Gardening - ticking those boxes

I am always surprised by how little time it takes to put compost into pots and trays. I was given the tomato and the lettuce plants. There is a Save Our Bees wild flower mix in the tray on the right. A charity sent us some for free. The 2 pots with white labels are a village sunflower competition. I set up the pots and simply asked each boy to push in the seeds. So they have taken part, under gentle duress. I'm so much more keen on this sort of thing than they are. So down that goes in my weekly log of Home Ed stuff. Tick, tick, tick go the boxes!

Games for the times we live in

My older son T has been playing a bad taste game called Pandemic. I watched the different screens, my mouth wide open in shock. Apparently in the game Madagascar always stays free of disease because it can shut down its airport and shipyards quickly.

T and H kept on saying, 'it's only a game Mummy'. I calmed myself down by remembering that chess is a battle to the death too, so some things never change. It's just not so close to the bone as this computer game with the news flashes rolling down the left hand side of the screen.

Maybe Monopoly could be seen as bad taste too. My brother and I used to ruin the bank all the time and had to bail it out from our heaps of cash! We used to put all fines in the centre and who ever landed on free parking got the lot. The poor old bank never stood a chance with us.

Our Acacia Tree

It is raining here, so I took a photo of our acacia tree, upside down in the puddle on the front door step. The tree is so old. It may have been struck by lightning once because the trunk is split. When there is a storm the whole trunk sways. Luckily it comes into leaf late, in May, and loses its leaves very early on in the autumn. Otherwise it would have been blown down a long time ago.

What are those doves doing?

It is a peaceful, sunny Sunday afternoon and the 2 birds are socialising on our wall. They do that necking thing to each other and one has a rather itchy wing. S/he keeps on pecking at it.

Now they are walking out of view, one following the other. Now back they come the other way.

I love the way they fly off so suddenly.

Why do I Home Educate?

I have just realised that I ticked the wrong boxes on the form I looked at today while the EHE lady and I had our meeting. I should have said that I am now doing HE for philosophical reasons. That wasn't how we started, but that's where we are now.

Now I have quite a list of extras to mail to her as my follow up. Maybe I can look for that beautiful poem someone sent out on one of the lists I'm on. That would be a positive extra.

Maybe foolishly, I hope that by going through the experience of sharing how it is for us doing autonomous HE, one more person will begin to understand how it really works. Yet going through the process of trying to explain what we do is soul-destroying, confidence sapping and lonely.

When I was breastfeeding I was surprised by the ages of the other older children breastfeeding at La Leche League meetings. But I am so thankful they did, because in time I understood that those mothers just did what was right, regardless of my ignorant views. They knew I might one day understand, and that meeting their children's needs was more important than my opinion of them on that day. So I feel I am doing something similar.

Overgrown

This is my favourite map from H's game Call of Duty 4 at the moment. It has a beautiful tractor in a field; lovely rolled bales of straw and neat wooden fences. The shooting game continues around all this and magically never damages it. I love Call of Duty 4 and will miss this phase of H's home education when he moves on to a different 'total immersion' topic.

My Zen Garden

This little corner needs no watering. The moss grows on those triangular bricks anyway. The lichen grows by itself on the stick. I put a vase in the central space, so it doesn't get blown over by the wind. When I want I can be quiet and sit here.

Brainwave

We are waiting for the carpet fitters. So I have been laptopping and thinking.

Those hardly touched workbooks I have in the kitchen, on a shelf marked Home Education, would be just right for me to complete myself. I could practice writing as clearly and neatly as possible, maybe with a fountain pen!

I am thinking of doing this to please myself and also to model the desired behaviour to my HE son. Actually, he has just asked me what I was thinking. I explained my plan and asked him to be my supervisor each morning! All he would have to do is be encouraging, sit there with me and say positive things. I know he is good at that.

The conversation moved on to insults, I don't know how. So now my handwriting practice is going to include listing a few insulting, but not swearing, phrases from the play I am reading at the moment. Maybe I am tempting fate, but I will mention it: The Taming Of the Shrew (which is the Charlotte Mason play for this summer.) My mini-Shakespeare efforts with DS2 will revolve around that list of insults.

Ice Bowl

In order to defrost the freezer I put a saucepan of boiling water in it. The freezer won and the pan was full of slush/ice crystals. I played with that and irritated the children by showing it to them. They had been busy following their own passions. Then I tipped out the rest of the slush and found I had a perfect ice bowl inside the pan. I ran hot water over the outside, tipped it out and played with the surprisingly sturdy ice bowl!

When I work it out I will upload the photo to go with this story. The moral for me is that house work and idle moments are actually the same thing.

The History Boys

I decided to watch this all the way through. What one phrase did my hawk-like children pick up from 2 rooms away?...'rancid turd'. So of all the discussions we could have had concerning this interesting film it had to be this one. Luckily it was a short one. Anyway they now know how to pronounce rancid.

Any EHE inspectors out there, please read and learn. Autonomous home ed is not quite what anyone expects.

Paradox

Yes, I found I used the concept 'paradox' today. It was rather embarrassing because I had verbally strong armed my 2 into going to a home ed meet up. And I profess to be an autonomous Home Educator. So in the car on the way back I told them about my moral dilemma. I faced up to my problem that I feel I have to take them to socials to somehow placate relations/LEA official/my own self. Yet I know in my heart that they are quite capable of coming up with some wonderful step forward out of the blue. All I have to do is stand back and keep on reading the home ed blogs/read bits of the Charlotte Mason curriculum for myself/skive off to the supermarket for some social interaction....

I still don't think the end justifies the means in this case. But they were very understanding and one son even offered me a hug. Why are they so lovely??