So how do you teach them? I couldn't do it.

The simple answer is.  I don't.  We are all born with an innate capacity for learning, and are eager to do so all the time.  From the moment a baby explores it's own body in the womb, and realises that when they stretch or move, they often get a response, and they keep doing it.  They learn as babies, to imitate facial expressions, in those very early days - this is the beginnings of talking, and understanding emotions, developing relationships etc.  It just keeps on going.  I know that there are plenty of items for sale these days which claim to teach babies and toddlers things.  I'll let you into a secret.  They are lying.  These objects, however all-singing and all-dancing they are, will not "teach" your baby anything.  A definition of TEACH is "impart knowledge to or instruct (someone) as to how to do something".  

Do we need to "teach" a baby how to do the things they need to learn, or will they naturally learn the things they need in order to survive.  They learn to cry as tiny babies to communicate their needs, and human infants are pretty helpless in comparison to most of our mammalian cousins.  Did anyone have to teach that baby to cry in order to produce these results?  Not that I know of, and I certainly didn't teach it to my babies.

Okay, okay, I hear you say, I get all that about the baby and perhaps I see how that works for how a baby learns to crawl, and a toddler learns to walk.  But letting them follow their innate survival needs is not going to help them learn how to read, complete a quadratic equation, or analyse and dissect a piece of poetry or a history text.  I agree, that these other things, are not essential for our survival, in the way that communication and movement is, but I don't think that our amazing minds stop there.  I believe that we learn what we want according to what we see relevant and if there is a real need to learn that thing.  In addition, I believe that that learning is at it's best when it happens at a time, and place when we are most attuned to that thing.  At this time, we are able to take on a large body of knowledge, skills and understanding as motivation is high, and the need for props and special things to entice us to learn the thing are less necessary.  The need for excessive repetition becomes obsolete as we are much more able to retain things and use the information appropriately  is far greater with this internal motivation to succeed at our task.

So going back to the question,  "how do you teach them?" , I said "I don't".  And when asked this question, which I am asked every time I mention that I home educate my kids, I usually say, I don't teach them stuff.  I see myself as a facilitator of their learning.  Attempting to support them on their learning journey by providing an environment they like that gives them opportunities to learn in some of the ways they like, with time to spend just being themselves, being with friends.  I see every moment of every day as a learning opportunity.  We are really learning all the time.  Here are a few examples of what I mean by this.

Right now, as I speak the children are upstairs playing.  I don't know exactly what they are doing, but from what I can hear it involves the following things: Story stones (using characters from the film Frozen), Lego, penguins, and occasionally dialogue and storylines from the television program Strictly come dancing and the computer game Minecraft.  So apart from the things that I couldn't tell unless I did a full observation of them, here  are just a few of the things I know they are developing and learning (in my opinion)
Learning cooperation and leadership skills ~ they take turns in the dialogue, build joint things and collaborate in large projects, not just physical, but as a story / game.
Practising complex vocabulary from stories, experimenting with putting them into context.
Enjoying life
Relating to a peer
Understanding shape and space
Developing creatively through stories and making lego structures.
Developing a deeper understanding of new information - particularly evident through the introduction of penguins into recent play, which has responded to our penguin project.

Other days we might have a discussion whilst travelling asking about anything from architecture, to baby making, or days of the week to the ethics of large businesses.  I love it when we have these conversations, and I will be as helpful as they need me to be at the time, sometimes they are avidly interested and ask endless questions, and other times the moment passes without much conversation.  This is a common feature in family life.  We are super lucky that, as we have more time as a family together, these conversations and opportunities can be really capitalised upon.

I am relaxed about the learning process, as I know that my children are eager to learn, and when they recognise something as useful or important to them, they do all they can to gain the information they want.

We are often made to believe that our children aren't learning unless what they are learning can be ticked off on a curriculum checklist, but I would argue, that if the only learning that goes on can be ticked off on a curriculum checklist we are missing out.

I am not averse to providing a bit of structure to the children's learning from time to time, if they are receptive.  They usually, however, gain this more structured way of learning from educational websites which offer a motivating way of learning more structured stuff.  I don't know what my kids will be when they grow up, I don't know what they will have learned by the time they reach school-leaving age.  However, I find that exciting rather than scary.

Things I found really helpful when developing my ideas about learning include:

The work of Jerome Bruner - an educationalist who talks of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, among other things.

Ken Robinson - Changing Paradigms lecture

John Holt - Learning all the time, How children learn

Whole Word Reading

You know that saying, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." Well, this sprung out at me this morning when talking to my husband about Evan's reading.  He is highly intelligent and takes on new skills fairly quickly, and very much a self starter.  Where reading is concerned this doesn't seem to be happening, despite the many hours on Reading Eggs, Teach your monster to read, reading books at home, and words in the environment.  During my teacher training I learned all sorts of ways to engage children in the beginning stages of reading, and support them with a variety of strategies. Despite this, Evan still really struggles with developing in this area, and lacks motivation to persist.   It is possible it just isn't the time for him, but in the back of my mind it does come to me that he may be one of those people who masks their inability to read with a variety of strategies - all too easy in this technology filled world.

Sat down with Pat we discussed this, and I explained the areas where he seems to struggle, and he mentioned that we should play to his strengths, and the key one of those is his amazing capacity for remembering things.  Which clearly points to using whole word reading strategies.  Pat himself doesn't get Phonics and I cringe when he tries to support the kids with this, as he doesn't get it.  Yet he reads very well, and has a number of degrees under his belt, so he must have done something right.  Most people reading this area probably screaming at the screen saying - well of course... we only relatively recently began using Phonics as a key way of reading.  Most of us parents these days learned to read via whole word reading strategies, with books such as Peter and Jane, and my favourite, Jennifer Yellow Hat.  I recall having lectures during my Education degree looking at the evolution of literacy education in the UK, and learning that the reason Phonics came on the agenda at the time was due to the fact that (I think this is correct, but my memory is not quite as fool proof as my son's so I may have a few things slightly muddled)  the education secretary at the time was married to an educational consultant who was heavily involved in the development of Phonics reading programs.  I know that phonics can support the learning of reading, and breaking words down so that you can decode new words, but to be honest, I don't think that I ever really use it.  I think I may look at different parts of words that are similar to words I know and see the make up of them, but certainly not in the synthetic phonetic way.

Anyway, back to my reason for blogging this morning.  After this revalation of a new way of looking at evan learning to read, Pat suggested a good way in would be either through Minecraft - his current obsession  (more info in another blog coming soon no doubt)  or board games which he really enjoys.  I agreed, but was definitely a little concerned at the bland nature of decontextualised words on flashcards as a motivator to learn new stuff.  Pat said try Pinterest, so I did.  A few ideas popped up, but none which leapt out at me, so I began google searches, which appeared more fruitful, I think as many of the things that were suggested actually involved some interactive games (without the prerequiste .jpg for pinterest).  Unsure of where to put all the information I was gathering I decided to turn to this blog and post them all here.  So after that ridiculously long introduction here are my findings. [please note: I have not tested or tried ANY of these things out with Evan, merely looked and maybe played some of the games to test their suitability for our purpose, I will add to the blog when we've tried some things out, maybe with some pictures if I get lucky]
_______________
[updated 6th October]

Progress so far.  Evan and Autumn have been responding positively to the concept of whole word reading, and liked a number of these links we explored.  The main one of interest seems to have been Starfall, and they like loads of the different games on there.  It is an American site, but
despite that seems to have plenty of relevant stuff on it.  I have been scouring charity shops for "look and say" type books, as I am reluctant to spend loads of money on something that may fall flat, like everything else so far.  We found some, and some simple picture books with repetitive common word text.  Books include:
Pip and Posy, Julia Donaldson
The Radish Robber, Peter Rabbit - Ladybird "Read it Yourself" series Level 1
Sam at the Seaside, Ladybird "Read with me" series.
Rosie's Walk, Pat Hutchins
Yes No, Jan Pienkowski
"Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," Said the Sloth, Eric Carle

We have been looking at the books, reading them, and I've been encouraging the children to get involved looking at the pictures, tell the story (understand the context) whilst also following the text.  We have been progressing by literally reading it together, all three of us interjecting with the next word.

The most popular book was the Peter Rabbit one, as they just love Peter Rabbit.  This was useful motivation.  I kept finding however that Evan was still not retaining the words he had read many times in each sitting - "said" being the most common in this book.  Additionally, I asked him about a sentence he had got mixed up with, and he said, "it doesn't make sense", and I said well of course it doesn't if you only read the beginning and end of the sentence, but he then referred back to a collection of words in the middle and identified that the third word didn't make sense so he didn't read it.  (I started wondering at this point, is he reading it in his head first, and only saying the words he is more sure of? )  The sentence was this:

Peter and Benjamin went to get Lily.

He was reading,  Peter and Benjamin... Lily

He was mis-reading (in his head) get as something else (I don't know what) but had successfully read went to, in his head.

I asked him if he was reading words in his head.  I explained that if he said out loud what he thought a word might be, I could help him, rather than me hearing a confused jumble.  I was excited at the prospect that we have just been missing something, and that by unravelling his thought processes a bit we might be nearly there.

A while after that, being a little impatient, and plenty frustrated I stopped our reading session and asked them both why they thought it was useful to read.  Evan said, so that he could read his Minecraft book that we recently bought him.  Meanwhile, Autumn said so she could read newspapers!  I decided that making a stronger link between the books we were reading and the things they wanted to be able to read would be helpful, and provide a stronger motivating force.  Being that we are focusing on the most common words I thought it might help to show them how many of the words in any given paragraph in their books, or my books contained the common words.  So I went through a few paragraphs pointing at each of the words which was a common word that he would learn at this very beginning period.  Thankfully, most of them were, and I added that the other words were often relevant to the context, and you could work them out easily using the beginning letter and pictures, or simply ask me.  I then went on to underline that by learning the key words via the the books and methods we were using was the key that he needed to be able to read anything.  There seemed to be a wave of realisation come over him at that time, and he drew his attention straight back to "The Radish Robber" and began reading fluidly.  A few stumbles here and there and mis-reads,but he kept going and accepted my help, and read right the way to the end with little help from me.

WOW.  This is the breakthrough we have been hoping that would happen.  For a long time now, I have known that his ability at reading over reached what he was making audible to be.  I feel now my ears have been opened to his ways of thinking about reading, and that he doesn't need to spend too much time getting caught up in unnecessary phonics learning, rather just keep going with developing his experience reading the main common words through books and games.

PHEW :)


Here is a site with links to others with Sight Word games

Interactive Game with Roy the Zebra

Interactive Game with flowers

Interactive Game with Dinosaur Eggs

Interactive Starwords game (from BBC) - needs shockwave player

Interactive Word Game - matching pairs

Interactive Flash Cards (pick words from high frequency list to practice with words read out

Interactive Word dragger game - drag words into sentence - uses pictures for uncommon words

Interactive recognition game - slow game play & easy to click and not pay attention to real answer unless supervised by adult.  Words read by american child, can be a little unclear at times - switch off the music for greater clarity. No end point.  A little dull.

Interactive game - best suited to classroom setting - as a spelling test type program.  Ability to add your own words, but time consuming for supportive adult and little motivating features

Starfall - matching game

Bingo game - with downloadable bingo cards

Interactive flash cards with test (no speech)

Look-cover-write-check game

Read a sentence (with speech) then check word recognition


MORE challenging stuff (300 word list)

Spelling game

Writing frames

Non computer-based games

Bank Street College - reading rockets - including Monopoly style game

Bristol Council Website - reading game ideas

BANG! game instructions

Other Resources

High frequency words flashcards - PDF download

First 100 words flashcards

Variety of word cards and flashcard - same words but different backing types e.g. rocket, raindrops, bricks etc.

Word bank books - mini word book which can be added to

More theming ideas with HFW

Places to buy some useful flash cards etc.

Last Chatworth visit

Chatsworth house has been a key feature of our Home Educating journey this year.  Providing countless days with friends and on our own exploring the gardens mainly, but also the house and the playground.  We've also clocked up many hours of cuddles with their Guinea Pigs.

It came to the end of our annual pass on Wednesday, so had our final visit on Tuesday, as our dance class blocked up part of Wednesday.  There were a few issues that day so we arrived a little late, and actually ended up missing the playground part of our day as it is usually the first hour of our visit before Guinea Pig cuddles at 11.30.  We only arrive shortly after 11, and since there were still many school children off school, it was super busy, necessitating queuing for our turn with the Guinea Pigs (plus it was one of the deliciously sunny September days, reminding us of our fantastic Summer.  Some people at Chatsworth, however, seem to be oblivious to the concept of fair queuing so we had to wait an extra 10 minutes for the precious time.  However, when they were sat their they had a brilliant and loving time with them.  They even had the opportunity to swap Guinea Pigs, with Autumn ending up with a new recruit called Fluffy, who is a real fuzz ball, and Evan with the amazingly rosetted Fudge.

We followed this by going to the Gardens, but dropped in on the amazing and beautiful toilets in the coach house restaurant with automatic flush, gold doors and beautiful sinks (makes a  nice change from the utilitarian ones in the farmyard!) Once in the gardens we headed to our chosen destination of the Grotto via the Trough waterfall. We had originally decided to eat our lunch there, but hunger won out, and we went and lunched on the money chairs overlooking the rose garden.  This is not far from where we usually have lunch - by the squirrel nutkin tree, so they popped there and explored whilst I read a book.  After about 30-40 minutes of play there we headed on to the Grotto, but we had a kicking and screaming Autumn, flat our refusing to move from the tree.  Insisting that she wanted to just stay there all day. After a while I managed to reason with here and explain that it was a family choice and that we all had to play a part.  That and a smidge of distraction seemed to unlock her legs and get us to move on and enjoy the rest of our day.

On the way to the Grotto we enjoyed the current collection of sculptures around the Canal Pond, I thin they are part of a collection on display on behalf of Sothebys, up for auction.  my favourite of which is featured again, after being on display this time last year.

The trough waterfall was a terrific hit, with lots of boingy prodding into the water with sticks, and there was a great exploration to find the perfect sticks with the right amount of boinginess.

After the waterfall was the perfect pond with its stunning colours surrounding it, and a brilliant tree that Autumn spent a good while sitting in.  I was a little sad later on when Autumn had left her arbourous home that another child with his family requested going in the tree, and was told by his parents that the tree was too precious to be sat on.  I have to say it was probably the sturdiest branch Autumn has ever sat on!  Whilst sitting by the pond Evan enjoyed watching the ducks, I think they were juveniles by their size.  They popped in and out of the water, and both Evan and Autumn commented on the various different ripples that came from the ducks.  Then Evan began exploring how he could make some interesting ripples by throwing pine cones into the water.  As it was a fairly calm day we watched this effect with interest.  Autumn and I sat and had a cuddle, and I took some beautiful photos, including of the Acer trees which are my favourites in the garden.

The Grotto didn't have quite the appeal that it usually had as it was occupied by a number of other visitors (we usually get the whole place to ourselves, which we thoroughly enjoy).  The children asked, as they always do, why there are footmarks on the roof of the grotto (which we view from the bit above it)  We move on and go back the way we came, which is unusual as we normally don't cover the same path twice in a visit, but Autumn had requested going down the other side of the waterfall and stream, which we had never done before, so today seemed a good opportunity to do this.  We spied some sculptures we saw earlier, which we mistakenly took for squirrels when we passed them from a different vantage point, but this time we could clearly see they were faces next to glasses and a bottle of wine!

The next stop was due to be the Kitchen gardens, and time was seriously getting on by this time, so when we stopped at various places, including the rock garden on the way I did have to remind them that they wanted to go further and time was short.  We reached the Kitchen garden for a very short visit, but it was just amazing to see all the amazing produce.  It is impossible not to be inspired by the abundance there, of food and flowers.  It was hard not to pluck an apple or plum from the tree, or not pick a flower to go in my hair, but I resisted the temptation.  Evan ate chives, as usual. We also came across those interesting flowers which look soft and lovely, but area actually hard like they are man made.  It was fun exploring this nuance with Evan. (Autumn had disappeared at this point)

It was time for our last walk out of the gardens, with an everso quick trip to the squirrel tree, but as Evan didn't fancy playing there at this point, Autumn didn't. So that was it.  Our last adventure in the Gardens.  We have decided to explore othere places this year, so have invested in National Trust Membership, and plan on going to Clumber park, and other places more regularly in the coming year, including the Deep, which we are going to on Tuesday, and visiting the Penguins who arrived there earlier this year.  I never dreamed that Chatsworth would provide such a tremendous wealth of fun, excitement and learning on so many occasions for us.  We will certainly take advantage of membership again in future years.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Chatsworth.  To all who work there, to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, to the Guinea Pigs, and other animals, to all our friends who have come with us, to the beauty, magic and wonder of the place. Also, the biggest Thank you goes to my Mum, who not only introduced us to the place, but gave us our annual membership.

Following are the links to all our other outings at Chatsworth

Relaxed Day
First visits
Autumn's Birthday
Making a river
December & December again
Babies
Paddling

Below are photos from our trip in August with friends

Reading: Reflections and perspective

This last month has been one of hunkering down and getting on at home more than anything else.  Outings and other activities outside the house have been fairly limited.  Evan is at the tail end of an ear infection, and Autumn, I am hoping, is at the tail end of a urine infection.  The illnesses have caused  a period of reflection. Here is part of the thought journey I have been on.

With Evan turning Seven I have had the inevitable panic at his level of reading and writing, feeling a tad insecure about his comparative level, as if I had to send him to school for some reason, at this point, I know that his levels would not be looked on too favourably by his teachers, and would lead to many difficulties, as the school curriculum invariably relies heavily upon the ability to read and write to access the whole curriculum.  Which, in my opinion, is why schools see it as so important to get at an early age.  I can understand this, having been a teacher myself, I certainly used it a fair amount when I taught Key Stages 1 and 2.  It is my perception that the gulf in his ability, in this particular area, between him and his peers means that school, for the time being, would be out of the question as a possibility.  I suppose up to now I have kind of assumed if circumstances necessitated, school could be an option open to us.  Now, though, I realise, that unless he has some sudden breakthrough, that option is lost to us, for the time being at least.  I reacted to this feeling of lack of control and insecurity fearfully by thrusting worksheets in front of both of my kids, in an effort to ensure this option could remain open.

I decided in order to keep the children in control of the majority of their time, I asked them to have kitchen table time with me for the 20-30 minutes whilst I prepared breakfast.  Any other time in the day is so variable, I felt it would be unlikely I could capture their attention regularly.  For the first 4-5 days this was fairly successful.  I found that Reading Eggs, Evan's favourite website, had a new worksheet section.  So I thought this would be a nice complementary thing to add to his knowledge and understanding of the subject, and have characters and things that were familiar to him.  At first he enjoyed it, but as time wore on, he became increasingly reticent to complete even the most simple of tasks, which I knew were within his capability.  Some simple information he seemed incapable of taking on board.  Looking back I realise that this is not in line with my philosophy of learning.  Evan seems to work much better when he is self-directed and absorbed in the task, rather than pushed into completing and arbitrary number of tasks at a set time.  His learning at these times is most likely to be low level, and not long lasting learning, certainly lacking in intrinsic value or motivation.  I had begun using fairly high stakes bribes, against my better judgement, to push him into engaging with the materials.  Suggesting that if I couldn't help him to learn to read or write, then I would have to send him to school and they would do a better job.  If I had been a fly on the wall I am sure I would have been screaming at myself that this was against all the ideas I had about learning, and very unlikely to produce the results I sought.  To be honest, I had that fly on the wall in my head... I screamed this at myself as I slammed down a spatula in frustration.  Thankfully after a few weeks I stopped and really looked at Evan. Was this doing him any good at all?  No, definitely not.  I kept coming back to the messages I had received from John Holt, in "Learning all the time", and from friends who have successfully home educated their children in an autonomous fashion, whose children are bookworms, but came to reading a little later than is considered "normal".  Children learn everything they need to learn if they are given the time, space and rich environment to do it in, rather than learning everything because we feel we need them to in the manner and time scale we feel is appropriate.

 Sadly, my reaction to my fear was not necessarily one which served my children's best interests, even though I had convinced myself that it did.  I am really grateful for finding the path back to working with my children again.

Things have shifted though, we have begun using this early morning time, as a productive time rather than vegging in front of the telly, which had begun fairly habitual, and started the day in a sedentary fashion which bled into the rest of our days.  I don't feel it necessary for the children to be productive at all times, far from it, but I do see the benefit of a little structured together time in the morning to set the day off to a positive start.  I no longer do the worksheets with Evan, but Autumn has keenly begun some workbooks which she is enjoying.  Evan, meanwhile does some games on Reading Eggs with my support and encouragement.  We took a week and a bit off all of these things whilst they had been ill, and I let them be...  Lots of hanging around and resting and cuddling; whilst also enjoying plenty of play.  When they were up to it the play between them seemed to flow in an amazing way, games would go on for days and arguments seemed to have almost completely disappeared.  A few days ago I realised that I hadn't had to support them in sorting out any battles for quite some time.  Instead, when I heard a slight impasse, I heard Evan negotiating and carefully and skilfully supporting Autumn, and backing down when necessary.  This was music to my ears, and I realised that this is what I needed to be doing.  Listening, supporting, creating rich environments, not shoving worksheets under his nose.

Since my revert to going with the flow life has suddenly become much lighter.  We are all enjoying ourselves much more.  Yes, I would still like Evan to be reading books independently and getting great enjoyment from them, but I realise that it will happen at the right time for him, and he isn't all that far off anyway.  I know that if I kept my regime going he would kick against the constraints and avoid any reading for a good long time.  I don't want to take that risk, and I love how much fun he is having.

Making a river

Another trip to Chatsworth, and another bit on our river project.  Many playgrounds these days are well resourced enough to have these amazing things... but we particularly enjoy this archimedes screw and accompanying water feature in a sand pit which provides endless opportunities for collaborative play.  This was the second river project they worked on during their visit, but the biggest hit.  They planned it so meticulously, and thoughtfully so as to create the river despite which way the balance was going, and it most importantly led the water back into the river from where it was sourced via the Archimedes screw.  Their efforts over their visits have led Evan and his friends to recognise key elements necessary in successful channel building - including not letting the water come down before you have created your channel so that it doesn't pool ineffectively at different junctures.  

This was about 15 minutes before we had to leave

Evan was beginning turning the Archimedes Screw to get the flow going just before we left.

It is going...

Here we begin to see the channels - which have been tried out.

Water joining t the two tributuries.

The channel flow has stopped.  They had tried the channel out, but it had filled back with sand as they had nothing to stop the sand falling in again.  So Tom re-dug out this section on the fly as Evan turned the screw.

Keep going Tom!

Here you can see a section where it pooled.

Here is the last bit of the circut, below here led to the river - both our batteries ran out so no more photos I'm afraid!

During this magnificent play Su and I were discussing how well the kids were playing and I have to say it makes such a difference that they have free reign over the equipment, and are not being pressured (either by peers, or adults) to share.  There are valuable reasons why we share, but we would never expect a scientist to share his equipment in a lab because a whole heap of other people had arrived and wanted to give it  go.  Equally, I would not be expected to share the use of all my craft equipment by others, especially when in the middle of an important project.  I would find it impertinent if someone demanded that I do so... not unlike the feeling I felt when Su told me that amidst the crowds of Chatsworth House today with the magical Narnia land, when an adult took the plastic crown off of Amy's head and put it on his own, without a word.  Unsurprisingly screaming ensued, and not a word of remorse.

I feel sure that the endless opportunities to play at their own speed and with what they enjoy has an enormous role to play in the learning and development that goes on.  I am so pleased that Home Education affords them these opportunities every day.