Home educating the kids

Fantastic give-away

2011-02-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

Today I learned about a fantastic give-away of Montessori materials.
Have a look: http://www.mommymoment.ca/2011/02/birthday-bash-montessori-print-shop.html
I have entered as well and hope for the best :-)

education (also posted on my TCC blog)

2009-06-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

So.... today I feel inspired. I need to write about education.
What is education and how does it happen.
Obviously not necessarily in a school setting or just on paper.
I find that a school education is inferior to a home education, the reason is that one on one education brings much more than education in a group setting where there is the same stuff educated by one person to a group of on average about 30 children. I do think that that will not bring the best of results.
We educate a group of 4ish children. Our youngest is 1 and is learning on her own, she does not need any help. Which is the way the majority of people let a 1 year old learn. Nothing wrong with that right? So why does it all of a sudden become wrong when they become 4, I find that amazing as a child learns more the first 4 years of their life, than ever after.
Now how does learning work you might wonder.
With having 4 children and the oldest being 14 I have seen from upclose how learning works.
Nor really on paper. Doing things makes it a lot more clear to kids.
Maths for instance is learned much quicker and faster in the real world. This involves shopping and cooking.
Biology, outside looking at the plants, going to the zoo, brings so much more than just pictures in a book.
Chemistry, love that, experiments, that really gives a clear picture :)
And then geography. There I have a wish, traveling the world, okay, not reasonable for us, so we just learn a lot from films and going outside checking out how the land has been used and what uses are for what, that is really working out superb, for lack of traveling the world :)
So what else do we have for things to do.
There are great projects to do with the kids once they express a certain interest in for instance a certain country. That is just totally cool.
What we love doing is picking a country and then working through it in various ways.
We go for the history and the present and th future, we discuss it and read about it, watch DVD's about it etc.
Then we go for the food from that country, make it, and eat it, not just the present food, but also the old stuff. F.i. the Roman food was really really good.
And then we check out the plants and animals from that particular country, that can be amazingly interesting, also the past if we can find it,as in some countries there have been animals going extinct. When possible we go look at those in a museum, or check out the alive ones in the zoo. A botanical garden is great for looking at the plants actually originating from that particular country.
What else is there, there is music of old and new from the country, the language, the perfumes, the scents of flowers, the religious of old and new, etc.
I am sure this gives a good picture of how I feel education works.

So what did we do with the Italy:
Latin (and we have continued as its a great language) and compare it to Italian and other langauges.
the food of then and now and ate it.
the animals of then and now
the religion of then and now including the etruscan
how the romans conquered europe, where they went.
the culture of then and now, including the etruscans
the contacts with the greeks and egyptians
we went to musea to see things

This is a similar way that young children learn, touch, feel and try, so why all of a sudden work only on boring paper, and take the fun out of learning.
Learning needs to be fun, as it needs to last a life time. When I look at kids in school its amazing how bored they are with learning. Most will not touch anything that has something to do with learning as soon as they are done with it. I find that sad and do not want that for my children.
I also do not want them to think that I have the ultimate wisdom, or a teacher has the ultimate wisdom. I want them to question me and things, so they learn. There are so many things that I learned in school as a child that really are not a given fact, but it was presented that way.
Even history, you'd expect that to be factual, but unfortunately with new research and different researchers with different thoughts and opinions plenty is really not a given fact.
Take for example the dark ages, those are taught in school as a given fact, but then there are researchers who have w written books with very good arguments that the dark ages have not happened, as in the dark ages there was no progress, this is not the way humans live. They argue that the dark ages were an invention by an emperor who wanted to base his right to the crown on ancestry, which wasn't there.
That kind of questioning is very important for children to learn to do, it keeps them inquisitive and curious.
I also do not believe in grades or rewards or so.
This does not bring a child an interest in the topic, but only in getting the reward or the grade, so they will not look into the topic in dept, just in fixing the score and then forgetting the lot again. Counterproductive I'd say.

Well folks, this is all for now, I take it you enjoyed the read :)

Been busy

2009-06-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

Lately we have been quite busy meeting up with other HE groups here in Switzerland.
There is a group that is located in the Romandie where there are a lot of English speakers in there. That group is meeting in the canton of Vaud quite regularly, 3x in June on a Friday.
The other left over Friday we met up with a German speaking group of Swiss homeschoolers about a educational coop. That part looks really promising. The homeschoolers are quite a tight knit group, as far as I can see and they are all very friendly and helpful.

Paul Klee

2009-05-23T23:33:00.000-07:00

Short before going to the Neat Baustelle we went to the Paul Klee Center.
Paul Klee was an artist in the Bern area and in this center you see a lot of his work, but you can also take an art workshop.
We did both, we went to look to some of his work in the exhibition area, this was very interesting as he has used a lot of techniques. He also had to make do with the supplies he could get his hands on and had to make a lot of things himself, as he lives in war times when there was very little available. The tour of the exhibition are was during our work in the workshop, as things had to dry a bit.

The workshop was also very interesting as we learned a lot about techniques than can be used. All attending made interesting pieces of art :-)
I will see if I can make a pic of it and put it on here :-)

Neat Baustelle

2009-05-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

Recently we have been to the construction site of NEAT, this is the construction site of the new tunnel through the Gotthard mountain. The site is massive, the work they are doing that is really really impressive. The trip was really educational. A lot was explained on how it all works and why.
Here you can see it: http://www.alptransit.ch/de/besuchen-sie-uns/infozentren/erstfeld/

We had a presentation about the building and we had a tour through the area of the construction site. Unfortunately we couldn't go into the tunnel as our group of homeschoolers had too many children under 14 years of age in there, which was a pity.

What was hard for us in particular was that this site is in the canton Uri, there they speak very different Swiss German from our local area, which is already not easy, so we had trouble understanding initially, but we weren't the only ones, therefore they asked if the presenter could please speak school german, so everybody could understand :-)

Switzerland

2009-01-08T01:45:00.000-08:00

Recently we moved to the Canton Bern in Switzerland.
As we are a homeschooling family I found that this seems to be much more problematic than it was in the UK.
We need to find us a teacher who is willing to supervise us, as neither of us has a teaching degree - like that makes any difference.
Furthermore, it seems that we will have to resort to school-at-home now, which is not something I am looking forward to.
I started with school-at-home when we had just taken the children out of school as I had no clue how else to do it and this was a disaster. The kids weren't happy and neither was I. It was way way way too stressful.
We continued with unschooling and that proved to be very successful and didn't cause any stress. The result is that the kids are way way way "ahead" in some area's and "behind" in other area's.
In the past here in this canton children who were homeschooled had to be tested yearly based on the cantonal curriculum and they weren't allowed to to fail or they had to go back to school. They also had to show their worked, again needing to follow the work required bythe cantonal curriculum.
No wonder there are few homeschoolers around here.
They changed this law in August 2008, but did put the requirement of having a teacher supervise when you do not have a teachers degree (a full-time study of 4 years, not possible to do with distance learning - have thought about getting it), though nobody knows what this teacher will have to do.
Somehow it sounds more free depending on the teacher you choose, but it did get me pretty jumpy.
One of my kids is severely dyslexic and has a load of trouble with reading and writing, though she speaks 3 languages fluently. This could be used against us. She is also on the autistic spectrum, no clue how they feel about that.

In total where we live, our apartment and all its really nice, but this part has gotten me stressed for the moment. And it has resulted in me thinking about this school-at-home more and more unfortunately.

Well..... if all else fails we can always move to Aargau, which seems to be the most free canton of all.

Conversation with a school child.

2008-12-11T04:57:00.000-08:00

Last year one of my children had a conversation with Clara who lives in our neighbourhood.
Clara and her brother Mike were trampling mushrooms to pieces, which my children didn't like, so my oldest went up to them and asked them to stop wrecking nature for no good reason.
The Clara stated that it was important to trample mushrooms because mushrooms are a hazard to nature.
My child replies: "Mushrooms are nature you dope, the crisp bag and plastic bottle you just threw down are a hazard to nature." and left it at that.

CBBC educational?

2008-11-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

This afternoon there is a feature on CBBC about the nutrition of the caveman on tv. I figured that would be massively interesting. And its sure food for conversation as we found out there are several things mentioned in there which are simply not true.
One of them is that the caveman in the UK valued the rabbit meat. This surprising as the rabbit is not native to the UK, so how can the caveman in the UK have eaten rabbits then, when the vikings brought them over, or were the vikings historically before the caveman in the timeline??
So this is simply not true.
Just like hares weren't in the UK until the Romans, which means that hares were there before rabbits even. And in the time of the Romans there were no caveman anymore.
Besides the rabbits wouldn't have been valued that much as the meat is way way way too lean for the caveman to stay healthy on. They needed the fat from other animal sources and they made sure they got it, as the caveman was healthier than the majority of humans in the western world today.
The other thing that was mentioned is that the caveman first ate its food raw. Sure, very healthy. Then the comment came that by the time the caveman discovered fire there was a boost in healthy. I doubt that very much.
Of course there were more different types of food that became to the caveman, but those were not necessarily boosting its health. Its not for nothing that these days people are going back to the caveman diet to become more healthy, as simply their food was very very healthy.
There was also a fear mongering bit in there about eating meat raw, even my kids know there is nothing wrong with that and they started complaining to the tv :-)
So much for educational tv. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. It became clear to me again that I have to be with them when they watch something "educational" to make sure they also get the other side of the politically correct story.
I keep being surprised about all the inconsistencies.

Good that they didn't go on about the caveman only becoming about 30 and then mentioning in the same phrase that girls didn't get their periods until 16, 17 or 18 and that is the reason why women get more cancer these days in the reproductive system as they get their periods earlier and earlier and are therefore exposed to the hormones much longers.

UGH??? How can that be, mom dies at 30, but you weren't born until she was like 17, so you are 13 when she dies, how can mankind have survived then?
As you are with yr 13 the oldest, the rest must be much younger.
Its soooo stupid those comments.

There is research that shows that stone age people didn't go through puberty like humans today and reached adulthood by about the age of 12 to 13, but then the periods must have come sooner to women and not like around 16, 17. Because that doesn't make any sense then at all.

In a way I am convinced that its all still quite a lot of guess work in stead of real factual stuff, as its very difficult to find real information, as nobody wrote anything down.

I am, however, convinced that the paleolithic diet was a healthy one and that it was not the diet which made people die very young, there must have been more that had to do with it. And maybe it was just more genetically and that we grew older with the centuries.

Whatever was the real truth, its definitely great conversation material with the kids and they keep digging and digging to find out what scientists have come up with :-)

Fixed it

2008-11-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

In the meantime I managed to fix it that way that the document that I have made is open for viewing for all. This means I will stop updating the blog post on the topic, as the document can be accessed through the link on the right side bar.
I have added the link from Germany and would love it if people would send me more links and information to expand this list. I would like to make quite a comprehensive list out of this and hope that with that other parents will have easy access to information, which most of the people who are home educating now have probably not had.

Home schooling

2008-10-27T06:07:00.001-07:00

Home schooling around the world

Europe

In most countries of Europe it is legal to home school your child.

Austria

It is legal in all the 9 Austrian
provinces. It is not common, on the German languaged e-mail lists I
have been on I haven't met many, although there is a homeschooling
Yahoo group now. One of the requirements in some provinces
is that children follow the state curriculum and take an exam at the end of each school year.

weblinks (in German):
http://www.erziehung.at/haeuslicher_unterricht/index.php
http://www.diefreilerner.eu
http://www.zickler.net/homeschooling.htm
http://www.leben-ohne-schule.de/europa_oesterreich.html
http://leben-ohne-schule.jimdo.com/
http://jipli.free.fr/oesterreich

Yahoo group:
http://de/groups.yahoo.com/group/homeschooling_austria/

Belgium

Completely legal, usually with a yearly visit by a government official,
which is typically mainly about whether the children are socializing
enough and happy with being home schooled, not so much about their
educational achievements, although there are officially some rules to
that extent. I haven't heard of anyone who ended up with real problems
about the educational achievements on the various Dutch languaged
e-mail groups I am on.

Weblink (in Dutch):
http://www.thuisonderwijs.be/

and one in English

http://users.skynet.be/bcha/

Bulgaria

Illegal. Some special needs children get an exemption, but they will still have to follow the state curriculum.

Compulsory education age: 6-16

Cyprus

Illegal - penalties can be given.

Czech Republic

Five-year experimental federal law (began in 1999)
allows home education only ages 5-12.

No clue what things are at now.

Denmark
Legal. At present no further data

Finland

Legal

e-mail:Anne Lappalainen

France

Legal

Les enfants d'abord (since 1988) has been working very hard in France
to make things easier on parents who are home educating. It has become
a lot easier over the years. There are people who are also unschooling
there now. This was in the past not possible, parents had to following
the school curriculum.

Weblink:
http://www.lesenfantsdabord.org/eindex.html (English)
http://www.lesenfantsdabord.org/index.php (French)

Yahoo group:

http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/IEF_eu

Jean-Claude Verduyckt

Germany

Illegal, at the moment there is an exodus going
on of people leaving the country as children have been taken away from
their parents and other problems.

Educational age: 6-16
Weblink:
http://educatinggermany.7doves.com/

Greece

At present still illegal, although foreigners get
left alone usually. They are working on getting it legal though. No
clue where they are with this right now.

Hungaria
Legal, but uncommon. There is a "duty to learn", not to go to school. The parents have the right to choose the place of learning.
The parent can choose between schools (state or private), or to have its child be registered as "magantanulo", which means "private learner".
In practise, one has to be registered at a school, as a pupil who is attending, or who is private learner. It is the decision of the director, in which way he wants to verify the pupil is learning, mostly they choose exams.
The lawtext:
http://net.jogtar.hu/jr/gen/getdoc.cgi?docid=99300079.tv
Please copy and paste the above link, otherwise it doesn't seem to work.

Although the law is liberal, homeschooling uncommon. There are school directors, who don't know about it, or at least they don't like it. The reason for this is, that for private learners, the school is not obtaining any funding. For learners at school, they get a certain amount/pupil.

Italy

Legal, but uncommon. Parents have to report to the schools, as you will
have to enroll your child in the school, but then you keep them out and
educate yourself. Foreigners who are not familiar with it, can often
stay out of that system altogether. In case you cannot stay out of it,
it is good to go around the various local school and interview the
principal to get a feel on how the principal feels about home schooling
and pick the school of which the principal suits you best :-) The
principal has to handle your home schooling paperwork.

Unschooling is very difficult, after elementary school. In year 8 there
is an intense exam. Some children, who are not ready, can wait a year.

MSN board for English speakers:

http://communities.msn.com/HomeschoolingFamiliesinItaly

Italian christian home schooling website: http://www.utilecomune.com

Italian language Yahoo group: http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/scuolafamiliare

Ireland

Legal.

Weblink to the Irish home schoolers organisation:http://www.henireland.org/

Compulsory education age: 6-16

Luxemburg

illegal

Netherlands

Legal, but uncommon and sometimes difficult.

Officially illegal as soon as one has had their child in school the school year before school starts again.

When parents have not had their children in school yet, they can go for
an exemption based on religion. This means that there should not be any
school or their religion within reach. So parents have to come up with
an uncommon religion.

Once a child has been in school it is seen that the parents have made a
choice for a particular religion or lack there of in public schools and
it is not easy to change your mind on that.

This can result in court cases. Usually parents do end up having their
children home schooled, but it can take some money, work and stress.

weblink: http://www.lereninvrijheid.nl/index2.html

weblink for the national organisation: http://www.nvvto.nl

weblink: http://www.thuisonderwijs.net

http://www.thuisonderwijs.com

Compulsory education age: 5-18

Norway

Legal and on the increase, though still small.

Weblink: http://folk.uio.no/cbeck/OTH%20in%20English1.htm

e-mail: oth@bdd.no

Poland & Baltic States

Legal, but only when permission is granted

Portugal

Legal. The school system has problems and therefore they are happy to have children educated at home.

Russia
No data at present

Slovakia
No data at present

Spain

Legal. Protected under article 27, section 1 under the Spanish
constitution, however for some families things are made difficult.

weblink to national organisation: http://educacionlibre.org/inicimarc.htm (in Spanish - started in 2002)

Sweden

It is legal and there are rules which aren't always easy to take.
Sometimes parents have to get permission. Things differ per
municipality. It is very uncommon.

My Alternative to School (MATS) is the Swedish organisation.

E-mail: katarina.jadinge@translateit.pp.se

Postal address:

MATS

Katarina Jadinge,

Pl 2199,

370 10 Brakne-Hoby

SWEDEN

Switzerland

Legal in most cantons. Things are very
different per canton. It varies from being totally illegal in Ticino,
parents needing to have a teachers degree in Basel, to parents needing
a teacher to supervise them in Bern, to totally freedom in Aargau.

An overview of which canton has what requirements is here:

http://www.cruxmove.com/SwissHomeSchooling.htm (english)

however, this could potentially be out of date.
A list with all Cantons: http://www.cruxmove.com/kantonalSummary.html (english)

Weblink to homeschool association of Switzerland: http://www.homeschool.ch/en_index.html (english)

This is a weblink to a parents lobby for freedom of educational choice: http://www.elternlobby.ch/deutsch/ (german)

Forum in French and English: http://nyonweb.ch/homeschool/index.php?lng=en
weblink: http://www.leben-ohne-schule.de/europa_schweiz.html (german)

Compulsory educational age: 6-16

United Kingdom

Legal in England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. Laws can
differ a big between the 4. In case exams will be done there are 2 ways
of going about it, one is the standard GCSE's & A-levels, the other
is going through the Asdan & Cope system.

The local education authority can be in contact with parents about
visits / reports, but when a child has not been in school before, they
are likely not to know about the family and will therefore not be in
contact, unless one gets reported in one way or the other.

National organisation weblink: http://www.education-otherwise.org

Mike Fortune-Wood:http://www.home-education.org.uk/

http://home-ed.info/

compulsory educational age: 6-16

Africa

Egypt

Ethiopia

Morrocco

Sudan

America's

Canada
Legal

Guatemala

Mexico

USA
Legal

Asia

Bangladesh

Birma

China

India

Indonesia

Japan

Malaysia

Pakistan

Phillipines

Sri Lanka

Taiwan

Thailand

Turkey

Australia & New Zealand

Australia
Legal

New Zealand
Legal

Please do contact me in case you have any additional information, additional weblinks, find that weblinks don't work, etc.
Thanks very much!
Diana

Burned school

2008-10-27T06:02:00.000-07:00

Today I received the news that the school, which my oldest 2 have attended for several years has burned.
This school managed to get my oldest child from being able to read and write little words at the age of 5 to regress to being illiterate at the age of 10.
May I be happy about this?

Burning

2008-10-25T00:36:00.000-07:00

One evening last week we ended up burning paper napkins, we experimented a bit with it, like one piece was burnt while it was just plain folded open and in a single layer, that was going really fast, one big woosh and gone.
Another piece was burnt folded, slower.
Another piece was unfolded, but rolled in a big cigar, that took a bit of time.
The longest took the piece that was folded and rolled up in a cigar, that was very compact and really took quite a bit of time.
Afterwards we discussed the hows, why's and what's to that whole process, including how the oxygen reaches better when not compact and all that stuff.

Chicken :-)

2008-10-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I was going to make a chicken broth. I prefer using chickens with the feet on for that as that gives more nutrients in the broth. So I got myself one and asked my partner to please cut it up a bit, so I could put it in the pan, otherwise the chicken was going to be too big to put in, and we do not need to see the feet sticking out all the time *g*.
Then he invited the kids to have a look at the chicken and a feel. So they came and were interested. The chicken got fairly well dissected on its way to the pan, some stuff was given to the dog, other pieces ended up going to really little pieces to see what was muscle tissue, what was fat tissue, what is bones, where are bones, why is the chest bone so different than a human chest bone. The works. It was really interesting and even our 5yo was totally fascinated by the chicken.

Home education around the world

2008-10-07T10:37:00.001-07:00

I have made a new link list in which I have put a document which shows a lot of countries, at the moment mainly Europe and their laws surrounding home education or home schooling. This list will be a work in process and will get updated every time I have more information.
So please do let me know if you have links for me.
Here is the link to the document:
Home education around the world

Wonderful blog post

2008-09-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today I read a post from someone else's blog. It was a post by the son of the woman who's blog it is.
He has been to school for 1 year, after having been unschooled before.

Here is the link: unschool versus school

Have fun reading, I sure did. It actually did take some of my concerns away :-)

Education in the woods

2008-09-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a friend of mine came over. She is very knowledgeable about plants that you can eat and stuff. She actually teaches it. We went into the woods near our house to have a walk there and see what there is to eat out there, there was quite a bit that you can eat or work with.
Clover flowers - in your salad
Stinging nettle - new tips of leaves in your salad, tea from the older leaves, use the older leaves as spinach, use the branches to make rope of.
Black berry - eat the fruit, eat the young leave tips, make tea out of the older leaves.
Duizendblad - eat the leaves in your salad, use them on wounds.
Dandelion leaves - in your salad
Bilberry's - eat the berries
Goat's willow - make things with the branches
Prickly coconut smelling bushes - flowers you can make wine of and put in your salad, they taste like coconut, but they have to be prickly.
Pine - the bark was used to extend rye & spelt flour by the vikings, like they do with soya now. I think I prefer the pine bark.
Birch - the sap can be used to make a nice wine of - tap the tree for 2 weeks in the end of march, no longer, coz that can damage the tree. Use the sap to make wine with. The pink colour of the bark has also been used as dye.

She also talked about quite some stuff that wasn't supposed to be in our woods, as they aren't native and are wrecking the soil or something like that.
Rhodondendron - comes from Asia and wrecks the soil
Hypericum - comes from Japan.

We talked about the grey squirrel, as that is a native to the US and outnumbering the UK native brown squirrel.
Furthermore we talked about rabbits, came with the vikings for food.
And hares, came with the Romans for food.
Neither of them native here basically. In the meantime they sort of are though.
The vikings used to use rabbits like we do chickens now, which are actually also not native, they come from Asia.

The kids enjoyed the talking very much, it was quite hands on, we tasted various things and found most of it tasting quite alright. The berries were all very good!

Viking Dork Normansson

2008-08-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the museum to have a talk with Viking Dork Normansson. This was very nice, we had a great time. Its a very nice guy who re-enacts the viking and he is quite a good replica.

Adolf Hitler on BBC Exclusiv on Vox

2008-08-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

This evening we are watching an episode of BBC Exclusiv on Vox.
Its very interesting, as its a historical piece on Adolf Hitler and the people who tried to kill him over the years of his ruling.
The people who wanted to kill him and how they ended if, if they did.

Flint knapping

2008-08-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the museum in Camberley - the Surrey Heath Museum.
There was an exhibition organised where you could see flint knapping being performed by Karl Lee. This was extremely interesting, as he really showed us how several stone age time tools were made. He also made the tools with the tools that they used back then.

He explained to us that in some area's people who do flint knapping will use more modern tools, but he doesn't think the replica's made that way are real replica's.
Karl is an experimental archeologist. Therefore he makes replica's. There aren't many people in the world anymore who can do. Some people like the Aboriginals in Australia still do it, they didn't stop doing it. This is really cool, they are still doing it the authentic way there.
In the US there are only a handful of Native Americans left doing it as unfortunately their culture is slowly but carefully dying out. Which is a pity. Languages dying out as well, its such a shame, our planet was so rich in a big variety of cultures and languages and there is so much gone. Just like animals and plants, so much gone.

What we also discussed was the film Dances with wolves, as its a very educational film. It shows a lot of things very well and pretty accurate historically.
The next thing we discussed was the attitude of the white people back then towards the natives. They first tried to kill them all, but when the natives proved to be too clever they resorted to other measures, trying to kill all their food. This is also pretty clear in Dances with wolves as you can see in the film how the white people killed a load of buffalo's just for their hide and tongue, with no respect for animal, earth or fellow human being.
Its pretty rude if you ask me, to do what happened. The natives were friendly, fed the white people, invited them into their homes, next thing, the white people just take their homes.
Pretty sick minds were around then I would say.

The other thing that was really interesting that Karl had to say was that back in the stone age times people knew lots and lots more about which plants people could eat and which plants were good ad medicine. These days we eat such an incredibly small amount of plants, compared to the people back then.

What he also told us, was that people didn't get much older than about 30. I wonder about that, as I have read bits and pieces here and there where people state that girls have never started their periods sooner than now, so how could that be then, coz the kids that the people get have to grow up before they can take care of themselves.
So if periods didn't start until 16 to 18, and they would die at 30, their kids would be like 12 or so. Doesn't fully add up to me, so I have to look into that a lot more.
The other bit is that their diet was much much healthier than ours, so if we get as old as we get, how come they died so young. They did have good hygiene contrary to medieval times.
That is a topic for some time soon, coz the kids were also very interested in that.

I think this was really super cool. He explained so much to the kids, they could ask away, the kids enjoyed it tremendously. I also think he enjoyed their interest in it all. He talked about how people lived and hunted and everything that had something to do with that. Really great.

And then lateron I ran into the following article which really says it all.

The title is:

The Objective of Education Is Learning, Not Teaching

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2032

Have a read, I really enjoyed reading the article.

Next week we will go the museum to talk to someone who knows tons about vikings and who re-enacts them. I think that is pretty cool as well.

Play dough

2008-07-31T04:59:00.000-07:00

Cooked.

2 cups of plain flour
1 cup of salt
2 cups of water
2 tbsp of oil
2 teasp of cream of tartar
Food colouring

Put flour, salt and cream of tartar into a saucepan and mix. Add water, oil and, if wanted, colouring. Mix then cook over a low heat stirring continuously, until the dough is a
very lumpy consistency and isn't runny.
Turn out and knead, adding colouring if not added before. Beware it is very
hot.
Store in a plastic bag or plastic container.

Papier-Mache Paste

2008-07-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

1 cup water
1/4 cup flour
5 cups lightly boiling water
Large saucepan

Mix flour into 1 cup water until mixture is thin and runny. Stir this mixture into lightly boiling water. Gently boil and stir 2-3 minutes. Cool before using.

Paste

2008-07-31T04:45:00.000-07:00

Cooking paste:

1/2 cup flour
cold water
saucepan
food colouring (optional)

Add cold water to flour until mixture is as thick as cream.
Simmer and stir in saucepan for 5 minutes.
Add a few drops of food coloring, if desired.
This wet, messy paste takes a while to dry.

Non cooking paste:

Bowl
1/2 cup flour
Water
Salt

In bowl, mix flour with enough water to make a mixture that's gooey, but not runny.
Add a pinch of salt; stir

glue

2008-07-31T04:31:00.000-07:00

2 cups flour
1 cup cold water
1 cup hot water
Mix well. Put in a glue type bottle and allow to sit for one hour.

Glue
3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1 teaspoons white vinegar
1/2 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup cold water

Mix water, syrup and vinegar in small saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil. In small bowl, mix cornstarch and cold water. Add this mixture slowly to first mixture. Stir constantly. Let stand overnight before using.

Windtalkers

2008-07-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

Last night we watched the film Windtalkers. This is about a piece of history that I wasn't taught anything about in school.
It was mentioned that there was war in Japan as well during WWII, but the main focus was Europe.
Therefore I found it quite important that the girls watched it with us, even though it was not for their age. It was very interesting to see how the Navajo language was used to make sure the Japanese didn't understand.
What was furthermore very striking was that Ben, one of the Navajo speakers explained how in missionary school he was not allowed to speak Navajo and therefore ended up chained to the heater for 2 days and then in WWII he had to speak Navajo to help his country.
Some of the racist bits were also very clear and educational.
Hope others will watch it as well.

Legoland continues

2008-07-19T00:38:00.001-07:00

We have annual passes to Legoland this year. Its one of those places that I am not a fan of but all kids seem to love. So therefore we did it for one year on Tesco vouchers. So, we have them, we go in and of course the whole world of Legoland is plastic, didn't expect it to be different. But it did make me wonder what the carbon foot print of Legoland is. Doubt its a good one.
But then we found out that while thinking that we could go into everything and do everything with annual passes, that was a dream. There is sooooo much that you need to pay for still. I do have a problem with that. You pay entrance fee, which is high and then you still need to pay for quite a few things. That just bugs me.
I wonder if I am the only one.
The kids have enjoyed quite a few trips and we have done quite some things there which are linked to our education, like looking at all the houses built there, checking out the water flows and stuff like that, anything is educational I found out.

As Sandra Dodd also said, everything is educational. She used Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis Presley and yes, totally educational.
How are shoes made, where does suede come from, what treatments does it need to get blue, etc. etc.
Its just wonderful to take that path with your children. I love it. And its a way of life, not a chore.

Tales of the green lands

2008-07-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

Recently we bought the DVD of this former TV-series. It is about life on a local farm in the times of James I, around 1620.
There are some historian and archeologists living like they did in those times.
It is very interesting to watch. Very educational.
One of the really very interesting things is how the celebrate christmas for 12 days.
Furthermore how they used almost every piece of a butchered animal.
The building of the animal shed to give them shelter for the winter is also wonderful.
We have watched it several times now and it keeps bringing us new things that we can discuss.

Conversions

2008-06-04T01:31:00.001-07:00

The kids and I found a very nice conversions website about all kinds of measurements. Old ones and new ones. Its a great resource to use with explaining things and helping them understand measurements.
Give it a try! Here is the link.

Weights and Measures,
Metric Conversions

Shopping at the museum

2008-05-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

On 18 May there was an exhibition which drew on material across from our area to illustrate what we bought and where we bought it. On show are a wide range of objects displayed in replica reconstructed shop windows, with an old fashioned shop-counter scene as the centrepiece, complemented by a wealth of local photographs and reminiscences. A good chance for some retail therapy without spending money!
The children got to see the weights used back then, and the got the chance to buy some sweets with old money, they loved it.

Legoland

2008-05-16T01:50:00.000-07:00

Heading off to go there today, more on it later.

Behaviourism crap

2008-05-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

Today I was watching some educational tv programs on the BBC and found that they are totally into making children participate in a way that is fitting with the behaviourism style of psychology.
And as I have been reading a lot of stuff from Alfie Kohn, which made total sense to me.
Therefore I got totally annoyed with the "well done!" type of comments and the "when you had the answer right, give yourself a shiny"
This is soooo encredibly counter productive when it comes to educating people that it completely ticked me off. I have seriously wondered if we should just totally ban tv in our house. On the other hand there are quite some things on tv/dvd/video that are very educational.
But I do want to minimise the behavioursm influence in our house as its totally not working.
And that goes for human kind as a whole to be honest. Its absolutely no wonder children in school aren't performing well or people in jobs. Its scary how something so wrong can have such a huge influence in our world.

Farnham museum

2008-04-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

Last week thursday we were at the museum in Farnham, which was really very interesting. We learnt quite a bit there about the history of Farnham, how they used to supply London and how things changed because of greed.
How some people who did own land and we working on it, lost it all due to others being too greedy. It was sad to see how some people lost everything.

Deer and wildlife evening

2008-04-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

Last night the girls, with a friend and dad went to an evening organized by Alice Holt near us. The evening was very educational. They were shown the different types of dear in Great Britain and there was a little talk about them. Furthermore wildlife in general was discussed and there was a walk in the woods near the center.
All of them loved going there. Alice Holt always has interesting stuff going on. We went to a lot of things last year and therefore we only do a few new things this year as they did almost all last year already. Luckily they organize new things every year.

Enchanted Learning

2008-01-16T09:35:00.001-08:00

Recently, after the christmas holidays, we have started doing the worksheets from enchanted learning again. We really love those. They have a nice calendar on there, which gives 1 sheet a day to work with, but there is a lot more on there. Lots and lots of information for virtually all ages. The kids really love working with those. The worksheets tend to make them ask lots and lots of questions afterwards, which is really good, as this way they get a lot of information to think about. Home Educating really rocks!

First Emperor Exhibition

2008-01-10T04:35:00.000-08:00

On 7 January 2008 we went to the First Emperor Exhibition in the British Museum. This was very very interesting. This whole terra cotta army, the governmental people, the artists etc. It was very impressive, especially when we learned that this emperor was only 13 when he became king of Qin. He came from a horse breeders family, but was very ambitions, within a few years he started conquering the surrounding states and made China as it is today, and this was before our counting of time started.
He standardized the written language to the Qin written language, therefore the Chinese today can still all read what others write, their spoken language can be quite different though. Of course it was necessary for all governmental offices to have the same written language to make sure all would understand each other. He standardized the weapons of the army, he made a sewage system and roads through the country happen. He also standardized the width of the base of charriots to make sure they would fit on the roads, which was important for quick transport of food, weapons or armies.
He died at age 49. He was quite afraid of dying and therefore made this huge army etc. to have that in the afterlife to still be ruling, obviously the feeling the need to keep doing what he did before death, after death.
We all enjoyed the exhibition very much, even our 4yo.

The exhibitions made me think about him being brilliant, but also that he was mad for all he did, its unbelievable what he all did.
That thought made a quote from Pirates of the Carribbean pop up in my mind: Will: "This is either madness or brilliance." Jack: "Its remarkable how often those two traits coincide."

workbooks

2007-12-24T07:57:00.000-08:00

Last night both girls were very busy in their workbooks, English, German and Maths. So we just let them be and did our own things, some knitting, tv watching etc. We were there for them for questions and help they needed, but we didn't stop them. They took their time, hours went by. After midnight one of them announced she was tired and was going to stop. The other one joined. This meant that they had been working in their workbooks from right after dinner until after midnight. They were extremely focussed and made a lot of progress. It was very interesting to watch them be so busy and make that much progress in those hours.
Trying doing that in school, working from after dinner to midnight. I doubt one teacher will go for it.
We do, and we see that it really pays off. Motivation is, as always, the key factor.

Magnet experiments - physics

2007-12-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

Today we have had a nice session of magnet experiments with the kids, they were fascinated by what is all possible with magnets. We had some paperclips floating in the air and stuff like that. We also had water with it, and paper, made a paper doll dance, moved a magnet ball around and iron filings. It was really great and very educational. The magnetic field was explained and it was showed how it worked. We also looked at the wikipedia entry on magnetic field to have more of an understanding on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field.
We have found that we love wikipedia, as there is always a lot of good information on there.

Kitchen appliances

2007-12-13T03:44:00.000-08:00

Since Monday I have been ill, so I haven't done much around the house. Some of the things were coming down to the kids, as my partner needed to work.
This resulted in them asking a lot of questions about kitchen appliances.
They have made dinner for the last days and have used the kitchen machine for that, this thing comes with quite some gadgets, so they hadn't been interested in using it. Now, as dinner was involving quite some cutting they decided to give it a try. They have learned a bit now about how this kind of stuff works and how easy dinner can be.
They have started enjoying cooking and baking. They also made a nice dessert a few times, just coz they had fun doing so.

St. Nicolaas

2007-12-06T04:25:00.000-08:00

Last night we celebrated St. Nicolaas. During the day we wrapped the presents, hid them all through the house and I made list of what was where. The kids were to find it all and then unwrap it. There was something for everybody.
We also baked kruidnootjes in the afternoon. This year I didn't make borstplaat or taaitaai or pepernoten, maybe somewhat later in the year.
Some presents were just toys, others were more interesting, like the "experiments" boxes. We have 5 and my partner will do those with the girls. This will be quite educational.
Some of the stuff I bought on e-bay, others in the shops. I tried to keep the spending a bit down this year. The kids were involved in picking presents for their siblings, I do consider it important that they try to put themselves in the minds of theirs siblings to see what they would like. It worked out really well.

Some recipes:

kruidnootjes:
250 gr flour
2 gr baking powder
5 gr cinnamon powder
2,5 gr. clove powder
2 gr. cardamom powder
1 gr. ginger powder
125 gr butter
125 gr demerrera sugar
50 gr golden syrup
3 gr salt.
Put flour, baking powder and spiced in a bowl. Mix in a pan butter, sugar and syrup with salt and melt it all. Mix both mixtures together to a well mixed batter. Leave this until its more firm. Make small balls out of it and put those on a greased baking tray into the oven, 180C for 15 minutes. Take kruidnootjes out of the oven and leave to cool.

Taai-taai & pepernoten
250 gr flour
100 gr honey
1 tbs syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp anis powder
1 tsp nutmeg powder
1 tsp clove powder

Warm the honey until soft and put syrup into it. Mix flour, spices and baking powder. Stir honey into flour mix to make a firm dough. Make large shapes for Taai-taai and very small balls, really close together for pepernoten. Put it on a greased baking tray and bake on 160C until done, for about 15 to 20 mins. Taai-Taai is usually made in the shape of dolls.

Borstplaat
12 tbs white sugar
4 tbs cream
some taste, like: vanilla, lemon, cocoa, raspberry aroma or instant coffee. I basically only use vanilla aroma or cocoa powder as the kids love those tastes. mix sugar with cream and cook it slowly, let it cook for about 5 minutes. When a drip becomes hard in cold water it is right. When you want to use instant coffee or cocoa powder you have to use that while cooking, the rest comes in when the pan is taken off the stove. You can make circles out of this or use cookie cutters to make shapes. Make sure the cookie cutters are heat resistent. You can do this in 1 ways: 1 way is
to put the cookie cutters flat on baking paper and pour a bit of the fluid in there. The other way is having the fluid on a baking tray and cut them out of that.

Speculatius
50 gr self raising baking flour
50 gr flour
75 butter
50 gr demerrera sugar
1/2 tbs speculaas spices **
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs almond shavings
Preheat oven to 160C
Put all ingredients in a bowl, cut the butter in small chunks with 2 knives. and knead the lot to a nice dough. Roll the dough out to 1 cm thick. Put cut out pieces (either with cookie cutters or just squares) on a greased baking tray and bake for 25 to 30 mins in preheated oven. Let cool for 10 mins.

** speculatius spices=
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp cardamom powder
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1/2 tsp clove powder

Well... now we will go prepare for Yule / X-mas.
I will post some of the recipes for stuff we use for Yule as well in one of the next posts.

No Thank You, We Don’t Believe in Socialization!

2007-11-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

The following link gives a very good idea on why the socialization issue is a non-issue when it comes to school being sooooooo good for socialization. The article really puts my thoughts very well into words, couldn't have done it better at all! My compliments to the writer.
Have fun reading: http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/10-1article1.htm

And you are ill today??

2007-11-26T07:11:00.000-08:00

Today while shopping a lady at the till in Sainsbury jumped to the conclusion that my 10yo was home ill today, as she wasn't in school. Interesting line of thinking. Why on earth would I take a child that is ill from school shopping.
She wasn't ill, she was just shopping with me, like we prefer doing before everybody goes into their shopping frenzy after school. It takes a lot less time doing it during school hours.
My 10yo got lucky as her little sister told the lady at the till that it was her b'day today, so she was side tracked from the whole idea immediately, as my 10yo hates it when people jump to those conclusions.
She wishes it was more normal to be home educated.

2007-11-23T05:18:00.000-08:00

Wednesday we were over at a friends house. They do music with the kids on and off. Our friend noticed that E(13) was playing a tune that she had taught her several months ago, only 1x. She was really surprised that E could remember it and just play it again. E doesn't read notes and is very dyslexic. Our friend was a bit envious as she would love to be able to remember tunes just like that and play them again as well.

2007-10-31T12:55:00.000-07:00

Today we had our Halloween party. It was a joint venture of several neighbours in organizing it together with DP. Strange enough, some of the bailed out at the last second, which meant that another neighbour had to do almost all the work, as DP had to be out of the country for work. This was known well ahead. The bailing out only since this morning. It was good how it turned out, as all went well, it was just really sick to have someone bail out at the last second.
The good thing is, as we are home educting, that the girls could help out as well, with decorating and all kinds of stuff like that, which they gladly did.

2007-10-30T05:06:00.000-07:00

On 20 september we wen to the museum again. There was some stone age stuff going on there. It was about how beads used to be made, about the war painting which people thought was done with woad, but recent research has showed that this was probably not true, it was more likely used to clean wounds and close them quickly. It was definitely not used as tattoos, as it really burns wounds clean.
Unless they had a very different recipe that the one known to us.
Furthermore there was a lot to learn about which vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices came to our end of the world at which time. A lot of what we eat now, wasn't there 1.000 to 2.000 years ago.
Slowly the exhibition went from Stone Age to about 50 years ago, it was very interesting.

The blogspot to go to!

2006-11-17T13:38:00.001-08:00

http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/what-to-do.html

The government wants to regulate Home Education :-(

2006-11-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

The below message I received recently, for me this is reason to worry. We moved to the UK to be able to Home Educate in freedom and then this goes on here. Hopefully a lot of people will make a lot of noise, which will result in keeping things the way they are. The enquiries of the LEA can be difficult enough to deal with.

Knowledge is power

What you need to know about the government’s plans to regulate home education.

Who are we dealing with?

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) is the government department that is responsible for developing strategies in education. They see part of their remit as aiming to achieve excellence for all and their functions will accord with the Every Child Matters agenda.

You can read more about the DfES at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/aboutus/

What are they going to do?

Last year, the DfES carried out a consultation on draft local authority Home Education guidelines. They consulted lots of Local Authorities and a handful of home education organisations, but would not accept contributions from individual home educators. Many home educators felt this meant that the consultation did not adequately or fairly represent the views of a large portion of the HE community.

Following this consultation, the DfES have not produced new guidelines. Instead, they now intend to conduct another consultation on Elective Home Education. They describe the proposed consultation as being “a full one, conducted via the Department’s consultation website.”..where they hope to ensure that the documents are accessible to as many people as possible.

The consultation website is at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/

What will they be consulting about?

From emails that have been sent to some home educators by officials at the DfES, it appears that the DfES is considering using the Every Child Matters Agenda to insist that home educators conform to standards as decided by the state. We don’t know exactly how they are planning to do this, but it is likely to involve them trying to tell us what our children’s education should ‘cover’ and checking we are delivering the education they want through a system of monitoring visits.

DfES officials have said that:
“The state cannot currently prescribe what form of education parents should provide, whilst all maintained and independent school provision is prescribed in legislation and subject to inspection. This anomaly is at odds with Every Child Matters reforms, supported by the Childrens Act 2004, which set out the Government’s aim to improve educational outcomes for all children, regardless of where they are educated, and to narrow the gap between those who are doing well and those who are not.”
and that:
“whilst s437 of the Education Act 1996 provides a remedy for LAs which have concerns that there may be no suitable provision, this is unwieldy, time consuming and expensive and in some cases will be nugatory where home educators are making good provision but are resistant to LA enquiries.”

What you can do to keep Home Education as we know and love it
1. Keep an eye on them.
Write to Elaine Haste of the Elective Home Education Department (DfES) at info@dfes.gsi.gov.uk and ask to be included on a list of those who receive information about the consultation.
NB: This does NOT mean that you have taken part in the consultation and the DfES cannot honestly claim that you have. Until we see the consultation document and have more information about how the responses will be used, we can’t be sure that taking part in the consultation process will help our case.
So why bother signing up now if we don’t plan to actually take part in the consultation? Signing up is important because the DfES needs to know just how many of us they are going to have to deal with. It means they know we are watching them, and we are getting organised.
2. Spread awareness.
Tell at least 4 other home educators what is going on and get them to sign up, as above. Get them to tell at least 4 others. Blog the story if you have an HE or any other kind of blog.
Refer people to the explanation at http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/what-to-do.html if you want a quick way to let them know what is happening. This leaflet is based on that text.
3. Spread the positive word about home education.
Follow up on any stories in the local paper or on TV with letters and comments. Talk about
personalised learning, healthy happy children etc - possibly using the recent media stuff about “toxic childhood”.
4. Join forces.
If you are a member of Education Otherwise you might want to communicate your feelings to the EO Government Policy Group about what you would ideally like EO to be doing about all this. You could also speak to your Local Contact. If you are a member of any other home education support organisation (or you know anyone who is) please pass on general information about the forthcoming DFES consultation.
5. Get political.
If you have any energy left, write to your MP and ask them to pass on your concerns to Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education and Skills.
• Tell them about why it’s important to you to be allowed to determine what is a suitable education for your child(ren).
• Remind them that Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act gives parents the responsibility to provide an education that is suitable to the age, aptitude and ability and any special educational needs of their child(ren).
• Explain how HE enables you to do that for your children and how external standards and
monitoring would make it harder to provide such an education.
6. Keep yourself informed.
Find out more about Every Child Matters at http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/. Keep up with the discussion about how to campaign to preserve our current freedoms by joining the UK-HOME-ED email list – see http://www.homeeducation.org.uk/list.htm for details of how to join.

November 2006

Cave painting - 21/10/2006

2006-10-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Recentely the Camberley Museum sent us invitations to come to the museum to learn about the stone age cave paintings. It cost us 5 Pounds per child to do that. We decided this was fun, even though it was Marissa's birthday as well.
Angela explained a lot about the people who made the cave paintings. She said that around those area's there were a lot of footprints of children so they think it was done by whole families / tribes. Nobody really knows why they did it and who did it. Some people think it was only men. Others think it was only the Holy men. Although nobody knows whether the Holy ones were only men.
She also said that the people probably didn't think of the present people looking at it, it probably didn't have the intention as a message to the future. Nonetheless, she wanted to have the children make a message to the future, they way the cave man did back then. So she invited all children to make paintings of things that are important now.
So the kids made a lot of drawings and they were lateron painted.
The paintings are going to hang in the museum, which I think is really cool.