Planning Rocks!!

Just before the half term I sat down with our Galloping the Globe, (Geography), Story of the World (history) and Exploring Creation through Astronomy (Science) curriculums and planned about 4 weeks worth - and this last week we actually managed to cover all the subjects - I rarely manage to do ALL these subjects in one week - and I have to admit it was all down to the planning - I had a sheet to look at each day to see what we were doing and so we achieved it!

I'm all for "unschooling" or "autonomous learning" or whatever you want to name it and I know an awful lot of learning happens without us actually planning and structuring it but I feel it's important (for us) to cover these subjects - if any of the children take a paticular interest in something then they will be free to explore it further and this does sometimes happen - but if they are never exposed to these new things/new subjects how will they get an interest in it?

I've long given up trying to do in depth studies with the children about any subject as they do generally lose interest - I think I've finally come to realise that it is absolutely fine to just skim the surface - and it's surprising just what they do remember!

Ever since we began "officially" home educating I would end up frustrated and feeling that we were not covering enough and then just "give up" so we would end up doing nothing (other than maths and reading and the occasional special interest) but once I grasped that it was ok to only skim the surface, for example in galloping the globe - it was fine to look for the country on a globe colour a flag in and discuss what animals originate from there, it helped me feel like we had achieved something!

I am learning so much on my journey as a mother and a home educator, it definately makes my life a richer experience!

And here's just three of my beautiful loving girls :-)