Tag Archives: Learning

Catlin Painting

North American Native American History Activity

History, Home education, Learning, Local community events, , ,

We have been exploring the people and cultures of North America before the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century. We have been finding out about the different cultural regions and getting a flavour of some of the cultures.

We created an activity to do to explore different cultural regions and the diversity of cultures:

North America is a vast continent. Before Europeans arrived in what they called the “New World” North America was already full of people. The vast continent covers many different cultures, shaped by the different environments.

There were small families, big tribes and leagues of tribes. The homes and clothes varied according to climate and the available resources.

Long before Europeans arrived cultures developed, changed, people migrated from one area to another.

There were no domesticated animals, apart from the dog, so through out the continent people hunted for game, and fished. Some people were nomadic hunter-gatherers, others were settled hunter-gatherers and some were farmers. Whilst people grew many different crops maize, beans and squash were commonly grown.

This is an activity for a simplified look at the different regions of North America, giving a flavour of some of the cultures.

Preparation:

Native American People Intro_Page_11. Print out the introduction and the ten regional pdf files, each of which has four pages – an answer sheet, an information sheet, a board and a set of pictures to cut out.
2. Mix up the pictures and lay them out.
3. Keep the answer
sheets to one side.

To play:

1. Choose a board for one of the regions.
2. Read the accompanying information sheet.
3. Pick the six pictures that match up with the information on that region
4. Check your answers with the answer sheet.

Ideas for discussion:

How does the environment affect way of life –  homes, food and clothing?

Land Art

Education, Home education, Learning, Making things, Things to do, , ,

One of the most satisfying outdoor activities we have enjoyed has been Land Art. Creating art from natural materials.
For my youngest it seems to be an instinctive process – to take materials from the natural world around her and create beautiful things and arrangements with them. One of the joys of land art is that it can be used to get out and celebrate nature even in the depths of winter. The seasons all add their own materials and backdrops. Autumn with its beautiful colours and a cornucopia of leaves is a particular favourite.

We have also run and taken part in formal land art sessions.

I like to have a camera to capture the results. Other than that all you need is yourselves!

  1. Find a place to explore. It could be a piece of pavement outside your house, the garden, the park, the beach or the woods.
  2. Take a good look around. What can you see? Explore the colours, shapes and textures.
  3. Start collecting – What can you find? It could be anything from stones, to leaves, to grass.
  4. Create some art. Young children especially often excel at taking found objects and arranging them in a way that is meaningful to them. Every piece of land art will be different. You can make animals, patterns, circles, spirals, even life-size outlines of you and your friends. Write words.

Land Art Worksheet

Examples:

Links:

http://landartforkids.com/. Great site which simply introduces ideas and steps for creating land art.

Some of Our Land Art

[pe2-image src=”http://lh3.ggpht.com/-tb92m2_tXy8/URdfYIavPlI/AAAAAAAAIhU/q6L1GqJjM8Y/s144-c-o/20130126_184843.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/115726803153382996794/IceCrystalsAtNightInGarden#5843243909717638738″ caption=”Ice sculpture in garden” type=”image” alt=”20130126_184843.jpg” ]

[pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-r3sh-sFqiuQ/T-gemGaPZsI/AAAAAAAAEQo/zjc6A1iOEn8/s144-c-o/IMAG0696.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/115726803153382996794/LandArtJune2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCLn80qL1v5jn6AE#5757885763497715394″ caption=”” type=”image” alt=”IMAG0696.jpg” ]

 [pe2-image src=”http://lh3.ggpht.com/-K5aRvE-r4vU/Umd8g1G8Z4I/AAAAAAAAVUk/9Auilj9izZM/s144-c-o/_MG_9541.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/115726803153382996794/LandArt#5937851537165150082″ caption=”” type=”image” alt=”_MG_9541.jpg” ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh6.ggpht.com/-ChbmJ36V8BQ/Umd8mMAusFI/AAAAAAAAVUs/NxpHUjhJmJ0/s144-c-o/_MG_9509.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/115726803153382996794/LandArt#5937851629212446802″ caption=”” type=”image” alt=”_MG_9509.jpg” ] [pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-3vgss9u_ybQ/Umd8v-jFIiI/AAAAAAAAVU0/4ZCS-91zq58/s144-c-o/_MG_9465.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/115726803153382996794/LandArt#5937851797397119522″ caption=”” type=”image” alt=”_MG_9465.jpg” ]

Structure in Home Education

Education, Home education, Learning, , , , ,
Schools use structure to deliver a National Curriculum, and to organise lots of people, both children and teachers. But as parents, with our own children the need for plans and lots of organisation becomes less clear. The lines begin to blur between education and everyday life. Every home educating family finds its own balance between these elements.

What is structure?

  • the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex (noun)
  • construct or arrange according to a plan; give a pattern or organization to (verb)

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/structure

Whose structure?

Often the term structured education is used to mean a particular approach to education, where the adult determines what is covered, possibly using a curriculum.

This sometimes causes some confusion when home educators using child-led approaches such as autonomous education or unschooling are exploring what structure means to them. At its very basic structure could simply mean reading a book in order of chapters, or eating at a particular time of day. Home Education has to work for everyone involved, and that may mean more, less, or different structure for each child, or for the parent.

I find it has really helped to think of structure as a tool, rather than the name of a particular approach.

What kind of structure?

Some people find that they want structure to the day, or week, but not learning.

This can mean the daily routine of when to eat and sleep. Or a weekly structure with certain groups on certain days, or in a world of lots of groups and play dates it even mean scheduling time just being together at home and focusing on what ever the children happen to be interested in at moment. Sometimes this is adult driven, at other times, especially with children with special needs, or anxiety structure can be largely determined by the child’s needs.
This a very interesting book that has helped me focus on what they are learning, and making time available to be with girls and allow them time to follow up their interests.

Some people want the learning to be child-led but need structure for themselves in recording learning and providing resources.

There is a great blog post about how this can be done: http://organizedunschooler.com/2009/07/19/in-the-beginning/.
It is possible to record, compare progress with learning goals, tick off things you’ve done, put together files on different topics, find resources and have them available, but still have the child control their own learning. The resources come out as child asks questions or raises topics. The adult initiated structure in the learning is for home educator, not the children.

A little bit of structure.

Some people have a little bit of structure. Often this might be a small amount of literacy, maths every day or a couple of days a week.
Others follow a particular curriculum or programme very loosely, or just for the odd subject, eg. history.
Tidal homeschooling is another interesting approach  which takes elements of unschooling and a structured programme and flows between the two.

Structured programme or curriculum.

In the England most state and many independent schools use the National Curriculum. This is set down by Department of Education. There has recently been a consultation and a new National Curriculum is planned to come into effect from September 2014.
Most online resources and much of the children’s book publishing in this country is focused on National Curriculum. Some parents follow it, others keep a vague eye on it as a comparison.
Other curriculums used tend to be US in origin, as the pervasiveness of National Curriculum, the lack of state monitoring, and the great diversity of approaches in home education all make for a infeasibly small market.

How structure looks in our home?

We are autonomous/unschooling. But we still have some structure. We tend to eat at a particular time of day, have certain groups on certain days, have rhythms to each day.

I don’t do structure for reading, writing and maths as they come up in everything else we do. But we have a little bit of structure in that we do a history, library and topic group most months. So we have something to prepare for these. Being autonomous each child is free to take part or not, and determine how to contribute themselves. My eldest has recently been asking for more structure, and help in delving deeper into the things she is interested in, and guidance with investigating new more structured, formal approaches to learning that move beyond the reading, conversation and play based education that has predominated up to now.

And as a fellow learner I have found that I too have interests that I want to investigate that often come with some form of structure - whether it be organising my history group, or taking an online course.

Finding out about animals

Home education, Learning, Nature Books, ,

My youngest and I are both very interested in animals, so I have started spending more time finding books and other resources that should interest her.

Our approach is fairly informal. But I do have a need to create a framework, in order to satisfy my sense of order and it makes it easier for me to research good resources and books, which as you can tell from my blog is something I love to do! Then if and when my daughter is interested we share them.

For the animal kingdom the obvious approach seemed to be to reflect the evolutionary relationships of animals, and the starting point for this has been the poster that takes pride of place on our living room wall. Produced a couple of years ago for the Open University, the Tree of Life poster is a beautiful representation of evolutionary relationships between living things. We have laminated it so that it will last. A variation on the poster is available on Amazon. My daughter is endlessly fascinated by pictures on this poster and the relationships between the animals. And this prompted me to find more resources for her.

A second essential resource is a good animal encyclopedia. As a child I spent hours reading my one and became extraordinarily proud of knowing about really obscure animals such as the South American Yapok (an otter like marsupial or pouched animal). So I spent a while roaming shops and Amazon looking for a really good up to date book to replace my rather out of date and tattered volume. My criteria were that the illustrations or photographs had to be beautiful to look at, that it be an adult one so that it has enough detail and coverage to satisfy an interested child’s thirst for the unusual, and that it include distribution maps so that we can easily see where a species comes from. The favourite we settled on it was the then current edition of The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide. Though we do also like the Natural History Book from DK – which includes rocks, plants and a larger number of species, but lacks the distribution maps.

We also have a copy of the very wonderful Zoo-ology, which I have blogged about before and is a great pictorial starting point for even the youngest child.

We don’t tend to use online resources but a one that appeals to me and I’m keeping in mind for my daughter as she gets older is the very comprehensive and visually appealing Arkive, a multimedia guide to animals, plants and fungi. There are teachers resources, games as well as comprehensive information on each species.

We also have a giant world map that we use to blue tac on things of interest. It has taken me a long time to find the ideal map website for our home education needs but have finally found the solution. These MegaMaps allow you to print out maps on A4 paper and stick them together to create really large maps. We print out pictures of animals of particular interest and stick them on to show where they come from.

For each group of animals I search Amazon and the local library for books to share. Then we reserve and borrow library books and see which ones we like. If there are books from particular series or that come highly recommended and my daughter likes the look of them then we might even buy one! I will post our favourites as we go along.

Coming next – Our favourite resources on the Great Apes

 

Home ed magazines

Books and Magazines, Home education, ,

Here is a list of home education magazines.

EOS – new UK home education magazine.

Home Education Magazine Long running US magazine.

Life Learning Magazine Self-directed, life-based learning.

Back-to-Homeschool Magazine – magazine by girls for girls.

Secular Homeschooling Magazine – another US one, non-religious bimonthly magazine.

Growing Without Schooling – Archives issue (Aug 1977 –  Oct 2001) of the magazine founded by John Holt, one of the founders of the modern unschooling movement.

Also a mention for Green Parent – a mainstream(ish) parenting magazine that often includes alternative education, including home education.

Are their any others that you would recommend?

Learning Trust, Trusting Learning conference 2011

Home education, Parenting, , , , , , , ,

Spent yesterday at the LiTTLe Conference in London – Learning Trust, Trusting Learning.

Very nice to see some old friends, put some faces to Twitter friends and see some well-known autonomous home educators in real life.

  • Imran Shah – Social worker and active member of email lists, with an articulate passion for parent-baby attachment. Talked about the vital importance of parent-child attachment.
  • Sandra Dodd – US Unschooling guru. Talked about living thoughtfully in the present and fostering a sense of wonder.
  • David Waynforth -  Research scientist on human behavioural ecology. Talked about children’s food choices.
  • Mike Fortune-Wood – Home education veteran, advocate and editor. Talked about the challenges facing Home Education in a political climate of increasing State control of childrens’ personal lives.
  • Alan Thomas & Harriet Pattison – Researchers into how children learn and informal learning.
  • Schuyler Waynforth

Considered writing a bit more about each – but KP Nuts has beaten me to it! The LiTTLe Conference in London 11.6.11

 

E learnt to read…

Home education, Learning, ,

My nearly eight year old daughter E is a voracious reader. She disappears off into a book for hours, procrastinating when it is time to do anything, just to spend a few more moments reading, and regularly disappears only to be found reading in the bathroom.

But no-one has taught her.

E does not go to school, so she has had the freedom to learn in her own way, at her own pace. Outside school learning primarily happens through conversation and trying things out, so there was never any hurry to start teaching her to read!

E has always been surrounded by books, has spent sometimes hours a day being read to and regularly visits the library where all our library cards are permanently maxed out. Indeed ‘book’ was one of her first words.

Some days I will disappear into a novel, until at last I reappear, satiated for a while. And her father is frequently found to be missing, presumed reading on his i-phone in the bathroom. Reading is just something we all do for fun – both to ourselves and to E and her little sister.

I guess we have taken the ‘just read to them approach’! And it has gone something like this:

Step 1.

Read lots to E

Some days we may not read to her at all, other days we will curl up in bed in the morning and read … for hours. First picture books, then later adding in non-fiction and a chapter or more in the evening. Once upon a time it was the Far Away Tree, then Swallows and Amazons, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and most recently the Hobbit. With a sprinkling of lots of others books too!

Step 2:

Play at reading

When she was a toddler E would often play at reading to her doll of course. Just like anything else a small child sees others doing.

Step 3:

Follow her lead

As time went on we got a feel for what worked for her.

Which turned out to be absolutely no teaching, no getting her to read or try to sound out words. And definitely no asking questions, or interrupting the flow. As soon as we tried any of these E just closed down and switched off. Instead she just asked me to follow the words with my finger for a while. So we listened and just continued to read to her.

Step 4:

Find words everywhere

Reading started with E recognising her own name, then the word google when searching for pictures of animals online. Words are of course everywhere!

On one memorable occasion when she was four we were walking home down the street and she shouted ‘stop’. In a panic I turned, envisioning an oncoming truck, but found instead that she had just read the word off a car sticker.

E found words on the computer, the playstation,  in shops, in magazines, on board games, in recipes – just a few of her favourite things!

But mostly E loves books. We all still read lots of picture books, many of which we borrow time and again from the library. Indeed although E can now read Harry Potter she will inevitably spend the longest time browsing and choose to borrow picture books. I will choose the chapter books and factual books that I think might appeal to her when we get home.

Step 5:

Reading to others

As she became more confident E would read simple books to others – her sister, and her Grandpa. But not to me – oh no, never to me!

Step 6:

Fairy Magic

As her reading developed E immersed herself in the Rainbow Magic books. She worked her way through at least fifty of these highly formulaic books, building up her reading skills. Sometimes two or three per bus trip.

Step 7:

E can now read quite independently. She has read a few chapters of Harry Potter, and is reading and re-reading her current favourite – Tony Robinson’s Kings and Queens. Interestingly before she could read fiction was a firm favourite, but maybe that is more to do with the general lack of good factual picture books?

Step 8:

Keep reading to her

And of course I still read to her. Not for so many hours a day – but most days we will manage at least one chapter. The latest favourites are the Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan.

Our aim has been for E to see reading as a joy, not a chore. Whether it be a story to lose herself in or a factual book that feeds that thirst for knowledge. Her personality has dictated that this meant leaving her to learn to read, whilst sharing books with her, and  surrounding her with words and stories. For our part we have simply needed to read to her, provide books and maintain faith – faith that she would learn to read.

A few favourite articles on reading:

http://lisarussell.org/blog/please-do-not-read-to-your-child-for-20-minutes-a-day/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201311/the-reading-wars-why-natural-learning-fails-in-classrooms

http://schoolingtheworld.org/a-thousand-rivers/

Other experiences:

This was written as part of Liveotherwise’s Reading Carnival.
Other experiences in Oxfordshire Home Educators’ Magazine. 

Okido

Children's magazines, Featured, Headline, Magazines and blogs,

DD2 has just received her first issue of Okido, the arts and science magazine for kids.

She is 3 and has enjoyed reading through it together. Her 7 year old sister is jealous and keeps walking off with it.
The illustrations are beautiful and very varied. The writing has them both engaged. Each themed issue, our first is biodiversity, includes stories, facts, puzzles, comic strips, things to make, games and puzzles. It is quirky and very different to mainstream mags.
Thoroughly recommend it.

Education Choices Pt 2: State school, independent school or home education?

Beyond babyhood, Education, Learning, Parenting, , , , ,

There are three main choices for educating your child in England – State school, Independent school or Home Education…

When to start:

Every parent in England has to, by law, provide an education from the start of the term following their child’s fifth birthday.

School stages and ages

(State schools and many independent schools)

Primary:

  • Key Stage 1: Reception, years 1 and 2 (5 to 7 yrs old)
  • Key Stage 2: Years 3 to 6 (ages 8 to 11)

Secondary:

  • Key Stage 3: Year groups 7 to 9 (ages 12 to 14)
  • Key Stage 4: Year groups 10 and 11 (ages 15 and 16)
  • Year Groups 12 and 13 (ages 17 and 18) are referred to as Post 16.

In many other countries formal education does not start until age seven, as it does in independent Steiner Waldorf schools. And within home education it is common for informal methods to be used for the majority of a child’s education.

If you prefer to start school later, you can delay your child’s school start as long as you like by home educating, then apply to schools when your child is ready. With pre-school aged children you may choose to do things full-time as a family, or supplement with play-based settings such as nurseries, playgroups.

How to Choose a School

Inspection reports, reviews and league tables can all be helpful, but you can learn far more by visiting a school and talking to pupils and observing the teachers and pupils.

Remember to ask lots of questions.
How does the school seem to you?
Do the teachers and children seem happy and how do they interact with each other?

It is important to remember that not all children will benefit from a high ranking academic school, and there is more to school than what you learn.

Any reports of a school, whether by writers or parents are subjective, based on their own opinion and background, and may not necessarily reflect your or your children’s priorities or viewpoints.

Mixing it up

Many parents will use a different option at different times, or for different children, depending on their individual needs. Another option is flexi-schooling, where a child is registered at school, but attends part-time at the discretion of the head teacher and is home educated offsite the rest of the time.

Find out more

 

<< Back to: Pt 1: What would suit your child and family?

On to: Pt 2a: State School >>