EOS
Education Outside School
No More Monkeys Some thoughts on motherhood guilt
Learning to Read and Write
Make Every Day your ‘World Book Day’
One Family’s Experience
Patch of Puddles
Work and HE
Life as a home educating family
Part One of our new series!
Join the OPAL Climate Survey
Plus
Free gift for taking part!
Activities, Project Ideas and more!
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CONTENTS
Contact Details: Education Outside School Magazine Miller's Rest, High Road, Gorefield, PE13 4PJ If you’d like to submit an article, please email: articles@educationoutsideschool.co.uk If you’d like to advertise, please email: advertising@educationoutsideschool.co.uk To contact the Editors, please email: editor@educationoutsideschool.co.uk
EDITORIAL POLICY The editors have the final say in deciding if contributions are printed and in which issue. There will sometimes be a need for editing contributions, for reasons of space or otherwise.
COPYRIGHT All attempts have been made to find copyright owners and are acknowledged if found; if you think yours has been breached please email us.
Welcome
3
Letters and News
4
The BIG Question
5
Patch of Puddles Life as a Home Educating Family By Merry Raymond
6
The Big Project
8
No More Monkeys Some thoughts on motherhood guilt By Paula Cleary
10
Make Every Day your ‘World Book Day’ By Yvonne Frost
12
The Census and Family History By Annabel Haylett
14
Children’s Pages
15
Learning to Read and Write Our Family’s Experience By Karen Rodgers
20
OPAL Climate Survey By Simon Norman of the Field Studies Council PLUS FREE GIFT OFFER
23
Spring-time? By Richard L.Jones
25
HE and Working?
26
Woods as a Classroom By Alison Kirkman of the Woodland Trust
28
Home Education Guidance The legal stuff!
30
Websites and Groups
31
DISCLAIMER Education Outside School is an independent publication, not allied with any home education group or organisation. Any opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the editors. All contributions (including advertisements) have been accepted in good faith and have not been in any way endorsed by EOS, which cannot be held responsible for the consequences of responding to any of them.
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Welcome to Education Outside School Magazine!
Meet the Editors has four children aged from nine to 17 and has been home educating for nine years. She will happily talk about home education to anyone who’ll listen! She swings from an autonomous approach to structure, depending on the child, the subject and how everyone is feeling. She is now getting used to mainstream education again, supporting her youngest daughter in her decision to give school a try and her oldest son at college.
Welcome To our fourth issue - we are so pleased to be here! This issue is a little later than planned and for that we can only blame our busy home ed lives - you know how it can be. But with the sun finally starting to shine through, we are here at last, full of ideas for the longer days that are fast approaching. Spring is always a time of change and growth and our ‘Big Project’ this time features on that. If you don’t already ‘grow your own’, why not make this year your first time? It doesn’t matter if you have next to no knowledge about gardening, or if you have a postage stamp type of garden, or even just a window box, much can be achieved and enjoyed by planting a few seeds. Have a look at the ideas on page 8 to start you off. Now that the warmer weather seems to be approaching it could be time to get out and about. The Woodland Trust are keen to reach all families and wanted to join with EOS to promote their new initiative of the ‘visitwoods’ programme to home educating families. Also, Simon Norman of the Field Studies Council was pleased to be involved with EOS and to make a special offer to our readers - see the OPAL Climate Survey on page 23. We also introduce our new columnist Merry in her Patch of Puddles. Many of you may know Merry from her blog, her online craft business or as the founder of the EarlyYearsHE list - we are pleased to welcome her. A typical challenge faced by many HE parents is the loss of one income. In response to this, many successfully manage to set up their own business, and we’re sure that many of you would like to know how they did it! In this issue we feature the first of our series on ‘HE and Working’ and hope to bring many success stories, hints and tips to inspire you.
has a son aged seven and a daughter aged one.
We hope you’ll find all these and much more to interest you as you look through.
She decided to home educate from the start, and so has spent a few years researching different methods and is now unschooling. They are currently thinking of getting chickens if anyone has any advice!
We are still receiving requests for a printed version of EOS and this is still our aim. To this end, this issue is the first we are charging for. We thank all of you for your support thus far and feel sure you can appreciate this move. We very much hope it will be a step along the way to our fully fledged printed publication in the not too distant future!
You can contact us via the email addresses on page 2!!
Best wishes Jane and Lorena @EOSmagazine www.educationoutsideschool.co.uk 3
EducationOutside SchoolMagazine
Letters and News
Dear EOS... Flute or French Horn?
Home Educated Children meet Expert
Local home -educating families had the chance over half-term to try out a range of instruments before deciding which one to learn. Brass, woodwind, harp, string and percussion players came together to play their instruments and to offer parents and children the chance to try them out. The event also managed to raise over ÂŁ150 for the Spinal Injuries Association.
Children from the Cambridge Home Educating Community met in Arbury with scientist, teacher and author Dr William Hirst to learn about the science of the body. By Karen Rodgers www.educationchoice.org.uk
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THE BIG QUESTION...
Q
uestions. They just come with the territory when you home educate! We’ve all been there, from the family gatherings when you’ve been gearing yourself up to tell everyone that you’re taking your children out of school, or that you won’t be sending them in the first place, through to those ‘at-the-supermarket-checkout’ moments when you find yourself so interrogated you’re looking around for the Mastermind black chair!
These questions are sometimes born of disbelief and horror that you could even consider such a strange idea, occasionally they are honestly curious and interested, but almost always demonstrate that the questioner has pretty much no comprehension of what home education is, is entrenched in a system and believes that this system must be ‘the right way’. We’re featuring those common questions to find out how you answer them! What do you say? Does it depend on the questioner, or their attitude? Does it depend on why you chose to home educate in the first place? Does it depend on how long you’ve been home educating? Have you answered these questions so many times that you have a quick one-liner all prepared!
But how will they do sports?
In the last issue we asked:
And here are some replies! There are a multitude of sporting opportunities in the community. Leisure centres have classes and sessions of various sportstrampolining, basketball, football, rock wall climbing, aerobics, and loads more; town sporting clubs (rugby, football, cricket, hockey, etc) have weekly training sessions during their seasons; Scouts have active meetings or days or weekend camp-outs where they hike, abseil, do challenge courses and do all sorts of sports, then there are the individual activities like karate, dance, BMX, gymnastics, riding stables, etc.- not to mention skate parks, cycling, jogging, skate board, rollerblading, outdoor gyms, swimming, home ed PE or activity meetings... If you look for them, ask around, you will find so many that it will be a question of 'How will we find the time to do...?' than 'What can we possibly find to do?'
I think my children are more active than most who go to school, they walk, cycle, trampoline, beach-comb, rock climb, build camps, snowball fight, swim, zumba, ice sculpt, run, dog walk and go to the gym. Sport has never been a problem!
Prior to coming out of school my children already did ballet, trampolining, swimming, dance and jujitsu lessons between them. Both couldn't wait for HE so they could add gymnastics to the list........ if I pull them out of school because I want a better educat
Our next question is going to be:
Why aren’t you at school?
What do your children, or indeed you, reply? Please email editor@educationoutsideschool.co.uk by May 15th
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Patch of Puddles Home Educating the PuddleChicks. Living without our Baby Boy.
By Merry Raymond
I
was asked to write this column a year ago; with just weeks to go until the birth of our 5th child, it seemed a great opportunity to answer the questions people always ask when Home Ed comes up. How do you manage? How do you balance all the needs of everyone? How do you cope with the younger children alongside the needs of the older ones? How do you get time for yourself? I thought I would show that it is possible to live and educate well when there are many needs to be met. If I could do it with four children and a baby, then anyone could! Home educators were facing a threat from a truly rancid government who wanted to take our freedoms and privacy away from us; I thought I could write about the everyday life of simply 'being' a home educating family and answer some of those concerns with the evidence of a happy, balanced, busy family. And then everything changed. Freddie was born, lived eleven fraught days and died. In one fell
swoop we went from a very average home educating family to one with the spotlight on us. Would we cope? Could we manage? How, without the back up of school distractions and counselling services, would the girls recover? Could we manage without 'the system', especially if the system turned on us? It was easy to imagine us being a scapegoat, a family who would be used to prove that without intervention, our children were at risk of emotional harm. Those were dangerous times. What actually happened was different indeed. Home educating for 9 years has taught us many things but the simplest of them is this. When a family is together for much of the time, it learns a rhythm, a dance, an understanding of itself as a whole. Faced with disaster, the children assumed that we would cope and so we did. They expected us to be human - and we were. We didn't expect outside agencies to rescue us or fix the children, we expected to do it organically, together, as a family. In those dreadful days of 'afterwards' there
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We are a home educating family with an intensely 'together' lifestyle......... we operate as an interdependent unit and that has been an enormous positive. was no school to rush back to, no adults hastening them through a tick boxed process. They were with us, day in, day out and we cried and grieved together. We know how our children learn and process information, so we were able to find the books and the words and the activities to help them. It might have seemed that education stopped but of course it didn't, we just had a very intense period of personal and social development. For a while books and films with loss and recovery became the ones we were drawn to. Science and maths didn't stop, but science became all about understanding, because they needed to, why sometimes babies do not breathe, why brains do sometimes not function and what that dreadful 1:200 chance of a baby dying really means. Nothing stopped, even though time stood still. Our children learned more about the friends who have also lost siblings; they learned, though it pains me, that parents who lose a child will need time and love and space. Far from being traumatised by being around their parents as they grieved, they saw that we also smiled, laughed, tidied the house and did the washing, that life goes on and that they were part of that process.
educating family for a magazine. The answer is twofold. Freddie has changed us, his loss will colour our lives and our approach to life forever and it is best to explain that from the start. The second is that the last year has defined for me what it really means to be a family. We are a home educating family and I suspect much of our wholeness has stemmed from our intensely 'together' lifestyle. Our life is not carved up into relying on systems to process our children; we operate as an interdependent unit and that has been an enormous positive. The years of watching my children explore life differently, knowing them in such minute detail, was an enormous benefit in helping them recover. It was unsurprising to watch them grieve differently; they were all as individual about it as they were while they learned to read. Nearly a year on, we are all doing okay; the girls are not unmarked, but I do not think the loss of their brother has harmed them. It was easy to slip gently back into familiar patterns and they did it gracefully and in their own time. We're back to life being 99% about history and maths and building complicated Lego models and learning gymnastic routines. Life goes on. It has been an honour to be their parents through it. It might not be obvious to other people, but this year has proved to us that choosing to home educate was right for our family. I think it has made us the strongest possible family we could be just at the moment when we needed it. n www.patchofpuddles.co.uk
Then there was that doctor who came to check on us and said that if any family could get through this, it was us. And the paediatrician who sized up our girls in a few minutes and said, "they are sensible kids; they'll get through." Far from turning on us, the system who knew us as a home educating family saw through the negative hype of the time and knew we would be okay. You might ask what this has to do with us being home educators and writing about ourselves as a home www.educationoutsideschool.co.uk 7
Get Growing! - A Big Project Idea from EOS Those of you with abundant gardens or allotments can skip this bit ....for the rest of us, who have done little or no growing, make this the year you give it a try! There are plenty of easy projects to start with and many can be grown in very little space, even on kitchen windowsills or in patio containers.
Chillies I love growing chillies in pots on the kitchen windowsill. And if I can do it, with my distinct lack of green fingers, anyone can! Ÿ A good variety to choose for a windowsill is Apache as it has a good yield and doesn’t grow very tall. Sow seeds in a seed tray from January-April. Water and cover - use cling film if you don’t have a proper cover for the tray, it simulates a mini greenhouse. Ÿ To germinate, the seeds will need warmth. An airing cupboard is fine. Ÿ Chillies take a while to germinate, so be patient - it could be a couple of weeks. Once small seedlings appear they will need light so move the tray to a windowsill. Ÿ Once the seedlings are a couple of centimetres tall you can transplant them into pots. If you have more seedlings than pots, choose the strongest and dispose of the others (survival of the fittest!) Ÿ A south facing windowsill will do best. Keep an eye on them and water little and often (I have to use my kitchen windowsill to be sure of remembering to do this - using a window I’m not frequently standing in front of will mean I’ll forget their very existence until it’s too late!) Ÿ Harvest in August-October. Freeze whole and use throughout the year. I chop them direct from frozen to add to recipes. a rn an le ter c n ildre eed wa r ch You plants n th for t is that nd warm sunligh y e a h t n o once ads inati germ needed heir he t only poked e soil! h have above t
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Herb Garden Many herbs grow really well in containers, including basil, thyme, rosemary, coriander, oregano and parsley. You can combine several different herbs on one container if you like, but make sure that invasive herbs like mint and lemon balm have a container all to themselves as they will swamp any other plants. 1. Herbs like sunny positions, but remember that containers dry out quickly so keep on top of the watering. 2. You can buy seeds and plant and germinate them yourself (as in chilies, above) or garden centres sell herb plants ready for planting straight into your pot. 3. If flowers appear on your herb plants, nip them off. This will ensure that all the plant’s energy goes into growing the tasty leaves. 4. During the summer you can pick a handful of fresh leaves any time you need them. As the summer comes to an end you can have a go at drying your herbs, or freeze them for later use. A good tip is to pick and chop them, freeze a portion at a time with water in ice cubes trays, then once frozen push them out and put in labelled freezer bags. All over winter you’ll be able to add herbs to your recipes just by selecting a herby ice cube and popping it into the pan! 5. All perennial plants (such as rosemary, sage and thyme) will keep growing and will need pruning back in autumn. Simply use scissors or shears to cut off any flowers or long stems. Perennial herbs will also need dividing in spring. Remove them from the pot and tear or cut a section of the plant and root ball from the main plant and place the smaller section back in the pot with fresh compost. 6. Annual herbs (such as basil and coriander) will need replacing every year with new plants. You can either buy new plants, fresh seed or try saving seed from your old plants in autumn.
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Sunflowers Everso easy and really impressive! 1. Choose a sunny spot, facing south as much as possible, sheltered from strong winds. Make sure there’s something nearby (like a fence) to tie the stem to, or plan to push canes into the ground as splints. 2. Choose a variety of sunflower seed. Giants like Giant Grey Stripe, Mammoth or Aztec Gold will require special attention to keep them upright. Dwarf varieties like Teddy Bear are ideal for patio pots or large window boxes. Some varieties like Even better, plant a few varieties so you can compare them. 3. Plant as per the instructions on the packet and tend as the weeks go by - water them regularly and, as they grow, secure the stems to fence or cane. 4. Watch and learn about sunflowers. Your children could keep a ‘Sunflower Diary’: Ÿ Which plants grow tallest? Take their picture next to the sunflowers so they can relate to the growth. Ÿ Which head grows biggest? Great practise at using a ruler, introduce terms like ‘diameter’, and ‘circumference’. Ÿ Use either or both of the above measurements to create graphs of growth over time, or bar charts comparing the size of different varieties. Ÿ Watch how a flowering heads track the sun - this is really obvious with sunflowers and a good way to discover more about sunrise and sunset. Ÿ Watch what wildlife is attracted to the flowers and to the seeds, help them see which birds like them. Ÿ Later in the year when the sunflower heads have gone completely brown on the plant, then chop them off and hang them up to dry out for a couple of weeks. Take some of the dried seeds to put aside to grow next year, use the rest to feed the birds over the winter or roast them to feed the humans!
to rd e n e g a o re h t f ts o ke it m t par eren why? Ma nd the f f i d ll ter a nts in test a k out e pla you wor of a fair e, so wa f day, m a s o m n a t the time t. Ca e ide he sa t plan grow bes ucing th riables t he same rol? o n y t d t a t v Wh intro hich u con ter a ther see w ientific by eeping o nt of wa can’t yo u s c k s e of ame amo t variable rtanc s a impo with the ple. Wh m s t a n x pla for e
Potatoes Pretty cheap to buy, so unless you’re going to plant loads it’s probably not going to save you any money. So just do it for the fun of it! 1. Can be grown easily in containers, like an old dustbin. Drill 10 or 15 drainage holes in the bottom so that it does not become waterlogged. Fill the bottom with 5-10cm of crocks (old broken pots etc), and then add another 15cm of good potting compost. Alternatively, you can buy special gro-bags. 2. Buy seed potatoes from a garden centre or online store. A good variety to choose is Charlotte, a salad potato. These can be planted outside now and will be ready to eat around July. 3. Put five seed potatoes on top with the sprouts pointing upwards. Cover the potatoes with more of the potting compost until they are just buried, and then water well. As the green foliage grows upwards add more compost. It does not matter if the leaves are covered as they will soon grow up through the compost again. 4. The only things you really need to watch out for is that the leaves of the potatoes receive enough sunlight and enough water. If the container is very deep then no sunlight will ever hit the foliage and the potatoes will not do well. In this case either fill the container with a lot of compost before putting in the potatoes therefore raising the height at which they are planted, or reduce the height of the container. Compost in a container will dry out far faster than a vegetable plot so watch out, don’t over-water or you may rot the potatoes. Have a look at the Potatoes For Schools scheme at www.potatoesforschool.org.uk. Designed for primary schools, it sends out free potato kits to schools that register and is open to home educators too. It’s too late to receive this year’s pack but you can register now for next year - chances are you’ll have forgotten about it by then and it will be a nice surprise in the post in 2012!
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No More Monkeys ........some thoughts on motherhood guilt. By Paula Cleary
O
n the threshold of motherhood, a woman carries more than just a growing babe inside her. She also carries an extra weight - a monkey on her back - that criticizes, tuts and chastises. She carries a legacy of successes and failures, hopes, dreams and disappointments. Invested in her are all the potentialities for improving or achieving where previous generations succeeded or failed. A home-educating parent faces their task with even more risk and responsibility. They have a great deal of hats to wear, and the pressure to succeed can feel overwhelming at times. A friend recently confided in me that “ A parent who sends their child to school, no matter how dedicated and loving they are, has delegated the education out. They may feel guilty about not picking the best school, or about not pushing homework enough, but the majority of the responsibility lies with the school and teachers; the parent has a buffer. HE parents invest themselves wholeheartedly, there is no-one else to blame, no system; the buck stops with them. Sometimes I feel I have invested my very soul. And when it doesn’t go according to plan (because, horror of horrors, our children are human beings and have their own paths to tread!) it all inevitably comes back to me because there is no-one else”.1 I am sure this feeling is common to all home educators - the sense of responsibility and guilt if failures or hardships occur to our children that we cannot fix as easily as we wish we could. As they grow, they enter into realms where we cannot follow, terrains they must negotiate using their own judgement - just as we also did, and continue to do. As they slip-slide and fall over, it can be painful to watch, painful to be unable to prevent every accident. When our children fall flat on their face, we blame ourselves for doing it all wrong. But are we being too hard on ourselves, and on our children, in the effort to prove the naysayers and critics wrong? Do we expect our children to be unnaturally well-behaved and hard-working to over-compensate for the fact that they are not in school?
We live in a society obsessed with success, targets and achievement above the values of inner peace, joyful living, being a whole person, and taking pleasure in one’s career choice. There’s an army of experts who apparently know best on every aspect of child-rearing and education. Grandparents, health visitors, inspectors, complete strangers, the neighbour at number 72. Not to mention the books, newspapers and media in general who all tell us what good education should look like, and how and what our children should learn. Everyone has their own ideas, and so do we. Trends and child-rearing decisions can equally create boundaries between parents and make them feel like they must belong in one camp or another. But as parents we are surely mostly guided by our own instincts and those of our partners. We are the prescribers, guides and closest followers of our children’s daily education. No-one else lives exactly
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the same life as our family, has exactly the same the inherent nature of things. I have also recently dynamic, the same idiosyncratic personalities to taken comfort in the words of Thomas Edison. It cater for. We all have certain educational ideals is difficult to find a definitive quote as the number that we aspire to, and when, by living them out, of attempts varies wildly according to which source these don’t always necessarily translate so neatly you believe, some say 700 ways, other 1000 - it into our real lives, we can become frustrated and seems to change with every retelling! But the guilty, feeling that we are failing. My greatest essential meaning is the same... struggle is the desire to give my four children a “ I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways free-range kind of education but there are that won’t work” 3 moments in our day when each child wants to do When we stop viewing failure entirely different things from When we stop viewing failure as as failure, it takes the edge off the other, and compromises failure, it takes the edge off all all our worrying. When we must ensue. I am frequently our worrying. ...... a more give ourselves permission to caught out by this. For have a go at things, to make compassionate and accepting example - we may need to go choices with the knowledge shopping for supplies. One state of being can follow. that we are mostly doing our child says they would rather best at any given moment, a paint. Another is playing on more compassionate and a computer game and wants accepting state of being can follow. In a recent to complete their level. Another is half-way issue of Juno magazine, editor Lucy Pearce shared through an audio-book. Another is doing some her own thoughts on guilt and acceptance which maths. It’s hard to know where to draw a line on each person’s freedoms, and stay sane and Cont’d on page 24 functional as a household. Upsetting the apple cart can lead to guilt that we are not following our dream - but the truth of it is that some things in life are unavoidable whether we do them there and then or do them later. Life involves putting out dustbins, waiting for parcels, being frugal till pay day, going without. It cannot always be that every person gets their way, nor should it be. I console myself when the children lay a guilt trip on me, that I am simply living in the real world, that their preparation for it involves some hardships, and sacrifices. Inevitably there will be a certain amount of disappointments scattered along our HE path- not for the sake of it as some kind of educational lesson, but inherent in the daily going about our business in a meaningful way. There will also be a certain amount of poor-judgement, of falling flat on our faces, of out and out failures. But is this all bad? The Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson once made this wonderful remark “Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.” 2 Here is a man who clearly did enjoy quite a bit of success in his life, but perhaps only achieved this because he was not plagued by self-doubts, self-flagellation and guilt. He seemed to positively celebrate and thrive in spite of his failings, in spite of his humanity, perhaps, because he embraced
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Make Every Day your ‘World Book Day’! By Yvonne Frost
T
hursday 3rd March 2011 marked World Book Day. The celebration, which takes place in 100 countries world-wide, comes from an original idea based on a Catalonian tradition which started 90 years ago during which roses and books were given as gifts on St George’s Day. In view of recent research into the standard of reading and writing of 7-11 year olds in Britain which revealed that 16% aren’t reaching the expected national standard, World Book Day is an important event in the calendar. In my own office environment it is not uncommon to come across teenagers doing work experience,
many of whom have difficulties with spelling and grammar. I am not alone in my observations of this; our local newsagent commented that many teenaged children doing work experience in his shop were unable to organise the newspapers into alphabetical order before distributing them. At a time when the Government offers statistics to show that academic standards are improving, this is not the perception in the work place. Why do we get the impression that standards in reading have actually declined? For a child growing up in the 1970s and 80’s there were no computers or Wiis. Children’s television comprised of “Mother’s Hour “ at lunch time and a couple of hours of mainly educational children’s TV (such as Blue Peter) after school. Other than that there was little opportunity to be passively entertained hour upon hour in front of a screen. Neither were there after-school clubs and activities in the quantities we have today. Whilst these activities are not in themselves a bad thing, it is necessary to maintain a healthy balance between ‘passive leisure’ (which stems from screen
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Why do we get the impression that standards in reading have declined?
type activities) and ‘active leisure’ involving a sport or creative hobby. In the 1970’s and 80’s life seemed to be simpler. In our household my sister and I, like many others, were involved in limited extracurricular activities such as Guides, music lessons and Sunday school. There was plenty of opportunity to read and I can still vividly recall curling up on a bean bag and reading six Enid Blyton books in a weekend. Books were exciting and intriguing to me then. A real treat was when my Grandfather handed me my own full colour encyclopaedia having collected it in weekly instalments for months! The indirect result of reading for pleasure is that children subconsciously absorb information, which enhances their learning at school. Reading, vocabulary and the ability to express ideas automatically improve. One of the highlights of the week when I was at primary school was our weekly visit to the library. Book tokens were also a real treat as they offered the opportunity to spend hours in our small independent bookshop relishing the pleasure of choosing a book which could be stroked, handled and cherished. Something happened however when I commenced secondary education and still occurs today. It is this occurrence which I believe has contributed to the decline in literacy which we see today. In secondary school, books were imposed upon us. They were no longer objects of pleasure, instead reading them become a duty in the pursuit of the Study of Literature. Reading became a constant repetition of set books. “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett is etched in my brain for being the most boring play on the planet. With hindsight I wasted years reading books at school which today I would discard after a couple of chapters in favour of something I enjoyed. University education only exacerbated the problem. Reading matter now consisted of law books and by the time I started work I no longer read for pleasure. Apart from the occasional gardening book I rarely read any non-fiction at all.
It wasn’t until my son was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at the age of seven that all that changed. Forced to home educate him due to the failure of the system to provide him with an appropriate education, I found myself having to read books again to educate myself. When reading books to my son I re-discovered the most wonderful children’s fiction. I fell in love with the vast range of stories by Michael Morpurgo, listened to classics like “A little Princess” on audio tape and the more recent “White Giraffe” by Lauren St John. History came alive in the Horrible History books by Terry Deary. It was only then that I appreciated how stifling prescriptive State Education had been and I believe still is. Although apparently ‘succeeding’, having earned my degree and become a lawyer, school had in fact deprived me of my creativity, requiring me to learn the same books and plays as everyone else. Nowadays I love books; I can’t get enough of them. I’ve subscribed to just about every book
There must be a healthy balance between screen based ‘passive’ leisure activities and more active and creative leisure activities catalogue printed, must be one of Amazon’s top ten customers and have joined the “read it swap it” website where you can swap books for the cost of a stamp. I can be found scouring the charity shops, car boot sales and antiquarian book shops. There are books under the bed and in the porch, you trip over them in the lounge and there is always a book in the bathroom. So what better way to celebrate books than to recognise World Book Day? Once hooked reading becomes an addiction. Whatever the level of your education you can teach yourself just about anything if you can read. Books impart the knowledge and experience of their authors. There are always experts wanting to share their knowledge with you if you are willing and eager to learn, no matter what your age. Cookery books have been written by teenagers for teenagers, by mothers for sons, by dinner ladies for children. Sadly, children today are far less exposed to books than when I was a child and the pressure of the
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Cont’d on page 24
The Census and Family History By Annabel Haylett
Y
esterday the 2011 census forms plunked down onto our front doormat. This reminded me that looking into family history can be an interesting project for children. I thought I’d share some information to help get started with this. The first detailed census was taken on 6 June 1841, and there has been a census taken in Britain every ten years since. The 2011 Census gathers far more information than the 1841 census, but past censuses can provide interesting family history information. The past census results up to 1911 are now all available on-line and most are free of charge. You can search for a particular ancestor, and then find out their parents and siblings by finding out who lived with them. Or if you happen to live in a home that was around in Victorian times, you might be interested to search on your address or street and find out who used to live there and what sort of things they did for a living. Did they keep any servants? What kind and how many? It’s all on there. Here’s the free census website for the 1841 – 1891 censuses: http://freecen.rootsweb.com/ The following sites are also helpful, but there is a charge to use them: http://www.1901censusonline.com/ http://www.findmypast.co.uk/home.jsp (Find My Past allows free access to the 1881 census transcripts but you pay for everything else. It also now includes the 1911 census but that is a bit more expensive to access. Using the free access to the 1881 census is good for looking up information for a particular house or street.) http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ (Ancestry contains a lot of information and also allows free access to the 1881 census transcripts. You can also create your own family tree on the website.)
If you want to get into this more, it could be helpful to obtain a book. Here are a couple that I’ve used: ‘Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy’ by Nick Barratt (see also this website that goes with the BBC series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007t575) ‘How to trace your Family History on the Internet’ (a Reader’s Digest book) (Some of this has become out of date but it is still basically helpful.) If you get serious about all this and want to make sure you are tracing back the right family line, it’s a good idea to obtain copies of the birth and marriage certificates. Civil registration started on 1 July, 1837. Copies of birth, death and marriage certificates cost £9.25 each from the Government Record Office. They can be ordered online: https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/default.asp To order them you need the Index Reference Number for the certificate you are after. This can be obtained from here: http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl To ensure you have the correct reference number, it is a good idea to look up the records for both husband and wife and make sure they match. To trace a family line earlier than 1837, you would need to look at parish registers – which I know nothing about – yet! Other interesting sources of family history are copies of Wills and war records and also graveyards. Have fun J www.educationoutsideschool.co.uk 14
Children’s Pages COWBOY COOKIES Cream together the butter.....
Ingredients: 1 cup butter ¾ cup sugar ¾ cup brown sugar 2 eggs 1 1/2 tsp vanilla 2 cups flour 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt ¾ cup oats ¾ cup nuts ¾ cup Raisins
with the white and brown sugar.....
Whizz in the eggs and vanilla until smooth.
Method: 1. Cream together butter and sugars.
Add half the flour, the baking powder, baking soda and salt......
2. Whizz in eggs and vanilla, really fast, to stop them curdling Mix thoroughly.
3. When it's ready, it will be smooth 4. Add in one cup of flour and the baking powder and baking soda and salt. Mix in thoroughly. 5. Add the other cup of flour, oats, nuts and raisins. mix in smoothly.
Add the other cup of flower, the oats, nuts and raisins......
6. Drop one tablespoon at a time, with a bit of space as they spread, and bake for about 10-15 minutes at 350°F
Drop onto a baking tray and bake..........
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LP RECORD BOWL
I'm not sure if I should do this. doesn't feel rig ht, but... it's recy it bought it from cling; I a charity shop; I have a CD of this music al ready! It's scie nce. I can tick the science box, yay!
1. The oven needs to be about 100-150 degrees C 2. Find an ovenproof bowl or container that has a base about the right size to match the label on the LP but also depending on the size/shape of the bowl you're after (a smaller one to make a taller bowl, for example) 3. Turn the container over, find the centre of the underside and stick a bit of tacky on it (again, ovenproof!) 4. Lower the LP gently, looking through the centre hole so you centralise it correctly 5. Push a little to stick it 6. Put it all carefully into the oven 7. Timing is difficult, but depending on your oven, and the thickness of the LP, 30 seconds could be more than enough! 8. I checked after about 10 seconds, and this time it was already starting to bend, so we watched it, which is great if you have an oven where you can do that safely! 9. Take it out with proper oven gloves/mitts and push it gently down if it hasn't gone as far as you'd like - it creates its own curves, but you might be able to push it a bit
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TISSUE PAPER FLOWERS
Making tissue paper flowers is something I remember doing as a child, but couldn't remember that far back as to how to do them.... I searched the internet as you do and found a few instructions to remind me. It's a basic fold, to make a fan, then pull out the layers to make a flower. I'm sure there are other ways, but this is easy enough for a child and looks pretty enough to me! We put them on our windows, having taken down the snowflakes at last!
Take a few sheets of tissue paper, different colours if you like, placing the one you want on the outside as the bottom layer, and working your way "in" as you layer one on top of the other. I think 6 sheets is about right, but your tissue paper might be more thicker or thinner than mine! Fold each fold about 1/2 an inch across the length of the pile of papers, the long side assuming they're A4. Fold the first section down, towards you, from the top; then the next section is folded behind, tucking the first section underneath the pile. Then fold those two, now stacked together, towards you, on top again. See how it makes a fan when looked at from the side? Make sure you push down each crease really well, as it can get a bit solid (maybe practice with only 3 sheets to start with, to make it easier).
Once you've got to the bottom of the sheets, bend it in half, tying with a pipe cleaner if you like, and then hold that folded bit really tightly while you gently pull out all the sections. Put sticky tape around the "stalk" that you're holding, and present to your mum for Mother's Day, or stick a few on your windows to cheer up the grey days until all the real flowers are here!
s t I d n a s ’ t I Getting it right between these two: does it drive you crazy? Do you care? I can only apologise to those who don't care that it drives me slightly crazy! OK, I do actually have bigger things to worry about, but I find that if it is done incorrectly, I stumble over it. My brain must be taking in the meaning as I go along and so it just doesn't make sense when it is wrong. Did you notice I wrote "it is" twice back there? That's one of the points - work out if it should be "it is" and then you can shorten it by taking out a space and a letter (the second i). If you shorten something, pop an apostrophe in there to show that you've taken something out. (check the "you've": you have; also "don't": do not; etc) As for its - just remember his and hers - they don't have apostrophes, neither should its. When something "belongs" to the it, then think of it as a him or a her, and add an s, no apostrophe. Just remember: his hers and its, and whether you meant to say "it is". Can I moan about "could of" and "should of� now? No? Maybe next time, along with kid's, kids' and kids!
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Logic Puzzles I love logic problems! When I was a child my father worked abroad and would be away for weeks at a time. On his visits home he would often give us a new problem to think about then promptly disappear again, leaving us to agonise over them until his next visit! In those pre-internet days there was no way to research them, we just had to hope we’d figure the answer out eventually. So, if you can’t get the solution straight away, don’t head for the computer....give yourself time, talk it over with your friends and family, and the answer may just come to you. We’ll print the solutions in the next issue.....so you’ve got a few weeks to think about them, just like I did!
s son e o h w t t of to rth hour f the d i b al ame th o s an . tur na the s mon t twin hine e e c v o n a a n m n g rn o s a re e m ma e bo f the ey we a tim ? o r A w o we day o ut th s to is be s wh ame ar. B acce uld th e o s y c e d n ow o H sam e ha sh
a year, es once in , four m o c t a h W th very mon nd six twice in e ek, a e w ry e v times in e ach and every times in e end? we e k
Cathy and s has six pa draw ix pairs of irs of blac er k w witho . In comple hite socks socks ut loo in he t e dar must k r she t ing, how m kness, an a o rd e r d ke fro a n y socks to be m the s u re to ge drawer in t a pa matc ir tha h? t
?
a er saw e offic learly c li o p A river c truck d wrong way the going a one-way w do n not try ut did b t, e e hy not? str him. W p to s to
Ma chil ry's m d u c a l re n . T m h a s May led Apr he first four il c . is th The th . The s hild is eco e na ird J n une me .W d o chil f the fo hat d? urth
There was a man in a solid cement roo m, there wa s way in and no way out. no There was nothin g else In th e room apart from a table. Ho w did he escap (this one ne e? e d s RE lateral thinki ALLY ng!)
Last Issue’s Crossword Solution
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Featured Book ‘A Matter of Conscience’ By Kelly Green
‘A Matter of Conscience’ makes the argument that education is a fundamental freedom, and that family decisions about education should be treated as an issue of conscience. It is divided into four sections: Education is a Fundamental Freedom, Arguments against the Regulation of Home-based Education, Challenges to Freedom of Education, and How Home Education is Changing Society for the Better. ‘A Matter of Conscience’ is now available from Amazon in the U.K., priced £9.99. For more information about the book, which is derived from material originally published on this blog, visit the Rubeus Books website: http://sites.google.com/site/rubeusbooks/home/our-books/a-matter-of-conscience.
Here’s the Table of Contents: Part One – Education is a Fundamental Freedom Freedom of Conscience, Education, and the “Good Life” Indoctrination, Resistance, and Personal Sovereignty, or We are the Bosses of Ourselves Compelling Interest Home Educator As Legal Beagle
Part Two – Arguments Against the Regulation of Homebased Education Regulation of Home-based Education is CounterProductive What If My Family Had Been Monitored? The Difference Between Autonomy and Powerlessness The North American Experience: A Submission to the Scrutiny Committee for the Children, Schools and Families Bill, U.K. Parliament, January 21, 2010
Part Three – Challenges to Freedom of Education Is Home-Based Education a Threat? Should Some People Not Be Allowed to Do It? Media Bias Combating Uneducated, Unsubstantiated Opinions and Hate Speech About Home-based Education Home Education: The Image Fundamentalism and Home-Based Education Research on Home Education: A Good Thing? Challenges to Educational Freedoms – Could They Be Coming to a Government Near You?
Part Four – How Home Education is Changing Society for the Better More on Research: We Home Educators are Just People. May We Request that Other People Stop Treating Us and our Kids Like Lab Rats? Perhaps No Group Should Be Treated Like Lab Rats. Social Engineering So What’s Wrong with a Parallel Society Anyway? Resisting “It” The Real (Secret) Reason People Choose to Educate Their Own Kids There Is No Scarcity – Let the Bells Ring
Appendices Appendix A: Background on the Home-Education Crisis in England Appendix B: What Happened in Ontario Appendix C: One of the Last Acceptable Prejudices
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Learning to Read and Write: Our Family’s Experience kept coming back to haunt me. How would our two daughters learn to read and write?
By Karen Rodgers
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efore we had a family, I had been working in Special Education and noted how children flourished outside of conventional schooled environments, especially when mentored in small groups or one-to-one by people who cared about them and who also, crucially, had the freedom and time to meet the child's particular needs. As our second child arrived and our eldest made great strides simply by exploring the world and asking questions, it was beginning to dawn on me that we as parents were likely to make the best educators of our own children. Yet the conventional view that the imparting of literacy and numeracy was a specialised task, uniquely the preserve of Professionals schooled in the mysterious techniques which were needed,
At 3 1/2 our eldest had been asking us to teach her to read when I came across a copy of Lynne Lawrence's "Montessori Read and Write" and quickly realised I had stumbled on something very special. Here was a well thought out account of how parents could help their child pick up basic skills, based on experience of children doing so and also on the understanding that the child-parent relationship is a very special thing and well designed for helping children learn. This book not only gave us some tips, it also gave me the confidence as a parent to ditch the conventional unspoken and self-imposed restraint under which many of us suffer and to pitch in and consciously provide the understated but constant support which in the absence of prejudice, parents are so good at providing. Six years later, our eldest is a fluent, voracious and adventurous reader and can
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write very competently. Her younger sister at nearly six is well on the way to following suit. I have several times been asked by families considering HE or new to HE how we did it and so thought it time to try and set out how it came about. Each child went through the same stages, but at different rates and in different ways. 1) When they were very tiny, we just talked to them; all day, every day, involving them in everything we did and explaining as we went along. We also sang to them a lot and told them stories. 2) From about five months, we started to read them picture books and lift-the -flap books and gave them a choice of two or three; (this structured choice was to form a continuing and crucial aspect of their education).
as punctuation, view point, characterisation, plot, likely outcomes etc. We also read newspapers and magazine articles together and discussed the charts and diagrams which appeared in them in which the children showed an interest. Our subscription to the New Scientist has been a good investment. They also saw us adults reading (and also writing) for our own purposes. We didn't think anything of it at the time, but with hindsight, this turned out to be crucial. Children look to do and to be what the significant adults in their lives are doing and being, in other words, in most cases, what their parents are doing and being. If their parents are reading and writing, they too will aspire to read and write and will find a way to do so. (The converse is also true, I now realise; if a child's parents do not read and write and do not value reading and writing, school-based literacy schemes are unlikely to make him or her want to. If it is serious about literacy rates, government would be much better off leaving teachers, in consultation with parents, to exercise their own judgement about what is best for the children in their care and focus instead on providing good library services for families). Making time to be seen writing an essay or a letter in sight of our older daughter was a key strategy for motivating her to write herself.
Loving parents who read to you are worth a pile of literacy schemes
3) As soon as they started to ask questions, we endeavoured to answer them and tailored our answers to fit with the kind of experiences they already had, to help them form links. (I have noticed that parents are very good at doing this for their own particular children). As soon as they started to use their hands we gave them tasks to do which they seemed to enjoy and which would help them develop knowledge of the world, confidence as learners and also fine and gross motor skills. This may sound technical, but it wasn't really, just as simple as setting out pots with different size lids for them to fit to the correct pots etc. and instead of constantly saying "Don't touch!", showing them how to touch things and use them‌‌ I didn't leave anything around which I was not happy to have them handle.(Again parents are very good at choosing these kind of objects and tasks for their own children). I sang to them a lot still, read them poems and each evening my husband told them stories which were specially and skilfully tailored to their needs and interests and which encouraged them to explore different scenarios and to think through possible outcomes. We also read a chapter book to them each evening and went to the library once a week and borrowed and ordered books.
4) We continued to read to them, a wider variety of more challenging books and they had constant access to these during the day and the space and time to explore them at will. While we were reading, we sometimes talked about such things
5) We played various games with them such as" I spy.. something beginning with ["m"]", using the phonetic sounds of the letters rather than the letter names (although they knew these separately through singing the ABC song). We encouraged them to make various shapes in sand and in drawing such as zig zags, wiggly lines etc. We would notice letters and numbers as we were out, on shops and houses and car number plates and talk about them and try and decode words using phonics as well as learning to recognise "puzzle words" which had non-phonetic spellings.. 6) We had sandpaper letters out and when they showed an interest, showed them how to trace the shape a letter at a time. We also had laminated charts displayed showing how each of the letters (and numerals) are written, and encouraged them to stroke the letter shapes with their fingers each day. Wehad a chalk-board book out which encouraged them to do the same thing but holding a chalk. There were also pencils and drawing paper
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constantly available and it was noticeable that as they became interested in letters, these would begin to creep into their drawings one by one. We had paper blank at the top and with widely spaced lines at the bottom, so the child could draw a picture and annotate it, if she so chose. 7) We organised get-togethers with other families to share the Poems & Stories which we were reading and took poems and songs into the local retirement home to share with the residents. Often it would turn out that the girls had learned a poem by heart merely from reading it a few times. These visits to the local retirement home gave the girls the chance to recite such poems to an kindly and appreciative audience and thereby develop their confidence, fluency and delivery. We asked our eldest to use writing as an incidental part of an important family task such as composing a shopping list or writing a short practical note to another family member (e.g "we left you a cake"). We invested in some of the Usborne Beginners series of non-fiction books about topics 5 year olds find fascinating which our youngest has found very motivating. (Occasionally using some of the Usborne books is as close as we have come to using a reading scheme). 8) From the age of 7 1/2 we asked our eldest to choose a topic each week to write about; demonstrated how to construct a spider diagram
and how to work through it methodically to produce a logically ordered and comprehensive piece of writing. Monday's task was to produce the spider diagram and to number the sections in order; Tuesdays to write the rough draft with a dictionary and thesaurus to hand, Wednesday's to check the draft and Thursday's to copy it up in best. We continue to read together every day, non -fiction and classic poems every morning and quality classic fiction in the evenings (we are currently much enjoying the "Swallows and Amazons" series) to sing together and to tell stories and the girls have access to a wide variety of books for independent study. In selecting books, the aim is to provide the girls with things which are both beautiful and true (at least in the allegorical sense). Focussing on this aim has saved me a lot of grief and time trying to justify why we don't use x or y resource. One of the best investments we have made is in a small number of beautifully illustrated hardback anthologies of classic poems. We continue to go to the local library once or twice a week and very much value meeting up with friends to share books and going to Alex Wood House to share poems & songs. I am working on getting together a collection of good, classic fiction for older children (of which there is currently a dearth in libraries). Abebooks has been a big help in this. In conclusion, it seems to me that children do not need school or reading schemes in order to become literate. Rather in the absence of specific learning difficulties, they easily learn to read and write if they are in a rich environment which offers them interesting resources and also an adult or adults who understand them well and love them and who are prepared to make the materials and the experience of literacy accessible to them as and when they show an interest. In short, loving parents who spend time with you and who read themselves and to you are worth a pile of literacy schemes. n
www.chartmedia.co.uk www.usborne.com www.sharingaloveoflife.org.uk www.abebooks.co.uk http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14379
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OPAL Climate Survey Free learning resources for home educators to support Science and Geography By Simon Norman of the Field Studies Council
Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) is an exciting new initiative from the Natural History Museum and Imperial College London that is open to anyone with an interest in nature. We aim to create and inspire a new generation of nature-lovers by getting people to explore, study, enjoy and protect their local environment. Between 2009 and 2012 OPAL is running six public surveys of wildlife and the environment in which anyone can take part. Last year many home educators took part in surveying ponds and hedges in their local area as part of OPAL. Look to the skies: the OPAL Climate Survey Our fifth national survey, the OPAL Climate Survey, is happening from March to June 2011. It will involve around 45 minutes of outside observations, and can be carried out in gardens or parks in your local area – you don’t have to make a special journey. The key questions the survey will help us answer are: § Where are aeroplane contrails found? The British Isles is criss-crossed with aeroplane routes. On some days contrails disappear almost immediately, but on other days they can persist for hours. § How do winds blow the clouds? Use the free cloud mirror to watch the movement of clouds, and help measure cloud-level winds. § How do winds blow at person height? Use a compass (included in the pack) and soap bubbles to measure wind speed and direction close to the ground. § How hot or cold do people feel? Find out the Tog value of your clothing, and compare levels of personal warmth across the country. The results will be analysed by OPAL scientists at Imperial College London.
Taking Part in the OPAL Climate Survey - with FREE gift! We’re sending a to everyone who wants to participate, which includes full instructions, a cloud spotter’s guide, compass, thermometer and cloud mirror. We are also offering a from the Field Studies Council, normally £2.75, for readers of EOS. There is a choice from: -
Butterflies of Britain (http://www.field-studies-council.org/publications/pubsinfo.aspx?Code=OP48)
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Cloud Name Trail (http://www.field-studies-council.org/publications/pubsinfo.aspx?Code=OP60)
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The Night Sky (http://www.field-studies-council.org/publications/pubsinfo.aspx?Code=OP141)
To receive them, please email me at opal@field-studies council.org with ‘EOS’ in the subject header. Please indicate which of the charts you would like. The closing date for this offer is 30th April 2011. We have designed the OPAL Climate Survey is designed so that it can be used independently by ages 11+. Younger children can still take part, but they will probably need the help of an adult. As the pack contains small parts, we regret that it is not suitable for children under 3.
Your results count! The OPAL Climate Survey will be supported by dedicated web pages which will display survey results, along with those of other participants from around the country. Ultimately, everyone’s findings will be fed into a ground-breaking community-led study of the natural world. See the results which have come in so far at the OPAL website www.OPALexplorenature.org. www.educationoutsideschool.co.uk 23
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resonated strongly with me and perhaps kickstarted the very idea of this article: “Guilt is a powerful, insidious tool ...It is perhaps the greatest way to stunt a human being. And we have learnt to do it to ourselves, to self-regulate our actions daily. It has the power to make us strive harder, higher, better. But it also has the power to shut us down and make us feel so bad that we stop trying altogether.” She continues “….The Buddhist teaching of equanimity is always a thought provoking lesson: things are not good, nor bad, they simply are. Once we can allow for this, our ego can detach a little from our own rightness (or wrongness), and we can begin to enter into dialogue or compassionate acceptance, with those who choose differently from us. The power of guilt, and of judgement can imprison us firmly in the prisons of our own values. Openness to possibilities is the key to setting us free.” 4
The 17th century Historian and religious philosopher George Herbert once made this pertinent observation “He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass”. 5 He was referring to the way to heaven but we can interpret the value of this lesson as a path to a more enlightened state of living in the here and now, in this lifetime. Of forgiving and forgetting our and our children’s transgressions, illjudgements, of the mistakes and slip-ups all humans are capable of. Forgiveness is not only about the big things but the smaller weaknesses that we see in ourselves and each other. There is an African saying that It takes a village to raise a child. No one person or two people should shoulder all the blame, guilt or joy of parenting alone. When we accept our flaws and allow others to play a bigger role in our family life, everyone is the richer for it. Our children need the love, guidance, constructive criticism and support of a wider network of respected, esteemed and
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cherished others as much as we parents do. We cannot thrive or live joyfully without helping one another. Being a good HE parent isn’t about providing the most expensive resources, having the best facilities, taking our children to every club within a 50 mile radius, or following a ‘method’ down to the last full-stop. It’s not about raising geniuses. It most certainly is not about being perfect. Neither we, nor our children will ever be able to please everyone in our lives, all the time. But we can still be nice people whilst staying true to what is most important and in following our own philosophies and way of life - even if it is not totally accepted or supported by every last person we know. Perhaps then, the most important gift we can give our children is simply our love, faith and unconditional acceptance - who could ask for more in life?
Spring-time? By Richard L.Jones
T
ime - what an elusive and ephemeral thing it is! Even more so to peoples of antiquity, who of course had the sun and moon to give them a guide to astrology and the seasons, though they lacked a simple device that could tell them the exact minute of the day (that then would have to be accepted country and world wide). Confusion reigned, and has caused us problems to this day in trying to pin down specific dates. The Romans used the number of years from the founding of Rome (753 BC in our system); their other provinces used year one from their foundation. That must have been fun!
Lets leave a gentler legacy for our children, and chase those monkeys away forever. Instead of having a monkey on their back lets give them beautiful, strong wings instead. Focus on the positive things you and they do. Congratulate and praise yourself and them. Hold out your hand to pick them up when they fall. Those realms where they tread in future won’t feel nearly so big and scary knowing that whatever happens, it’s not the end of the world - just another lesson learnt. n
1. A HE friend who wishes to remain anonymous, via email. 2. Robert Louis Stevenson; Complete Works, vol 26 ‘Reflections and remarks on human life’, section 4 3. www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_a_edison.html 4. Lucy Pearce, sub-editor’s response; Juno Magazine, Letters page: Dec 2011 and also appeared in Lucy’s fantastic parenting blog http://dreamingaloudnet.blogspot.com/ 5. Sidney Lee (ed.) The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, revised edition (London: Routledge, 1906). Page 34.
‘Escaping Toxic Guilt: Five Proven Steps To Free Yourself From Guilt For Good!’ by Susan Carrel ISBN-10: 0071497358 ‘Emotional Blackmail: When the people in your life use fear, obligation and guilt to manipulate you’ by Susan Forward and Donna Frazier ISBN-10: 0060928971 ‘The Good Enough Child: How to have an imperfect family and still be perfectly satisfied’ by Brad E. Sachs ISBN-10 : 0380813033
There are few dates to help us understand the two hundred years after the fall of the Roman Empire (410 AD) in this country - as expressed by the monk Gildas, this is not to offer any complaint against him as an Historian. There could have been no agreed dating system in Britain in his day, although it is probable that individual kingdoms used the regnal years of their king. Of course Gildas was writing for the subjects of at least five British rulers. The BC/AD system was not used until the Venerable Bede in the eighth century. In short our early history suffers because Gildas had little choice but to be vague. So given these problems, it was apparently nothing later to see peasants celebrating New Year in the spring months, as each diocese adopted their own timetable. It was very difficult for each county to synchronise time, in fact because of this problem the celebration of New Year became so late in some parts that the term 'April Fool' was coined for just such occasions. In fact it wasn't until the coming of train timetables that this problem was ironed out. Thank goodness for Greenwich mean time.
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Education System is doing nothing to show them how all-enveloping a good story can be. It’s much easier to switch on the television or computer than pick up a book. So what can we as parents do about it? One idea is to use audio books, which were introduced to me by a friend who said they kept her children occupied for hours on long journeys. Audio books are free to borrow at your local library; we have listened to some great fiction whilst travelling to the music lessons or youth group. One of my daughter’s friends even asked me if she could sit in the car to hear the end of Jacqueline Wilson’s “Hettie Feather”, she had become so absorbed in the story. Children travelling with me have had numerous discussions about the books they’ve read, as a result of an audio book we are currently listening to. I also place books in the pockets in the back of the seats and regularly swap them. It’s amazing how often they’re picked up and read! Gift tokens are a brilliant present and with the introduction of sites like Amazon, customer reviews give a good idea as to whether a book is worth buying. We also regularly visit our local library where my son has discovered we can get hot chocolate for 50p and he can spend an hour or so on a wet morning choosing books and videos to take home .
HE and Working Lorena Hodgson
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o, how do you do it? Another one of those questions HE families get asked. How can you afford it? You must be rich/on stacks of benefits/have a rich husband. In fact, we met someone recently whose first reaction to the idea of home education was that it must be the preserve of well-off middle class families who can afford a multitude of tutors. While I'm sure there must be some HE families who can afford "it" and everything else, I get the impression many go without some things that are considered essential today. I'm not going to go on about TV or not; weekends away, or not, but I think we have all "sacrificed" in our own way, even if we think we've lost nothing. We have made a choice and put looking after our children full time above other needs or wants.
So this month why not get treat yourself and your children to a good book, sit yourself down with a coffee and learn something new! It’s never too late! n
www.worldbookday.com www.readitswapit.co.uk
I recently spoke to a parent who is having difficulties making ends meet. Her mother has suggested she goes to work, to bring in extra cash, "the children will be fine at school..." The last thing this mother wants is to send her children to school. She would rather go without other things than do that, but not everyone understands that. I suggested she ask her mother for suggestions on how to bring in more cash while staying at home, they could work together on something perhaps. This leads me neatly on to what I want to do over the next few issues. To talk about how to make money from home, specifically start up your own business, with a potential for more if you want to. I have been an independent worker for 20 years now, in various roles, but I've spent some time as a director of a limited company; plenty of time with customers, suppliers, magazines, attending shows, www.educationoutsideschool.co.uk 26
organising shows, talking to other business owners of various sizes (the businesses, not the owners...) and sometimes business advice places! I didn't realise it until I started the magazine with Jane and we attended a couple of those seminars organised for "Women in Business" that I actually knew what I was doing already! (as did Jane!). It was interesting, but there's nothing new in the world of how to attract customers, how to present yourself, etc etc. It doesn’t matter too much what your business actually is, the ways to market yourself are the same. Websites and social media are new, but as that's one of my old jobs, I can manage that. So, I decided with so many families needing to "bring in a little extra cash" and HE families in particular, I'd try to bring that information to you through the magazine. I know we can all go to Business Link (well, until they get shut down), and other organisations like them, but I've found many of them only give half the advice; or are talking about larger companies - I'm going to start with "one man bands" - or "micro-businesses" as we're now called. Of course none of these agencies even consider the issue of how to do it with children in tow!
with it - do you want to just get extra cash, are you planning for it to pay the mortgage, or do you want to build it into an empire?! I'd like to interview HE businesses to find out how they are organised and to share the experience. Having family at home is not the norm, as we all know, and it makes running a business, especially from home, a different exercise to running it while the kids are at school. I'll put some questions on the website and Facebook to help you make the decision in the first place. We'll also be linking up with organisations to help you.
Please write in, or use Twitter of Facebook, to tell us about your business and what you want to do www.educationoutsideschool.co.uk 27
things such as ancient trees, spring colour, a river or lake or, especially at this time of year, bluebells. Information such as whether the wood has a cafe, visitor centre or toilets is also included - all really useful when planning education outdoors.
Woods as a Classroom By Alison Kirkman of the Woodland Trust
W
e all know that traditional schooling methods are not the only way for children to learn. Home education is a great way to teach children in a more holistic way about the world they live in. Teaching as part of a group can also be extremely beneficial, providing more stimulation and social development opportunities for children as well as inspiration and support for educators. It's often a challenge to find a good place to educate in a group, but the great outdoors is undoubtedly one of the best. Woods especially offer a whole range of natural resources with which to teach and your nearest wood is probably nearer than you think. 33 million people in the UK live within 2.5 miles of a publicly accessible wood and the possibilities for education are endless. VisitWoods.org.uk has recently been launched and will be of enormous help to home educators in finding suitable woods to take their children for outdoor learning. It is the UK's first interactive woodland website mapping 14,000 publicly accessible woods. Many woods have attributes to show they are particularly good for finding certain
Karen Rodgers from Cambridgeshire home educates her two girls. Asked about the benefits of educating children in woodlands, she says: "Children need to develop their senses and faculties of fine and gross motor control. They develop these best in an environment which is rich in contrasts - in colour, texture, scent - and where there is plenty of space to move. It's good to allow children to take managed risks and take them to a place where they are at liberty to touch and engage with any object or substance that attracts their attention.
"Natural woodland provides opportunities for the whole range of these needs in a way that indoor artificial environments cannot. Also, woodland is a hugely motivating environment for children. They really do want to feel that bark, watch that beetle, climb that tree. It helps them to develop selfmotivation, self-confidence and self-discipline as well as a keen sense of risk assessment. "In an outdoor environment there are no video games, TV screens or a fridge full of food to dampen down their natural drive to learn and explore. Outdoor education frees children from the prevalent materialist, competitive and destructive 'mine or yours?' mindset. It enables them to play with each other on neutral territory and of course there's the obvious benefit of fresh air and Vitamin D!" There is also a range of resources on VisitWoods to aid learning, such as downloadable spotter sheets to identify woodland flora and fauna and even a den building kit to inspire creativity. Education Outside School Editor, Lorena Hodgson, says: "The attributes on VisitWoods.org.uk will be really helpful. It's so important for home educating families to feel they're given permission to run around, make dens and 'do stuff'. All too often woods are just seen as places to take the dog. "Do check out VisitWoods in advance, and use the links to the Nature Detectives website for ideas as well. The best thing to do then is to take the
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children on a long walk, ask them what they can see and what they’d like to do. You can always go back there for all the different activities they will come up with! Wear appropriate clothing, take plastic bags - they're useful to sit on, or to carry treasure or muddy boots home in. Take some snacks, water and warm drinks, get outside and have fun!"
English Poetry inspired by nature – Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’, Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘The Way Through The Woods’ by Rudyard Kipling, great environment to practise descriptive writing Languages Latin scientific names of trees/plants; words like ‘arboreal’ and their connection to Latin languages such as the French for tree, l’arbre.
rn a e l e w n a c t a h s? d So w o o w e h t in Geography Orienteering, laying a trail and following it.
Religious Education Discussion of older religions such as paganism which were heavily based in nature, Druids who traditionally met for worship in groves in the woods as they were forbidden to meet in places enclosed by walls and a roof; significance of Yew trees in Christianity and as one of the things borrowed from paganism to ease and encourage their conversion into Christianity
Of course, a visit to the woods is fantastic of itself and needs no embellishments, but if you felt inclined to tease out the educational value a bit more, how would you do it? Here are a few of EOS’s suggestions - some will occur as a natural by product of your day out, some may need some research either before the trip or upon your return. Take your pick and add some of your own!
Art Simply drawing what we see, making natural art out of objects around us, relate to natural artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, bark rubbings, photography
Biology An easy one with all the plants around! Species, classification, plant reproduction, insects, mammals (badger sets, squirrels etc), fungi…..
Maths What is the tallest tree; measuring the area of the wood; age of trees through counting rings; for younger children counting the numbers of a certain type of tree/plant found
History Age of trees, history of the British landscape, what used to be woodland, why and when it changed, industrial revolution; which monarch was on the throne when this wood was young…..
Physical Education Walking, running about, climbing trees, obstacle courses
Chemistry Bit of a crossover with Biology, but could talk about gas exchange, carbon cycle, greenhouse gases and the importance of trees…..
Physics The way leaves fall to the ground, trees that have ‘helicopter seeds’ like maple and sycamore, discuss the physics of flight
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Education is Compulsory, Schooling is Not The specific legalities of home educating in the UK differ somewhat between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as much as they do in countries throughout the rest of the world. The national organisations listed to the right go into this in detail and are a good place to go if you are unsure or have specific queries. However, some things are clear: YOU DO NOT need to be a qualified teacher to educate your child at home YOU ARE NOT obliged to follow the National Curriculum or take national tests YOU DO NOT need to observe school hours, days or terms YOU DO NOT need to have a fixed timetable, nor give formal lessons THERE IS NO FUNDING directly available from central government for parents who decide to educate their children THERE IS NO WRONG WAY to home educate. There are many different approaches, from the autonomous or child-led to the highly structured, through a myriad of hybrids in between. In fact it has been said that there are as many different approaches to home education as there are families doing it.
The above is a swift ‘FAQ’ style list; basically, if you’re thinking of HE, and your children aren’t registered at a school, just keep them home. Talk to them. Research what they could do, and discuss with them how they’d like to learn. Then just do it. Go out, enjoy. (Museums, playgrounds, everywhere, are much quieter in school time!) If they are at school, send a letter to the head teacher, use recorded delivery; say you will be home educating, and that’s it. Nothing else is required of you. You are the parent, you are responsibile for your child’s education, as you are responsible for other aspects of their life. If you do your research, you will find yourself impressed and maybe amazed at what children can do outside of school. They really can learn very successfully! Don’t Panic. Research, and enjoy. Local Authority information and actions differ wildly, but the facts remain as above. If they wish to speak with you, check out the websites of HE organisations for suggestions on how to do this first. LAs are interested in making sure your children are receiving a good enough education, they are allowed to check if it seems they’re not.
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Home Education Websites and Groups There are many home education groups, national and local, all over the UK. Most websites and lists are full of very valuable free information provided by other home educators. A few charge a subscription. EOS Magazine is not affiliated to and does not recommend any particular group over another and they have been listed in no particular order - please use your own discretion and follow your own home ed path! Any omissions are purely due to our own human fallibility! If you run a website or a group that you would like to see featured here, or if you know of one that you feel should be here, please contact us and tell us. National
Regional
AHEd Action for Home Education www.ahed.org.uk PO Box 7324, Derby, DE1 0GT
North East North Yorkshire www.nyhe.co.uk http://groups.yahoo.com/group/henney/ (Home Education Network North East Yorkshire). A monthly meeting in a local village hall and a monthly meeting out and about somewhere in the local area
Education Otherwise www.education-otherwise.org 125 Queen Street, Sheffield, South Yorks. S1 2DU Freedom In Education www.freedom-in-education.co.uk
West Yorkshire wyheal.wordpress.com
HE-Special Home Education in the UK - Special Educational Needs www.he-special.org.uk
East Midlands Leicestershire www.he-al.org.uk
HE-UK Home Education UK www.home-education.org.uk HEdNI Home Education in Northern Ireland www.hedni.org Home Education Advisory Service www.heas.org.uk Home Education in the UK www.home-ed.info Home Educated Youth Council An independent voice for home educated young people heyc.org.uk MuddlePuddle A site aimed particularly at the 0-8 age range. www.muddlepuddle.co.uk Schoolhouse For home education in Scotland www.schoolhouse.org.uk PO Box 18044, Glenrothes, Fife KY7 9AD Tel: 01307 463120 THEN UK The Home Education Network www.thenuk.com PO Box 388, St Helens, WA10 9BS admin@thenuk.com
Northamptonshire www.iflow.org.uk www.northantshe.org.uk West Midlands Worcestershire www.worcestershire-homeeducators.co.uk East Cambridgeshire www.cambridgehomeeducators.org.uk South East Berkshire www.heroesberkshire.co.uk Isle of Wight www.iwlearningzone.co.uk Kent www.flags-education.org.uk www.ukhome-educators.co.uk Surrey www.pact-he.org.uk www.swsurrey-home-ed.co.uk South West Bristol www.bristolhomeeducation.org.uk Dorset www.he-ed.org.uk Somerset www.homeeducationcentre.org.uk Wiltshire www.nwilts-he.org.uk Wales North West www.creativelearningandsupport.co.uk
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Home Ed Gymnastics Group Mansfield, Nottinghamshire The group is open to all home educated children aged between 4-16 years old, subject to the availability of places. We meet on Friday afternoons during term time and half term holidays (but not during Easter, summer and Christmas holidays) from 3pm-4pm. For further details, contact Alexandra or Martin at martin.gray6@ntlworld.com or on 01623 477922 or 07923 496701.
www.schoolhouse.org.uk
www.thenuk.com
www.educationeverywhere.co.uk
Spring has sprung The grass has riz I wonders where the birdies is? Some say the birdie's on the wing But that’s absurd! I say the wing's on the bird! Anon
www.muddlepuddle.co.uk www.hedni.org
www.heas.org.uk
www.ahed.org.uk www.education-otherwise.org
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