Home Ed Forest School

One of the things I love about home education is the opportunity to spend as much time as we like outdoors, and so far this summer the weather has lent itself nicely to this cause. We've been spending most of everyday (at least 4 hours and often more) outside. Children learn so much from being outside with nature, their observation skills and knowledge of the world around them forms the foundations onto which science is built. 

Yesterday was our first visit to a nearby home ed forest school. We had a brilliant time map reading, number hunting and clue solving to find our way to the park's fairy doors and hidden treasure. Along the way, we made new friends, observed the ducklings, paddled in streams, threw forest floor over ourselves, jumped in muddy puddles (glad I brought the wellies!) and had a wonderful time! Can't wait to do it again very soon! 

Are you taking part in the Big Butterfly Count?

This nationwide survey needs your help! It's a great summer holiday activity and simple enough to do with kids of all ages, taking just 15 minutes of your time. You can complete the survey anywhere - your back garden, fields, woodland, the local park..

The results will help the organisers, Butterfly Conservation Trust, to understand more about environmental effects on butterflies and wider wildlife, for example butterfly declines can be an early warning sign for declines in other wildlife in an area.

To learn more, and to take part in the count which can be completed anytime from 19th July - 10th August visit http://www.bigbutterflycount.org

I'm planning to complete the survey with the kids sometime over the next week and will let you know on the blog how we get on!

Toddler Sand and Glue Artwork, making sensory birthday cards

It's my grandad's 94th birthday tomorrow, he's partially sighted and today we made him some sensory birthday cards. Over the last few years his sight has deteriated significantly, due to age-related macular degeneration. He delights in Eden and Asher, his great-grandchildren. Every week we see him on a Saturday, he laughs as they dance around the room to YouTube videos, and Asher brings him endless cups of tea from the pretend tea set. I'm always trying to think of creative ways to involve him in the kids drawings and artwork, even more so when it's his birthday or Christmas. 

Today while Eden was at preschool, Asher and I made him a tactile handprint birthday card using glue and sand from the sandpit. I'd imagine this would look even better with coloured sand, but I had none to hand ('scuse the pun).

Asher loved putting the gloomy pva glue on his hand, and totally 'got' the concept of doing a handprint - very carefully placing it on the card. He then followed the instructions to cover it in sand, and was delighted when we shook the sand off and were left with his handprint! 

When we were done, I left the materials outside to re-do with Eden later when she was back from preschool. However, she beat me to it! While I was tying up a few loose ends with jobs inside she found everything outside and with no explanation made her own card, dealing with the glue bottle herself and looking at Asher's dried artwork to copy what to do. She made the top card in the picture, with the swirly glue patterns. I'm so proud of her using her initiative in this way :) 

I hope Grandad likes his sensory birthday cards tomorrow. 

#100homeeddays Nature Walks, Sand and water play

Day 34:
I'm loving the weather at the moment and all the outdoor-time we're having. Everyday I'm so grateful to have fields and woodland right on our doorstep to explore. We love discovering new things on our 'nature walks', every one of them is different and enjoyable in their own way, like today there was much excitement finding (and eating) raspberries growing in the wild! Today we also learnt about oak trees and a new flower, the poppy (picked from our allotment plot).

Day 35:
I don't plan our days at home I just see where the day takes us depending on our interests on that day. I don't think this will change in September when we 'officially' (in the eyes of the law) begin home ed. We don't plan to follow any set curriculum, although Charlotte Mason's principles on education will be followed to some extent I think. Today turned into a sand and water play day. We did mark making in dry sand, manipulative skills in wet sand, used creativity making art with sand and glue. We covered science: floating and sinking, reflection, filling and pouring skills with water play. Kids are learning all the time and they learn best when they're interested. I love that home ed will enable us to follow their interests.

"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life"

Charlotte Mason was a 19th century educator. Much of what she has to say on education seems to fit well with our family life. Her motto 'education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life' is something I aspire to for our own home education. 'Atmosphere' refers to the setting in which the child is brought up. 'Discipline' is the formation of character habits. 'Life' refers to the provision of living ideas to teach the academics, rather than dry facts. 

Charlotte wrote 7 volumes outlining her education philosophy. So far I've only read volume 1, but in the meantime have been doing lots of reading and research into implementing a Charlotte Mason education. For example, Charlotte encourages a lot of outdoor time, particularly in the early years - I love this idea and we're trying to get outdoors as much as possible. Children learn so much from being outside and in nature, not least they learn early observation skills needed to form the basis on which later science learning can be applied. Charlotte also encourages 'living books' to teach ideas, leaving the 'twaddle' behind. I might write more on that another time. 

Here we are earlier this week enjoying our outdoor time 

#100homeeddays: day 27

I am loving this sunny spell we're having at the moment. We're spending loads of our time in the garden which is lovely. Just the other day I moved some furniture around out there and the table is now in a much better position to be used regularly. Today, we did some of our strawberry project work while watching the first day of Wimbledon. 

The kids then had great fun jumping off the decking steps! I love these action shots! 

#100homeeddays: Day 26

Keeping Daddy company in the workshop 

Home education #100homeeddays

Eden's 4 now, and due to start school in September. Until 9 months ago we'd never given her education any more thought than she would go to school, as is the 'norm'. Then back in September last year over the course of a few weeks, we ended up having a number of random chats about home education with various people - it just kept coming up in the conversation. We began to read up and find out all we could about educating this way. We applied for a school place anyway while we were making our decision. When April arrived and we found out which school Eden had got into, it was one of the top schools in the area. But we'd already made our decision to home educate by that point, and then was the time to 'go public'. 

There are many many reasons as to why we've decided to educate the children at home; but I guess what it boils down to is this: we like the freedom and flexibility that home education offers and we feel it suits us as a family and our lifestyle at this time. We're really excited about this adventure! 

I've started taking part in an Instagram initiated home ed project, tracking what life is like educating at home, using the hashtag #100homeeddays. I'm actually on day 25 already, and thought I should start recording here on the blog too - better late than never hey! 

So here is day 25: bedtime stories. We try to choose classics for bedtime, we've read the complete Beatrix potter collection and Winnie the Pooh - both of which we have beautiful editions of, and are currently reading this one, which has lovely illustrations and the stories are just the right length for bedtime. 

As it's my first home ed post I'm going to add one from yesterday too - this is the kids in the garden playing with magnifying glasses and practising their observation skills in the process. 

Every day we're discovering that home education is a lifestyle and learning happens all the time, it doesn't start at 9am and stop at 3:30. The key is facilitating the learning process - through providing the materials and holding discussions as the opportunity arises. It is very early days for us at the moment in our home ed journey but we're so excited about these special years ahead of us. 

Apley Farm in Shropshire

Yesterday we made the most of the bank holiday sunny weather and visited Apley Farm Nature Trail and Animal Park. We haven't been there before, as it's a 40 minute drive away, but I'm sure we'll visit again as we had a lovely family day there.

We started our visit by following the Skylark Nature Trail, a lovely little self-guided walk, about a mile long, around local fields and woods. It definitely lived up to it's name - we could hear Skylarks all the way around (confirming this later by looking up the Skylark sound on our British Bird app). There are information boards along the route, and Eden enjoyed looking out for the white arrows guiding our direction. She was very proud to spot a butterfly hiding amongst the leaves. We took a photo of it to look up later, it was white with green lines on it's under-wings. Later we found out this was called a green veined white butterfly.

After the nature trail and a picnic lunch, we headed over to the animal park. There are many interesting animals to look at, and a petting area with rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens. I loved seeing so many babies around the farm! Asher particularly was very excited spotting all the animals, and he made us laugh with his rather entertaining goose impression!

The highlight was a donkey ride for the kids - a first for both of them. It was lovely seeing how much they both enjoyed it, Asher again was very entertaining with his horse impressions and attempts at speeding the donkey up by bouncing up and down on the saddle - I think he'll be a natural!

Entry into the animal park is very reasonably priced, and there is a free entry family day coming up on 8th June 2014 if you're interested in visiting.

All Things Wild Nature Centre

Today we visited All Things Wild Nature Centre in Honeybourne, near Evesham. We had such a fabulous time there! There's such a variety of activities to see and do.

We started by taking a walk through the animal pens, enclosures and paddocks, where every so often we'd bump into a dinosaur, which the kids loved! Eden and Asher, at 4 and 2, can be reluctant walkers at times - the dinosaurs, short walking distances, and stamp trail really helped encourage them around the site. Eden especially enjoyed finding the stamp boxes for the stamp trail and was very proud to complete her worksheet - her first one! 

There are so many dinosaurs to discover! 

And a dinosaur dig - a hands-on way to learn about fossils

We did pond dipping and found some water snails, and we met baby ducks and chicks in the barn 

Eden is fascinated by bugs at the moment, and here they had bug land, with lots of learning resources available to discover the world of bugs 

If it rains there's 2 indoor soft play areas, an indoor learning centre where you can do junk modelling, colouring, and nature sensory games. The kids really enjoyed the indoor pedal tractor track! 

All of a sudden the kids are looking very grown up!

We had a fantastic time today - it's been such a fun day of learning outdoors! 

Cardooo Cards: Journey Buddies

Last November we reviewed Cardooo Cards - the fun greetings cards that encourage children to engage in activities developing literacy, numeracy and creativity. You can read what we thought of them here.

A few months on, and we're still enjoying Cardooo Cards. Last November we were sent a Rapunzel story card. Eden will often pick this off the shelf for us to read, and last month it travelled abroad on holiday to Florida with us, being a very convenient and compact form of entertainment for the flight.  

Today I want to review another of the Cardooo cards, which just like previous cards we've reviewed, offers excellent entertainment value. This is one of their Journey Buddies cards, called 'At the Ballet'. Eden goes to ballet class every week, and has recently taken her first ballet exam, so she was excited to receive this card in the post. Eden is nearly 4.5 and most activities in the card were ones that she could do herself, such as dot to dot, lots of colouring in, and stickers (always a BIG hit). In addition, the card would appeal to older children too, with dancing facts, stories, and wordsearches amongst other activities - the cards pack A LOT in!



Eden's favourite activity in the card was the ballet board game, complete with dice to easily make yourself and counters. We enjoyed the twists and turns of the game, as well as the relevance to ballet, and it was great counting practice for Eden.



Journey buddies cards make a fabulous boredom buster for long journeys, crammed full with lots of activities for on the go.  The card is priced at £3.50 and if ballet isn't your thing, why not browse the selection of journey buddies cards here - in their range there's something for everyone! If you're heading away on a family holiday this Easter, don't leave without one!

Our Very Hungry Caterpillar Day!

Last week to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the book, we held our own very hungry caterpillar themed day. Eden woke up excited (I'd told her the night before) and absolutely loved it, Asher (just turned 2) definitely understood the association going on through the day and enjoyed the activities. Balloons were a must! 

I made this play mat for Asher before he was born, we haven't had it out since he was a baby, so it was lovely to have it out again as part of a party today. 

Asher loved the caterpillar that I made from an old Pringles tube. I cut a hole in the lid for a mouth, stuck a face on and some green paper for the body, and printed out some VHC food (that we coloured in ourself as an activity in itself) which we then posted to 'feed' our caterpillar. Like I said, Asher really loved this activity and it kept him busy for ages. All week he's returned to this activity too. 

While he was playing, Eden and I filled in a multiple choice quiz answering questions about the VHC story. 

I found a sequencing printable on Pinterest where we put the parts of the story in order, and practised our counting

We did lots of painting, making butterflies with tissue paper, and caterpillars out of egg boxes. I love how these mini-canvas fingerprints came out - a nice keepsake of the day! 

The day's inspired me to do something similar again soon. Eden just found it a lot of fun, especially as she loves art and creating things. And for Asher it was really noticeable to see the connections being made through the day, the development of his speech and consolidating associations through spending a whole day on something.