Early Autumn Learning

Writing about our learning is always a balance. We have had some great and enjoyable days but there are always adjustments to the plans to be made and times realise how much we need God's grace. 

These are a few of the highlights of the last few months.

Science
Our local home education group has a science theme, this year. This has meant practising activities at home in the days before each session. Particularly popular was the rocket, although I was far too busy to record it; extracting DNA from strawberries

and melting chocolate (states of matter!). 

The group was able to vote on the Royal Society Young People's Book Prize. We are now waiting to find out if our choice was the overall winner.

Art
Younger Daughter has been working on an Explore Art Award in photography. This meant a dash up to the Natural History Museum, one Saturday, to see a wildlife photography exhibition before it closed.

This award also means working on a project. The plan is to combine art with history studies.

Poetry Tea
This term has been busy so I thought that we might have fewer poetry teas. However, it turned out the Poetry Tea was an important part of the week and no one wanted to miss this. 

Nature Walks

We are using Exploring Nature with Children and this year, using the new journal.

Seaside Trip

We had a week away, at the sea,

in Bournemouth, while my kind husband held the fort here. Our time away included a long cycle ride,

time on the seashore with rather wet paddling, a visit to Corfe Castle and the Bournemouth Aviation Museum. 

Reformation Day
Today,we have celebrated the 500th anniversary of Luther's 95 theses being pinned to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Over the last few weeks, we have been reading Danika Cooley's book When Lightening Struck about the life of Luther. Other activities have been

• a Reformation quiz earlier in the year. The children now have their prize Bibles with a picture of Wittenberg on the front.
• five solas colouring sheets
• playmobile video of Martin Luther
• video narration of Martin Luther's life part 1 and part 2

Of course, we had to have some themed food: sausages and Black Forest gateau.

This term, there has seemed to be more to do than time! Trying to prioritise seems a major challenge. Any thoughts?

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Beatrix Potter at 150

Today is the 150th birthday of Beatrix Potter. We visited her home, Hill Top, earlier this week. Hill Top has been left as when Beatrix Potter lived here. She actually lived the last thirty or so years of her life,after her marriage, at the nearby Castle Farm but popped into Hill Top every day. She gave Hill Top to the National Trust in her will with the conditions that it shouldn't be tenanted and her furnishings should be left as they were.

The vegetable garden might have jumped out of Peter Rabbit.

The rest of the garden is a typical cottage garden with flowers and fruit bushes growing together.

Hill Top is a small house with timed tickets. We had to wait a couple of hours for our slot although this wasn't a hardship with Esthwaite Water a few minutes walk away.

The house is fairly dark.  These furnishings were collected by Beatrix Potter and some of the details appear in her books.

These little pieces are not dissimilar to the items attacked by Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb.

The tale of Samuel Whiskers was inspired by the rat problem in Hill Top when Beatrix Potter first moved in. Some of the skirting boards still have rat holes in them although I understand that the rats have long since moved!

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Summer so far!

This blog has been rather neglected recently. June, in our family, has been about taking Middle Son to exams; increasing amounts of time spent caring and a joyful few days spent camping with three of my children, in Suffolk. We've just come back from camping so this will be short. It has been good to have a time to recharge, to think and sleep! The campsite had a silent after 10pm rule which was greatly conducive to rest. 

We spent hours on the beach.

These holes are the nests of sand martins. 

Evening sea.

Sand and pebble sculpture by Youngest Son.

Our tents. We are not professional campers although it is surprising how much can be cooked on one burner in the rain!

 This end of the year is hard work and I know that I'm not the only tired home educator around.  It is easy to get overtired and lose perspective. I am grateful for a husband who held the fort at home and that we were able to have a break. Refreshed and grateful!

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How to Unplug your Child

Like many parents, I am concerned about the amount of screen time to which children are exposed.

Yes, there are plenty of learning opportunities involving screens and we do use screens for history (Veritas self paced), for occasional YouTube science videos and for reading (Kindle Fire for immersion reading and Kindle/laptop for ebooks). Still, computers tend to encroach on leisure time. I would be the first to admit that I haven't been the best at controlling this. Younger children in a family also tend to benefit from older siblings' skills at doing up old computers/putting on the lastest software and the general accessibility of screens. In view of all this, I was delighted when I saw How to Unplug your Child: 101 Ways to help your kids turn off their gadgets and enjoy real life by Liat Hughes Joshi on sale with the BookPeople.

When the book arrived, my child who is least interested in screens, took the book off to read and soon returned with a wish list, including a games night, a spa day, borrowing a dog, making sushi and charades.


Cardboard stair sliding has proved immensely popular including with the child who most likes screens.

The ideas vary from incredibly easy, for example, bath time at the wrong time to challenging, start their own business.

My only concern is that I would have loved some more ideas for the children to do on their own. There were some, for example, the cardboard sliding and making a mini-parachute that the children can do alone but probably, most of the ideas do require parental help e.g. stories around a camp fire and geocaching. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to abdicate parenting but there are times when, like other parents, there are phone calls to be made or the freezer needs defrosting and then it would be helpful to have a section that children from about five can manage on their own. 

Overall, this is a helpful book and should provide plenty of ideas for activities. I plan to try to work through many of the ideas. 

  Disclaimer: I purchased this book for the use of my family. The opinions are those of myself and my children.

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Big Butterfly Count

The Big Butterfly Count makes a great, short summer holiday activity. 

The charity Butterfly Conservation is doing a survey of butterflies and moths in the UK. They want volunteers to spend 15 minutes on a sunny day surveying. They seem to be very flexible as to the areas used. We used our garden but it seems that most open spaces could be used. The date is also flexible, anytime from 17th July to 9th August although they prefer a sunny day. I guess that increases the probability of actually seeing butterflies. 

There is a handy identification tool on the site although we found that butterflies don't keep still for long so identification was a bit challenging, at times.

Butterfly on the potato plants.

The survey led us to look at other insects. We saw dragonflies and watched bees and bumble bees collect nectar, and hopefully, pollinate our pumpkin flowers.

The children were very keen to catch a butterfly but soon let it go.

Over 15 minutes, we saw three different types of butterfly and several other insects.

Definitely recommended!

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A funny sort of rest

We've been away, this last week, for a holiday, in the Peak District.  The downers were a visit to the Minor Injuries Unit  and  phone calls with a paramedic in London. Yes, I did think the care arrangements were secure and well, they probably were but events happen.

Still, the Peak District is beautiful. We have had the usual, even later than usual bedtimes; as well as a child who wants to discuss numbers at 5am.

Anyway, on to the positives.

We spent Sunday at Stanton Lees Chapel where God's Word was clearly preached in a gloriously scenic spot.


Other highlights included Speedwell Caverns which had an underground boat trip through a disused lead mine into a natural cavern which contains the Bottomless Pit-all 11 metres deep.

It is hard to believe outside that the ground it riddled with old workings.

We saw bats, a camel and a toad on a night walk.

Ruined castles at the end of roads.

Eyam, the historic plague village.

The older paintings in the church which date from the Middle Ages and so fitted in well with the children's current history.

And one of the oldest public water systems in the country. If I didn't know otherwise, I would have wondered what caused the plague.

Beautiful Ilam.

Thanks to Middle Son for the last two pictures.

I always wonder whether holidays are worth the effort of arranging cover for caring duties and the stress when things go wrong at home. This year, it has been even more borderline and I really, really don't know whether it wouldn't have been better to go in shifts or one of us take the younger ones away. It seems like sacrilege to say this but the amount of organisation required just becomes silly. Has anyone else ever wondered this?

Anyway, Derbyshire is worth seeing and isn't too far from London.

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Not back to school: On the Welsh borders

While Facebook has been full of pictures of children going back to school, we have been away on the Welsh borders. Yes, I'm going to pay for this on Monday when there is over a week's worth of washing, starting back to our more formal home education and doubtless a few other things as well.

Still the Welsh borders are worth a day of hard work.

Sunsets and night walks. We saw bats and heard owls.

There were castles.

Stokesay Castle

The older Ludlow Castle with is turrets and winding stairs. Youngest Son kept finding new passages and stairs.

and a priory at Much Wenlock. This is a gem and a place that I hadn't seen before. It must have been magnificent in its Medieval completeness.

Of course, there was plenty of outside time:

walking in streams and on Offa's Dyke.

We had evenings of games, eating outside or sitting around the woodburning stove. I  am thankful for a break and for the beauties of creation and beginning to feel energised for the start of the new term. A worthwhile, not back to school week!

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Summer survival

The summer holidays are approaching fast. Not quite so soon here as for my US friends. We still have almost a couple of months to prepare.

For most families, much of the time will be spent at home with perhaps a smaller proportion of the time spent away. This time at home can be quite challenging! As a home educating mother, I'm quite tired by the holidays. In September, when my Facebook feed is taken up with friends rejoicing that they can now go out for coffee, I, and many other home educators, are strengthening their arms for the new academic year. So the summer holiday needs to be relatively restful.

BUT I want my children to have a happy holiday and this isn't always completely compatible with a rest for me! The holiday weeks take some planning to achieve a happy balance.

These are the principles that I use when planning and I hope they may be useful for others.

• Some of the best activities take place at home with relatively little input from adults.
• Just because we are having a break from formal learning doesn't mean that learning ceases. I become an unschooler in the holidays. This means, for us, letting the children explore their interests and some strewing of vaguely educational books/games etc around the house.
• We do go out most days around home to run off energy.
• Bigger, all day trips, I try to limit to once a week. This doesn't always work out!
• We try to make the most of local events. Over the last few summers, we've been on bat walks, teddy bears' picnics, birds of prey displays and art sessions all in our local area. 
• Sometimes having to find an activity sparks the imagination. These nature collections were the children's idea.

So rather than a list of staycation ideas in London, here is a list of some of our more generic summer ideas. These are all things we have enjoyed.

• barbecue
• camping in the garden
• reading in a tent in the garden
• making dens-indoors, outdoors both at home and elsewhere

• different park
• picnic in the park
• poetry picnic
• cooking
• writing the week's menu and cooking/helping cook depending on the age of the child
• writing the week's menu and ordering the food to budget
• flower arranging
• paddling pool
• art in local museum/gallery
• walks in the woods/countryside

• bat walk
• packing cases and pretending to go on holiday to very exotic destinations
• making ice cream/ice lollies
• using a magnifying glass to melt chocolate. Needs adult supervision!
• paint with mud-very popular and very messy!
• invite several families around for a big outside lunch
• explore a new local walk/cycle ride
• help harvest garden produce
• blackberry picking and eating
• volcano making - the children never seem to tire of this. I can't imagine a holiday without at least one volcano "experiment".
• reading scheme either from the library or elsewhere
• making a scarecrow
• board games

Over to you. I need to write a list of ideas for this summer. Do you have some that you could share?

For more ideas for Summer Staycations do click on the picture below (available from 28th May).

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