Wings

 Wings

O, 3,  has this new name for his breakfast jacket potatoes. He calls them the JPs. This is because alphabet questions are a regular early morning fixture now. "What's P for?" "What's J for?" "What else is J for?" So it goes. He also completed this number puzzle as soon as he woke up this morning and at the beach today was calling out the numbers on the beach huts.

O questions are pretty defining at the moment. For me they are the beginnings of a large part of our autonomous style of learning and, this the third time around, more relaxed into enjoying and indulging them. For his elder siblings though they interrupt crucial TV viewing. "How is Scooby flying?" "Why is Daphne doing that?" When they do not answer he asks again either louder or more slowly as if he is on holiday in a foreign country struggling to make himself understood.

E, 5, is totally back on Peter and Jane, asking to read to me again late yesterday afternoon. 3 pages. His concentration noticeably improving. The key is being available for him when he asks. Not to everyone's taste for sure.

S and I watched another Agatha Christie last night. Feeling a little gutted I gave away my box set but they seemed to be on TV pretty regularly. We got to talking 1930s  architecture and have discovered a London tour based on Poirot filming locations. Added it to our Autumn list.

Today has been a Grandma beach day. Yesterday's afternoon car journey provided a siesta catalyst that has been missing these past few home days so E and O were awake well past me last night.

We started off at windy Goring and walked along to see the fisherman selling his catch but it was all too sad for S, 7,  the whole place holding memories of friends who she doesn't see anymore so, after hot chocolate and brownies in the bus we headed along the coast to nearby Clymping where we took the seashore spotters guide to identify this cute sea bindweed and spent a while talking about interesting rocks and stones. My PB was an eyeball stone S found.

Reminded me of the hippo stone that landed TDO with a customs stop. A very different beach day to the sunny lilo in the sea at Witterings of our previous Tuesday but still cool nonetheless.

Weekend Whip

 Today's title track is E's choice.

Weekend Whip

Hello Pay Day. You've been a five week month of a long time coming.

With the bus refuelled after 5, really mellow, home days we have, today, gallivanted again. The 80 or so mile round trip to an old friend's 40th at the fabulous Sandhurst Park.

July was a month of austerity. With over a thousand pounds additional planed and unplanned expenses  to budget for I capped our fuel spend at £100 (which is 70 litres and approximately 650 miles depending on who is driving and where.) There's a little maths equation in there I reckon. With TDO spending three times that amount on commuting juice that seems like a reasonable spend for pure gallivanting pleasure. Nobody has had any new clothes, shoes or lipsticks.

I also limited us to visiting places that were either free or where we already had memberships which, outside of the Novium and one visit to Worthing soft play, we managed. Two trips to Cass, one to Wetlands, several to Fishers Farm and extensive use of our National Trust Membership with over five visits all helped. I have written about our memberships on  here in a post called "Members Only"

Additionally I tried to be really good at budgeting our food spend which has been gradually creeping higher for some months now. The first two weeks I managed £200 for 3 meals per day for 5 people plus a small amount for nappies, cleaning products, wine, beer and toiletries. The back half of the month was harder as I realised I'd simply emptied the freezer and store cupboard early on and were closer to a  £225 weekly spend divided up between: the local butcher (TDO says meals that don't contain meat are snacks,) Ocado deliveries, local farm eggs, local baker and veggie box. Initially this seemed really high to be but when I broke it down to the per person per meal level it really was surprisingly low. 7 days times 15 meals (ie 3 meals times 5 persons) equals 105 meals. As we often have 5 different meals at any one sitting economies of scale are harder to achieve for £2 per person per meal as an average seems pretty good going to me. Especially considering much of our shop is organic, local and free range.

Previous attempts to cap food spend have lead to our health suffering too as a reminder that you are what you eat and I was mindful not to let that happen again. Plentiful supply of berries and salad from the allotment helped out here.

We've also taken flasks and all of our food out with us and had ice creams only at home. From a budget point of view it has worked well. We've pretty much saved the cost of all of our expenses by cutting back, but from an unschooling free reign on food choices point of view far less so with one lowlight being E eating 4 ice creams from the freezer.

August is here. The floodgates have opened.

 A very cool round about swing thing that goes up and down and round and round.

 Big slide on a hill

 Zip wire

 lego fun

Spoons iiii

Spoons

Sometimes there is a tendency to focus on problem solving without pausing to acknowledge solution finding.

And so it was this morning when S was on an early morning dog walk with the, now recovered, Edmund the dalmatian that I realised how she loves her dog walks. She has stopped asking for a dog. It's not been a big "I told you so'' kind of deal but, in her own way, she has come to appreciate the responsibilities and commitments and is very thankful for the opportunites to spend time enjoying the highs of dog ownership and having a new adult friend to talk to. It's all good.

She has turned the Barbie dream house into a film set for Agatha Christie after watching a Miss Marple with me last night. We had a big chat comparing and contrasting the detective mystery solving skills of Poirot and Marple.

Played lego with E this morning when I should have been tidying up.

A visit from paternal Grandparents and a Great Aunt today. Lazy Sunday lunch with a choice of 3 desserts. Boule at the park, a trip to the allotment for ripe tomatoes and carrots, playing post offices. Making goggly eye pictures, enjoying the clear horizontal surface of the big table.

So It Goes.

commitments

For What It's Worth

 For What It's Worth

Accidentally stayed up really late last night. Circa one am. Three or so hours later than "usual." S, 7,  was very keen to watch the opening ceremony for the Olympics and so we did. She lasted till eleven or so but we played on til the end.

The day will soon come when it is not possible to carry my children up to bed.

It was brilliant by the way. Expectations exceeded. References to Harry Potter, Peter Pan, James Bond and the end flame designed by Thomas Heatherwick whose graduation piece we see on our frequent trips to Cass Sculpture foundation. Normally I am a little scared by nationalist flag waving but I felt Danny Boyle described a country and history that identified with my perspectives of 2012.

A two Scooby Doo Saturday morning, boule in the post from G & G, a game at the local park, more reading from E. All rolling in a relaxed Saturday style.

Finally invested in a stylish new pot for our bay tree which, by the way, was a supermarket herb back in 1997 only to discover S had made some modifications of her own. The sleek minimal lines but a pipe dream.

We need to use our home ed table to seat additional dinner guests tomorrow. I may be sometime.

 the trio are in a cool sibling groove (& alarmingly good at boule, I didn't win a single game)

If someone had told me last week I'd be this mellow after four home days I'd have been surprised :)

Fiesta

Fiesta

Yesterday's post was very close to intellectual and led to some really interesting spin off conversations about economic theories, home educated Agatha Christie and the psychology of learning.

No such challenges today just the very strange sandal suntan mark on my feet for your entertainment. Less suntan more mumtan.

 I forgot to photograph E's fimo clones yesterday

 Been more about Superheroes today.

Weed bought E a Batman figure this morning and they have been inseparable ever since. S watched Wonder Woman on DVD and made a fimo Robin, the boy wonder, for O so they could play together. She is very thoughtful.

 I had a couple of hours to myself this morning running local errands and filling the fridge for a weekend of tasty treats. S helped our making her "world famous" tiramisu. None of the trio fancied coming for a walk with me. It was foretold by a quiz on the Magic Ballerina website that S asked me complete this morning which said:

"You are the Queen of Enchantia. You always like to take the lead and  help look after others so you are most like the Queen of Enchantia! You feel responsible for solving other people's problems and will always be on hand to help out. Everyone needs some time for themselves so don't feel bad about that."

This afternoon we met some schooled friends at the park for a couple of hours. Completing a  hatrick of visits to our local park this week.

In Other News

The peas at the allotment seem to have pea moth. S's enthusiasm is not dented by this difficult growing season.

E's reading reward arrived today.

This is how we roll, home educating summer holidays style.

The Economics of Home Education.

A fimo Wonder Woman S , 7, made this morning lies ready for the oven. Wonder Woman has escaped from worse scraps than this. She has both the golden lasso and Feminium bracelets.

On this, the eight anniversary of my retirement from paid work as an economist, I thought it would be appropriate to write about the economics of home education.

Of course I have touched on this  almost daily in the past 17 months of blogging whether it be talking about the changes in the maths of human capital economics that have changed the value of a degree. In 2012 when graduate unemployment is high and graduate salary differentials are contracting in many professions, combined with the fact that the cost of obtaining a degree is significantly higher than when human capital economics was first fashionable, for example. The value of a degree, for the sake of a degree, is open to question.

Or alternatively when I have blogged about the huge differences in the price of term time and school holidays pricing when it comes to booking trips and holidays in both the UK and overseas. In many cases a tripling of the price is not unusual for example.

Recently too I have been blogging our spend on days out gallivanting, swimming, craft materials and so on.

Of course this post only relates to us and my family. There are home educators who are spending much replicating private school at home hiring in a range of bespoke private tutors to replicate the school curriculum at home only, in their opinion, better and equally there are home educators how have ripped up the rules the completely and changed the maths of life. Have a look at our friends, who used to be local, Wondering Wanderers to see the possibilities.

The tree of economics has grown many new branches over the last eight years, when I was working behavioural finance was one fresh area that was of interest to me another area is the Economics of Happiness.

With the economy in the UK still in a recessionary period it is clear why governments would like to see two parents working. If I returned to work I would be paying taxes, we would provide jobs by eating food in prepared factories rather than that cooked by us from scratch at home, buying lunches, paying for childcare thus turning our currently unquantifiable actions into useful, hopefully growing, numbers on a balance sheet.

In Other News

A home morning of: fimo, cheese on toast with Empire Strikes Back melted into a library visit for Story Lab scratch and sniff, smelly trainers stickers which merged into a couple of hot sunny hours with a local home ed family as the only people at "our park" (that's what O calls it) eating gorgeous watermelon.

S and I watched a Poirot last night. I am thrilled she is turning into a detective and Agatha Christie (who was herself home educated) fan.

Never in any doubt.

Sun Is Shining

 Sun Is Shining

My normal blogging window is during the afternoon episode of Scooby Doo on CBBC, a children's BBC channel here in the UK, but today we had friends over visiting so I thought it would be nice to watch it altogether as they are Scooby fans too. Shortly after the episode started E, 5, who had decided not to watch as he had seen it before, came to me and said:-

"If I read six pages of Peter and Jane can I have this?" thrusting a picture on the tablet of a toy at me. I said "Yes." Mostly because it is easier to say "Yes" then see how it goes but also because it has been weeks since we've done any book reading and I really didn't think he would concentrate for six pages but you know what. He did!! Impressed.com

Seven years along the home ed road we've stopped at a variety of hotels, camp~sites and motels when it comes to friends but the friends we saw today have there from the start and intellectually, ideologically are probably the most closely aligned to us. They had been to the little conference a few weeks back and we had a good chat about that.

In Other News

Grandma put the beach tent in the garden before she left this morning and it has been played in for ages.

We went to the local  park but it was really too hot so we didn't stay long.

E has played soldiers in the garden, S has made smoothies with her friends, shown them her rocks and requested cucumber slices to place on their eyes, I found O this morning awake looking at  stories happily on his own.

In many respects, for the next few weeks at least, we will probably resemble most peoples idea of home educators. Largely at home doing low key stuff til we can properly gallivant again in September.

Learn Nothing Day at the beach

Today would have been my maternal Grandmother's 96 birthday. Today is also Learn Nothing Day, a holiday for unschoolers, so this is a brief post.

We've had a day at West Wittering Beach today with both Grandma and Grandie. On the plus side the sea was warm, the trio had a blast on the lilo in the waves, nobody has any sunburn. On the downside it was heaving, so busy. This has filled me with  a renewed appreciation for our counter cyclical, outside the box gallivanting lifestyle. Earlier on this year we paid a visit to this beach and we were the only car at the Witterings and it struck me today that some people must think the this is what it looks like!

On the learn nothing front we've done okay all minus O who has been "Whying?" and counting even more than usual today.

In other News

S lost another tooth last night. She knows the truth about the tooth fairy which is lucky as these days she stays up much later than me!

Careful budgeting is really paying dividends, I am at that point like when you start loosing weight on a diet and can see we will have covered our out of the ordinary expenses this month which is great.

Love Is Gonna Lift You Up - (again!)

You know I used this tune on Saturday? And I bet you haven't listened to it yet but that's okay I've listened to it enough for all 200 of us (and some.)

Love Is Gonna Lift You Up

"Where there's a heart beat, there's a dream inside........."

We were waiting outside the library, along with the resident cat, when the doors opened at 1pm this afternoon. The reason? The summer holidays story lab reading scheme. S and E had both chosen two of the books we've read last week and were ready to review them.

As a home educator it is not often I hear my children talking to other interested, "official" adults about their reading and learning and whilst I am fully aware that S is emerged in her reading E blew me away with his story review and analysis. It was half youtube lego product review and half his own style. 

Last year he didn't want to join in (so he didn't) but this year he was confident and animated. Everything is better when you are ready.

In Other News

We have been to two parks today. First with some home ed friends in Horsham and second our local park where we also went after supper last night. As the schools in our area are now on holiday we were not the only people there. S got chatting to a neighbour on the swing who was explaining about her step half and half step siblings. It takes a lot to confuse S who told me later "I didn't mention our family being regular size." Like she was ordering a coke in Mcdonalds

Along with most veteran home edders my feelings towards school summer holidays are mixed. When I heard my first "You've got them for six weeks then?" this morning from a shop assistant I had to employ some labour breathing techniques but S really enjoys the fact that we are not the only people at the local park and we don't have to drive 15 miles to find company but equally she, and I, are aware of the potential "fair weather" nature of these friends.

Operation not spend too much is continuing for the last week of July. I've kept at food spend on budget whilst feeding us pretty well and both the library and the park are free of charge (well indirectly they are funded from our £150 council tax but given that is compulsory!) Will I always be an economist?

Cherry Wine

 Cherry Wine

So it goes. Today has been transformed from the previous hard moments Sunday by the application of positive mental attitude, great croissants, sunshine and expectations management.

Instead of feeling grumpy that S was relaxing on the sofa watching Ballet Shoes (a film I like) whilst I was folding laundry I took the laundry into the same room and folded and watched.

Instead of all of us going to the allotment and getting crosser and crosser with E's bored disruptiveness I stayed home with him and rather than telling him I would be free to play after jobs I played lego and playmobil for a solid hour with no devices around meaning afterwards he happily continued and  left me alone to get on with my stuff. Sometimes you just have to turn it upside down and around.

The home cooking and growing continues. This weekend has seen processing 5 litres of chicken stock and 2.5kg of gooseberries as well as beetroots, salad and chard. S and O had a great couple of hours at the allotment making rainbows with the hose. E helped me with the bowl of fresh picked raspberries. When I say helped I mean ate but hey, help comes in unexpected ways.

S has made a passport for the new hamster she would like. Instead of a lion and unicorn on the front she drew a unicorn and hamster. I had no idea she even knew what was on the front of a passport!

E wanted to make some more Lego Batman capes today. I heard him huffing and puffing with the black paper and scissors and whilst I was  looking for the whole punch I found some black felt Weed had left. It was so successful we went on to make our own Robin too. I notice in the castle photos that Batman is being made to walk to the plank and it reminded me of something Sandra Dodd said on facebook:- (the italics are her quote)

"I have a suggestion about families, and children, and learning, and the news. Please, anyone with a child too young to google or to read, don't review for them terrible news about dead babies or shootings or wars. Make their lives happy, where they are, today.

For moms: If you don't know anyone directly affected by bad news, don't allow yourself to be "directly affected" in such a way that you go deep into your feelings about "what if" and "poor families." It is possible to slip down too far, and who's taking care of your children then?

For Batman fans. :-)
If you have a kid wanting to go see the Batman movie, Take HIM! Don't whine or whinge or wring your hands about something that happened somewhere else. It was not about the movie, and it was not about a theater. It was about one guy who was for some reason unhappy.

Don't let your own kids grow up to be so unhappy. Start now! HAVE A NICE DAY!!! Create nice-dayness around you.

A 24 year old did something horrible last night. I have a 25 year old and a 23 year old who have done very nice things this week. Be on the positive team, not the negative team. You can do it.

If anyone posts any details about horrible things, I'll delete them quietly. If anyone posts suggestions for happy things to do to promote joy and gratitude, that would be great!"

This was really interesting to me as in my life before children I was a news and current affairs junkie, there's a video clip of me being interviewed on live television somewhere on this blog, and, when I became a mother at home I had to decouple from the news so this comment really resonated with me.

We watched "Finding Nemo" for Family Movie Night last night, O who has, almost overnight it seems, arrived in the "Why?" zone with a bang asked questions all the way through and was anxious about Nemo being without his parents. Interesting that, as a third baby, he has seen all kinds of material aimed at much older children a cartoon story inspired such thought. It seemed sader to me too than it had before. O was asking "Why doesn't Nemo's Daddy stay at the school?"