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NOTICE ON PICS - All pics on this blog (unless otherwise stated) are my personal work. DO NOT take pics from this blog without seeking my permission first! Bless you.

Welcome to my blog. It is updated weekly with pictures and projects from our homeschool - maybe you can find something to inspire you :) I have a (no longer updated) materials page elsewhere on my website and will, occasionally, post my homemade materials in this blog.

I'm married to Tim (delivery driver and gorgeous musician), have 2 daughters, live on the south coast of the UK and have 1 aging cat (Hemmingway or Hemmy for short). I love reading, yoga, crafts, baking, daft old comedies, music and teaching.

On this page you can find my homeschool blog, if you want to read my general, day-to-day blog, click the link below :)

My NOT Homeschool Blog!

Great Links:

Hands of a Child

Homeschool Share

Mathwire

Nature Detectives

NOTE ON PICTURES: This shouldn't be necessary but I have, sadly, noticed growing cases. Please DO NOT link directly to pictures on this website - it steals my bandwidth and is BAD! I CAN trace you if you do and I will take action.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Beautifully contained chaos

Today has been, in all intents and purposes, a perfectly normal homeschool day. Started off with the usuals - properties of materials, abstract nouns and percentages for Rosie and building an Animal Crossing house out of bricks for April. Then they went on to craft stuff and this is where I started to unravel mildly.

Rosie carried on with her castle:

 

April did some "stamping" which then turned into an impromptu colour mixing experiment:

 

.... and I flitted back and forth between the two becoming gradually more (quietly) hysterical over the mess. Oh! mess there was - over the dining table, Rosie, me, April's table, April, the radiator ... on and on.

There are times when I really don't think I'm a "proper" home educator at all - real home educators don't seem to mind the paint and glue and glitter and cut up paper and other crap all over the place. Me? I can tolerate it to a point but then start getting panicky.

Actually, this may be as good a place as any to bring our minds back to the issue of school for April. Some regular readers would be very forgiven for assuming that we had decided to home educate April - after all, the dread "s" word hasn't been mentioned for a while has it? Well, we haven't decided that at all - at the moment, her place is still there, we haven't cancelled it or anything

We've just kinda ... forgotten about it lately *shrugs*. I guess the "mess" issue brought it back into my mind.

I wonder, what would I gain from her going? One afternoon a week to myself, less mess around the house, more peaceful time to work with Rosie (who needs the help more).

... but what would I lose? Seeing my child grow up and learn first hand instead of getting half baked school reports, knowing exactly WHAT she was learning instead of getting half baked school reports ..... you get the picture.

.... but there are still no clear answers. This sounds incredibly sad but I need someone to say "you must send April to school because......" (and then give me a sensible reason) or "you must home educate April because ......" (and then give me a sensible reason).

I'm normally pretty damn good at making decisions but on this occasion I cannot. My brain, it seems, has turned into rice pudding.