Combination of 3 projects; a very hastily done animation of her map project landscape (LEA man was coming and we wanted it finished!) with a standing stone Celtic circle n the back ground that gradually falls over.

Not an exact map replica, but not bad.

Exhibition of work. (Set up after he left, we’re not pandering to all that!)

Three pics of animals wallowing in mud, so you can only see their heads. Must do daylight ones, especially of the hippo as the detail is lovely; very Aardman like.

And this pair of elephants, which i think is just beautiful and quite extra-ordinary for a 9 year old. It seems to exude playfulness and love from between them.

It may be that you’ve read my posts on the Home Education Review recently and dismissed it and the comments about what it means for the wider community of parents who do use schools, as nothing more than hysterical rubbish from someone who ought to not mind the idea of permission and registration and regulation and withdrawal of licences and minimum standards.

If you were one of those people, or might have been, you can go and read what i said here and here.

And now the government is going threaten parents with fines of up to £1000 and court action if their children are unruly, badly behaved or not upholding, in the schools opinion, their side of the “home school” agreement. An odd decision, since i think (off the top of my head) truancy is still rising despite similar powers to ‘combat’ that problem. And if you’ve never signed a “home-school agreement” (and i have) they are a bit vague and woolly to say the least.

Sometimes, maybe even often, bad behaviour will be because of bad parenting, sometimes it will be because of problems in school, the influences of other children or teachers in school or plain and simple boredom. Or lack of connection because they aren’t engaged with what they are learning, not surprising given the government is now having to alter it’s policies on educational provision to “devolve power back to schools”  – and wash it’s hands of failing standards and cut some costs, if i’m not much mistaken. Centralised decisions on what individual children need doesn’t work apparently; we need more personalised education, suited to the needs of individual children. (Sound familiar… like, i dunno… oh, being home educated!!!!)

I’m completely convinced that bad school behaviour is not necessarily parental influence; i know a boy who behaved badly, truanted, smoked, took some things he shouldn’t have, drove cars and bikes too fast, drank far to much and eventually got expelled for persistent truanting and lack of effort. His dad is great and his brother didn’t have any of those problems as a teenager. He’d had a few problems growing up, his mum died but mostly, if you talk to him now, he says he was bored at school, because he was very, very clever and disgruntled with the restrictions on his life. He needed to live it, so he rebelled so he could.

Cleverest man i know. And i know a few. I’m married to him.

So, the bad parents probably won’t learn masses from parenting classes unless they are very lucky or very ready to change, the policy is likely to be about as effective as the truancy one and the schools, well – will they change? A staggering proportion of senior schools, despite widespread delight at their abolition, ordered voluntary KS3 SATs this year, so i’m not holding my breath.

Any way you look at it, it seems to me that parents are about to find themselves punished if the school fails to educate their child in a way that enthralls them enough to ensure they behave well and want to turn up. Which is odd, when you think about it in context of the HE Review, reviewing parents and children and forcing them back into school if they think the parent isn’t doing well enough.And even odder when you consider that the law says that a child’s education is the responsibility of the parent, which they can hand to a school if they wish. The relationship, it seems to me, ought to be more like customer and service provider, with school expected to provide a service that is good enough to be worthy of the custom.

What will the parents of these unruly kids who are facing fines do? HE isn’t going to be much of an option when the new legislation comes in, that’s for sure. The system is going to have those parents every which way.

They came for the home educating parents, but i did not speak out because i was not a home educator. Then they came for the parents who chose a bad school, but i did not speak out, because our school was good. Then they came for the parents who chose the nursery with a sex abuser as a nursery nurse, but i did not speak out, because my children went to a different nursery.

And then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak up for me.

Still think i’m delusional?

With thanks to Tech for the title and Grit for her series of posts and inspiration

Today, our poor children made polymer chains and explored non-Newtonian fluids, ate a healthy meal in the company of each other and interested adults and then enjoyed the cakes baked by one of them, collaborated on making sure all of them were appropriately dressed for sun and water play and then had a wonderful sunny afternoon, laughing and living in beautiful weather, in a beautiful garden with several adults who love or care for them very much indeed.

Science is snot what you think.

Very proud of Fran for handing her project in a day early (in the end, evidently dates are not her strong point!) Apart from helping her to do a page plan so she could see what needed to be done and then keeping her at it over the weekend, she has done it all herself. We managed to have enough conversations over the weekend so that i think she has at least learned a few new things about the Tudors, but she has definitely learned how to put a project together.

Tell you what though, if she does come back to being HE’d next year, i’ll be expecting a lot more of her! (And we’ll be working on punctuation!)

Maddy and i have been having a go at animation.

First of all we had a quick go just to see what the easy mistakes to make were and how to use the software.

And then, because Maddy doesn’t like to do anything by halves, we went straight on to Morph!

Part of the remit for a suitable education is that it should fit you for a life that is appropriate to your apptitude and ability. It’s fortunate that Maddy quite likes the idea of being an animator then really

Last wednesday was latinetc and the kids thoroughly enjoyed DaddyBean showing how hot air expanded and contracted. Wine bottles, matches, candles, boiling water and all sorts of exciting apparatus used with out any risk assessment paperwork, no check on clas to adult ratios and no learning goal paper work.

No one got injured. Well, okay, Maddy developed a mild case of pyromania and SB did slightly singe herself, but she is a girl who can pull an injury out of a padded room And her parent was there.

On the other hand we’ve discussed the ins and outs of it all week, along with related oxygen use questions and so on. Definitely stuck in their heads.

Latin, French, Music and Art all went on as normal, plus a nice healthy lunch and lots of socialising and running around.

Rest of the week is mainly blogged; lots of music lessons, music theory, playing, reading more in our Celtic book and a substantial amount of maths in various forms. Even Josie.

This week we largely declared a PlayMobil week, aside from the mappy stuff and the younger three have had a huge and complicated game running with that. Lovely to listen to and watch. Fran has been volunteering for all sorts at school and helped run the KS1 sports day and is vice house captain for sports day (today, all the others have gone to watch) – her teachers have given her very positive feedback on how great she is at joining in and getting involved. She’s not been so keen on the sex ed and was very unhappy about a fairly scary birth video they watched – quite different to how i’ve tried to describe it (i don’t mention my experience to much!) and some of the ones she has seen as a child.

Yesterday we had a really amazing day out in Cambridge – i’ll blog it more if i ever persuade my phone to release the photos but The Cloth Place was just one of the best executed pieces of art/theatre/free play/learning experiences that i’ve ever seen. Brilliant. The kids literally had to be dragged away – i adored it. If you can get up or down to any of the other sessions people are booking, do – it is really lovely.

Day was perfectly started by the event the week had been leading up to in my planning from last year – as a top off to our map work and our DT/IT map and mapping technology project, as we were leaving the house, the Google Streetmap car drove past! So hurrah, i can tick off the “real life” learning that happened there and as a handy by product, we’ll have proof that my children do leave the house!

Irony? Much?

After The Cloth Place, we had a Starbucks lunch in the park, followed by playing, following a trip to the Anthropology and Archaeology Museum in Cambridge. Kids loved it and it was a perfect end to the day – i love being able to dip into a museum without feeling you have to eke every last bit out of it. Long may they continue to be free. And now i’ve discovered how easy the Cambridge Park and Ride is, we’ll be going much more.

Being home educated sucks