car journey up to Scotland - I'm doing the driving and I know I will be in agony if I don't loose a few stones.

Oooh and then the end of May it's the Green Parent Forum get together in the Forest of Dean, so looking forward to that, a few days at home, then a day trip to Haslemere for a nurtured earth event, whcih coincides with my birthday.    

Social days, busy days, but gosh so much fun and Rye is so coming out of himself - today even with C present he played lovely with some of the other kids.   Marvellous. Oooh and no backward hugging etc; about the only thing he did really, is he shut the door on C.  Our host had words with him and, unlike if I'd spoken to him, he didn't do it again :-)  Gotta love having a community around that helps with these things!

**smile**  He did fall asleep at 6pm again this evening, but he's awake now and I can hear him chattering to himself and singing.  LOL I can hear him saying to himself, "When mummy comes out of her bedroom, I'll talk at her."  bless him.  I'm guessing that "talk" will be in the realms of coming into my room.... how long can I hold out for the loo?  ;-)

Muffin Marathon.

Yesterday Rye and I made around 40 + muffins, mostly blackberry from a pile picked by a friend's kids.  I also made some blueberry ones before the berries in the fridge went manky.  Rye enjoyed helping:

He particularly likes licking out the bowl at the end ;-)

Blueberry muffins.

Blackberry muffins.

More blackberry muffins...

And just  few more.

We then spent a lovely evening at my friends house.  Rye played with her kids, we chatted and gosh it was most pleasant.  There's stitch and bitch group in Folkestone that meet on a Wednesday evening so I'm going to try and arrange it so I can go maybe once a month with my friend . 
By the time we arrived home, Rye was rather tired, he zonked on the sofa and when I decided to go to bed, he refused to get up.  Sadly, because of the pain in my knees I cannot carry Rye up the stairs, so I covered him with blankets and came up to bed.  He decided to join me at 2am this morning.

This morning has been busy.  The kids played, had snacks and I put on a load of washing, pootled around, getting things ready for us to go out.  About 10ish, we left the house, walked down into the village to go to the post office, then the chemist becuase I've scratched under my arm, must be in my sleep, and made a horrible mess, that has gone very yucky - 'cep I'd not noticed until I tried to put on deodrant this morning - OW!  It really looks like thrush infected nappy rash, so I tried initially some lavender oil.  OMG bad move, stung the bejeebers out of me and had me quickly washing it off.  So, while in the post office, which is also the chemist, I asked what I could use and was given a thrush cream.  Then onto the bank, library to drop of the dvd we borrowed, and finally the Co-op or a few bits I needed. 

Then the part of the morning the kids were most looking forward to the picnic in the park followed by playing on the equipment.

They had a grand time.

King of the world!  The king unfortunately had a crisis of confidence and began to get a bit hysterical, saying he couldn't get down.  I kept very calm, telling him how much confidence I had in him, and gently talked him down, suggesting where he put his feet etc.  Of course, soon as his feet were on the ground, he wanted to climb back up again, lol.    A mummy friend just happened to be at the park at the same time, so we chatted while the kids played - all very lovely.

On arriving home missus went straight to bed, and was asleep within minutes.  And Rye asked if he could play with the playdough set he won at missus' party on Saturday.  I had planned to replace the commerical dough with homemade; not had chance though, and to be fair he is having a ball playing with the stuff and at least he's past the age where he'll try to eat it.  

And now, well I'll pop on the chicken tikka curry we're having for tea, quick sweep around and then I'll get missus up.  My friend said she'd pop up after her work at around 4pmish.. so yeah, time to get a move on again :-)