First Term

We have just finished our first term and things have been going great. There are days when Kasey-Ray asks about schoolwork before I have even given her any. Her favourite thing to do, beside baking, has been writing prompts. I got all these random words such as: Justin Bieber, the Queen, an egg, a tornado, and much, much, more. Then I lay them all face down on the floor and Kasey-Ray had to make piles of four. Once done we giggled over what four there were. Kasey-Ray's job was every day to write a story on four of the words. I would stick four in her book and she could write anything but the story had to mention these words. She had so much fun and said that these were the best writing prompts she has done. We have a spelling book too and she is to do 3 to 6 words and day then write a sentence with that word. The rest of the day can be anything from the planner. This week is the school holidays and after that we are going to be making an autumn display, hallowe'en display and a Guy Fawkes night display. I am hoping it will be fun. Kasey-Ray has already been animated with her ideas for autumn. Let's see what autumn shall bring :)

Tornado Experiment

With hurricane Irma causing devastation we wanted to explain it to our daughter. Luckily we have a tornado experiment pack so we built the motor then attached the bigger bottle. It was slow but by putting in beads it was a great way to explain all about the debris as well. Then we had the idea of trying a smaller bottle. We weren't sure how different it would be but wow. See for yourself.

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One week to go

Only one week to go before our first, official, full-year, of home schooling begins and I am so excited.

Already I have been planning. So far I have three folders which maps out what I plan to do each week. Currently they are only full until the end of October, with a bit leading up to Christmas. I keep buying new ink and printing things out then running out of ink all over again, lol. I also have to keep buying supplies of the right green paper, for my daughter, as she suffers from dyslexia and can read better on certain paper.

So whilst I am feeling giddy about it all, I thought I would share with you all some of the boxed activities that I have been buying on Amazon.

This year I thought my daughter could try and invent something. She loves Science so I thought it would be a great way to open up her imagination. I bought this boxed activity and we also plan on visiting the Science museum in Glasgow in September.

We also decided to do some weather experiments as well as learning about water, which we touched on briefly before the end of last school year.

We will also be doing various arts and crafts and I picked this up.

We will also be doing three languages this year - French, Sign Language and Spanish. In these topics we will be covering the basics then come the end of the school year she can get to pick which one she would like to continue. Beside using Twinkl for resources we will be using YouTube, books and these handy things.

 

All of our lessons can be done both at home or out and about, which I love. We also have lots of field trips planned. I am hoping everything goes well. I have a set amount planned for each week but I do know that if things are not done we can just do them the following week or do more on the week we are at. 
I will also be keeping records of everything I do, just in case the local council want to check in on my daughter's progress.

Planning the year ahead

In August we start a brand new school year. Kasey-Ray will be in P7 which means, in Scotland, she will be in her final year at primary school. It also means that this will be our first full school year at home schooling.

Currently I am working on preparing a timetable for the entire year. It is a big task, especially because I have never done it before. Not only that I want to make the school year fun but educational.

It is a continuous worry as to whether we are doing the right thing, but I suppose this goes part and parcel with just starting out.

Kasey-Ray has already told us that she wants to do lots of baking and science but I also want to ensure that she learns English and Maths too.

One of the main places that I get resources from is a website called Twinkl. I joined when we first started homeschooling and decided to sign up to the premium package so that I have access to everything. I have to say that it is a great website and there are so many great resources on there.

This year we will be adding three languages to the school year - French, Sign Language & Spanish. I want to teach Kasey-Ray the basics then come the end of the school year she can decide if she wants to continue any of them.

We will be doing lots of other things like Art, Computing, Social Skills, to name just a few. And even though we will have a structure in place we will be going at Kasey-Ray's pace and focusing on things she struggles with and trying to find more fun ways to help her improve these. 

One thing we don't want is for learning to become a chore. We want her to love learning, which is why I have been buying fun Science experiments.

The great thing about all of this is the fact that not only is Kasey-Ray learning new things but, as a family, we are learning too.

There are some lessons that I 'eek' at, such as French and Spanish. My language skills are a bit rusty.

There are lots of trips planned too.

Currently I have problems with my health but it is great that whilst I am having hospital visits my husband and eldest daughter are on hand to help out with the learning.

Look out for posts about our progress from the 21st August.

Bread making.

This morning my daughter and I made bread. Now I have never made any before but my daughter has when she was at school.
After trawling the internet I found a simple recipe on this site ---> Bread recipe
One thing different we did was brush melted butter on the top before putting them in the oven.

 Ingredients:

• Vegetable oil
• Bread flour
• Quick action yeast
• Salt
• Sugar
• Warm water

We added all of the dry ingredients then made a well before adding the liquid ingredients then mixing it all together

We kneaded for about 10 minutes, taking turns.

We separated the dough into 8 pieces and we made shapes with four of them before putting them in a baking tray.

We covered it with a towel and left it for just over an hour.

The shapes didn't stay so we have 8 rolls.

We melted some butter in the microwave and then brushed it on top before placing it in the oven at 180 degrees celsius for 20 minutes.

How amazing do these look. We took 2 each cut them open and smothered them in butter. They taste amazing and I am asking myself why I haven't made bread before. We now want to do them once a week.

Games and learning

Recently I spoke to another home educator who told me that board games are a great and fun way to help with learning. She also told me that the best place to get them from are charity shops. This way if we don't like them then I don't have to fret about how much money I spent.

So... today my daughter and I board a bus and went trawling charity shops. We actually did fantastically. We even bought a chemistry set that has lots of different tools - I think we have to buy the stuff for it but I am not worrying about that now especially when I only paid a couple of pounds.

As soon as we got home my daughter wanted to play Kerplunk. I have not played this since a child but it was really good fun and at the end we got to count up the marbles to see who has one. On another plus, it had a golden ball and you can decide whether to add five points or minus five, etc. So definitely a great way to have fun with numbers. Well worth the £1.99 I paid for it.

So it begins

Letter and forms have been sent to the Education department but we don't want to sit and wait for approval so we got stuck straight in.
This week has been all about trying to discover what she knows.
She loved the fact that she could go to 'school' in her pyjamas :)

Today was the second day and the first thing she wanted to learn... how to clean the toilet. Maybe I can teach her how to clean the oven, lol.

Why we chose home schooling

Back in 2001 I had this idea to home educate whilst pregnant with my eldest. For the first couple of years I still thought that it was possible but the older our daughter got the more doubt slowly set in. Doubt that I wouldn't be smart enough to give her the education she deserved. In my head I thought about when I was at school there were so many teachers and once you went to high school you got a different one for each subject. So of course the self doubt started to set in. Then there was the peer pressure to conform to the norm.

Everything was going well. Our eldest is an over achiever so was excelling at school, even when we moved and the bullying started. It went on for years and it broke my heart. She changed from a confident and out going young girl to an insecure young person.  A

I have posts about it on my other blog - laviniaurban.blogspot.co.uk
A lot of you know that this is why I wrote my Erin the Fire Goddess series (click here for more info.)
My eldest daughter may not get bullied but it has changed her and she keeps everyone are arm's length. No one would even dream of trying to bully her now because it changed her to the point that she will not take shit off no one.

Right now she is still in high school and studying for her exams.

So why do I home educate? Because we have another daughter who is almost 6 years younger that our eldest.

When she was young she was oozed confidence. She was a complete fire cracker. In nursery she didn't took no shit from anyone. Most of the time she preferred to play alone. One of the teachers did pull me up about it saying that it is wrong. I told the teacher off, explaining that my daughter is an individual and if she would rather have fun playing alone than being bored playing in a group then that is her choice. You can not force a child or anyone to do something if they do not want to.

However, in Primary 1 our youngest daughter did want to join in but the others didn't want her to (not all others as there were a couple that would try to integrate her.)

Over the years it started to effect her. New students would join the school and saw her as weak. Her confidence began to waiver as the name calling started. I would go into the school to sort things out as our youngest is a very caring and sensitive girl but at Primary 5 I started noticing things, even on my visits to the school for my talks. Funny thing here is that the other students would be excited to see me and talk to me about my books but I would see how over half of them treated my daughter. It really annoyed me and I would start my talks by asking if anyone has ever been hurt by someone's words. Every single child put their hands up so I told them to now imagine how other people feel when they call them names. 

You would have thought that would have helped, even a little bit, but nope.

Then a few months ago our youngest daughter was standing up for a friend (she will happily stand up for others but not herself) when everyone turned on her. This was outside of school but when she came home crying I flipped. Me and my eldest made our way to the park and told them all off. I got apologies, even though I knew that the one from one of the girls was fake because she has a habit of sucking up to adults and acting as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Anyway, the main people stopped with the name calling but others in the class took their place and someone who she thought was her friend joined in and she came home crying. This was the last day of term and I got straight on the phone to the school. The head teacher called me back and arranged a meeting for 18th April.

However... during the Easter holidays our youngest daughter kept crying and saying that she didn't want to go back to school and can't she stay home with me. It broke my heart. My husband and eldest daughter mentioned that maybe I should home educate. I was worried about this idea and about her qualifications and would I be enough. All the same things when our eldest was a toddler.

I had already told the school that our daughter wouldn't be coming back to school until this bullying was sorted and a day before the meeting I looked at my daughters and I knew. There was no way I could allow the youngest to go through all the same things our eldest went through. 

The day of the meeting I was still nervous. I had mentioned the meeting on Facebook and it was then that I saw how many of my friends actually home school. 

I asked my daughter one last time if she really wanted to be home schooled by me and she told me 'more than anything.' So that afternoon I went to the school and told them. I was prepared though. In the two hours before the meeting I had done my research.

I took the school by surprise. They asked us to come back today (20th April) so they had time to prepare. I knew that they wanted to look at it legally. I also know that they think it is me forcing this upon my child.

If my daughter turned round to me and told me she wanted to go back to school I would allow her. It is her choice and I will support her and do everything in my power to give her an excellent education.

All I am waiting for now is to hear back from the Education Department with our approval to home educate. Not that it has stopped us, we started lessons yesterday :)