Comments on: Geography. And no, i couldn’t have planned this a year ago.

By: Mink

Mink — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:36:39 +0000

I’m a visual learner too, so can totally relate to this – I just wish I’d had a Mum like you to home educate me when I was a child, it would have made life so much easier! As it was I spent years telling people “don’t tell me, show me. I can’t follow the words but if you show me I’ll get it straight away”. At one point I gave serious thought to having a t-shirt printed as I got so sick of explaining this to the same people over and over /

My favourite thing about home education is that you really get to understand how your child thinks and can provide the kind of education they couldn’t possibly get anywhere else.

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:32:57 +0000

I’m so glad that Maddy and you are learning from each other. Yes, it would be an unusual school that could adapt itself to fit her properly.

Is a map something like what you see out of the window or looking down from a hot air balloon, or is it description of what’s next to or connected to what? (I think it’s both, depending on the circumstance). For instance http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/blog/?p=505.

When you’re on the global scale and you want a flat map, what do you think is most important? Shape and bearings between things (the Mercator projection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection) or area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall-Peters_projection). Does size relate to importance?

Then there’s the here-be-dragons nature of maps being developed over time. Browse around http://www.openstreetmap.org/ enough and you find some interestingly sketchy bits of the UK. Who makes maps and why? (Armies, like the Ordnance Survey, miners like John McDouall Stuart etc.).

I think that Dwarfish maps in Middle Earth stories have East going up, BTW.

Yes, another way in which I’m turning into my dad (raving about maps)!

By: Carol

Carol — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:45:25 +0000

That was fantastic Merry! It proves how things naturally unfold given opportunity and the right environment.

By: Elaine

Elaine — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:36:29 +0000

Ditto tbird’s comment.

Merry, you’ve just described how my Ben appears to tick and therefore you’ve helped me out big time. That’s a lovely post, thanks for sharing it.

By: Nigel Evans

Nigel Evans — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:08:04 +0000

another fab post, I can ‘see’ the huge progress Maddy has made, well done done to you both.
I’m so glad you said towards the end, that you had worked on this over a few days, i was begining to think, how on earth did you fit that all into one day

By: tbird

tbird — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:43:26 +0000

aw, Merry, that’s lovely. And yes, it proves the point really that you can’t plan a full year’s worth of education in advance really!