All of a sudden, to coincide with us not rushing around sorting out floods, houses or getting ready for a big holiday, we have been able to focus on our day to day routine and lives and the home education is back with a vengeance.
Me and the boys have been doing all sorts together.
I made a green juice with my new manual juicer, the boys will be learning how to put this together and make juices soon. It is quite labour intensive.
We took a walk into Fenny and had a look at the vacuum robot.
We also saw this sign and had a chat about how big companies monopolise markets and what this means for small businesses like this one.
When we walked into a car park, a car came past. Caden remembered the Ted Hughes poem from the other day and said he was scaling the wall. Miles copied too.
The boys' Dad and I seem to be getting on well again and we have had a chat about the boy's education. We are both happy with the direction it is going in though I said I wanted to work on Caden's handwriting and Miles' reading as a priority which he agrees with.
Maybe Caden heard me but we decided to do our Christmas wrapping and cards (I don't send Christmas cards but it's a good opportunity for writing for the boys). Caden decided to write a Christmas card to Dan TDM from Diamond Minecart, who is a you tube minecraft video superstar at the moment. If you have boys into minecraft, they will know who he is. Once there was a good reason for Caden to do the writing, it was incredible to see, he wrote away and he writing is really GOOD. We have done handwriting practise in the past but he hated it, it was repetitive and meaningless. I thought I would come back to it when he turned seven having read research that shows boy's coordination is not as advanced as girl's pre age seven. I wanted to make life easier for Caden and me. I will hold to this with writing for Miles too, unless he shows such an interest as this.
This really brings home to me how the principles of autonomous education work. It is working for us right now at home. I am providing him with the tools to facilitate his interests and the academic stuff is happening in a meaningful way for him. I have loved watching it happen.
First Caden finished off the Christmas list for me of people we needed to get presents for, here is Daddy, Caden, Miles, Granny Jo, Gramps, Zack and Ashley.
This is his card to Dan TDM (while Miles snarfs a bowl of blueberries).
Miles gets his axe and spends 15 minutes chopping wood for me.
Miles also did some great work. He has moved on naturally from large squiggles to quite precise curly patterns which look a lot like writing. I remember Caden doing this and once Miles recognises letters and can read well, writing won't be so difficult for him. I think the trick is to allow them access to drawing, colouring and painting. Anything that get their fine motor coordination going will contribute to writing.
This morning Caden and Miles worked on a project based around a favourite DVD they have been watching. How to train your dragon. They have been watching the making of the cartoon documentary which has shown some of the cartoonists artwork and sketches. They then wanted to sketch the dragons themselves from a still frame they paused on the DVD.
You can see that Caden chose to label the dragons he created himself and has written their names. One you can read is the 'Whispering death'. He asked for help with the spelling.
In other news, we are getting into watching documentaries while the weather is cold outside. We are watching the Human Planet series together and talking about all the different things the program presents. The first one was Oceans. Caden and I held our breath when the man dived to see how long he could hold his breath for compared to us. The answer... a lot longer.
Life is good on the boat, we are getting used to the space we have. The boys are learning to be respectful of grown up's space too, they can't just dive around (hot stove nearby) and jump on the couch or throw things at each other like they might in a house. I think it is great that they are adapting to a different environment and I hope that they learn more consideration from this.
We also have been having lots of fun, singing loudly to songs from the radio and watching the ducks and seagulls from the windows.
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