A retrospective exploration into our learning journey: September 2020-August 2021

In January 2021 I set a simple theme for the art lesson. Draw a pirate scene using paint. This is Sophia's picture.  Two months later I set the same task. Draw a pirate scene using pencils. Sophia drew a ship on the ocean and included all the traditional features. She had prisoners on the middle level, a little boy and girl who had been captured. Someone was looking through a telescope on the top. There were pirates on the beach where X marks the spot. Coconut trees towering up above, with the odd coconut falling in top of the pirates. Flags were down to claim the beach.  Her detail was amazing. What had changed between the two pictures? Time had passed and the art material had changed. Allowing time to pass and changing the environment can make unbelievable difference.

It was a problematic substance in our household until the children reached 3-5years old. Kira wanted to eat it, and the other two struggled greatly with the feel of the texture. Sophia thought it made her dirty and had to wash her hands between every touch.  Through patience and gentle exposure they all have embraced the activity, they're not a fan of the accompanying machinery options however. These are absolutely awesome for encouraging hand strengthening, however they failed to capture the imagination of my three. They like to be free to create individually. Naturally they've all been through the stage of mixing all the colours and making 'poo'. As a general rule the children choose a food based theme to their imaginative playdoh sessions. They run a cafe or restaurant and make dishes to order. Xander decided to make wriggly worms the other day and was chasing the squealing girls through the house.   This past year they have also loved using it for making dinosaur fo...

Do you have a 'know it all wall' in your home? This is Sophia's name for the space we provide to stick up information they are currently learning, and display work they have completed, in amongst posters.  We have had fun with ours throughout the years. They learnt how to spell their name by having a name wall, learnt colour mixing, themed alphabets, habitats etc. My children gravitate towards their walls at all times of day. I was chasing them to bed yesterday and found Sophia and Xander in the school room, in front of a poster. They were chatting about the continents, what they would find in each continent and which ones would be good to visit.

Favourite books can be a great source of early projects. Making a favourite book the focus of a topic is so much fun. This along with favourite nursery rhymes was a key teaching tactic when they were little. They would decide how long we spent on it.  It remains a popular teaching method with them. A few years later and they still randomly choose a book and research it. One of the first books the girls gravitated towards for this purpose was 'The Three Little Pigs'.  - They listened to me reading the story.  - They recalled the story in their own words.  - They created a picture depicting the houses, pigs and the wolf. - They learnt the properties of the materials discussed in the book.  The science behind the story has always been of particular interest to them.  We have studied the science behind a number of nursery rhymes and books and it really makes the story come alive for them. They also loved studying the 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'.  This c...

Experience through me, a typical reading session with a toddler with adhd and hyperlexia.  Give yourself forty-five minutes for the session.  Wait for ten minutes for her to stop performing flips and tricks, bearing in mind she will have asked for this activity. Another five minutes for her to get snuggly in your lap, and have a giggle because she is purposely holding the book upside down. She will then flawlessly read a page of a Peter and Jane book.  Then point out that the next page is pretty much the same as the one before so why does she have to read it?  You refocus her.  She reads the next page flawlessly.  'Oh look I have a bellybutton', poking at it and giggling.  Refocus.  Next page read flawlessly.  'Mummy, I'm Kira Morris, what's your name?' (saying her name frequently is part of her torrettes).  Refocus.  Next page read flawlessly.  A screaming fit, 'Sophia's looking at me!' then launching straight into another fla...

Why on earth would they do this? What were they thinking?  The girls were looking at disgust at a spare McDonald's paper straw from their dad's order. They sat down and had a serious meeting over the ridiculous decision to use paper for the purposes of transporting liquid.  I think McDonald's could have benefited from having a panel of three and five year olds in the room the day that particular decision was made, before they rolled out their first version of paper straws to the public.  It was really amusing to watch. They chatted away about how stupid it was. How it would fall to pieces after being in the drink for too long, get soggy with the liquid travelling up it, and finally would break off in your mouth. They were testing this theory watching the straw sat in water.  They were oblivious to the fact dad was on the other side of the kitchen struggling with all those issues as he was trying to drink his pepsi max.  As they established the reasoning behind t...

Are you aware of the amazing potential of your recycling items!  They all have at least one more purpose before they meet their end in the recycling bin, and as a parent to young children I'll let you into a little secret....sometimes they never make it into the bin! They are transformed into a new toy destined to join the toy room. It's not rubbish, it's crafting treasures and seriously saves money from exhaubrant prices from craft shops.  When you have young children, it matters not if they're home educated or not, there are universal fun projects to be found in the recycling bin, great for cold rainy winter weekends and holidays.  If you are studying at home, arts and crafts can play a vital part in any topic or project. Go grab these free materials now!  Yes you can buy almost anything these days, but it's not as fun as making it yourself, you lose imagination the more you rely on store brought templates and constructs. When you buy everything, there's an el...

Games are an important part of educational  play methodology and the beauty with this teaching strategy is that it grows with the children throughout their early years education.  The girls had mentally outstripped their games last year and whilst they still enjoy playing them they needed a new challenge. I devised a verbal quiz  specifically tailored to their curriculum, across all the subjects and we played it during breakfast time and initially they loved it and found it fun.  The girls mental processes soon became apparent when they started answering questions on a daily basis. Kira has an extremely high response speed and can fire back answers at super cat speed. She would answer first and would be accurate the majority of the time. Sophia needs a longer response time, needs to process, sometimes she would answer the day after.  Therefore this quiz style of gaming quickly became stressful for Sophia and the competitiveness was unhealthy as Sophia started to...

This is a subject which prior to starting this home schooling journey I believed belonged in a school lab and didn’t really have a place in early years learning.  My girls have resoundingly proved me wrong in that assumption, and for the past three years we have been on a magical scientific journey together.  Sophia was so curious, from the age of three wanting to know what made a rainbow and asking questions about her world around her.  I found some great educational presenters on YouTube, namely Jack Hartmann and Rachel and the Treeschoolers who have some fantastic videos for this early years age group, up to the age of seven. There are lots of songs and dances to help little ones to remember the material and the girls   have just taken this subject by storm. In the first year I introduced the topics and then have built upon them throughout the years, extending their knowledge and understanding. I have laid out the topics within this blog, starting with the girls...

Ma ths is one of those subjects that just seems to take place in day to day life with little behind the scenes planning. I simply have a yearly goal I would like the children to work towards based on a reasonable level of progression on from the previous year.  The children greatly exceeded my annual expectations this year and I realised that their logical brains make them perfect mathematicians. I still wanted to make the subject fun, however the girls had mentally outgrown the games brought from the previous years. It was vital to maintain their level of interest and not allow them to become bored with the subject, so I had a little brainstorm with myself.  I loved board games as a child and we had all the usual suspects and would have regular gaming sessions as a family, but one firm favourite was ‘Game of Knowledge’. I wanted to recreate a similar board game which would reflect the children’s curriculum this year. This presented a fun way for them to practice maths skill...

Kira learnt her alphabet last year, however having just turned three years in April 2020 she was not my focus in the reading department as Sophia had blossomed with a new reading scheme of Peter and Jane and was really keen to learn to read.  This was the year when I learnt that age is not the determining factor when children can learn to read, ability has little connection to age. The childs personal interest will determine how successful they will be within the subject.  I had started reading with Sophia at the age of four because I thought that was the age they needed to start learning. I discovered the error in my teaching ways as she was not ready and it was a negative experience for her initially as we couldn’t understand why she wasn’t learning the words. She however came into her own at the age of five.  Consequently, I was not focusing on teaching Kira officially, I just read her bedtime stories and encouraged her to keep the alphabet fresh in her mind. Kira ...