I have just been in touch with this lady who is hoping to get this message out to all home edders...

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Sarah

Message:

I am launching a competition open to home-educated children and young people only. To enter the competition, you need to produce a story about bullying.
Your story may be told in any one of the following 3 formats:
a) a written story
b) a film
c) a comic strip
Whichever format you choose, you must be able to send it to me in digital form, either by e-mail (writing and comic strips) or on a DVD rom (films).

All work submitted will be made public on a website in Anti-Bullying Week (November 16 to 20), unless you wish your work not to be shown, which is fine.
I am in the process of finding judges and prizes, so will let people know more about those when I have arranged them!
If you are interested, contact me as soon as possible for an application form and more details.
Ali    ali@yggdrasil.org.uk    

The Royal Opera House is looking for a young person aged 11-14 to write a fanfare.  You can find out more here http://www.roh.org.uk/education/schoolsandteachers/fanfare.aspx?utm medium=fanfare& emailsource= 4270&utm_ campaign=education& utm_source= fanfare
 or here http://www.numu.org.uk/fanfare/.

The closing date is 12 February 2010.

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Sarah

Road Safety Week 2009 takes place 23-29 November.

If you go to www.roadsafetyweek.org you will find plenty of information about the week and how you can be involved.  There is an educators section where it is possible to order a free poster pack and to find detailed ideas on teaching about road safety.

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Sarah

The National Literacy Trust are launching an online survey which will look at attitudes towards reading, attitudes towards writing and the extent to which pupils engage in literacy activities at home with their families.  (Can you tell they were only thinking of asking children in school?) They are looking for 9-16 year old boys and girls from a variety of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds to participate in the study.

They say, "Anyone participating will need to provide children with access to the online survey and will receive a report that will outline some of the findings.  The survey will be running from 16th November to 4th December and can be accessed here  http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/research/attitudes2009.html?dm_i=73S,21DL,OVJAI,6I4S,1

Those wishing to take part need to register their interest before 23rd October."

I wrote to enquire if there would be opportunities for home educated children to participate in the study.  The reply was favourable with the only comment being that, "The only requirement is access to a computer with an internet connection."  So, if you are interested please contact Christina Clark (PhD), Head of Research on christina.clark@literacytrust.org.uk
and she will send you a link to the survey. 

I think it would be fascinating to see how different the attitudes are between home and school educated children, if at all.  Mine are too young to join in at the moment.
 
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Sarah

Here are a couple of opportunities to have some fun (educational too!) and Help the Aged.

The first is the Great Sunday Lunch which you can find out about here.  It is all about family, friends and neighbours getting together to enjoy lunch and raising money for Age Concern and Help the Aged.  The idea is to invite some guests to a Great Sunday Lunch and ask them to show their appreciation by making a donation.

The second is the Big Knit and links with innocent smoothies and Sainsburys.  The details are all here.  The basic idea is that people are encouraged to knit 'hats' for Smoothie drinks.  For every behatted smoothie sold, innocent and Sainsbury’s will give 35p to Age Concern and Help the Aged. 

They say, "It’s time to get knitting to help older people stay healthy this winter. It’s a sad fact that in the UK, 1 in 10 people over the age of 65 are malnourished. So when it’s nippy outside, it’s even more important for older people to look after themselves and make sure their bodies are in tip top shape.

The monies raised will then be used to fund projects and advice centres offering information on healthy eating as well as cooking clubs and get-togethers where older people can sit down and enjoy a meal in each other’s company. Hot Christmas dinners all round."

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Sarah

There is a Family Learning Festival from 17-31 October organised by the campaign for learning (part of the government).  This year’s theme is “Get Together - Discover More!’

There have been grants made available and various home ed groups have applied to do various things, eg. in Manchester there will be a home-ed science lecture.

If you would like to know what is on near you you can call 0800 100 900 and quote 'family fun' or visit http://www.welovelearning.co.uk/ 

There is also a film competition:  "Whatever you enjoy learning... tell us or teach us in a short film and be in with a chance to win £500 in the TLP competition."  Closing date for entries is 30th November.  It would be great if it was won by a home-edder!

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Sarah

Did you need an excuse to learn about, cook with and eat chocolate?  Well, here it is:

Chocolate week October 12-18, 2009 

You can find out all about it here.  If you look around the site you will find that there are chocolate tasting sessions booked for all over the country - yummmmmm! (Though I noticed nothing too close to me - sigh!)

Enjoy!

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Sarah

Oh, here I am again telling you about something else food related!

This does sound good:  National Baking Week - can't you just imagine the smell and taste?

It runs from 19-25 October and you can find out more here.

There is a 'teacher's section' here.  You will need to register to access their downloads.  Under 'school' I simply typed 'Home educator' and there was no problem with that.

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Sarah

National Poetry Day 2009 is on 8th October.  There is a large event on in London and you can find out more here.   I gather there is still time to enter a poem into their competition.

The Poetry Society is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.  Their web site has various ideas for poems plus resources to use in teaching. 

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Sarah

A quick reminder that the library summer reading challenge is coming to an end.  My local library has had it's 'finishing event' already.  However, the librarians tell me the quest is open for another couple of weeks, so if you've not quite managed to finish yet there's still time to go in and receive your certificate.

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For all you budding artists out there, here is another nationwide event that may be of interest to you.

The tenth Big Draw runs from 1 to 31 October 2009, with a special focus on Saturday 10th October.

The website says:

Join us in celebrating The Big Draw's 10th birthday from 1-31 October 2009. Find your nearest Big Draw venue on our events database and sign up on the e-list for Campaign news.

The Big Draw is a month-long season of participatory activities for people of all ages and abilities. Over 1000 events will use drawing, painting and other creative media to engage participants with museum and gallery collections, historic sites – and each other – in new and enjoyable ways. Big Draw events encourage everyone to expand the boundaries of drawing by experimenting with pencils, paint, charcoal, sand, clay, digital imagery, choreographed movement, vapour trails and much more.

Big Draw Day is Saturday 10 October, but more than 1000 events will take place throughout October in galleries, museums, art clubs, heritage and environmental sites, libraries, archives, science, community and shopping centres, colleges and schools across the UK, and internationally.

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Sarah

As I mentioned a few weeks ago September seems to be a month when everything happens all at once!  Are you wondering why we are letting you know about so many things that are not directly 'home ed related'?  The latest guidelines for many LA's when looking at home education include questions about how children are contributing to and getting involved in the local community.  Whilst many of us already are 'in' the community in all kinds of ways, hopefully some of the recent posts have provided some extra ideas for you.

The eighth British Food fortnight takes place from 19 September to 4 October 2009 during Harvest Festival, the traditional time for celebrating our food. 

Their 'blurb' says, "The event will celebrate the diverse and delicious range of food that Britain produces with promotions and tastings in shops, all-British menus in pubs and restaurants, food and cookery lessons in schools and glorious food festivals. Whether you are shopping in supermarkets or local shops, or eating in pubs or restaurants you will be able to enjoy the best of British food during the Fortnight."

There is a 'teacher zone' here which aims to use British Food Fortnight as an opportunity to teach young people about food and how to cook. There are downloadable pdfs of their resource packs and information about their ‘Cook for Life’ Challenge.  There is also a list of resources such as 'what's in season when', colouring in sheets for younger children and recipe cards.

They finish with the comment, "We hope that you enjoy putting the Ooo back into food during British Food Fortnight!"

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Sarah

Channel 4 has already started their educational programmes.  Details of these can be found here.  We have enjoyed a few of these programmes, though if you have no way of taping programmes this will probably not be of much use to you as many are shown at 4 a.m.  

I think that the BBC educational programmes will also start again soon. However if you look here their information is not up to date and when I contacted them about it they said they didn't know when it would be brought up to date.   We have found many of their programmes to be of great value, especially the phonics programmes for younger children.  

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Sarah

This is something that is well worth checking out:

The programme for National Schools Film Week 2009 is now live.  You can find all the information in your local area at  http://www.nsfw.org/.

All the film viewings are free, linked to National curriculum, and open to home educators.  This year's theme is 'Creativity and diversity'.  The programme features a range of current and forthcoming films to address topical and challenging issues shown from a variety of different perspectives.  There is a wide variety of films on offer, including The Tale of Despereaux, Prince Caspian, Hoodwinked, Arctic Tale, G-Force, Whale Rider, Wall-E, and Bee Movie and it is worth checking more than just your closest town if you don't find what you want.

The screenings take place

15-23 Oct [England, Wales, N. Ireland]
2-6 Nov [Scotland]

Last year the film week took 400,000 children to see 250 films at 2,000 screenings in 550 locations throughout the UK!

This is a very popular event so book early to ensure your places! 

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Sarah

The Ordnance Survey Free Maps for 11 year olds for 2009 opened for orders last week.

This is the link for home educators to order them:

http://freemaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/freemapsfor11yearolds/homeEducator.jsp

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Sarah

I am cross-posting this with permission.  Hope it appeals to someone!

Sarah

The Primary Mathematics Challenge is a national competition consisting of a test with interesting, mathematical problems (mostly multiple choice) aimed at the top 60% of 9-11 year olds, although anyone aged 11 or under on 31 August 2010 can enter. I'd say it is suitable for children who enjoy maths and problem-solving and get bored being tested on whether they can "do" the basics.

There is more information and past papers on the Mathematical Association' s website here.   Every child taking part will get a certificate, and Gold, Silver and Bronze certificates will be awarded to those who do particularly well.

Last year, the competition was opened to home-educated children for the first time and the 32 home-educated children aged 7-11 who took part did very well compared to their schooled peers! It would be great to see even more entries this year.

Home-educators cannot enter children directly through the Mathematical Association so if you would like to enter a home educated child, please join www.groups.yahoo.com/groups/PMC-Home-Ed where there is information about how to enter.

It's that time of year again and there are all kinds of events planned for September.  We'll try to remind you of them as we find them...

The first is the Heritage Open Days.  There are many events taking place across England in the next few weeks, many in places not often open to the public.  There are many churches open, as well as historical sites, museums and parks.  

You can find out more here:   http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/directory

I hope you find something good for a day out!

Sarah

Booked Up is a national programme run by Booktrust (an independent charity dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to engage with books and the written word) and supported by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.  It's goal is to encourage and support reading for pleasure by providing each Year 7 pupil in England with a free book from a list of 12 specially selected titles.  Click here to see this year’s booklist.

They say that last year’s programme was a huge success with over 672,000 children receiving their free Booked Up book.

You can find out more about Booked Up here.

From their Q&A:

What do I do if my child is home educated or doesn't attend school?
If your child does not attend school but is 11 years old they are still eligible to receive a free book. Please contact our customer service department on 0845 606 4262. 

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Hope someone finds it useful!

Sarah

The library summer challenge is about to start.

This year's adventure is called Quest Seekers.  You can find out more about it here.  They say, "This year’s theme for The Summer Reading Challenge is all about the power of the imagination. It will take young readers into a mysterious and wondrous land where they can discover the joy of reading and nurture a life-long love affair with books."

You can sign up for the challenge by visiting your local library.  It's free and every child will receive a fold out poster and membership card.  At the end of the challenge each child will receive a certificate and there are other goodies along the way.

There is also a games site here.

In some areas libraries are arranging special events linked to the challenge, so you may get a special outing too!

Enjoy!

Sarah