Conversions

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

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

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

Behaviourism crap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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??

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

The government wants to regulate Home Education :-(

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

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.