Day 5

Today's going to be one of those days that you move on from and hope to learn from mistakes made!  Not one of our best!

After 5 days it is quite clear that whole mornings spent sitting at a desk is a bad move!  S hates writing!  He is a hands on learner (I'm sure there is some sort of educational jargon for that!) and to sit still with a pencil in hand and paper on the desk is asking a huge amount!  I'm realising now how different one-to-one teaching is compared to a whole class situation.  In a classroom the pupils on the whole learn to conform to the group.  If the task is not done in their learning style whilst very dull it is accepted and the task is completed.  On a one-to-one basis though it is so much more apparent when something quite simply is not going to work and where the motivation is struggling!  S will have to do tasks that involve him sitting concentrating for long spells but at this early stage I am so aware of the need to try and keep things positive and to foster a positive learning environment between him and myself and I really don't want him scunnered!

I'm also beginning to learn just where he is in terms of his abilities.  As a parent you place a massive amount of trust on what the school tells you.  In the main most of us parents don't really have to question too much the levels which the children are working at because there is an element of trust that the teachers do know best and that they will be working to push your child on.  I am quickly finding gaps in S's understanding of topics and realising that a fair bit of revision is needed before we can introduce new topics.  S is swaying from being bored with too easy work to being frustrated if he makes any mistakes.  A balance is proving difficult to find!  Tomorrow I'm going to do a math's assessment with him (on the computer) to find out just exactly what we should be looking at. 

The balance between mum and teacher was hard today.  I was becoming increasingly frustrated with S when he was not in the mood to give his best.  I so much don't want to be shouting at him and be frustrated at him.  During his spelling work today I had to leave the room!  I think he realised that I was frustrated as he quickly did try to finish the task and seemed to settle down!   Hopefully as I find the right level of work for him and work out a balance of types of activity then he will settle down.

After an emotion filled weekend for me and S I think both of us are now tired and beginning to settle down into this new life.  Whilst today has been a hard day for us both in terms of learning I am already seeing a calmer child emerge.  We had another of the girls off school today.  That's both the twins now been off.  To be honest I am convinced in both cases they were wanting to find out exactly what was going on at home!  Having done that now I hope they will settle down back at school.  Their homework alone took 45 minutes (between the 2) so I was telling them that that is their home schooling bit!!!

Anyway, the computer has been on again for most of another night.  I am really hoping that tomorrow I can try to have things all sorted and to take the evening off! 

S's take on week 1.

I found it quite hard.  Science. I have to do science every Tuesday.  I liked the trip to Amazonea.  I loved the bit where I got to touch a frog.  I liked looking at the ants and looking at the tadpoles. 
I liked the Mr Flinch book.  I liked cooking frog biscuits.  I got to stick the frog cutters in the dough I learnt how to make.  I liked going on the computer. 

Freedom!

I can't actually believe it's only been 4 days since we started home schooling!  This has been a long week!

Today S and I had a great day!  We did click'n'kids, reading, spelling and maths (quickly becoming our morning routine) and then headed out!  We both so much appreciated getting out and about and the sunshine added to our moods and the whole excitement! 

We went to Amazonia today in Strathclyde Country Park.  It is meant to be Scotland's largest (or only - I can't remember) indoor rainforest and has a great number of animals/insects to look at.  I found a Tesco Days out token which expires on Monday so decided it would be perfect to tie in on our project on frogs! I took all 4 kids last summer and we had fun there although zoomed round it then. Today we stayed for nearly 2 hours and listened to talks, handled a snake, frog and millipede (well S did - there is absolutely no chance I would!!), took part in an interactive display on the rainforest and looked around all the enclosures.  S was great!  He asked appropriate questions and took an interest in it all.  It was so quiet and reminded me very quickly of one of the major benefits of home schooling.  For a child like S who struggles with big groups and noisy places this was just perfect.  It was quiet and our group for the animal handling was just 4!  Nobody else to feel embarrassed in front, nobody else to compete with, nobody else to feel intimidated by just us and some tourists!  It was such a good day!  Definitely a "high" in the parenting and home school stakes.

After school I was all ready to put my feet up for a little while!  Without going into all the details we ended up having a major craft session, tea and then an ad hoc Halloween party (I HATE Halloween but then that is a whole different topic in itself!!) followed by a movie!  My feet are now up but my eyes are struggling to stay open!

The day was not all highs and we had a good share of lows.  I would share these but to be honest for S's sake I think I will keep these just between us! 

I am glad we have got to the end of the first week of home schooling.  I was worried that by this stage I would have been having major regrets!  I was worried that I would have been losing the plot!  I was intrigued as to how being mum and teacher would work!  I am realising that actually in so many ways informal education is happening all the time!  Tomorrow I am going to Edinburgh on my own for the day.  I am so looking forward to getting away and the trip couldn't have come at a better time!  I am also looking forward to all that next week holds too.  There are definitely things we need to look at.  Socially we really need to try to find ways for S to mix with other people his own age and both S and I agreed that we need to make a bigger effort to getting out and about.  Next week we are going on another trip this time with other home schooled families from the region and we are both really looking forward to that!

For now though our school working week is over and I can be pure mummy for the next couple of days!

Day 3 - A New Dimension

I think we must be trying to cram in every new challenge into the first week.  Last night one of the twins was up twice with sore head, back and tummy.  My first real challenge was upon us - how to home school with a sick child.  Not being used to broken nights (it's so good to be able to say that!) I lay awake for hours after being up working out in my head how the day ahead was going to work.  M was tired not surprisingly when we all got up and I agreed to keep her off.  Once the other 2 were out to school it quickly became very evident that M was really fine!  Her request for snack at 9:10 am followed by a request for lunch at 10:00 betrayed her wellbeing!! Whilst delighted that we didn't have he onset of some horrible but it made things a lot more tricky to have a tired but well 5 year old competing for my attention with S!  How mummies home school with babies or toddlers in tow I have no idea - major respect!

My time with S went really well today on the whole.  It's becoming very clear now the tricks used by S to avoid work that he finds difficult.  Now I'm beginnning to see a pattern in this I will hopefully become more patient with him and we can take the stress out of things a bit more.  Language barriers are massive with a lot of the work and an area that I don't feel I have a huge amount of expertise.  Having said that when S has success it is so rewarding!  He is loving the reading book and we are having lots of fun discussing what might happen next.  I feel like I'm getting a good grasp on simple fractions - hopefully S is too!!  We attempted doing some baking today which was not a great success.  Although we did produce a final product which was edible I'm not sure that I've got a mini Jamie Oliver in the making!  His stamina for seeing it through to the end was very dubious and my patience was running thin by that stage!  Again though we persevered!  S lost his smiley face (he's given one for every task he completes well.  When he reaches 30 he will receive a "reward") which was a huge deal for him but hopefully a lesson learnt!

I am very very tired!  We didn't manage to get out today apart from our walk to school.  Having M at home complicated it all a bit more.  I made it to our Tweenagers (primary school group at church) tonight but feel already like I've been starved of adult company!  Tomorrow we are both very excited as we are going to go to Amazonia at Strathclyde Country Park.  S's project on frogs is perfect for this trip so we're going to use up a Tesco Days Out token to get us both in for free!  I think the change of scenery will do us both good and this is afterall meant to be one of the benefits of home schooling.

Word is definitely getting out about what we are doing.  At Tweenagers the kids are beginning to ask what we are doing.  The kids are all very positive about it which is lovely.  Tonight to be honest I'm not feeling particularly excited about it all - just tired and the responsibility of what we've taken on is really beginning to sink in.  With lots of other things going on in our family just now my head feels very very full and I am looking forward to this initial settling in period finishing!  Any regrets - none at all! 

Day 2 - Reality check no.1!

If day 1 was fantastic day 2 was a real reality check! 

Breakfast was a nightmare!  One of the other kids got to the Sugar Puffs first so S had a meltdown!  So a time out was issued and eventually complied with!  Now normally on a school day, we would deal with this, move on and then eventually I would sigh a huge sigh of relief to get them all packed off to school and enjoy the peace for a while.  This morning though I felt a real sense of doom that this was the mood being set for a morning's work!

Today was hard work!  We did get a lot done but S was definitely wanted to push the boundaries and to determine just who was in charge for the day!  His desire to get all his smiley faces for his task was big but he didn't seem to realise that he had to put in the effort in the tasks to get them in the first place!  We still managed all that I'd planned to do and more which I feel is quite a major achievement bearing in mind the attitude that went into the day!  We did have to finish the session with a wee chat about who actually is the boss in this situation.  This is a real steep learning curve for both of us!  S announced that he didn't realise home school teachers were strict!  For me the blend of mum and teacher is a hard one to do and I don't want to have to nag him all the time!

Despite all of that there were plenty glimmers of just how fab home schooling can be.  S's reading comprehension today was about apples and how apple orchards are dealt with.  I remembered half way through that there is an apple tree at the end of our garden.  Admittedly it is not a very impressive one (our last house had 3 trees laden with apples every year) but it has produced a wee crop of apples this year.  So, after we'd read the passage and answered the questions I took S outside and we picked some apples, discussed the tree and what stage it was at, took some photos of the apples and then came back inside and worked on our fractions using the apples we'd just picked!  How's that for cross-curricular teaching!!  Another lovely time was tonight.  S's topic is frogs!  He LOVES frogs!  Today as part of our topic work we watched a dvd about "friends and foes" in the frog world.  S watched a cobra snake eat a frog and a water scorpion catch a tadpole.  He loved this and was so excited to tell his brother and sisters all about it later on over tea.  So, tonight just before bed we all sat down to watch this part of the documentary again.  They all loved it so much that we sat watching more!  I never really imagined my 4 very active kids sitting watching a nature documentary at bedtime!! 

So it's been a very mixed day.  Planning is taking me ages just now.  Each day brings lots of ideas for me to work on and seeing how S learns and how I teach (particulary new things like "fractions"!!) leads me to need to work out just exactly what I am doing the next day in detail.  I am learning I need to be much more organised.  Tomorrow we will need to get out.  I could see how in home schooling you could feel completely caged in very quickly so must sort that quickly!  Thankfully the kids have been really good at helping to keep the house tidy.  "Mummy dustbin" now comes to our house every evening and puts anything and everything that is on the floor that shouldn't be in the bin!  "Mummy dustbin" has definitely helped my sanity as the kids are taking her very seriously (finally!!!!).  Long may that continue!

Right - I think that is enough for now!  I'm not intending all my posts to be long.  But I suppose at this beginning phase there is lots to write about!  Any advice would be so welcomed!!

Day 1

My husband and I have pondered over the whole subject of home schooling for years now.  With our eldest child now 10 and our baby twins now 5 we have had many opportunites to see the highs and lows of school.  We've seen many times where the kids can thrive and we've seen times where school is quite simply one of the hardest places to be! 

This summer we took the decision to take one of our children out of mainstream schooling and to teach him at home.  I am a qualified teacher but am qualified to teach Religious and Moral Education to secondary school pupils!  Quite a different area from primary 4!  However, surely the skills of teaching are the same across the board.  The knowledge base is different but I am motivated!  I want to give my son the best education that I can and am determined to put in the effort that I need to!  I have spent the last 9 weeks reading, researching, speaking to teachers and other home schoolers and preparing and planning for what lies ahead.

So today arrived!  Over 10 years after I left the classroom I returned to a somewhat different classroom situation.  Actually I feel very privileged!  What better pupil could I ask for but my own son!  My nerves and apprehension seems totally ridiculous when faced with his excited little face sitting at the desk! 

For the last few years S (I'm going to keep certain details private for his sake) has hated going to school.  Getting dressed in the morning has been a battle in itself.  This morning though, S was dressed and ready to go before I was even out of bed!  This motivation continued all morning.  We tackled so much - reading, spelling, atlas work, maths and science.  S learnt today new words - "neighbour", North, South, East and West, the meaning of an acid and the names of scientific equipment, fractions (although that's going to need a bit more work!!!!) and what an atlas is.  That was just our mornings work!

I'm going to keep this blog for many reasons.  There are so many folks who have followed S since he was born and prayed for him for years.  That concern has been so much appreciated by all of us in the family.  There will be things I won't share in the blog about him that I feel are for him to share himself or for us to share in a more personal setting - but I thought it might give folks an insight into what we are doing.  I don't know many people who home school.  I'm hoping that will change.  Maybe if you are reading this you think what we are doing is completely bonkers.  Maybe you'd like to do it yourself and are reading this to see how we get on!  Whatever the reason, I think that diaries + blogs are great things to get thoughts down and to share to improve situations. 

I hope I can keep this blog up.  I'm not going to write every little detail down and it might be that life might get so frantic during the days that the last thing I can face is the computer to blog but hopefully it will track our path through this new adventure!

So, on this the night of my birthday and the start of a new year for me in so many ways I will sign out!