Bonfire Night Festivities

We celebrated bonfire night in style this year - with a whole weekend of fun and fellowship.

We also started making a display, as we learnt about Guy Fawkes and made rockets and coloured pictures to go on our kitchen wall

Friday night we had our own bonfire with some family, sharing mushy peas, hot dogs, bonfire toffee, parkin, cupcakes, cheesecake and hot chocolate - a fair feast for all!

Building the bonfire

Staying warm with the little ones inside

Some of the yummy food on offer

Children playing then time for sparklers

Abigails first sparkler :-)

It was a fun night, and I used mostly disposable items so that there wasn't much clearing up to be done at the end of the day. The fire burned well and hubby ended up staying up until 2am checking on it - the next morning it was still hot and had some flames!!

Saturday night we were off to some good friends of ours for fireworks, fun and fellowship. It was so lovely to meet up with them all and the children had so much fun seeing each other - I am so grateful for the godly families God has brought into our lives over the last few years that my children have chance to have likeminded friends and peers to grow up with. I did get some pics but haven't managed to download them yet!

The only downside to the whole weekend was me dropping my blackberry down the toilet!!! So although I have a new one coming tomorrow I have lost all contacts, calendar information etc so will have to start again.

10 reasons we love home education

I thought I would write a small post on why we love home education so much. We realise it's not for everyone and we're so grateful that we are able to keep our children with us all day - here are just some of the reasons (I'm sure I could find a LOT more) they are in no particular order just some thoughts


1. No rushing around in the morning for the "school rush"

2. Holidays whenever it suits our family and budget

3. Our children get to learn at their own individual paces, in their own styles.

4. We can make our learning relevant to everyday life - for example we're learning about canals as we are going on a canal boat daytrip soon

 5. No bullying to deal with (well not outside the family ;-)

6. We get to see character issues as and when they happen and deal with them quickly.

7. I get to learn alongside my children - and I'm learning a lot more than I did at school!!!

8. Our children are used to being around each other the majority of the time - there's no adjustments for school holidays etc

9. Our children are happy to play together - there's no age segregation (too cool to play with little ones etc) 

10. We can school year round if we desire, no long breaks during which our children may forget some of what they learned.

Well there you have it a few reasons why we've chosen home education, there are many more and it is one of my favourite subjects :-) I'm always happy to talk about it.

Treasure Baskets

I was inspired by a post over at imagination tree, and a couple of weeks ago we had our first "treasure basket" session.

I filled a basket (plastic as I didn't have any money for "nice baskets" lol, with different materials, some paper, some netting, some knitted gloves, brown paper and ribbon and let Abigail loose - as you can see from the pictures she thouroughly enjoyed it!

Educational Activity for all!

Do you want to know our favourite activity? The one that all ages - from Abigail (1) to Bethany (9) all enjoy and do together?

It is - a lacing activity - not just any lacing activity - to make it really special we use edible (mainly) materials - strawberry laces for the string and often cereal hoops to lace - we also put pasta on this time.

They all absolutely loved it - the "creative" ones made bracelets and necklaces and the younger ones benefitted from the co ordination skills this helps develop

Here's some pictures of the children enjoying themselves lacing.

Home Educating with toddlers/preschoolers

There are many, many articles out there about coping with toddlers while home educating, and I have read and utilised a lot of them.

The main thing I have learned, both from reading and my own experience is that every family is different! So the first thing you need to keep in mind while trying to work out your own journey is that what works for another family may not work for you - but it may give you ideas that you can "tweak"

We are very relaxed with our home education, we don't do a lot of structure but neither are we totally autonomous (well not most days) we like to cover topics that interest us and our main aim is that our children grow up with good character, knowing and loving Jesus.

We have been using Heart of Dakota - little hands to heaven with our 3 and 4 year old (even the older ones join in) and we love it, we just do from it what we feel fits and although it is "scheduled" for half an hour every week day we don't always manage to fit it in, for example if the little ones are happily occupied with imaginative play or if baby is fussing a lot then we don't do it. I find that if I try to force it too much then it becomes a burden and does not encourage my little ones to have a love of learning.

And while the older two are busy with their school work, I either find a relevant thing for the little ones, or bring out the tots trays.

There is no "magic formula" or special way of home educating with little ones but I find the best way for us is to involve the whole family!

Learning in Small Chunks

I feel like I'm learning a lot this year -  from being more organised, decluttering, learning to stay on top of the housework to home educating the children, and being a better wife! Not to say I have it all sussed now - it is very much a journey and the more I read about others the more I realise that actually no one has it completely sussed, they just find what works for them but there are times that we all get overwhelmed and struggle no matter how many children we have, or what our lifestyle is like.

I have always been very relaxed in our schooling, believing very much in the better late than early theory and that children learn more through play, we also made some mistakes early on which I believe has led to my older children being more reluctant to learn though my eldest (nearly 9) has started showing a real interest and desire to learn, we are slowly getting there with the reading and I'm managing to fit in the "extra" subjects these days - since I started planning. We haven't stuck to it rigidly, for example instead of carrying on learning about Australia in Geography we learnt a bit about Japan and earthquakes, as it was all over the news, and one day last week my son was ill so we didn't do school that day we did it the next (I have 2 days which I don't plan extra subjects allowing for library and free time)

The biggest thing I am learning with regards to home educating is that small is better than big - it's fine to only read a small bit of the book we are learning from but doing a small bit every week we will get through and it's better than doing none at all!

We've also progressed onto the next hooked on phonics with my son, I am going to teach my eldest the phonics rules as in Ruth Beechick's book The three R's and was going to do the same with my son but he wanted to do hooked on phonics so we started that yesterday.

I'm also reading Managers of their chores by the Maxwells and can't wait to start planning my master chore list and make chore packs for the children, I think it will help with the housework and character building - for them and me!

Flat Travellers Fun

We are taking part in our first ever "flat traveller" swap - we made a lovely sparkly swan, which Bethany name "Sparkles"

We sent her off to Ohio, then patiently waited to recieve Flat Nolan and Flat Claudia

The three eldest were very excited. We were thrilled that they arrived today as we were going out - Bethany took Flat Claudia to her dancing lesson (where she does ballet and tap) and then after dinner we took them both to Tapton Lock

where we visited the visitor centre, and had a little walk along the canal, spotting ducks and looking for fish

We then drove to the Stavely Stretch of the canal - at the present time there is a 9 mile gap where the canal does not meet up, but they are trying to close it.

It is very pretty at Stavely - though there were no locks, there were people fishing, and running adjacent to the canal was a river with a little waterfall

We also found out some very interesting information about the history of the canal - and in paticular how they used to clean babies!!!!

Seriously worth reading if you can - just for the :-0 factor!!

Finally, we decided to take the children and their flat travelling friends to Poolsbrook Country Park - we haven't been for a while and we were absolutely delighted to find they have added to the park and there was a lot more equipment to play on

It was a great afternoon out - made even more special by our "flat travelling" friends, when we arrived home (well we went to Grandad's as he had taken us out) Flat Nolan and Flat Claudia got to watch Grandad making his tasty pancakes

All are in bed asleep now, after such an exciting day and we can't wait to see what adventures we will have tomorrow!!!

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 :-)

Sewing Projects

My eldest daughter wants to be a fashion designer and has for the last few years, she is excellent in drawing and designing and most definately excels creatively rather than academically.

I believe in encouraging our children in what interests them and to be a designer she really needs to learn to sew, we've done a few bits but through one of the email lists I discovered a lady who was holding a sewing day for beginners at her house so I booked Bethany up to go and asked my Mum if she could have the other children (which she said yes) but then I got ill :-( so poor Daddy had to go instead - we are very blessed that he is self employed and often has the flexibility to be available if needed.

She absolutely loved it and learnt a lot I think.

I believe that a sewing machine may be on the agenda for her next birthday - as long as I can use it too! We do have a mini type one we picked up for £20 from Netto's a couple of years ago so we have something to be starting with but a full size one would be great!

Here is the skirt she came back with - made out of a bed sheet!!! I am so very impressed and know that this is one area we really need to encourage and support her in, just gotta try and get the balance between pushing too hard and encouraging her to persevere!

Autonomous January

Its' been difficult to get back into the swing of things since Chrsitmas! We had the LEA visit, and I'm trying to declutter the house and get it back into order as I was feeling stressed in every room, we've also helped my friend move and had to "bury" a hamster (which we'd only had a few months)
So I've been letting the children follow their own interests, I haven't got the school books out much - just a couple of times but I'm wanting to spark that love of learning back as the flames seem to be just flickering a little at the moment.
I've also had my confidence boosted with a great report from the LEA and I'm feeling quite relaxed - my children are enjoying reading, and rather than force it I am just taking every opportunity - if they pick up a book then I find time to help them read it, so much more fun and enjoyable than trying to sit down and make them read!!
Even my 4 year old was looking for words in a book earlier today (peppa pig though it may have been lol) - I have a feeling she will be an earlier developer than my older 2!

Here are some pics from our "autonomous" learning during January

We've done baking and cooking

We've played games

We've worked on the computer

We've been sewing

We've been out and about (a little) to the pond and to the library

We've also done a lot of dancing, and making dens and making up stories and shows that I haven't got pics of - I think my children are far more "creative" than "academic"

so all in all though we haven't done much in the way of book work we've done lots of hands on activities and I truly believe children learn so much more through play and conversation than through reading "dry text books" and forcing them to write pointless information!

LEA Visit

Thank you so much for your support and prayers - is it very strange of me to say that I actually enjoyed the LEA visit? (Well apart from 2 children fighting over the computer near the end but....) 

I think he was very impressed at just how prepared we were (thank you to all the wonderful people who gave me ideas and advice, Deedee, Sylvia to name a couple) and grateful for the lists/information I'd printed out for him to take away to help him with his report.

We had put all our books out on the table - my lovely Mum let me use her house for the visit as it is much easier being bigger and she was going to keep the little ones in the living room while we were in the dining room - though they were far too interested (nosey) in what was happening to stay in another room lol.
We also put a slideshow of photos on my laptop of activities done over the last year and had some of the childrens work out for him to look at.

I was happy to find out that he really seemed to understand home education and appreciated the opportunities home educated children get and could have spent all afternoon chatting about education etc, my 4 year old wanted to read to him (well in her own way) and my eldest was happy to talk to him about fashion (her favourite subject) and answer his questions - my 7yo son was a bit shy and just stayed glued to computer most of the time but at least that showed his IT skills lol.
He was very careful not to be asking the children so much as me but I was quite happy for them to answer his questions rather than me if they were happy to do so as I thought it was a good opportunity for them.

All in all it was a pleasurable experience and encouraged me that we do actually get quite a lot of learning done (sometimes I admit I do wonder lol) and he was perfectly happy - I'm looking forward to reading his reports. 

Now to get some more of the "books" done before he visits next year lol ..................

New Date For LEA

Lovely Christmas present haha - the first day we get post after Christmas and there is a lovely letter for me with a new date for our lea visit - 17th January!

I'm not overly worried, just sometimes I think about getting everything ready and think I just don't have the energy to really get it all sorted but we have a couple of weeks! And even if I just get our curriculum books together to show what we do then it should be ok. I've already written a list of topics we have covered and prepared a slideshow of photos - I'm just gonna get the children to choose a book to read to the inspector and hopefully that will be enough!

On the plus side being known to the LEA has had some advantages already - my 4 year old was sent a book start pack and we have had a letter telling us about a special home ed event at a science museum!

I will keep you posted!!

Making our gingerbread house

I think for this paticular post we won't need many words - just watch the story unfold hehe.

Please note I do not feel that I am paticularly creative - we've been putting off making this gingerbread house as I wasn't sure what to do but it was sooo much fun I would encourage anyone to have a go!

We gave the little ones a bit of their own to "decorate"

looking good!!!

Starts with a hole in the roof!

Oh no the house is collapsing

And the moral of the story - build your house upon the rock :-) - or make sure your walls are stuck properly lol