I have started a weekly linky where I blog about learning at home and encourage others to do the same. This is open to any parent blogger those who have pre-schoolers, those who have children in school and those who home-educate.
I am currently home-educating my 9 year old son and 10 year old daughter. My 14 year old son attends a local secondary school. As he starts working out what he wants to focus on in the future, I hope to support him more with his learning at home at weekends and in the evenings.
I have come up with some questions to help me structure my posts but you should feel free to link up any post related to learning at home and in its widest sense too (cookery, arts and crafts, gardening, literacy, numeracy, ICT< history, science, design, life lessons, languages, music, religions and more)
1. How we are feeling?
My daughter is feeling enthusiastic about learning at home. My son is reluctant this week and this is getting me down a bit. I am not sure I have the key to making him keen. There are so many distractions in the home particularly video games.
2. What have I enjoyed most this week?
I have certainly enjoyed listening to my daughter. She has some strong views and is not afraid of expressing them. I think this is a very good thing. I enjoyed snuggling up with my son and talking about the human body particularly about growing bones.
3. What has my daughter enjoyed most this week?
She tells me she enjoyed Aesop’s fables most this week.
4. What has my son enjoyed most his week?
Video games! Lord save me from video games!! He did enjoy sharing his knowledge about the human body and laughed loudly when I mispronounced “micro-organisms”.
5. What is my daughter’s proudest achievement this week?
She says opening a box and trying out a Gravity Defying Puzzle.
6. What is my son’s proudest achievement?
Knowing a lot already about the human body particularly the ear.
7. What are our challenges?
I am now feeling fine about home-educating my daughter as she is keen to get involved and to try ideas. My son is more strong-willed and more challenging as he knows exactly what he wants to do but I want to broaden his horizons and ensure he is equipped for a positive future. I feel very isolated with this task and not at all sure I will find the key to ensuring he enjoys learning. He is so very bright. Perhaps that is part of the issue but I am not a trained teacher and I just don’t know what to do. Pushing him causes arguments but I don’t think leaving him entirely to his own devices is right either.
8. What resources have we found particularly helpful this week?
Maths Antics
Potato Council – we have sent for a potato-growing kit
A Baker Ross arts and crafts bundle
9. Top outing of the week
A trip to the local town and a Jenga game. We were supposed to go to see another home educating family but that fell through due to a poorly car.
10. What are some of our plans for the next week?
I still feel I need to plan more to reduce my anxiety levels.
I am hoping to find a good way to talk about the Holocaust with the children.
More Aesop’s fables.
Moving through videos on percentages at a good rate.
Incorporate more music and poetry into our days.
My daughter wants to learn more about sewing.
My son wants to learn more about Iceland.
I do hope you share your learning at home because I think a real truth is that we can all be inspired by and learn from each other
I certainly have a lot to learn.