It's been a busy few weeks in the Old Schoolhouse. Or rather not IN the Old Schoolhouse. We've been out and about rather a lot!
First saw a weekend where we headed off to the Museum Of Lincolnshire life to meet up with some other Home Educators and have a look round the Meccano exhibition. There was some hands on meccano to play with and Lemmy and Oz trundled off to build a police helicopter crane. I'm not sure which of the two was responsible for which element of that combination! It was good fun, and Lemmy asked if he could have the TinTin plane to make. So that's gone on the list of 'things to buy'.
Then we had a return to Lincoln because there was free entry to the castle, where we saw demonstrations of archery and old firearms. The latter was very good at demonstrating how unreliable the firearms were! We saw birds of prey, and a troup of medieval musicians and of course a walk round the old prison.
We headed over to the Cathedral, which prompted our first real talk about God. Lemmy is still of the opinion that God is some kind of magician - like Merlin. But we had a chat about different people holding different religious beliefs.
A trip to the Bishops Palace saw Lemmy wandering off with Grandad so I'm not entirely sure what he learnt at that point! But he has a thing about Henry the VIII at the moment so was interested to learnt that he stayed there once.
He bought a knights outfit in the shop, so we have a chat about the Crusades coming up at some point in the future!
Then we headed over to the Museum Of Lincolnshire life again, where they were having a WWI weekend with demonstrations of field guns being erected and the various developments in gas masks, and a look at guns.
As we left he picked a book up in the shop which was all about WWII, an era which he is very keen on learning more about.
This weekend gone we have spent with friends in Ely, and Lemmy was very excited about this as of course the Cromwell house is there and the English Civil War is really his 'thing' at the moment. We didn't go to the house as we were pushed for time but a future visit is on the cards to explore it properly.
On the Sunday we went into Cambridge and had a quick walk round and some lunch before heading off to watch the Kid Carpet and the Noisy Animals show. We saw the songs from this performed at Shambala last year (us grown ups are fans of Kid Carpets previous output aimed at the more mature fan - mature in age, not mentality!). Seeing the show in it's full form with all the visuals was great! Kid (he's called Kid Carpet because he's 'kiddish' was the explanation Lemmy offered to our 8 year old companion) is really great at engaging this young audience. Lemmy was enthralled, and noisily joining in. He was up and out of his seat like a flash when the dance competition was announced as the climax and to the joy of our little group he won!! He's still on a high about this now!
Next weekend is going to be a more sedate affair. We have no plans - so hope for good weather and the chance to get in the garden and plant more seeds. Lemmy is becoming more interested and knowledgable about growing fruit and veg and as he knows I volunteer for an organic gardening charity he's keen to learn more about organic gardening methods!
Monday 19 March 2012
Sunday 12 February 2012
No fun like Snow Fun!
You can just see Lemmy peeking out from behind his snowman!
Lemmy was most disappointed not to have snow at Christmas, but then in his six years on this planet all he can remember is snowy Christmases. I'm sure we can all remember that feeling we had as children when you glanced up at the window and saw the snow coming down, or awoke in the morning to a world suddenle covered in a white glittering blanket. It's magical.
Last weekend we went for a walk down the lane. The fen drain was completely frozen over and we stood on the second bridge for a while watching the swans. One had found a gap in the ice and was ducking under to feed. The other was tentatively stepping across the ice and with the occasional cracking noise it's foot would disappear. Eventually it joined it's mate to feed. These swans often nest at this point on the drain and so we walk up there through the months and eventually are rewarded with the sight of the cygnets.
We had the obligatory snowball fight, Lemmy reigning victorious (as always).
We returned home and while I came in to warm up, the boys stayed outside and built a snowman.
We're still autonomous at the moment, aside from a little bit of time each day to do a couple of worksheets on Maths and English. Lemmy's reading is coming along, and I guess when he can do that much better we'll naturally graduate to doing projects and more directed learning. Winter for us always seems a much more quiet time on the learning front as we're at home more. But then you reflect on the day's conversations and realise you've often covered a wide range of topics. There's usually some History and Geography in there, mostly because Lemmy is still interested in English Civil War!
Friday 9 December 2011
salt dough and life lessons
I was watching Kirsties Homemade Christmas a couple of weeks ago. Lemmy wanted to watch it too, and started to get very excited about the approaching festivities. He saw the section with the children making saltdough decorations and suddenly decided he would like to do it. The power of television eh? I've done saltdough with him before but he rapidly got bored with it.
Anyway off we went to make the dough and we cut out lots of Christmas trees and stars and I did some rounds to paint as baubles. The following week when they'd been baked and were ready we painted them and covered them (and ourselves!) in glitter too. I'm going to put the strings on later and figure out where to hang them, so I'll take some photos and add them to the blog.
The 1st of December was a sad day at the Old Schoolhouse. Our lovely, soppy dog was put to sleep at the vets. I've blogged about it over at my other blog http://motherofintention.blogspot.com/2011/12/another-sad-good-bye.html but I wanted to mention here too as obviously this is something that has had an impact on Lemmy. He's taken the news pretty well, but then he's lost two pets in the last year already. With Kelly-dog I didn't tell him she was PTS. I really wasn't sure how he would deal with that news. But this time his dad told him that Oz-dog was gone and had prepared him with the knowledge that he may have had a special sleeping medicine at the vets. Lemmy asked me this outright and I generally don't believe in lying to children, if there is an age appropriate way of explaining something to them. So I told him the truth, and he asked if Kelly had died the same way and I admitted that she had. We had a very long conversation about how and why this was done. It happened over the course of the weekend, he came and asked questions as he thought of them. Sometimes asking the same questions over and over. I think he understands now.
He also asked if we'd buried him in the garden like we did with Kelly and I had to admit that we hadn't. We've had him cremated and will be burying his ashes next to Kelly when we get them back. He knew about cremation already as his Great-nana died ealrier in the year and she was cremated. He still asked a LOT of questions about it though.
I know some people struggle with how to broach the subject of death with small children. My view is that the best way forward is honesty as much as possible and in an age appropriate way. We haven't had to deal with the death of a close loved one yet, and I know that will be a whole different ball game when it does happen but I do hope that having taken such an honest approach with loss of our dogs has set the groundworks of making it as easy as it possibly could when they time does come.
Us grown ups are still very much in the grief stage of the loss of this four legged member of our family. Lemmy seems to have moved on emotionally very swiftly. We're buoyed by that ourselves. Christmas is coming and Lemmy's obvious childish enthusiasm for that is infectious.
Anyway off we went to make the dough and we cut out lots of Christmas trees and stars and I did some rounds to paint as baubles. The following week when they'd been baked and were ready we painted them and covered them (and ourselves!) in glitter too. I'm going to put the strings on later and figure out where to hang them, so I'll take some photos and add them to the blog.
The 1st of December was a sad day at the Old Schoolhouse. Our lovely, soppy dog was put to sleep at the vets. I've blogged about it over at my other blog http://motherofintention.blogspot.com/2011/12/another-sad-good-bye.html but I wanted to mention here too as obviously this is something that has had an impact on Lemmy. He's taken the news pretty well, but then he's lost two pets in the last year already. With Kelly-dog I didn't tell him she was PTS. I really wasn't sure how he would deal with that news. But this time his dad told him that Oz-dog was gone and had prepared him with the knowledge that he may have had a special sleeping medicine at the vets. Lemmy asked me this outright and I generally don't believe in lying to children, if there is an age appropriate way of explaining something to them. So I told him the truth, and he asked if Kelly had died the same way and I admitted that she had. We had a very long conversation about how and why this was done. It happened over the course of the weekend, he came and asked questions as he thought of them. Sometimes asking the same questions over and over. I think he understands now.
He also asked if we'd buried him in the garden like we did with Kelly and I had to admit that we hadn't. We've had him cremated and will be burying his ashes next to Kelly when we get them back. He knew about cremation already as his Great-nana died ealrier in the year and she was cremated. He still asked a LOT of questions about it though.
I know some people struggle with how to broach the subject of death with small children. My view is that the best way forward is honesty as much as possible and in an age appropriate way. We haven't had to deal with the death of a close loved one yet, and I know that will be a whole different ball game when it does happen but I do hope that having taken such an honest approach with loss of our dogs has set the groundworks of making it as easy as it possibly could when they time does come.
Us grown ups are still very much in the grief stage of the loss of this four legged member of our family. Lemmy seems to have moved on emotionally very swiftly. We're buoyed by that ourselves. Christmas is coming and Lemmy's obvious childish enthusiasm for that is infectious.
Monday 14 November 2011
Too busy learning!
I really have to make more effort with this blog!
Our days are so busy just being.....
We've been learning a bit about Armistice Day, as obviously it's been at the forefront of peoples minds and conversations just lately. Lemmy is very interested in all things war. Well he is a boy!
I've requested some information from a family member about my Grandfather's time during the war so that we can do a proper project. I think (hope) Lemmy will engage with it more if it's about someone he can relate to. Of course he never met my Grandfather, but he is aware of who he is.
On Saturday morning Lemmy got up and saw a picture of an Otter on my computer. He wanted to know more about it, and so followed an hour of finding out all about Otters and then Beavers and Mink. I don't know how his brain makes whatever connections it does but this somehow led on to watching videos of volcanoes erupting and learning all about them and in particular pyroclastic flow.
We've done the usual reading and writing practice this weekend, and some colouring too to try and improve his handling of a pen. This is the hardest part of Home Educating. He's really not keen on this element of learning. He really does want to read, but doesn't want to put in the practice. I'm very aware that this child of mine can read far more than he's letting on...
Other things we've been doing - gardening (always lots of that in this household), he's helped cut down the last of the apple trees we've removed. He then made a 'meteor deflector' out of the branches. This was basically a bivouac!
It's hard to remember everything he's probably learned over the last few weeks. He's very inquisitve, and conversations range widely all day - every day!
He's also very proud of the fact that he's now been invested at his Beavers Troop!
Our days are so busy just being.....
We've been learning a bit about Armistice Day, as obviously it's been at the forefront of peoples minds and conversations just lately. Lemmy is very interested in all things war. Well he is a boy!
I've requested some information from a family member about my Grandfather's time during the war so that we can do a proper project. I think (hope) Lemmy will engage with it more if it's about someone he can relate to. Of course he never met my Grandfather, but he is aware of who he is.
On Saturday morning Lemmy got up and saw a picture of an Otter on my computer. He wanted to know more about it, and so followed an hour of finding out all about Otters and then Beavers and Mink. I don't know how his brain makes whatever connections it does but this somehow led on to watching videos of volcanoes erupting and learning all about them and in particular pyroclastic flow.
We've done the usual reading and writing practice this weekend, and some colouring too to try and improve his handling of a pen. This is the hardest part of Home Educating. He's really not keen on this element of learning. He really does want to read, but doesn't want to put in the practice. I'm very aware that this child of mine can read far more than he's letting on...
Other things we've been doing - gardening (always lots of that in this household), he's helped cut down the last of the apple trees we've removed. He then made a 'meteor deflector' out of the branches. This was basically a bivouac!
It's hard to remember everything he's probably learned over the last few weeks. He's very inquisitve, and conversations range widely all day - every day!
He's also very proud of the fact that he's now been invested at his Beavers Troop!
Monday 19 September 2011
Not back to school!
well - I haven't posted all summer. We've just been too busy doing stuff!
We've had a summer full of learning about growing in the garden. Lemmy's runner beans grew really well! And his pumpkin plant has one grapefruit sized squash on it at the moment. He discovered how delightful mange-tout are as a garden snack and the result of that was that we managed about two stir-fry's worth into the kitchen and the rest ended up in an active 5 year old's belly!
We've done a few festivals this year, most notably the Croisannt Neuf in Wales which was delightfully small and saw Lemmy spend his pocket money on a gaudy pink and gold glitter face mask and developing an obsession with an old fashioned coconut shy!
Shambala at the end of the summer always proves to be the best festival of the season for us though. The biggest negative was Lemmy getting his first ever wasp sting. He dealt with it admirably, first removing the sting from his finger and THEN coming to me to announce the injury - though by that point he realised it was hurting and he descended into tears. A trip to the medical tent ensued (as the finger was swelling quite a lot) and we returned smelling of vinegar! And true to form Lemmy managed to sweet talk a nurse into parting with a medicinal polo. Then he spent the rest of the weekend telling any pretty girl who would listen about how brave he had been!
He had great fun in the kids field, though I think possibly the grown ups enjoyed John Hegley's animal alphabet somewhat more than the kids did. Lemmy was really keen to make a bar of soap so we did that on the last day and he was very pleased with the end result. The musical hit for him was seeing Kid Carpet (a favourite of mummy's, and i'm so glad he starting producing childrens music as well as his adult stuff)performing songs from his upcoming kids show. And of course watching the fancy dress procession produced lots of excited exclamation!
So home now, settling in for the winter. It's time to start teaching him to read in earnest. He's finished Reading Eggs, but I'm not sure how much of it he's absorbed so we've moved onto Starfall for now and actually it's reassuring that he does know far more than he's willing to let on. The writing is proving a bit trickier. He's very much an active outdoor boy, so sitting and doing 'proper work' doesn't appeal. I'm afraid bribery of sorts is working here. He's discovered Moshi Monsters and so for the time he sits practising reading and writing, he earns time on MM.
He's also discovered Warhammer (mum rolls eyes). He has been very interested in Oz's English Civil War soliders, so I suppose the fact that Warhammer has skeletons and zombies was always going to appeal to him.
I'm going to try very hard to do a weekly update on here, to keep track of what fun we're having and also to document the warts and all aspect of Home Ed. It's a brilliant journey, enjoyable for the most part.....but it wouldn't be fair to only put the nice bits would it!
We've had a summer full of learning about growing in the garden. Lemmy's runner beans grew really well! And his pumpkin plant has one grapefruit sized squash on it at the moment. He discovered how delightful mange-tout are as a garden snack and the result of that was that we managed about two stir-fry's worth into the kitchen and the rest ended up in an active 5 year old's belly!
We've done a few festivals this year, most notably the Croisannt Neuf in Wales which was delightfully small and saw Lemmy spend his pocket money on a gaudy pink and gold glitter face mask and developing an obsession with an old fashioned coconut shy!
Shambala at the end of the summer always proves to be the best festival of the season for us though. The biggest negative was Lemmy getting his first ever wasp sting. He dealt with it admirably, first removing the sting from his finger and THEN coming to me to announce the injury - though by that point he realised it was hurting and he descended into tears. A trip to the medical tent ensued (as the finger was swelling quite a lot) and we returned smelling of vinegar! And true to form Lemmy managed to sweet talk a nurse into parting with a medicinal polo. Then he spent the rest of the weekend telling any pretty girl who would listen about how brave he had been!
He had great fun in the kids field, though I think possibly the grown ups enjoyed John Hegley's animal alphabet somewhat more than the kids did. Lemmy was really keen to make a bar of soap so we did that on the last day and he was very pleased with the end result. The musical hit for him was seeing Kid Carpet (a favourite of mummy's, and i'm so glad he starting producing childrens music as well as his adult stuff)performing songs from his upcoming kids show. And of course watching the fancy dress procession produced lots of excited exclamation!
So home now, settling in for the winter. It's time to start teaching him to read in earnest. He's finished Reading Eggs, but I'm not sure how much of it he's absorbed so we've moved onto Starfall for now and actually it's reassuring that he does know far more than he's willing to let on. The writing is proving a bit trickier. He's very much an active outdoor boy, so sitting and doing 'proper work' doesn't appeal. I'm afraid bribery of sorts is working here. He's discovered Moshi Monsters and so for the time he sits practising reading and writing, he earns time on MM.
He's also discovered Warhammer (mum rolls eyes). He has been very interested in Oz's English Civil War soliders, so I suppose the fact that Warhammer has skeletons and zombies was always going to appeal to him.
I'm going to try very hard to do a weekly update on here, to keep track of what fun we're having and also to document the warts and all aspect of Home Ed. It's a brilliant journey, enjoyable for the most part.....but it wouldn't be fair to only put the nice bits would it!
Saturday 28 May 2011
More garden, Peru and Mercury
We've been doing a lot in the garden over the last couple of weeks, and decided that this bit of garden would be handed over to Lemmy. The paeony was already in, as were the forget-me-nots but Lemmy chose some plants at the garden centre to fill in. He made a bee-line for the marigolds, for some reason he is very taken with them. Of course he couldn't resist the snap-dragons, and I was very pleased when he picked a bright red zinnia as it's always been one of my favourite flowers.
Lemmy also learned how to build a cane support for the runner beans which he planted in the greenhouse a while ago now. We built the support and he planted the runner beans out - though only time will tell if he'll actually eat any!
Lemmy has a subscription to the National Geographic Kids magazine and it arrived this morning. He sat with his breakfast and browsed through it until he found an article which got him very excited - a feature on Machu Picchu. He announced he wanted to go there! My cousin visited there on a trip to South America a couple of years ago and fortunately has some photos online so we went to look at them and Lemmy seemed quite impressed that someone I know has actually been there! This afternoon we expanded on this a little by finding Peru on the (very large!) map of the world we bought this week. Then a little time on the internet to learn what language they speak in Peru, and what their flag looks like and to find out who built Machu Picchu. By that time I was losing his attention a bit so we decided to turn our attention to other matters.
I also bought him a poster of the Periodic Table this week, and he was keen to do something with that. I asked him what he wanted to learn and he just wanted to pick one of the 'squares' so off he went and picked Hg - Mercury. We talked about the chemical symbol, and then about the atomic number - we wrote on post-it-notes and stuck these on the poster. We also watched some Youtube videos, one of a man handling mercury which led to a discussion about it being poisonous and then a video demonstrating that even a heavy lead musket ball would float in the mercury.
One other things which has really grabbed Lemmy's attention of late is Oz's toy soldiers. He's currently in the shed learning how to re-enact the English Civil War........
Tuesday 10 May 2011
In the garden
Helping to cut back the stag horn trees....
Helping to prepare the bed for the paved barbeque area....
Helping to build a new Barbeque.....
And using the box as a space-ship....
We decorated our outdoor table......
We had some tree surgery done and they brought a cherry picker. When offered the chance to go up in it Lemmy could barely contain his excitement! He was very well behaved and even got to make it go up and down.....
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