A successful day

One of the great things about home educating is being able to change direction when needed or drop everything to focus completely on a particular area of interest. As a parent, this can take some getting used to but it is well worth learning to let go of the plan sometimes and see where the current takes us.

The plan this morning was to catch up on some table work before going to see my mum. Our formal work looks rather different now to when I last blogged, with Daniel doing sit-down learning 3 or 4 days each week and spending around 2 hours (sometimes more) on various subjects. Even Adam has been quietly getting on with Maths Seeds and turns out to be considerably further on than I had realised, and is now requesting other work too. I fear a Twinkl subscription may be in our near future.

Anyhoo, with Bank Holidays #1 and #2, followed by a moochy and unproductive day yesterday, we all felt ready to get back to the familiar routine. I came down to breakfast, however, to find Daniel and Adam engrossed in an online drawing tutorial video that OH had found. The minute he had finished eating and got dressed, Daniel disappeared with the tutorials on the iPad and a large stack of paper and I didn’t hear a peep out of him for the rest of the morning, so absorbed was he in his drawing. He did emerge briefly to ask for a ‘black marker pen’ so I presented him with my box of Sharpies (usually kept well out of reach and sight of small people), along with solemn promises of disembowellment should he leave them anywhere his brothers could get at them. He thought I was joking...

By the end of the morning he had produced several very decent drawings that he was very proud of and would have carried on even longer if we hadn’t been going out. In the meantime, I and the two smaller ones planted some new bedding plants (I had to borrow Ben’s trowel and he got very shouty, holding out his hand and yelling "Me! Me!") and we brought an old fenced-off planter from Adam’s toddler days back into use with his strawberry plants.

Then they both had a glorious time with watering cans and a bucket of water while I stealthily (and at top speed) washed the kitchen floor.

After lunch with my mum, Daniel was desperate to play a new board game he had invented based on our old set of Explore Europe. Oh, how I wish they still made it! It needs a bit of updating - ours has Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia on it, and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova are conspicuously absent - but the kids love it. Adam wasn’t in the mood for board games so he and my mum went off to the park and Ben was asleep. After a couple of goes at the new version Daniel and I returned to the old Explore Europe and then looked around for something else to play. We ended up with Scrabble, which he had heard about from Gangsta Granny and he actually managed to beat me, stubbornly refusing all help from me (although accepting a little from my mum when she and Adam got back). I must dig around at home and see if we have a set.

Some days home ed just does itself.