Even on a bad day…..
So this Monday we had a “Bad Day” in terms of how we tend to HE. We had a day that the kids were pretty much left to their own devices. As Grit says “leave them alone and they do wonders” which I tend to agree with, so I don’t usually worry too much about days like that. However I was feeling a bit low so thought we were having a “Bad Day” so I decided to do what I tell everyone else to do who worries about whether their kids are actually doing anything. I wrote down what we actually did (actually I’m just writing it down now I mentally recorded it at the time).
So what did we do.
Well we have an Austrian lad staying with us just now so without even trying we are all spending a lot of time dealing with explaining cultural differences. So from breakfast onwards cultural and language education.
Then the older ones plus our guest cycled into Newport and went swimming, met up with friends and wondered round the shops. So They’ve covered loads and loads of PE, socialization and life skills (Rebekah kearnt more about the frustation of loooking for a specific item in the shops that they don’t have). It wasn’t them I was worried about.
It was the little one who was actually at home with me.
I was supposed to be doing my paid work but ended up in a never ending cycle of house work baking and washing up. So what did he do? He spent about 3 hours on the ancient game boy (that had been lost but now was found, rather life a New Testament prodigal). He was playing Pokemon, a game I didn’t give him at Christmas as it had so much reading involved he would never have been able to have played it. So even just playing Pokemon he is enhancing his reading skills.
Next we went to the library he chatted the whole way there about Pokemon, about the stratergies he was using about the relative strehgthes about the skills of different Pokemon about their natural habitats etc. While the knowledge of Pokemon might not be important to him as he grows up the skills he is using and developing are tremendous. So we have logical thinking skills demonstrated on the way to the library.
At the library we got the first of Jonathan’s stickers for the Reading Quest and chose some more books and he read the Beeno while I was looking for my books. Aside - I love that he is now sitting and reading properly when a couple of moths ago he wasn’t reading anything, I love that all our children have had the chance to read in their own time and have all done it and love reading. He isn’t as far a long as the girls but he is doing it for himself for the first time this year and is really pleased with himself.
Back home Jonathan sits at the kitchen table and does magic maise pictures while I do more cooking (unbelievable the amount of cooking I have managed to do on this day!)
Everyone home for tea, pizza and more cross cultural discussion.
Then Jonathan and I went swimming (with Rebekah – I really think she was a fish in a former life) and Ruth did some baking (everyday biscuits I think – with so much icing sugar spinkled on it made you sneeze) and then everyone carried on with watching Top Gear.
So we’ve deifintely done socialisation (why oh why do people worry about home educators socialising), logical thinking, PE, art, cooking, cultural education, reading and life skills. Not bad for a bad day really.
