Preschool at homeschool

 First of all, I know we don't really call it 'home school' here in the UK, but 'home education' didn't fit so well into my title, and I get it that people here will grumble about the difference so necessitating the long explanation of my snappy title.  Not sorry.

I see a lot of questions on forums along the lines of 'how do you home educate older children when you have younger ones demanding attention?'.  I guess the answer depends so much on the dynamic in your family, what each child is like in temperament and ability and so on, so there's no easy answer.  For me, I find doing as many things together as possible in a practical, hands on way that both boys can access is good with our small age gap.  However I do spend more time on sit-down activities now that Ollie is nearly six, and this is the time that could be difficult to manage with a younger brother home.

Fortunately, Toby is usually really happy to get on with his own things with a little help and guidance.  I set up a little table in the kitchen next to where I work with Ollie on the kitchen table.  Toby often asks for his puzzles out, and will patiently go through jigsaw after jigsaw.  Other times he will rush to join in and do the 'school books' that he asked for, which requires more input from me in reading tasks and helping him.  This is good in it's own way too though as it gives Ollie thinking time and opportunities to have a go at completing whole tasks himself - I'm encouraging him to work through things himself sequentially and check the answers together at the end, rather than pausing after each small thing and waiting for direction. 

When Toby has had enough of school books he might wander off to play, or will start another activity such as asking for his play dough, or paint box, or some cutting and sticking.  Today he wanted me to draw him some pumpkins to cut out, then stuck them on green paper.  He then used the scraps from cutting out the pumpkins to make more cut and stick pictures.  Having easy to access, easy to set up, easy to clean up materials is a sanity saver for this - watercolours instead of squeezy ready mix paints, glue stick instead of gloopy glue, paper and scraps ready to hand in a kitchen cupboard. 

Today Toby made four pictures, and after being suitably praised by Ollie and me and his favourite put up on the fridge, he decided it was time to crack on with some ironing.  He cleared his table (tipped it onto the floor, but hey ho), fetched his toy iron and brought items one by one from the airing rack in the living room.  After ironing a piece, he took it back to a laundry pile on the sofa and brought through another item.

By the time he had nearly finished his ironing Ollie was done with maths and phonics and we were ready to do a couple of pages from his science book.

 Most of our science is practical, but we do a bit from workbooks every so often to make sure we are covering school topics.  Ollie's flying through these, so although we're on 5 to 6 year old maths and phonics, his science book is 9+.  I asked Toby to come and help us, as even at the age the book is supposed to be for it's just basic stuff about adaptations and food chains that Toby does well with.  Toby said 'hang on, just finish this sock' and came to join us on working out which of a list of animals went with which of a list of adaptations.  I showed them pictures of what the animals looked like, but they were critical of the leaf frog having skin colour to match it's environment rather than the impala since, as they pointed out 'the frog in the picture was a different green to the leaf it was on, but the impala was better camouflaged against the dry grass'.  They were right, but I countered with a 'yes, but the statement says skin colour, not fur colour and I don't know what colour a shaved impala is and no I'm not going to look it up just right now'.  I'm trying not to raise smart arse kids, but at the same time I don't want to go down the road of 'that's the answer they're looking for in the book, therefore that's the only correct answer' which obliterates curiosity and independent thought.

Toby can join in with French too, and this was less controversial than the vagaries of the science book as we made plate pictures based on word list of foods they did with Madame on Monday.  Toby showed that he grasped the essentials by asking in French for a biscuit please, which makes me think he has heard Ollie asking this repeatedly at Madame's house.  He had a minor meltdown that I put the picture in his file the way up it needed to go, not the way he wanted it (despite it falling out of the plastic pocket when done his way), but was happy enough when he finally got his biscuit.

We watched the kids science show Toby wanted at lunchtime, and since this was based on nice explanations of gravity and a funny story about cheesy rock monsters living on the moon, we followed up with watching a tour around the International Space Station.  Toby was concerned they didn't have a proper kitchen (he loves cooking) but on the whole living in space was deemed to be 'cool' so the boys spent the next hour building a space station out of living room furniture and floating around it.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at Bodium Castle.  We usually do sit down work in the mornings now, and spend the afternoon out seeing friends, at gymnastics lessons, the new sports club we've set up, the beach, the woods, play parks, castles and so on.  Having memberships of NT, EH and the local aquarium is a mine of free afternoons out so long as I ignore the constant pestering for 'popping into the café for a nice cup of tea, or maybe a sandwich' (a polite request which made a lady we were walking past laugh out loud this afternoon).

Having time for sit down work with Ollie was the main concern I had when Toby decided he absolutely did not want to go to nursery any more, but actually it generally works out really well.  The kids see me and Matt studying, so for them it seems a natural thing to do, and by interspersing lots of short, partly self-directed activities we don't have too many head aches.  I gave up on them doing separate projects that they had chosen as wrenching my head between Vikings and Dinosaurs in things they both wanted a lot of my assistance in was tough, but they both enjoy working on the projects together so it's been a good decision.

I don't know what people do with bigger age gaps, but home educators (and parents in general) are nothing if not resourceful.  As to when do we get any housework done, well the house frankly isn't going to show up in Ideal Home magazine, but I fit stuff in between activities, it's mostly clean and very comfortable, and one of the most important things kids need to learn is how to work as a team with their adults to look after themselves and a home.  A little game they invented called 'hotel staff' was quite literally awesome tonight as they dried dishes, hung laundry, tidied and hoovered with me.  After the chaos in the living room from 'space stations' I was super happy about the change of game.  With a busy weekend of science parties to present and a foraging event to attend and document ahead, so I'm glad a big stack of housework isn't also on the list.

Educational freedom

 The boys have been working very hard on their 'school work' and so it's a great pleasure to be able to take a morning off when we feel like it to go to see the new exhibition at the gallery (it made our eyes feel fizzy) and then make the most of low tide by running around being airplanes and hunting in rock pools. 

We wrote with our toes in the sand and counted how many seconds we could walk just on our heels.

We looked at how the smooth part of the beach was good to walk on, but the rippled part started to get muddy and by the bottom of the beach it was impassable gunk that swallowed up our feet.  We 'rescued' a big pink sea snail the size of a chestnut stranded on the sand by finding a rock pool for it. 

We investigated the plants of the shore, and talked about how the seakale and horned poppies had to cope with salt and wind and storms.

We talked to an older friend we met along the way, and ate a sandwich while watching the horizon and talking about the curvature of the Earth and why the lighthouse is there far out to sea.  Then we headed off for our afternoon Yoga lesson and to present our lovely friend and teacher the cards the boys had lovingly made before we left home, Ollie writing out a whole message on his creation and even little Toby writing his name on his one.  At yoga we stretched, and breathed and listened to a story about filling our bucket with happiness by filling up other peoples buckets for them with our kind words and actions.

It was good to remember that education isn't just about reading and writing in a closed room (although that plays it's part),  it's about finding a balance and seizing the opportunities that we have to grow happy, healthy children who can't wait for the next story, the next lesson, the next adventure in learning for the whole person.   Even a trip to the shops becomes a treasure hunt with Daddy and another opportunity to learn together.  Whether children are schooled or not, this is something we can all enjoy as families - we are all free to enjoy educating our children when we are with them, and it's often in subjects that will only be tested when we look at the adults they become.

Tesco Farm To Fork

We had a kind invitation out of the blue this week to join a group of fellow home educated children on a Tesco Farm to Fork outing at our local store. 
It's something I've seen on their notice boards that they offer to local schoolchildren as part of their 'Eat Happy' commitment to help combat childhood obesity by encouraging a good relationship with food.

The basis of this good relationship is knowing where food comes from and how it ends up on the supermarket shelves, and throughout the trip round the store the provenance of each food and how it is transported, stored and produced is covered.  They hope that it will also encourage children and families to try something different - our bunch of explorers certainly did, with cheese tasting and exploring exotic fruits amongst other things.



One of the highlights was the bakery trip where, as well as seeing how the dough is made and turned into bread, we all got to add our choice of extra ingredients to make our own bread rolls.  Ollie made a cheese and seed slug with raisins for eyes.

 I liked the look of the proving oven - that would be very useful for getting a speedy rise on my bread on cold mornings!

 We were blown away by how helpful and informative the ladies running the session and all of the staff involved were.  They really made the kids feel special, speaking to them by name and taking time to talk to them not just at them - a really interactive educational session rather than a quick tour around.

The amount of opportunities to get hands on was perfect too - feeling the flour, smelling the yeast, tasting the pancakes.  The worksheets were good too, giving us an opportunity to have some writing and reading practice as well as something to share with family when we got home.

Ollie really enjoyed the fruit and vegetable scavenger hunt and picked Okra as his unusual vegetable to show the group (we've enjoyed it frozen from a Chinese Supermarket in Croydon before but it's not something we see fresh very often).


We were given a lesson in different types of seafood and where they're from, and a demonstration of filleting a fish and shelling a prawn.  We even got a chance to experience life in the chiller and in the freezer - I would not like to be a tub of icecream at -21oC! Brrr.

I had heard these visits were good, but I am really grateful to all the staff who made it so memorable.  I am also very grateful to the home edding mum who organised it and invited us, and the other mums who welcomed us into their group and made us feel a part of it.  It was a bit tricky when Toby found out where we had been while he was at nursery, but hopefully the bribe of a sticker book has done the trick and he's forgiven us now.  If you have children over 5 (and are in the UK) and have the chance to get involved in one of these free sessions I would definitely recommend it.



Note - I've linked to the 'Eat Happy' page for information only and because there are good resources there, but have no affiliation with Tesco (other than occasional product testing).

Our week in pictures

 I'm not a prolific blogger.  I love to write, but I'm also pretty much constantly on the go doing something so carving out time to actually write about it is an infrequent event.  I thought I'd do a bit of a summary of the kinds of things we've been up to in the past week as an insight into how it works for us doing the home ed thing (including the constant query of 'but what about socialisation').

The egg parachute experiment, from a lovely gift courtesy of my sister in law, was a high point of the week.  We tested the drop rate and breakage of eggs with and without a parachute.  I put the eggs in a plastic cup with clingfilm over the top so the one that did break was contained and swiftly used up to make a cake.  The boys all had a brilliant time designing and constructing their plastic, straws and elastic cord eggstravaganza (sorry).

We went to see the brilliant story teller at Tales for Tots at the Delaware Pavilion in Bexhill, then round the fab display of artwork from ladybird books of the 60s and 70s (which as an 80s kid I remember well) and then to the library for a new stack of books.


This week we played with magnets.  I tipped the iron filings from my old magnets kit (a cheap supermarket science kit I've had for years) into a sandwich bag and taped the edges shut so the boys could play with them without getting filings stuck all over their magnets.  The boys were fascinated trying out different magnets on the filings and making them swirl around.  Ollie decided to tape the bag flat to a table mat to try to make a magnetic drawing board. Toby's favourite was when I put ring magnets on to a chopstick - one way up they stuck as he expected, but the other they bounced up and down, levitating beautifully.

We had a lovely afternoon just mucking about in the back yard enjoying a relatively warm day, decorating the shed with chalk, drawing roads and car parks on the patio in chalk to push card around, drumming with sticks and making up songs, and finally a funny game they came up with to try to catch an eagle using sticks and garden ties.  Eagles are not a thing I've seen in Hastings before, but they gave it a good go, even trying to use Toby as bait.


We had a fun morning in the park with our friends who had brought along spotter sheets of seasonal things to find, enjoying a good run around and looking out for the things on the sheets including squirrels, birds and even deer poo.  Then we spent the afternoon at children's yoga with some more friends, stretching and dancing and laughing.

We spent a morning at the sign and shine Makaton group for children with speech delay that we help with, played with old friends and made some new ones.  Then we had gymnastics lessons in the afternoon where the boys also get to play with their friends.

This week the kids discovered they had grown the biggest mushroom ever because we had forgotten to check our mushroom box growing in a cupboard.

We went to a one off maths fun session this week and met some other lovely home educating families.  The session was taught by a private school teacher who had home educated her own kids and she really knew how to engage with the kids.  Ollie was one of the youngest, but seemed to grasp everything straight away and begged to go back so hopefully these sessions might become more regular.  I was glad it was in a hall because it meant I could send Ollie to run around it every so often to burn off his jitteriness so he could sit back and concentrate again for a time without bouncing off his chair.

 Matt took the day off to spend time with Toby scootering along the seafront while Ollie and I did the maths, so I made the most of the extra pair of hands afterwards by getting my hair cut (at an actual salon, as opposed to just getting Matt to trim off the bits my hairbrush got stuck in).

We played loads as usual, and painted, drew, did workbooks for phonics, maths and science.  We went to a friend's birthday tea one morning, and then Matt took the boys to a swim disco while I sat by the pool and worked on my next University assignment.  They met some friends there who have ended up being home educated too.

 At home the boys got experimental with paints.  The shower curtain and bath are still blue from trying to wash the paint back off again.  We've cooked together, played instruments, done housework together and made the house messy again several times.  Toby is majorly into space at the moment, so we've been reading a lot about it.  Matt found great footage of astronauts showing around inside the ISS, then Matt used an app to track the ISS going over our house and the boys stood out in the garden to watch it - this caused a huge amount of excitement.  Other topics covered as they came up this week included why people speak different languages, where in the country and the world our friends come from, what's religion all about and why do people believe different things, crash tests of airbags, why isn't it that all ladies have long hair and all men have short hair, why are people's skins different colours, why don't ladies have the same bits as men, why do some seeds grow two leaves and others just one (seriously, I'm having to explain dicotyledons and monocotyledons to a five year old), why are some words rude and not others, what nutrients are in different foods ...... (my brain usually starts to ache pretty early on in the day - science I can cope with, but the whole of the reasons and details of world religions at 7.30am is hard going).

Today we had a lovely pancakes morning followed by a super fun science session organized by the Hastings Pier Charity where we learned about gross body stuff, including making fake poo and blood.  This afternoon Matt and the boys planted up potato growing sacks and built a mini grow house on the patio to house our seedlings for the allotment.  Each and every day we have read together both during the day and at bedtime, plus some time watching Cbeebies and a heap of other games and activities that the kids entertained themselves with while we did washing up.

So I guess a pretty typical week for folk with small kids, we balance running from one fun thing to the next with scheduling in time to be home and just potter about and play imaginatively.  It's all good - it just doesn't leave a lot of time to write about it :)

Why do people home educate their children?

I've previously talked about our own reasons to home educate, but I have recently been following a number of conversations on home education forums where the issue of 'why' has been discussed at great length and I thought it would be interesting to set out the main reasons given.  Many families home educate because they feel that this is a lovely time they want to share with their children, but others are pushed out of the mainstream by a whole host of perceived problems.  This article is very much looking at the negative reasons for the choices, I know this does a disservice to the many positive reasons why people choose to educate at school or at home, and I can only apologise for that and promise a more positive article in future.  Since this is all drawn from recent discussions on the forums, the reasons were however by far weighted towards the negative reasons, and so this is what I am reflecting here.

By far the largest response to the question 'why do you home educate' was lack of special educational needs provision in schools, lack of good training of teachers in this area and children suffering as a result of it.  The needs were wide ranging, including life limiting progressive conditions, frequent illnesses, conditions such as diabetes, physical needs, emotional issues and 'ADD'.  The most frequent need quoted that was not dealt with well in school was regarding children on the Autistic Spectrum, with large classrooms, large schools and poor teacher training being given as the main issues.  There were stories of children being battered and bruised by being physically restrained during rages brought on by the unsuitable environment, and of parents being treated like the problem rather than partners in their child's education.  A particularly worrying lack seemed to be in staff's awareness of children's illnesses.  This is something I experienced myself as a teacher - the parents would carefully fill out all the health information when they registered the child, which was available in a file in an office for the form tutor to note down, but the information wasn't given to subject teachers and cover teachers were particularly in the dark - an issue I raised several times.  The solutions to these problems would include simply better staff training with SEN being a core subject during teacher training rather than just an option, but my old bugbear of schools and classes being too big are an issue here too.

This is a shame because when schools are properly set up and run for inclusiveness or as specialist schools they are a fantastic environment to provide children with an individualised plan to support their educational, emotional and social development and work in partnership with parents to provide strategies that can be used at home to support the child's progress.  It can be done well, but the hundreds of families pushed into home education who had intended to have their children educated at school is testament to the lack of provision and understanding in this area.

The second largest area of concern was bullying.  Gone are the days when a child would be expelled for assaulting another child.  Now schools are judged on retention, paid bonuses for taking violent children expelled from other schools and issues of behaviour management are firmly in the classroom teachers area of responsibility rather than that of the family or the senior management.  The bullying I experienced at primary school - the name calling, silent treatment, exclusion - made me miserable enough, but the bullying of today goes far beyond this.  Children are being home educated after being subjected to nothing less than daily torture, with beatings and physical violence such as being stabbed with compasses and slammed into desks being commonly reported.  'Cyberbullying' was also mentioned, with children receiving vicious abuse, even death threats, and having their torment in school filmed and put on the internet.  A friend who teaches recently brought to my attention the phenomenon of 'banter' where every verbal or physical assault challenged by a teacher is met with a shrug of the shoulders and the recommendation that the teacher 'calms down - it's only banter'.  In some cases the teachers themselves were the bullies, with constant criticism and sarcasm being used.  Children as young as 5 were stated as having been withdrawn from school because they were depressed, self harming, talking about wanting to be dead.  Parents talked about having spent years repairing the damage and getting their children back to the happy, confident, keen learners they had dropped off at the school gates at 4 years old.

This seems an insane situation, where the quiet studious kids are forced out of schools and the education they crave because the bullies who have no intention of opening a book are the ones who are pandered to, rewarded and praised.  Every child has the right to an education in safety, whether at home or at school and as much as I believe every child can be supported to behave in a considerate way, our current school system doesn't seem to foster that.  It is undoubted that many of the bullies are victims in their own right - perhaps of neglect, disinterested parents, abuse at home, but this does not give any child the right to make the lives of other children a misery.

The age of school entry was a third large reason, with many parents stating their belief that 4 was far too young to start school, especially for the summer born children who were closer to 4 than 5 when they start full days in September. A few schools, at the discretion of the head, still offer settling in terms of part days, but this is increasingly uncommon.  Even 5 is felt to be too young by many, with the trend for starting formal education at 7 in the countries with the best standards for literacy and numeracy in Europe being given as proof of this.  Daily homework was a complaint, especially in light of research which shows that it actually damaged young children's learning.  Restricted movement and opportunities to spend time playing and being outside was also a concern of parents with primary aged children.  Age structuring of classes was also mentioned, in that in no other place would you expect to spend all your time with people the same age as you - in social situations and in the workplace you have friends and colleagues of every age.  The one size fit all approach is a concern, both in terms of what children should be achieving and who they mix with - we all know 6 year olds who are happier in the company of smaller children, and others who prefer to make friends with older kids and adults.

Bright kids were another group that were commonly home educated - 'my child was told they were naughty, but they were bored because they had done everything'.  What do many overstretched teachers do with a bright kid who has finished their page of sums?  They give them another page of the same kind of things - an approach that can make kids feel like they are being punished for being quick.  What do they do to the child who always has his hand up to answer questions?  They ridicule them by using 'that tone of voice' to say that there are actually other children in the class, always pick them last to answer, make them feel like a nuisance.  All things that can be avoided by decent teacher training and providing support with differentiated lesson planning and questioning techniques.

Another concern was that children were not having their basic needs met - not being allowed to go to the toilet as needed, not having access to water, being hungry.  Hassle from schools over children needing to be home ill from school was mentioned - including the recent instructions to parents in Wales of the list of conditions that the child should not be kept home from school with, including glandular fever!  With my own little ones poorly this week, I was certainly glad that I didn't have to phone them in sick to school and nursery while trying to get a doctors appointment at the same time.  I'm also glad that with Toby having been on a nebuliser twice, and prescribed antibiotics, steroids and an inhaler I didn't have to drag him out in the rain to take Ollie (who also had a cold) to school.  Being educated at home gives the kids permission to be ill, to recover properly, to go to the park for some air in the afternoon if they feel better without worrying about being spotted out and about having been taken out of school sick.

None of this is intended as a slur against teachers, this is just an overview of the most common reasons why kids were taken out of school, or never sent.  The over riding theme was that the children were miserable and failing to thrive.  My own opinion is that since our national wellbeing and economic success in the future depends on these children that are being made so miserable at school, it should be an absolute priority to provide safe, inclusive, academically and socially good schools for those who want the option.  Class sizes should be capped at 20 to give teachers the chance to actually get to know their students, provide for their individual needs and mark properly (tick and flick marking gathers data, it does not support learning), schools should be small enough that the Head knows every child (I've worked at a big school were the Head didn't even know the names of the rapidly turning over staff, never mind the kids, a big difference to the schools I attended where the Head greeted each of us by name), violence should never be tolerated, teachers should feel valued, have good training, including in special educational needs of all kinds such as supporting educationally high potential students and those with statemented issues, and they should be allowed to offer a wide curriculum with literacy and numeracy integrated into creative and investigative projects,

Even if every school was a safe, welcoming environment there would still be lots of families choosing to home educate, and I don't want to give the impression that home education is a 'second best' always chosen by families with no other choice.  However, there do seem to be an increasing wave of families voting with their feet because they can't bear to see their children suffering and this is not fair to anyone.  Since it costs the Government around £6,000 per year to educate each child at school, I'm not sure that they have the will to reverse the trend for home education, especially in light of new research that shows how well home educated children do academically and how they contribute to the workforce and society as adults.  In one study in Canada I read about for example it was found that not one adult who had been home educated was claiming social security benefits, and the percentage of the population who participated in weekly social and sports clubs was far higher in adults who had been home educated.

This all sounds as if I'm very anti-school - I'm not.  The right school, with the right staff, can be an amazing place for learning and growing, and many schools are trying their best to put children first despite all the restrictions and counterproductive initiatives thrown at them.  I'm also not anti home education - it's not always something forced on people, and when it is for the vast majority it is in the end the best outcome for the children involved.  I'd just like to know that every family has a genuine choice between the different and equally good forms of education.

Our outdoor classroom

 So we're nearly at the end of the first half term of our 'official' home education.  To be honest, very little has changed for us as we have always enjoyed a wide variety of educational experiences.  We do up to an hour of written work on most days using maths and literacy workbooks, but it's not all in one go.  A couple of pages after breakfast before we go out, a couple more in the afternoon when we come home, and maybe a couple more after dinner.    The workbooks probably aren't completely necessary as there is so much learning going on without them, writing labels on pictures, adding up scores in our magnetic fishing game, singing number songs and so on.  For me though the books  feel like a good way to add to our paper record of progress and both boys enjoy showing daddy what they have completed at the end of each day.  Perhaps because they see both Matt and myself studying, doing what they call home school is just a normal thing for the boys.  When I'm helping Ollie with a page from his maths book, Toby will sit next to us with his colouring book concentrating just as hard on that as Ollie does on the numbers. Yesterday Ollie was talking a bit loudly and Toby said 'Shh I doin my school work' as he sat drawing faces on his little whiteboard.  Toby also likes collecting up the work books from the kitchen table and saying 'I put on Daddy's desk now, he look later'.

What forms the backbone of our learning however, and the thing the boys most enjoy, is the outdoor learning.  This can be learning about seasons and weather as they ride their scooters through the park, or something more focused such as a bug hunt.  We are fortunate to have an amazing park a short drive away with all sorts of different habitats, lots of water ways, formal and informal flower beds and an amazing collection of trees which are often helpfully labelled.

This week Ollie wanted to go searching for water boatmen after watching about them on an episode of 'Minibeast Adventure with Jess' on Cbeebies.  We headed off to the park with out nets, the plastic yoghurt buckets that we use for all sorts of things, and a bug viewer.  On the way to the shallow muddy pond that I thought might be our best bet for finding some we did a lot of sensory exploration.  I pointed out herbs such as rosemary for the boys to smell and try to name, we spend a long time in the rose garden looking at all the different colours and sizes of roses and running around to find our favourite colours and smells of roses, then wove in and out of the bamboos listening to the noise of it rustling and making up stories about panda bears.  A heavy fall of sweet chestnuts provided an opportunity to investigate the prickly outside and soft inside of the cases, and peel some chestnuts, all of which had a little maggot munching away inside to the boys delighted interest.  We looked at the difference between the leaves on the evergreens and the falling leaves of the deciduous trees.  We talked about chlorophyll and why the leaves are changing colour.  We compared leaf shapes of the different types of oak growing along the path, the sharp points of the Pin oak, the deep lobes of the Hungarian oak, the small compact lobed leaves of our own English oak.  We compared sizes, lining up the leaves we had collected in order of size and hunting for the biggest and smallest leaves we could find.

At the pond we gently scooped up some freshwater shrimp with our nets, watched them swimming around with the bug viewer and then released them.  No water boatmen today, but perhaps it's getting too cold for them now.  The 'pond' is more of a silty bottomed scrape in the earth at the side of the path, so not the best pond dipping place, but safer with little ones than hanging over the edge of one of the bigger ponds.  We then went to a place where a shallow stream pours across the path so the boys could play with their nets and buckets - no expectation of catching anything, but the action of repeatedly scooping up and pouring out water is one which the boys really enjoy. We talked about why the rivers in the park were flowing so swiftly today - about the heavy rainfall, catchment areas and valleys, the water cycle and how the valleys were carved out.

If I were to write a lesson plan about the activities of the day I would be running into several pages of learning outcomes, including the numeracy outcomes involving shapes and sizes and the physical benefits of running and playing outside.  Whether little ones are in school or following the home education path, this type of activity is something which is accessible for every family.  It's incredibly cheap - the buckets were left over from buying yoghurt in a far cheaper way than as individual pots and an old tea strainer or sieve are a good stand in for a net if you don't have one.  Most of the activities require no equipment at all (just maybe a notepad to write down anything you couldn't answer at the time to look up later - despite a Biology degree, years of teaching outdoors and in a classroom and being well into a Geosciences degree I still get plenty of questions I have to look up at home, even if it's just because it's easier to find a video of rubber being tapped from a tree than to explain it).  The only thing you need is to really look, listen and experience things yourself so you can draw your kids attention to interesting things, and respond to them when they bring you things to look at.  You are a brilliant teacher and your kids love it.

Starting the home education journey

We had a great deal of discussion when it came to applying for Ollie's first school last winter (in the UK the cut off date for school applications is mid January of the year your child is due to start school and the school year starts in September).

It wasn't quite the discussion that goes on in most homes in the UK however, where after visiting every remotely local school and poring over OFSTED reports parents write down their order of preference and then wait for the intervening months to pass until they find out if they got their first choice.

Our discussion focused on a different issue - was Ollie going to go to school at all, and if he was, what age should he start?

I'm a teacher myself by training and experience, and as a child went to a wide variety of different types of school, all of which I enjoyed for the most part, but all with widely different ideologies, provision and academic expectation.  So I wasn't coming to the table with any great angst over my own experiences clouding my thoughts, just a fair insight into what was available and what the issues are.  Most children will enjoy school and will do well in school.  School has a host of benefits, including well trained, well motivated teachers who genuinely care about their students and a good range of resources to aid learning.  I don't intend this post to be 'school bashing' or to try to convince people not to send their kids to school.  It's just an explanation of our choice given our individual circumstances.

My first intention was that Ollie would spend a couple of years at the nursery attached to the school we thought would be a good one for him, based on a range of factors including a good provision of outside green space, good provision of resources, teaching which seemed good and a Head who seemed keen to provide challenge and stretch.

What ensued was a year of Ollie screaming until he literally vomited every time I took him to nursery.  The staff would have to drag him off me to get him into the room while he sobbed and promised to be a good boy (as though my abandonment was because he thought he had been naughty).  It broke my heart, but everyone around me said 'they settle down quickly when you leave', 'they need to do this so they're ready to go to school' and a host of other things that made me feel like an overbearing mummy making a baby of my child (he was 3).  Alarm bells rang every time.  His 'key member of staff' would say 'he settles down quickly when you leave - he goes for a nap under the play house'.  A nap.  Ollie.  This didn't make sense as he never napped.  I would pick him up early because he was exhausted by 2pm, often ravenously hungry even though there was food still uneaten in his lunch box, usually filthy, often with torn trousers.  Eventually it all came together and I realised what was happening - he was 'napping' because he was utterly depressed, he was ravenous because no-one had helped him with his lunch, he often had a dirty bottom because no-one helped him in the toilet, he was dirty because no-one helped him put on an apron.  He never brought home anything he had made.  When I asked him what he had done he would say 'nuthin',.. 'who did you play with?'... 'no-one' which I knew wasn't true.  One day I arrived to pick him up during story time - the staff had 50 or so kids in two groups sitting next to each other in the same room and were shouting different stories at them - my head was spinning after a few minutes.  Yes he did often also have a good time playing with sand, or water, or on trikes outside, but his overall experience was of chaos without enough adults to make sure his basic needs for help and affection were being met - all within Government guidelines for ratios, but clearly not a nurturing environment for a child.

I was given a recommendation for another nursery - this time with just 20 kids at a time with 4 or 5 adults.  I got on the waiting list and when Ollie's place came up started him with just a couple of half days to see how he settled.  It could not have been more different.  Ollie was excited to get there in the morning, went straight in, when I picked him up he always had some art or food he had made.  Despite the evidence of having done messy play, he was clean and dry.  His lunch box was empty and his tummy full.  He wanted to stay longer, so we rapidly extended to the two long days he does now - 9 to 4.  His teachers can't believe that the confident, mature, happy little ring leader they see could have been a child who screamed like a banshee at the thought of going to his old nursery. He could not be happier - he tells me he wishes he could go there forever.  Seeing how different he was in this setting sealed the deal for us in our schooling decision.  It also made me feel like a complete monster - how could I have followed what others advised in the face of my own instincts and observations and have let my child be so unhappy, even if it was for 'just' two days a week? 

As far as we could make out, the problem with the other place hadn't been anything that could have been fixed by something like staff training, it just came down to the sheer number of children.  By the time Ollie was due to go, the school would have expanded it's intake to 90 children in reception year - with part of the time in their own classes but a lot of 'free flow time' all together.  Research shows that children learn best in small classes (wedging in TAs into a large class isn't as effective as one teacher in a small class), and that schools should have no more than 200 to 300 pupils, yet here we are with 30 in a class (I've taught up to 38 in a class myself while teaching science in a high school) in schools of 800 or more pupils.  So size of class and school was the first issue.

The next issue was age of entry.  I believe that 4 is just too young for many children to be in a formal educational setting all day, five days a week.  We still often have lazy Monday and Friday mornings at home, where even though we're up at normal times we do quiet things at home because the boys are recovering from either the busy weekend's activities or the equally busy weekday ones.  Ollie is however generally a bundle of energy and isn't designed for sitting still and being quiet for any length of time - he is well above expected ability in reading, writing, numeracy but this takes a back seat to the more important business at this age of playing, running, stretching, rolling, climbing and doing all the things young children need to do to develop good co-ordination, strength, balance and social skills.  Most schools have a play centred approach during Reception Year, but at age 5 in Year 1 children are expected to spend an increasing amount of time sitting still and concentrating.  This isn't developmentally appropriate for many children, and I think especially not boys.  From an early age they are therefore being fed the idea that there is something wrong with them because they can't sit still.  A 5 year old isn't designed to sit still.  Research into learning and achievement around the world backs this up - countries which delay formal education until the age of 7 have higher literacy and numeracy rates that those with an earlier starting age. 

This is a snapshot of our decision when it came to Ollie's education - and I say 'our' because it was really important that both Matt and I were happy with the decision.  I leaned more pro home ed, Matt more pro school, but in the end we came up with a compromise that we think will work.

We will follow the research and keep Ollie out of school until he is 7, at which point we will try to get him a place in one of the smaller village school outside our town but within a sensible driving radius of around half an hour.  Class sizes may well still be up to 30, but at least the school overall will be a more manageable size for staff to get to know the kids as individuals.  If Toby wants desperately to go to school when Ollie does, then we'll give him the option to try it, as we would if Ollie had seemed really keen to go this year.  Eventually we will try to move out of town and find a new home close to the smallest secondary school in our area, avoiding the huge failing Academies which would be our current options.

In the mean time, it is a continuation of what we do already - we learn through experience and through play, as well as sitting down for half an hour or so quiet time most days with one of Ollie's books to fill in activities on writing, numeracy, science, history etc... all just the ones that are available from the supermarkets.  We read, three books at bed time, often more in the course of the day if one of the boys brings me a book to read to them.  We sing learning songs and nursery rhymes.  We watch videos online from time to time if that's the best way to answer a question like 'where does rubber come from'.

Ollie's current nursery time is coming to an end soon, and the staff have been wonderful in adapting their school transition program for Ollie's circumstances, as the pages he filled out in a transitions booklet this week show.  He certainly seems to have decided for himself what our curriculum will be composed of - learning to read and studying about butterflies apparently.

A lot of friends and family have been supportive of the idea, especially after I pointed out that the socially acceptable thing for me to do would be to go back to teaching full time, hardly ever have any time to spend with the boys but be able to pay for them to go to private school if the local ones were too big or too bad to serve their needs.  So why not cut out the middle man, teach them myself and actually get to spend a couple more precious years with the boys, while at the same time adhering to the good practice of the research that has been done? 

Others are less enthusiastic towards our choice, taking it a bit personally perhaps 'well it's all very well but some of us have to work full time'... full time school for 4 year olds is therefore actually free childcare  - desperately needed by many working parents, but not automatically therefore what is best for every child.  I have no judgement over other folks decisions - each child and each family circumstance is unique and we each make the decisions based on what is best for our families based on our circumstances.  Maybe you have a great local school, maybe your child thrives in large groups, maybe you love the extra curricular activities that will be available and you own individual child is hugely independent and desperate to go to school, these are all brilliant reasons to send your child to school at 4.  Maybe you are a single parent, or a couple on low incomes and the best thing for your family in the current economic climate is for your child to go to school at 4 freeing you up to bring in vital wages, that is a blooming good reason too.  Sending them to school when you don't feel it's right for them just because that's 'what everyone else does' maybe isn't such a great reason.

There are also bad reasons to home educate - fear of professionals becoming involved in your family, fear over pressure to return to work if your child is at school all day, fear about change in general, a misconception that this would be an easier option - talk to anyone who home educates, it is very much the hard option compared to dropping kids off at school for someone else to entertain and educate.  The whole argument that you have to home educate because 'no-one understands my little Bobby, he's just high spirited' as he smashes things and swears at people - no, unless there's an underlying medical or mental issue, that's just bad manners and home educating won't fix it until you seek help in learning how to manage poor behaviour effectively.  Kids can be free spirits without being obnoxious.  Unless you are committed to putting in the work to provide a varied and interesting learning experience that will provide challenge and stretch, plus seek out every opportunity for your child to have access most days to other children and adults to socialise and play with, home education is probably not the right choice.  The law doesn't say that children must attend school, but it does say that they must be receiving an education and plugging them into TV all day does not count as this.  If you don't like studying and reading yourself home ed isn't your best option (and reading the home ed forums there's a surprising number of people out there trying to home educate while not enjoying study and reading themselves?!).  Again, I don't want to sound like I'm judging other's decisions, but you can see my point I hope - home education should involve an actual education, whether this is through disciplined 'home schooling' or a more free-flow unschooled approach.

Ultimately, send them, don't send them, send them later, find an alternative such as Montessori schooling, send them to a faith school, a small school, a forest school, to the moon - it's totally up to individual preferences but what we can all hopefully do is try to understand the decisions made by other parents and support each other because we are all just trying to do the best for our kids and every one of us needs the support of other parents one way or another.

Halloween carrots, science and art

 This year our local supermarket was stocking purple carrots called 'Witches Noses'.  This might sound like some kind of GM Frankenfood, but actually orange carrots are the more recent type (17th Century) prior to which they were purple.  The purple carrots we bought were a modern breed, but it's nice to support a greater variety of vegetables than we have been used to seeing.  The purple colour is caused by anthocyanins which you may have heard of because they are a group of antioxidants also present in fruit such as blueberries and credited with all sorts of health enhancing properties.

The colour was so strong it bled and made soup look a bit unappetising , and when we ate them raw we ended up with stained fingers I cooked the last batch of them on their
own by simply boiling in water.  This produced a deep purple liquid and made me wonder if it would make a good indicator solution in the way that red cabbage water
does.  A quick shake of vinegar in a sample on a spoon later and my hopes were confirmed, so I saved the juice for some after dinner fun.

I started by pouring a couple of tablespoons of the carrot water onto a plate and giving the kids vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to add to the liquid.  It's better to start by letting children experiment and make observations by themselves without telling them what to expect at first.  You can draw out their observations with comments and questions 'wow, look at that, what colour did it go when you added the vinegar? Now what happens if you add bicarb?'

Once they've had a few goes turning the solution to red, blue, back to red you can start to introduce some of the correct terminology.  Here's roughly how I explained things as we went along:  The liquid is an indicator solution. Indicator solutions change colour if you add an acid or an alkali.  They
'indicate' which means they show you whether you have added and acid or an alkali.  Our indicator solution goes pinky red when you add an acid and blue when you an an alkali.  Vinegar makes the solution go red, so do you
think it is an acid or an alkali?  Taste the vinegar, what does it make your

mouth feel like?  What else makes your mouth feel like that? Lemons? Brilliant, lets see what happens when we add lemon juice.  The bicarb made the solution go blue, so do you think it's an acid or an alkali? Alkalis sometimes feel soapy, what else can we test that feels soapy? ...

After the boys were in bed, I dipped some strips of paper in the remaining solution, then added some salt as a mordant (something that fixes a dye) and boiled some cotton rag in it for a few minutes, cold rinsed it and then hung it to dry.  I wanted to make indicator strips, and thought it might work to make 'permanent' indicator fabric which we could play with, rinse out and use again another day since purple carrots are a rarity in the shops if we wanted to repeat the experiment.  I found the paper I had cut up from an old envelope must have been a bit posh - acid free -as it went blue.  The cotton dyed beautifully, so we were all set for the next day.



 This time I lined up some safe, everyday household items to test, including milk, washing up liquid, more bicarb mixed with water, vinegar and some carbolic soap scrapings mixed with water.  Ollie added most of them himself to glass ramekins and then dipped a strip of indicator fabric into each one, laying the dipped strip in front of the relevant ramekin.  At the end, we talked about what colours they had gone, how light or dark a change and what the colours meant.  Getting it right whether the colour indicates it is an acid or an alkali is very hit and miss for Ollie, but even for him I would have been surprised if he remembered all of it first time.  This activity is just about enjoying making things change colour and introducing the words for young children, as they get older you can focus more on the science of what is going on.  You can even baffle older kids with the irritating statement that all alkalis are bases, but not all bases are alkalis (alkalis are just bases that can be dissolved in water, and not all bases can be dissolved in water).  Even little ones Toby's age enjoy seeing the effect they have on the colours by dipping them into different liquids, and will likely at some point start mixing the liquids together in experiments of their own design.  With Ollie we also keep a little science experiments log book because he likes to look
back on the experiments he's done before.  Sometimes he'll add drawings of the experiment, today he
was happy to supply reminders about what colours things had turned, what that meant, and to chose some
different coloured strips to stick in.

 When we had suitably covered the dining table in multicoloured gloop, I had a quick wipe down and gave each of the boys a square of the indicator fabric, a ramekin of vinegar and another of bicarb in water.  They had free reign then to create whatever took their fancy - at first dipping chopsticks daintily into the liquids and onto the fabric, then using their fingers, and finally pouring the liquids out completely.  They were really pleased with their finished artworks and I think they're so pretty I'm going to pop them into frames so we can see their science and art up on the wall.  I don't know how well the colours will keep, but then, that's just another experiment.

If you can't find purple carrots (which is fairly likely) then this works well with the liquid saved from boiling red cabbage.  Letting kids choose what the want to test really gets them involved in the whole activity, but make sure you stress that they don't try out the things that lurk under the kitchen sink for example if you use things like bleach in your home.  I'm working on the assumption with kids of the age of mine are that telling them not to put thing in their mouth is not fail safe, so I opt for things which are either edible, or at least won't do them any harm if ingested in small amounts, such as soap. If you make up just liquid indicator it will keep in the fridge for a couple of days, the paper strips and fabric for a lot longer so long as they're kept dry.