AS and US

Sometimes being creative is about doing nothing and Tuesday was one of those days. I should say that I mean 'nothing' by my normal standards. Big fella (he's 14 now) and I went on a foresty jaunt with our other Home Ed friends to make dens, and while there we watched a very entertaining game of Fireman Horse Golf where the local firefighters where whacking a full sized plastic horse up a hill with a rather useless looking golf club. There weren't getting very far and after a while gave up, put the horse on wheels and loaded it back onto the fire engine. 

You might make the mistake of thinking I had eaten poisonous mushrooms from the forest floor prior to the firemen turning up, but I can assure you that I didn't and it really happened. Ask around. There were witnesses.

Can we please just play football next time?

I don't think I've mentioned here before that we Home Ed our eldest son. There are many reasons, one of which is that he was the last year to go to Middle School before the Isle of Wight disbanded them and went to a two tier system. There are many stories attached to this period in our lives that make me want to eat copious doughnuts, so I try not to think about it.

We have the pleasure of being a 50% Aspergers household and school just didn't fit. Home schooling is much better for us all and has given our son a good grounding in 'college style' education, that is, if you don't know and you need to find out, go and FIND OUT! (with assistance when required). He often does his GCSE work in his PJs of with his t shirt on back to front, which simply wouldn't have been acceptable at school. My feeling is that his education is the most important thing and that all the other stuff will get learnt when he's ready to learn it. 

We do a lot of functional skills - shopping, cooking, generally looking after oneself, and he reads for hours and hours. He also loves Minecraft, Sonic and Mario games and finds he can 'be one of the guys' when he plays with others. We don't allow any fighting games as my philosophy is that what goes in has got to come out. 

People often say to me "Ooh, I could never educate a child, I'm not clever enough" but that is a cock eyed way to look at it. You don't have to be an expert on every subject that your child wants to learn, you have to be resourceful and facilitating. You have to allow your child space and time to develop and give them the opportunity to do the things they like to do and float away from the things they don't. For example, our son wanted to do a timeline from the Stone Age. He literally wanted to know it all... every king, queen and event. We got up to the Tudors before he said he didn't want to do History any more. I think that's quite a feat. He knows every what every King/Queen died of from Ethelred the Unready onward. We're currently revisiting a bit though, with a look at the current Royal Family and any quirky facts he can find.

Here are a few of the things that we've done:

Proved that the Apollo Space Mission was faked. And then decided we could be wrong (in the style of Stephen Hawking & his Doctorate work)

iGCSE in Chemistry (grade B)

Made a giant (5ft) Roman hurling catapult thing for the Learning Zone Home Ed film

Trampolining Swimming and walking

Listen to every episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage

Watch QI & Dara O'Briain's school of Hard Sums

Read read read! Including all of the Chronicles of Narnia, all of the Harry Potter books inc. the weird little spin offs, The Faraway Tree et al, Roald Dahl in every form, The Worlds Stupidest Signs/laws/Headlines, everything by Jeremy Strong and all of the Womble books, science books, joke books and Michael Morpurgo books. And zillions of instruction manuals. Methinks this is an engineer in the making.

This year we're having a go at 4 more iGCSEs and learning how to run a bath so it isn't stone cold when you get in it. 

Never a dull moment.