A Learning Experience to Remember: August 2021-August 2022

It was 8am when the theme was chosen for the day. Cakes.  Kira helped me measure out the ingredients, mixed the batter and spooned it into cases, having correctly answered a quiz on its ingredients and making process, from mixing the batter to icing the finished product.  Later in the afternoon we had an messy hour decorating the cupcakes with icing and food colouring whilst we chatted about buying and selling the cakes, practicing maths skills with money and change.  Interesting fact: Kira cannot do maths after eating icing. Sophia however remained very focused throughout the entire lesson. They finished the topic by drawing their best dessert and writing a short piece on cakes. 

Sophia chose to study about markets one day and the other two warmed up to the topic over the course of the day. We played and worked all day on this theme, beginning with all taking it in turns to read the designated book on the farmers market.  We had a morning of role play, where we set up a traditional market stall initially with a full range of farm produce set out on the table, courtesy of farmer Sophia, who also brought a cow to market, played magnificently by Kira who dressed the part. Alexander joined in, and a food market quickly merged with the farmers market.as he busily set up a pizza stall, and was preparing orders for everyone. Active role play commenced and hours flew by.  Along came a grumpy old lady (played magnificently by yours truly), very hard of hearing, who asked the farmer questions about everything under the sun about the produce and the cow who was inaccurately sat eating potato peeling crisps, mooing away on occasion.  This lady was very bad at...

A great way to engage a child is to ask them what do they want to learn about and basically make the leaning day up around their answer, incorporating the theme in amongst the transferable skills.  Sophia loved this idea and three days flew by with her choosing her theme in the morning and us working throughout the day on her chosen topic.  Sophia was so immersed in the learning environment she actually didn't realise she was learning. After a few intense learning days she asked me when she was going to stop playing around and get back to school lessons. She was astonished to recap and realise she has been practicing all her skills every single day whilst having a massive amount of fun.  Kira joined in sporadically with a few of the activities however it became obvious that our empirical little girl did not gain as much educational information in this format as her more creative sister. This is fair enough.  During these few days I did extra work with Kira one in one...

  'I'm not hungry for food Mummy, I'm hungry for learning'. This was uttered by my six year old as she laid curled up in my lap under a blanket.  Rewind six weeks previous and she had enjoyed a lovely week full of exciting social events, the likes she had not experienced since before the pandemic.  The children had visited local playgrounds, soft plays, trampoline bounce parks, arcades and the beach, rebounding with family and making new friends with the children from the local area. They had an amazing week.  This was to result in five weeks of severe illness for all the children and I did not feel brilliant either, thus Sophia lying in my arms as she was at this moment.  She was left incredibly tired by this illness, which continually tested negative for covid, despite having all of the current symptoms. Nevertheless she was still keen to work.  She had been watching YouTube food channels with her Dad, learning about cuts of meat, cooking techniques and g...

There are days when this is the only apt description of our home ed experience.  Join me as I recall a classic example.  To an outsider looking in, the scene in our kitchen this morning looked liked absolute chaos.  Three children in fancy dress were squealing, running round the kitchen, falling on the floor laughing, while I was tidying down the kitchen after breakfast....  They were playing 'Simon Says', which had initially kickstarted the breakfast quiz. Simon says, 'What is 9-3?', Xander unexpectedly answered first.  You've got to love Simon to help you out when your children are listlessly spreading themselves out across the table with their heads down, not wishing to engage in a curriculum knowledge quiz.  A successful quiz completed, the children were mentally warmed up and ready to go.  We went on to have a revision lesson on identifying materials for the girls and first time round for Xander, who picked it up very quickly.  Simon says fin...