So it has been one month now since Esther and William left school

We spent the first two weeks in Spain

Came home for a week

Before heading off to Cornwall

To Coombe Mill Farm

We are taking some time at the moment

To deschool

I need this as much

Perhaps more

Than Esther and William

Living, literally, over the road from the school is very hard

I find myself at the window

Trying to catch a glimpse

Gain a sense of how things are going at school

I know that we all made the right decision to leave

But I miss my colleagues

And I dearly miss my class

It was a good decision to not be at home for the first few weeks of term

And actually we are about to leave again

For longer this time

Our house is being extended and renovated

So we have to move out for at least the next two months

Funnily, we are moving to a lovely village

Where I used to teach at the very lovely village school

I am looking forward to spending some time there again

And so we are deschooling

Slowly

And at the same time we are finding our feet with home learning

My plan is to eventually follow quite a structured, very creative curriculum

But for the moment we cover some basics everyday

Reading, letter formation, number formation

We do maths ‘work’ about three times a week

And we are doing lots of incidental

Accidental

Learning through play

Once the work on the house is complete

We are home and settled

Then our more structured days will begin

But even now the children are learning so much

At their own level and pace every single day

Yesterday and today are good examples

They have been good days I think

I think

They are how I imagine home education should be

An Edspire Home Ed Day

We woke up in the morning

We all pottered, worked and played

The shopping arrived from Tesco

And the children devoured all the fruit delivered

In a matter of minutes

We then did some Early (not so early!) Morning Work

Today we focused on handwriting

Letter formation

We are working on our curvy caterpillar letters

Like c and d, q and g

After this task we had a late breakfast

During which Bea was playing with some plastic farm animals

Cow, chicken, sheep and pig

Without really thinking

I asked William to order the animals in alphabetical order

Which with a little help with cow and chicken he did

I then wrote the word ‘big’ on a piece of paper

And asked the children which animal they would put on the word

William chose the cow as it is the biggest animal

Esther chose the pig as pig rhymes with big

I wrote other words down

The children placed the animals and gave their reasons why

This opened up a lot of reflective talk about our visit to the farm

And allowed me to informally assess what Esther and William know about these

And other farm animals

And all the while Bea was listening

Repeating words and phrases

So through our conversations

She was learning too

We spent about half an hour engrossed in this

Completely unplanned, impromptu task

And it was wonderful

Once breakfast was over and cleared away

William played with Bea

While Esther and I did some maths together

We are working on estimating and counting

And we also revised simple addition and subtraction

Jumping along a number line

William did his maths later in the day

Again one to one with me

We looked at partitioning numbers into tens and units

Ordering two digit numbers

Adding single digit numbers to two digit numbers

Using a number line

William loves maths

And is working well above expectations for his age

So I am always looking for ways to stretch and challenge him

With Esther it is all about building her confidence

And developing her learning through her wonderful creative ability

A big part of yesterday was Esther and William’s first ever swimming lesson

And our first event with other home educating families

Esther and William loved their lesson

And I am hoping through the regular sessions

We might all make some friends

After swimming we came home

Esther and William had some time on their computers

Before we all went to do some water play outside

I had thought we would do some work on capacity

Using the paddling pool

But at the last minute decided that we would instead

Look at floating and sinking

I collected together some fruits and vegetables

Created a recording table on the laptop

And off we went outside

First we looked at all the food stuff

And made sure that we all knew what they all were

I then asked the children to predict

Whether they thought each item would float or sink

We had a great discussion about what we all thought and why

We then had great fun throwing the different things into the paddling pool

And watching them to see if they did indeed sink or float

Mostly Esther and William’s predictions were linked to size and weight

They thought the smaller things would float and the larger things might sink

They were both surprised when the apple and the orange floated

We then started to talk about why some things float and some do not

We decided to peel the orange to see if that would make a difference

And it did!

The peeled orange sank straight to the bottom of the pool

Esther then decided that we should also peel the banana

The banana stayed afloat

We broke the banana into smaller pieces and each piece stayed afloat

We wondered why one raspberry sank while two others stayed afloat

It was becoming clear that we needed to think about more than weight and size

Esther realised this most when a pea pod floated but a single pea sank

This was such a fun activity and also the beginning of some very very exciting learning

A whole other blog post worth of learning (coming soon)

After a lovely long play outside

We came in for one to one reading with Mummy

We use a mixture of reading scheme books and real books

Fiction and non fiction

William has a reading age of almost twice hos own age

And he devours books especially anything with maps and facts

Esther is much more unsure

She has big gaps in her phonics learning

So I do a lot of phonics work with her

We use Reading Eggs

And we read easier books to build confidence and fluency

Both children adore being read to

And we have recently enjoyed

George’s Marvellous Medicine

and There is a Viking in My Bed

At bath time the learning continued

With Daddy explaining about volume and density and displacement

It really was a lovely day

Jam packed with learning and play

Today the learning continued

And I am really enjoying following the children’s lead

And investigating and exploring ideas

To answer questions they ask

I am also enjoying planning learning opportunities for my own children

And I am enjoying the closeness that brings

I know that not all days will be good days

And between all the highlights

There are very challenging Bea moments

I call them the ‘Bea’ts in between

Another blog post to follow

We are only just finding our feet as a home schooling family

But I am feeling confident that we have chosen the right path

For the moment

For us