A miniature literary adventure

Today we went on a miniature literary adventure and it was great fun. We packed our lunch and the kids in the car and headed to Buckinghamshire. Our first stop was the  Roald dahl museum and story centre in Great Missenden.

It was full of hands on things for the children and not so young ones to enjoy from hands on computer activities, photo's dress up, creative writing and crafts. The Wonka doors even smelt of chocolate!

 Finding out how sparky Beebie was by answering some tricky questions. It turns out that she is as sparky as Fantastic Mr Fox!

 Chipman and Dad enjoying looking at Dahl family photos

 Dad couldn't resist trying out the dressing up box, although I think they were meant for smaller people!

  Chipman loved using the automatic grammatizator to make his sentences. Do boys ever grow out of finding toilet's funny? P enjoyed following the James and the giant peach trail and answering the questions along the way.

After we'd finished our literary part of adventure and our tummy's were full of picnic we headed of to Bekonscot model village and railway in Beaconsfield. It is a place that both my husband enjoyed visiting as children and enjoyed again today! We watched the trains go round as we looked at miniature shops, schools, churches, fairgrounds and saw a killer giant duck.

The children named this normal sized duck the 'killer giant duck' as in comparison to the model people it looked HUGE!

Chipman was amazed that the roof was made of asphalt tiles like a full size roof would be and being sensory driven had to know what it felt like!

The amount of attention to detail and work that goes into each of these models was astounding.

After looking into a small world and the world of an awesome author we loaded 2 tired children into the car and headed home.

Art time with perfectionists

So when I started our art session this morning I planned to teach the children about aboriginal dot art and then blog about it, but as ever with home educating it hasn't quite worked out that way. The reason, both my children are huge perfectionists! My plan  to tell them about the history of aboriginal art and play aboriginal music whilst painting didn't quite work, teaching my perfectionists a new skill means lots of encouragment so they don't give up, so instead of teaching them about art history I taught them how to persevere and try their best. It might not have been the lesson I intended but it was one worth learning!

The children's perfectionism is teamed with low self esteem which means nothing is ever perfect enough. Beebie's stems from her speech and language difficulties, she tried hard with her speech but it didn't always work so she just gave up talking, she has to try harder than others with certain subjects for less results so her coping strategy is if some doesn't go according to plan she will rip it up before you have a chance to talk about it. Beebie is in school and a lot of her homework gets handed in on a sellotaped piece of paper! Chipman's stems from being told at school for years he's naughty and a bad person, if he's such a bad person how can he do anything good. If he can't do it as perfectly as he wants or it's challenging then he just gives up! They both want to prove themselves worthy by being perfect, well perfect is unobtainable so it causes lots of frustrations.

This morning as we sat down with drawing books and bamboo skewers and paints, I set them each an individual challenge whilst they were painting. Chipman's challenge was to see his picture to the end and complete it. He completed his challenge, he nearly didn't at several points when his picture didn't look like the one in his 'how to draw book' but he listened to my advice and produced this beautiful, colourful flower.

Beebie's challenge was to not get stressed out if it didn't go right or was hard, but to talk about it. She found it frustrating but she told me that she was getting frustrated rather than screaming or sitting in a mood. I talked it through with her and on she went. At the end she had drawn and painted a dolphin, cat and dog and said 'Mummy that was so much fun'

The children may not have learned a whole lot about aboriginal art or even produced anything that looks like it but they rose to the challenge. They tried something new, they accepted that their pictures were not exactly 'perfect' like the book and they have made some fantastic art work which once dry will be proudly displayed on the wall.

Leaping into deschooling

Deschooling, a term I had never heard of until I started home educating. What is it exactly? Well it's getting school out of our systems, 12 year old Chipman has 8 Years of learning in a school environment and myself 14, we only know how to learn in a classroom. Home educating has so many advantages over classroom learning but both mine and Chipman's heads are in a school mindset, that each subject must be taught separately for a set time each day, that we must follow a very rigid timetable that is the same each week and that it won't be fun! We need time to find out how Chipman learns, what he loves and get to know each other, for the past 8 years the only time we have spent together has been after school and the holidays. So now the official school type learning stops and we have fun! 

So far this week we have started making a a 3d cardboard sphinx (he's really into the Egyptians at the moment), made clay models, watched films, been to the charity shops to buy books and games. We have learnt a lot about each other, I have learnt that Chipman loves crafting as do I but I have also learnt that I am not a very patient teacher and want to jump in and do it for him! I need to learn how to take a step back and to facilitate him rather than doing it for him. I also need to find creative ways for him to show his learning.

Chipman has also taught me how to play chess! We have learnt that both of us learn by doing and not by reading the instructions. I have also found that Chipman is a much more patient teacher than me and explains things very well verbally.

I don't know how long we will deschool for, I imagine for as long as it takes, there are many different theories that range from 1 week to 1 month per year of schooling the child has done. We will carry on learning about each other's passions, learning styles and who the other person is until we feel ready to learn and when Chipman and I can see that learning can be fun and not just workbooks.

Are you deschooling? Have you already deschooled? Share your experiences or ask your questions in the comments below!

A new adventure along our way

I had always planned to go to Africa and when I first became a Christian I was all ready to sign up and serve the Lord on a different continent. However He had different plans as I found out that I was expecting Chipman and I had to cancel. My desire to go to Africa has never gone away though and it is truly special that I get to share this experience with Chipman, God's plans do not always match our ideas but they certainly are for the best. Jeremiah 29 v 11 says so  "For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." I was devastated that I couldn't go when I wanted to, but now after 12 years of waiting I get to go on an amazing journey into the unknown with a very special young man. 

We are traveling with a charity called Mission Direct, and whilst we are in a town called Rukungiri we will be getting stuck into building site life. There is a mainstream primary school there already but nothing for disabled children, that is until Mission Direct started building an extension. Now the disabled children of Rukungiri have an amazing opportunity of their own to look forward too, an education. We will also be visiting other local projects and helping out, this is going to be the best 2 weeks ever!

I will be blogging more about our trip on a seperate blog and would love for you to come on over and visit it to find out more!

Would you be willing to support Chipman and I in prayer? This is a scary time for him as he steps out of his usual routine and into a different world, please pray he will adjust well and enjoy the new and exciting experiences. Please also pray for patience for me as I deal with Chipman's behaviour without the support of my husband. And lastly for my husband and daughter Beebie as they cope for 2 weeks at home without us.

Thinking creatively about creative writing

I was looking for ways to engage Chipman in creative writing and stumbled upon the TES website. It is full of resources uploaded by teachers and is free to access. Some of the activities need tweaking for one to one home educating. I found a fantastic powerpoint on the website which I turned into a workbook. Here is how I did it......

Firstly you will need to down load the resource from TES, this requires signing up to their site. It's free to join and well worth it for the treasure trove of resources you will find!

Next I printed off the power point slides, 3 to a page with notes, this option is available on the print screen.

I then cut them into individual strips.

 The next step was to get creative and make a front and back cover out of card. I made mine out of card which I cut just a bit bigger than my pages. I used a sharpie, gold pen and some card decorating stickers for mine, but this is where you can let your creativity go wild!

Lastly you can make your book by laying your back cover on the bottom, then laying your paper on top and finally your cover. The amount of pages you can include may well be limited to the number of pages you can fit in your stapler! I used 15 pages and then stapled it. I put the left over strips in an envelope ready to make another once A has completed this one.

For Chipman who is a reluctant writer the short amount of lines make the task achievable (although he does have to option to carry onto the other side of the page). It has really helped him start thinking about things imaginatively and is in good size chunks that don't overwhelm him.

Let me know what you think. Have you got any good ideas to get reluctant writers putting pen to paper or getting them to think creatively? If so please share them below.

Earthquakes at home and learning together

We did it! 5 morning's getting Beebie into school without any fuss and 3 nights of going to bed well! She is very happy with her bubble sword as a reward! As for Chipman and homeschool, all is going brilliantly. This week we looked at the effect of earthquakes on buildings with a hands on Lego experiment. It was great fun and both Chipman and Beebie enjoyed it. We have come to the end of our Japan topic and on Chipman's request are now moving onto Egypt. Again we will be lapbooking and will post photo's as we go.

This week there have been doubts. The main one of these for me is am I teaching him enough? From other blogs I have read I know I am not alone. I have been reassuring myself that no matter how much Chipman writes down on paper he is learning 24/7 and enjoying doing it. I have loved getting to know Chipman better and spending quality time with him during our learning. It is amazing to see his thirst for knowledge and how he will persevere. I am still being flexible and we are definitely learning as we go along together.

 Chipman has also enjoyed meeting up with his home educated friends at group and at the park. It's great to see him making new friends and also good support for me. I would recommend to anyone home educating or considering it to join a group, you can find lists of these groups on Education Otherwise. It has lots of information about home educating and is worth a visit. 

I am feeling so at home with being a stay at home mum and am very thankful to God for giving me this opportunity and peace in my heart. My prayer this week will be for calm in our home and hearts that want to listen to God and to each other.