Happy non-first day at school to us!

Today we officially became a home educating family! We celebrated Eden's non-first day at school. She had a great day, full of learning and surprises. These are just a few moments from the day. While I had some activities planned, many more developed naturally as a result of the children's creativity and curiosity. Looking forward to tomorrow!

Spontaneous Castles and Knights Day (visiting Ludlow Castle)

Why is it that spontaneous days out are sometimes the best? We woke this morning to another rainy bank holiday Monday. With no particular plans for the day (other than a potential visit to our allotment plot which wasn't all that appealing in the rain) we were chilling out in our living room after breakfast. The kids were flicking through our library books, one of which has really caught their eye. A board book, lift the flap style, about knights. After reading it through a few times with them Eden said it was her favourite book, and the idea came to us to visit a castle today. A quick google search brought up Ludlow Castle, and Eden excitedly rushed upstairs, and reappeared wearing her knight dress up outfit. Half an hour later we were on our way. 

We'd read that Ludlow Castle is really dog friendly, so our guide dog puppy, Viking, now 20 weeks, came with us too. He was so well-behaved, even with the rain! 

He enjoyed exploring the grounds and attempted the steps up to one of the towers, getting half way up before changing his mind! 

Eden fitted right in wearing her knight outfit! She wasn't put off by the rain, refused to wear her coat and skipped along exploring the castle ruins.

Asher loved wandering through the castle rooms, finding hidden tunnels and climbing up and down the many steps. He also loved the muddy puddles! 

One of the highlights of the day was watching the Heritage Cup British Full Contact Medieval Combat Championships. Very entertaining! 

Despite the rain we have lots of great memories from today. Looking forward to a return visit to Ludlow Castle, perhaps with a picnic next time and better weather! 

This year we're Frogs at Just So Festival! (Our Frog Craft day)

Only 3 more sleeps until the return of Just So Festival in Cheshire. Last year we had such an amazing time; taking in the carnival atmosphere, joining in with the vast array of activities on offer and dancing the nights away with the kids while listening to brilliant bands. There is such creativity on offer everywhere you look. 

This year for the tribal tournament we have decided to join the Frogs. Today we've been busy making accessories for our outfits. Eden couldn't wait to get started and ate her breakfast so quickly! 

It was Eden's idea to use a paper plate as part the craft session. So we started with painting and while that was drying made some legs (involved me thinking back to my childhood days of how to do this). 

Next up was badge making - these turned out a little bigger than we'd originally imagined, but at least they'll be clearly visible! 

Finally we brought the laminator out and have made some bunting to proudly put up on our tent.

Once everything was dry we assembled our frog paper plates - the tongue idea I found on Pinterest and Eden genuinely shrieked with delight when I demonstrated it to her - she thought it was hilarious! 

I'm finishing off our frog craft day by doing some frog-themed crochet as part of my dress up outfit for the weekend... 

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.