The last half term has been busy and whilst these things are never perfect, progress has been made. Three items have helped contribute to this.
Family Nature Learning Sessions
The London Wildlife Trust ran a series of six Family Nature Learning Sessions for home educators. We spent a couple of hours, once a week, with a group of others, in a woodland area, learning about making shelters, footprints, minibeasts, birds and making fires. The latter was very popular. We tend to spend a fair amount of time outside but having a reason to get outside during the greyest, coldest time of the year was helpful.
The only downside was that the children were tired after the sessions and my grand ideas of doing all the morning work, in the afternoon just didn't succeed. We substituted with read alouds and poetry tea!
Not part of this but allied to it has been our nature table. Youngest Son is particularly interested in lichen and moss so has been busy adding specimens.
Brave Writer
I've written a bit about Brave Writer before. We used the free writing and poetry tea ideas last term.
We have continued with these items this term but added writing ideas from Partnership in Writing. This lead, amongst other things, to a writing project on codes and using a suggestion about narration, making a diorama of Robin Hood.
There is much more that we can do and I have plans for another writing project starting after half term.
Goal setting
This seems obvious, probably to everyone except me. I've set goals for the children before but not shared them with the children or made the goals too distant to be useful. This half term, the children had simple goals which we discussed and rewards for achievement of these. This has worked and half term has seen each child help make a very chocolatey recipe. Of course, I plan to set goals again in the next half term.
Now, we are enjoying a different sort of week with our half term break. I love these breaks half way through the term. Time to recharge but not enough time for everything to be forgotten or for the novelty of a break to disappear.
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Family Nature Learning Sessions
The London Wildlife Trust ran a series of six Family Nature Learning Sessions for home educators. We spent a couple of hours, once a week, with a group of others, in a woodland area, learning about making shelters, footprints, minibeasts, birds and making fires. The latter was very popular. We tend to spend a fair amount of time outside but having a reason to get outside during the greyest, coldest time of the year was helpful.
The only downside was that the children were tired after the sessions and my grand ideas of doing all the morning work, in the afternoon just didn't succeed. We substituted with read alouds and poetry tea!
Not part of this but allied to it has been our nature table. Youngest Son is particularly interested in lichen and moss so has been busy adding specimens.
Brave Writer
I've written a bit about Brave Writer before. We used the free writing and poetry tea ideas last term.
Goal setting
This seems obvious, probably to everyone except me. I've set goals for the children before but not shared them with the children or made the goals too distant to be useful. This half term, the children had simple goals which we discussed and rewards for achievement of these. This has worked and half term has seen each child help make a very chocolatey recipe. Of course, I plan to set goals again in the next half term.
Now, we are enjoying a different sort of week with our half term break. I love these breaks half way through the term. Time to recharge but not enough time for everything to be forgotten or for the novelty of a break to disappear.
If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or e-mail.
This was really interesting to read, Sarah. I think we will be setting goals also over the term for the older ones as well as weekly ones. It is very satisfying for all to see them reached:)
ReplyDeleteYes, this is definitely something that I plan to continue although I am aware of the risk of overdoing this and becoming overwhelmed!
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