Autumn Break

It has become a family tradition to take a short holiday in the Autumn. There are a few reasons for this chief among these is simply because as a home educating family we can. These brief excursions have helped me to appreciate the beauty of this season – a chance to slow down and just 'be' with the children.

This year we chose to do a Feather Down Farm Break at Hollings Hill Farm in Herefordshire. We all had a lovely time –the days were quite idyllic but its a pity we can't say the same about the nights. Bill finds the first night in a strange place difficult and did the usual screaming thing (somehow everyone but me slept through this part). After some soothing cuddles I finally persuaded him to go back to bed only to be startled by one of the farm cats who had by this time found the vacated warm spot. Needless to say Bill would not get back in the bed and the cat would not leave the tent so Daddy got to spend the night in Bill's bed with the cat for company. The other three nights were much the same but without the cat.

Our tent, with the wood burner glowing in the dusk

Reading the Hobbit, all toasty by the fire

The kids made friends with the ponies in the next field. This one was particularly soppy!

Slow cooked stew - on an open fire like a cowboy. Meat was bit tough though!

More food! Bread baked in an old-fashioned outside wood oven. Exciting AND tasty.

Following a visit to Hampton Court Castle, Bill spends the afternoon defending our 'realm'.

The aforementioned Hampton Court Castle (photo by Sarah); not to be confused with the (later) Hampton Court Palace in London.

... and we're off! (part 2)

Sarah was not at all keen to start a new term as she very much enjoyed doing 'nothing' which seemed to involve reading piles of books and listening to music. Once we got underway she blossomed into the bright engaged child that we know and love. For Sarah the 3Rs are a trial, not because its too hard but that they take time away from the more creative side of learning. In maths she is using 'Life of Fred ' curriculum which teaches maths through the life story of a 5 year old maths teacher and does not contain pages and pages of problems so has lessened the maths drama a little. She continues to write enormous amounts of fiction and is currently working on a piece for the Usborne Young Writers Competition. Her main lesson block has been on the Age of Exploration and she has engaged better than I expected as she did threaten to revolt if we ever read about Columbus again – thankfully he only put in a brief appearance .We had intended to begin her second block 'Astronomy' but she has felt so awful this past week that we didn't get much done at all.

Bill is still living life at a hundred miles an hour. He goes to playgroup three mornings a week and really enjoys his time there. He rarely tells what they've been doing but judging by the amount of glue and paint he wears home they must be doing plenty of crafting . He is such a outdoor boy that he spends much of his time in the playgroup garden and in ours.When not out doors he can be found playing with his playmobil ark and camper van. In September we celebrated, with much ice-cream, his 'forever family day' - the day he came to be with us, his forever family. Other things we've done this month included going to the wedding of a dear friend we couldn't be more pleased for him. This was also the month of our church weekend away which the whole family thoroughly enjoyed and could make a whole post on its own. We made Dragon Bread for the first in honour of Michaelmas – I think they did a terrific job although Sarah's did look like a very cute guinea pig pretending to be a dragon.

... and we're off! (part 1)

I can't believe we are now in October; September seems to have flown by and I haven't got round to my second post. I think I'll just jump straight into what we've been up to in our little hole here in the shire. September is the start of more structured learning for us ( children learn all the time don't you know) and all went swimmingly for about 2.5 weeks with the owlets being enthusiastic little superstars. Then the Great British Cold virus struck and we've all felt pretty rotten for almost a fortnight.

Percy is doing well with the basics (3Rs and all that) and I won't bore you with details of maths and grammar lessons. His first main lesson block has been on building and practical projects which he has enjoyed very much, what 9 year old boy wouldn't love setting up a workshop and being let loose with saw and hammer? We started by clearing out the top shed and making it into a workshop for carpentry projects (may double as a chemistry lab for Sarah latter in the year but Percy is guarding it with his life at moment – it's become his cave). He spent some time practicing with the new tools and constructed a toolbox. He is now planning on making a tug boat and a pair of stilts over the coming months so more on that later. We also began building a model house with cutest wee bricks but lack of time and illness have made it a work in progress.We will be continuing in this constructing vein over the year. His second block is on the practical aspects of maths and our focus this week has been on linear measurement. We have discussed how you can measure with any unit as long as it's consistent and Percy decided to measure himself in Wowies (his cuddly dog that's been with him since birth) and discovered he is 3 wowies and 1 wowie leg tall. We did also use the more conventional metric and imperial measures!

Brevity is not my gift, so Sarah and Bill will appear later this week!

Why Blog?

"Why on earth do I want to write a blog?" I have asked myself whilst deciding to start this or not. "Why would anyone want to read my thoughts on family and life as a home-educating mother?"

This month is the start of our seventh year on this journey of home educating (still not used to the usual skepticism and disbelief though!), and this is party in 'in-house' thing to keep in touch with good friends around the world and far-flung family. There are people we love as far afield as Seattle, Washington and Johannesburg, South Africa (Ben, Amanda, Meggie and Dan - you know who you are!! ... oh and not not forgetting Grandad and Nana in Winchester).

I'll probably start with some chat about what our plans are this year, with some nice pictures of our summer and time this autumn.

Hope you all enjoy it and look forward to sharing our adventures and times of discovery with you.