The Children's Manifesto

Almost exactly 24 hours on since my last post and the Big Smalls are swimming (again!) and baby small is sleeping (again.) I think this is their sixth swim session in the last 10 days, it is so brilliant just to be able to take advantage of the counter cyclical opportunities our home ed life brings when their is more than one adult around and head off to the pool when there is no one else around.

So, what has been happening here with the happy home edders for the last 24 hours?

Middle Small had a snooze after swimming yesterday so wide awake and rejuvenated at around 9pm last night he had flurry of late night learning when, in the middle of building an epic brio track, he decided he must do some Peter & Jane. He finished re~reading 2a so there are now43 words I am confident he knows. The ladybird keywords reading scheme is based on the idea that just 100 words make up half the words we read and write. Thanks to afternoon napping both the boys were awake til late last night. Big Small fell asleep reading "The Philosophy Files" and woke up this morning bursting with questions from the chapter "How do we know the world isn't virtual?"

First thing The Daddy One took an early morning stroll to the butchers for breakfast sausages and came back with a paper so I read this Guardian article on ideal school as decided by children. The consensus on facebook seems to be that the answers sound a bit like home ed. Some of the comments are really insightful from the children. The friendship bench, the fluffy carpet and the trips without worksheets all raised a smile from me.

My parents have been with us today and the Daddy one is off for the rest of the week so this morning Mum and I took the children to a very windy Fishers Farm Park for a couple of hours whilst the biggest boys erected a greenhouse at the allotment which, in addition, now has 6 raised beds. We ordered a ton of play sand last night after comparing the merits of beach sand and play sand for a while. Now we just need to hope it can be delivered pretty close to the plot and then one raised bed will be a giant sand pit.

The DVD of Odyssey came in the post just as we arrived home for lunch. I am very grateful to my friend higglepea for her suggestions on Ancient Greek resources. She has saved me much time. Mum watched the film with S but said S knew most of it already. I am so pleased she is still into Ancient Greeks. I read this great blog post on the continuing relevance of ancient civilisations to our understanding of the world today.

This afternoon I have been to the library for more books on Ancient Greece and Maisy. The big smalls didn't come. They wanted to save their legs for swimming!