OK, so following on from my previous post, I have been surfing the web and following rabbit-trails on technology and education.
Take a look at the following video, and consider these questions: are the issues being raised in the video relevant to home education or not (and if not, why not), if they are relevant, how do we address them? If our children are learning autonomously, how does that figure in - how and where do we draw the boundaries, keep them safe, ensure that if they choose to game, facebook, blog, twitter or whatever (and apologies to conservative grammatists there for my verbal use of 'game' and 'facebook' there!), that they are getting something educational out of it or should we be encouraging a balance between all this and learning in more traditional ways?
We've been amazingly busy of late, and I've been encouraged to get blogging again.
The UK is currently in the throes of what amounts to a very biased government review of Home Education law, and one of the questions that has been thrown into the pot is what is a suitable education for the 21st century.
I've been having an interesting conversation online with a real-life friend of mine who is a 'learning technologist'. She believes - with a passion - that today's schools prepare children perfectly for life - in the 1890s! She also believes that what is needed is technology, and lots of it! To be specific, social media - Web 2.0 collaborative learning & networking technologies, and among the best of these she suggests the following:
Of course, homeschoolers in the US and home educators in the UK are already well connected through things like yahoo groups, curriculum forums, and the newer Ning communities such as the Homeschool Lounge, the Home Ed UK Network and so on.
But something I've been working on lately has been to try and encourage the home educated children themselves to get involved with collaborative projects such as wikis (I particularly like wetpaint).
As and when I get round to it, I'll try and re-do my links to include some of the social networks that I find most interesting and helpful.
But I'd also like to add a couple of resources to the 'must-have' list of learning technologies:
but I'm not sure how appropriate these would be for children who are learning at home autonomously (as most UK home educators do), I would need to investigate further how these can be used.
I'm interested to know other people's views on technology, and what might constitute an education that would prepare children who are studying now and in the 2010s for life in the 2020s, 2030s and beyond.
And which technologies do you consider to be crucial, interesting or useful?
And next time, I promise to try and up-date you about exactly what it is we've been doing and where we've been going!
I think that home-based education already has the potential of being automatically greener than travelling to school elsewhere: we don't need to drive to school, small 'human' scale operations tend to be less wasteful than big 'corporations', for example.
But here's a place to share and think about ways to become greener in our homeschooling.
Here are my preliminary ideas:
- Use both sides of paper, including using the other side of printed papers (recycle your unwanted post this way)
- Avoid consumables where possible (do your writing on whiteboards or chalk boards or maybe, if you're technologically up-to-date, on interactive whiteboards!) and / or get your children to give their answers orally rather than writing them down in consumable books - that way they can be used again.
- Sell, 'freecycle' (give away) or exchange any unwanted materials http://www.freecycle.org/
- Use second-hand books and materials where possible
- Use online materials that don't need to be printed where possible
- Use recycled materials for your arts projects, or non-recyclable materials that would otherwise end up in the trash (but better still, try to purchase less non-recyclable items)
- Go on nature walks (instilling a love of the natural world in your children is probably the best 'green' thing you can teach them!)
- Get involved with a conservation trust as part of your homeschool activities
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I am so overcome with sadness and shock of the passing of our dear friend and fellow UK Home Educator, Chrissy 'MamaSmurf', that I hardly know what to say, other than to say how very priviledged I was to have known her, and to convey my very deepest and heartfelt sympathies to her dear family. You will be sorely missed.
You can read MamaSmurf's blog, "Moving the Mountain" here and the news of her passing on the UK Homeschool Nations blog here
The current Charlotte Mason blog carnival theme is that of narration.
When I was at school, this was normally called "Comprehension", and usually involved telling back, in your own words (very important, and very difficult for a child to understand, sometimes, I think) your understanding of a story or non-fiction subject you've been told about by the teacher, or that you've read on your own. Comprehension can also consist of answers to set questions on the passage or subject - in essense, 'Comprehension' shows that a child 'comprehends' the story or subject.
Narration is one of the foundational instruments of a Charlotte Mason education, and unlike school comprehension, usually involves an oral retelling rather than a written one - at least in the early years, and unlike comprehension, narration does not usually use questions, except as a prompt in the case of a child who finds narration particularly difficult.
My understanding is that Charlotte Mason actually required a short narration on every piece of writing a child reads or has read to them.
Unfortunately, this is an area we have really, really struggled with, and cannot claim any degree of success!
However, re-reading Charlotte Mason principles, I realise that narration is such an important part of learning - a passage that a child narrates is much more easily and fully retained than a passage that wasn't narrated, that reading and listening without narration is almost totally wasted!
So I am determined to try to start this again. My trouble is that my oldest child is now almost 13, so I don't quite know how to encourage him to start doing something that he has for so long been reluctant to do. I think, with him (at least in the first instance) I will need to use questions to prompt him into telling what he knows and remembers, rather than expecting him to just narrate 'cold'.
I have 3 boys and one girl, and despite not wanting to impose or encourage cultural gender prejudices, I have found that the girl is much more keen on all the things one might expect a girl to be keen on, and narration is no exception. My daughter seems to be much more willing to tell me what she knows than any of the boys. None of my children write 'independently'. The 12yo who can chooses not to, and will need a lot of coaxing to improve that situation. For the 8yo I tend to write down her narrations, and she will occassionally trace over my writing. She just isn't a proficient enough writer yet to write for herself and would get frustrated that she can't get on to paper what is in her mind (which I think may have been my older boy's problem, at the root of his reluctance to write).
I haven't done any narration yet with the 6 and 5 year-old, so that will be another thing I'll be trying to start when we get back into our routine next week. What I might do is to start with the youngest, and ask each older child to add something to the younger children's re-telling.
I don't think I will require narration for everything - we'll just have to see how we go. Perhaps we'll just start with our main read-aloud which we'll be doing once a day. I'll let you know how it goes!
We are talking at the moment about setting up a Homeschool 'Co-op' - a group of families that gets together for lessons on a regular basis.
This is in part inspired by the talk I went to at the Homeschool Conference (see previous entry), and in part a result of wanting to have a homeschool group not just for social activities, but for educational value.
I'm currently reading "Homeschool Co-ops: How to Start Them, Run Them and Not Burn Out" by Carol Topp.
I have suggested the idea to the local Homeschool support group, and we are just at the stage of brainstorming - deciding what we would like and when and how often. I'll let you know how it proceeds.
We had a really great time at the homeschool holiday - we were blessed with brand new accommodation (and from what I understand from others on the holiday, probably the only accommodation that was acceptable on the site. Sadly, the chalets do not appear to be properly cleaned or looked after, which is a shame because it detracts from the enjoyment of being together and getting the most out of the holiday.)
Now we are back (after some horrendous journeys!) with a huge mountain of dirty laundry, to find that the washing machine - which has always had a dodgy electronic dial - is playing up, and the belt on the tumble drier has snapped (from overuse?) - not good, especially with the typical British weather being particularly bad and wet this 'summer'. The washing machine does work more-or-less, but I can't get anything dry, so we are running out of clothes faster than we can replace them.
The holiday was a blessing though - we were staying with dear friends from the North that we don't get to see very often, and there were lots of talks and activities laid on. I went to a couple of helpful talks - one on special needs (and one of the recommendations was the learning breakthrough programme, which I would love to invest in if I had the funds!) and one on running local homeschool groups.
I have run a local homeschool group for about 8 years, with varying degrees of success. At the outset we had evening meetings of the mums to discuss curriculum, we have had prayer meetings. We have even had lessons together (music, drama, sports, history) but they always seemed to fizzle out. I've run a couple of books, curriculum & resource days and more. But the two things I learned from the talk at Cefn Lea was that (1) Unless the LORD builds the house, they labour in vain that build it - prayer needs to be the cornerstone of a successful homechool group, and (2) You can't go it alone! The most crucial ability in a leader is the art of delegation. I don't mean to be a 'control-freak', but I do find it hard to get other people to step up and take on my vision. Obviously, I need to spend a lot more time on my knees!
We are just getting ready (30th August) to go to the UK Home Education Conference & Holiday. This year for the first time ever, the Conference has been so popular that we couldn't get in, which I'm slightly gutted about! But we have been really blessed to be able to rent a chalet from someone who had booked early and ended up not being able to go after all (thank, you, Susan!) So we are looking forward to a few days of restful adventure in the Welsh mountains!
One of the things that persuaded us to home educate in the first place was going to the HES FES holiday (Home Education Seaside Festival). The first and major concern that people have about home education is the issue of socialisation, but we were impressed by just how positively socially adjusted, polite, and confident the home ed children at HES FES were, and in our 9 years of home education so far, it has continued to be our experience.
I was looking through some of our finished projects for 2006-2007 yesterday, and was surprised by how much we'd done - I thought we had nothing to show for this year, but actually we had lapbook projects on Mesopotamia, Hanukkah and Passover, and big "class projects" (large evan-moor pocket-style lapbooks we'd done together as a group) on insects and seasons. We also have lots of lapbooks and projects that we started but didn't finish because the enthusiasm and interest was transferred to other topics, so I'll be putting those in my 'bottom drawer' to fish out and complete when the mood takes us.
I pulled together a load of books and resources to do a project on rivers last autumn, and just at the last moment the children decided they wanted to do a project on South America instead. So our 'rivers' geography was dropped in favour of a make-it-up-as-you-go-along continent project. Everybody really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, so I'm glad that I let that happen rather than insisting we went ahead with the original plan, but again, the rivers project can go in my 'bottom drawer' for a rainy day.
One thing I would like to encourage this year is getting back to our 'Charlotte Mason' roots (I started to home educate after reading Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's book 'For the Children's Sake' which advocated principles laid out by 19th century educator Charlotte Mason, which in a nutshell involves presenting the best offerings of our culture to the child so that he or she can develop not just the intellect, but the whole person. I do promise to tell you more about Charlotte Mason, but very briefly, I'm hoping to include more Nature-study, classical music and art appreciation this year. I'm planning to add regular up-dates here, so remember to check back!
We don't have to conform to the school term-times and holiday times as home educators in the UK, and I think that in view of the fact that the majority of UK home educators use the 'unschooling' method of home education, timetables can be a little irrelevant.
We are fairly relaxed and are learning all the time, but we do also use curriculum which is divided up into weeks, so for convenience, I try to plan out when we will pick up and put down that curriculum (although life doesn't always go to plan, and we appreciate the flexibility we have to do things our own way, and make the most of every opportunity, and to rest when we need to).
Sometimes we need a break from the curriculum, but don't stop learning, and we'll sometimes do unit-studies or projects and some lapbooking.
I've tried lots of different ways of scheduling through the year: I've 'stopped' for the school holidays. I've carried on all through the year, and I've also tried a 3-weeks-on, 1-week-off scheme all through the year which works out to the same number of weeks as a traditional school year.
I've found that, with the summer holidays, neither working right through nor taking a six-week holiday works very well for us, but we do tend to need a short break, and this year we've taken a nice long break.
We're planning to start back with our curriculum on 8th September, though between now and then we'll be easing back in gently, starting to get back into our routine.
We're just over half-way through Sonlight curriculum levels 1 and 6 which includes literature, history and some geography. (There is much more to Sonlight curriculum, but we'll only be using those sections this year).
I'm looking at one of Dinah Zike's "Great Science Adventures for science, and another for geography. We've also decided not to use Sonlight's "language arts" for English this year, and instead I've found an out-of-print curriculum called "Reasons for Writing" for creative writing, "The essential Spelling List" for spelling, "Jolly Grammar" for grammar. I do like Sonlight's "I Can Read It" phonics programme, but we're also using lots of easy readers, including the old-fashioned "Ladybird Key Words" reading scheme.
We are UK home educators, using an ecclectic mixture of resources, leaning towards unschooling, with some Charlotte Mason principles, Classical, Sonlight curriculum, lapbooking, unit studies/ themes/ projects and much more besides.
